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Crafting & dilithium = impaired social gameplay

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
The reason that I open this thread is because there's an aspect of the game that is seriously impaired by recent changes, and while it was mentioned in a few posts, I believe it did not get the proper focus.

On last interviews dstahl said that he (and the devs) wanted to make the game more social and less solo in season 4. The latest changes in TTS do not go towards this direction - in fact, they go to the opposite one. I will mention here two crucial aspects, but anyone who has more examples is welcome to add:

1. Crippled crafting: This is of course the biggest problem, and it's the reason for me opening this thread and actually taking an active role in the "protests" against dilithium changes. Admittedly, I don't craft much myself and I usually use common gear, but I also don't really do PvP much and I'm a casual player so I don't spend too much time on the game. Many people do want the cool and shiny gear, and many of them don't really want to craft, buy (with badges / dilithium), or grind for it. On the other hand, there's a significant number of people who want to advance in crafting, which requires that one craft much more than one actually needs. These opened the door for a wonderful social aspect, where crafters would "sell" their time and skill (for either EC or materials) to players who do not want to craft. This also opened the position of a Fleet Crafter, which most fleets have. Adding dilithium to crafting essentially kills social crafting and makes it a completely SOLO activity!

2. Unattractive exchange: I usually buy most of my gear on the exchange, and sell most of my loot there. I also kinda like doing easy diplomatic investigations and recently I also started the delta flyer crafting mission, so I get quite a lot of 1st order badges. Since I have nothing to do with them (surpassed their quality a long time ago), I generally buy uncommon gear with them and then sell it on the exchange. When the dilithium comes into play, I see no reason to do that. Crafters would also not sell things on the exchange, since dilithium is involved there. The only things that might get sold there are loots (although, one might keep relevant attractive loots in order to avoid the possibility of paying dilithium for it in the future) and second-hand common gear, which people might sell for a bit more than 1/2 value (which is what you get from the vendor). This crippled exchange removes another social-market aspect from the game.

Up to now, most complains I saw about the dilithium economy evolve around people being "lazy" and wanting STO to be as easy as possible, and I kinda defended Cryptic for trying to make the game more challenging. The general intention of the EEPH seems reasonable (e.g. make rare gear actually rare and not mass produced), but there's a fundamental flaw in his plan. First, challenging and harder-to-get (which gives more pride and higher status to things) does not have to map to "takes more time" but rather to "takes more effort" or "takes more skill". Obtaining dilithium is not hard right now, it just takes time. If you go to every academy event and do a routine of relatively easy dailies you can "easily" make the 8k ore a day and refine it, and then you're only bound by time. The fact that one doesn't have a life and spends 3 hours every day on STO routine is not a source for pride and does not make the game challenging. Additionally, since these activities are essentially solo they do not promote social gamepla - they actually promote a solo one.

I have some suggestions on resolving some of these issues, but first I want to see what other people think of the issues themselves. Please do not post issues such as "I reallly hate grinding for VA ship - I want an easy free token because I pay you money" - focus on the social crippling of the gameplay.
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