Scaling of missions and non-scaling loot

System

Ok, I get it, the original economy was a total Cluster****.

Tribble, as it stands now, is even worse.

On Tribble, now, it appears that all story missions scale. THat bears repeating... it appears that all story missions scale

It was bad enough before I figured out that if I took a Breen mission as an Lt. Cmd, and completed it as a Cmd. I would get the LT Cmd. loot. Fine. Minor Bug. No Big Deal.

However, current indications are that:

a. You will have to grind dailies to get the higher tier ship you need to have to advance.
b. Grinding dailies will increase your rank.
c. Story Missions, which at one time were sufficient to keep you competitive with PVE content, may no longer be enough

at the moment, I am doing the "Researcher Rescue" mission, at LC7, and am facing LC7 enemies. what reward do I get from admiral Quinn upon completion? a Mk II Body armor.

If ALL story missions are going to be scaling, ALL completion loot needs to be scaling, and the Mk lvl of the loot needs to be Set at the time that the mission is completed, not at the time it is accepted.

Alternatively, the new ship could come equipped with gear for the rank you are NOW at and not your previous rank.

As of right now, ALL players on Tribble should recieve a MASSIVE bonus refined dilithium, to overcome these issues, so that end-game content can be tested adequately.

Archived Post

timotheus.d wrote: »

If ALL story missions are going to be scaling, ALL completion loot needs to be scaling, and the Mk lvl of the loot needs to be Set at the time that the mission is completed, not at the time it is accepted.

Ah simply jump to the appropriate mission for your lvl, ooh wait we can't...
Cryptic you couldn't balance a single efficient MK VI engine, how the heck are you going to balance all Story mission gear across level???

Who would ever think this was a good idea...

Cryptic Employe 1: Hmm maybe its a good idea, for everybody to do the missions in order, that way when there is a bug, they wont be able to progress anymore, and have no choice but to play how we tell them to.

Cryptic Employe 2: Wow that sounds like a great idea, gotta make sure that the missions level with the player otherwise its gets to easy.

Cryptic Employe 1: Good thinking Batman, hadn't thought of that, what about the mission rewards?

Cryptic Employe 2: Nah can't have them level, i mean players might actually want to use em , if they match their level, less reason to buy dilithium in the store, let's better not.

Cryptic Employe 1: true dat, motivating players with in-game stuff is soooooo Season 2.

Archived Post

Conceptually speaking, there should be no problems in either scaling, episodes, or even non-scaling or scaling gear.

In regards toward scaling gear, a good 90% of the gear in the rewards are not 'special', so they shouldn't even have problems scaling. They're just basic shields with extra bonuses tacked on. So those Mk __ Shields [Reg] would be the same across the board.

Even some of the 'unique' items have no scaling problems; think the unique Devidian shield you get. It adds a % based damage resistance that is supposed to be more efficient against Devidians, and also a standard regen bonus. This, too, should have no problems scaling, since you never need to scale the % protection vs Devidians. (We're ignoring the fact that it doesn't seem to actually work right now)

The specific problem with Efficient Engines is that they are just that much better than all the other engines, because they add an effect that isn't just situationally useful. If you scaled the engine, you'd make it so no one would use anything but the engine. In other games, you wouldn't care about such a thing, because it's a neat engine that's amazing when you get it, but you'd just move on to bigger and better things later in your life time.

But since other stuff scales, that doesn't work so well, and this neat little item becomes a bad design choice, because it's a balancing nightmare. For stuff like this, it makes sense that those items don't scale.

Regarding the issue with the Episodes; my understanding is that leveling has been accelerated. If this is true, then we're getting through the levels significantly faster than we would on Live, so this isn't *as big* as problem, although still a problem. Even if we're not, I don't mind the episode break down with some changes.

1) The majority of the loot should scale. Since most if it is just basic gear with standard modifiers on it, there's no reason to no scale it. A majority of the unique gear is scalable, too. But it's also understood that some gear (Such as the Efficient Engines) isn't scaled because of really unusual implications in their scaling/balancing.

2) Featured Episodes should all be removed from the Episode Arcs, and made into their own arcs. These are self contained stories, and inserting them forcefully into the main episodes is a bit jarring, and does interrupt the story flow a bit.

3) The episodes should all be detached from each other, and allowed to be played whenever you want - but based on a prerequisite level. IE; You can start the Cardassian Arc anytime you want, as long as you're a Captain, even if you haven't completed the Klingon or the Romulan Arcs.

I think this alleviates some of the problems with scaling missions and scaling or non-scaling loot.