Just wanted to let everyone know about something we are working on. There will be a full dev blog about it soon, but I wanted to start getting everyone's feedback on it now before it went to tribble.
We are in the middle of revamping the skill system. This change will come in stages. The first stage will be a space skill revamp. The second stage will be a ground skill revamp. Finally, we hope to split ground and space skill into 2 separate pools. The timeline of these changes are still very TBD, but by the time Free to Play is released, we may only have the space skills updated. Any changes will come with a free respec.
There are 4 main reasons for the changes:
- Captain skills keep you from changing ships - if you spec into a Star Cruiser, you are discouraged from trying an escort because you have to respec (or you have to spec your skills broadly can cannot specialize if you want to change ships often).
- Tactical skills discourage you from using anything but phaser, disruptors, photons and quantums - it's too expensive to spec into skills like antiproton since the skills cost almost twice as much for the same bonus.
- Skills are confusing - what the heck does Astometrics do anyway?! - Its very confusing to cross reference what skills are affecting what abilities.
- I put all my points into space, why is ground combat so hard? - We want to separate the pools so we can ensure good game balance.
So here what the skills changes will look like:
- Starfleet Training skills all go away. That branch will be gone. Instead of a captain skill that buff one particular ship's hull, shields, turn rate, etc, there will now be a skill that just buffs HPs for all ships, a skill that just buffs Shield HPs for all ships, a skill that just buffs turn rate and speed for all ships, etc.
- There will no longer be skills that just affect one damage type. There will be weapon skills, beam skills, cannons skill, torpedo skills, etc., but not phaser skills or antiproton skills.
- Many skills will now simply grant a passive bonus instead of affecting a handful of abilities. For instance, you can buy a skill that will buff your energy damage resistance, but that skill will not affect any of your click abilities.
- Some skills will still affect your click abilities, but they will be less obscure. For instance, you can buy a Starship Hull Repair skill. That skill will simply make all your ship hull healing abilities better. It will only make hull healing abilities better, it will only affect the healing aspect of those abilities, and no other skills will affect hull healing abilities.
- All abilities used to use 3 skills to improve them. This is changed. All abilities will only use one skill at most. Many abilities will no longer utilize any skills at all. The effectiveness (magnitude or duration) of those skills will be modified to approximately 75% of what you can achieve now with full skills. For example, if an ability would grant a base 10% debuff, and could be improved to a 20% debuff if you have max (9 levels) in all 3 skills that affected that ability, then that ability now will just come with a flat 17.5% debuff.
- The number of skills will be cut in approximately half. As such the cost of all skills will be approximately doubled.
At this point, we are only focusing in stage 1 (Space Skills). Here is a quick glance of what the new skill may look like (still very early and subject to change):
Tier 1
Starship Weapons Training
Batteries - Increases duration of Battery consumables
Starship Hull Repair - Improves hull healing
Emitters - Improves Shield Heal
Tier 2
Starship Energy Weapons Training
Starship Projectile Weapons Training
Starship Subsystem Repair
Starship Warp Core Efficiency (bonus power when low)
Structural Integrity - Bonus HP
Inertial Dampeners - Res Hold, Disable, Knock and Slows
Shield Systems - Shield HP
Tier 3
Starship Beam Weapons
Starship Cannon Weapons
Starship Maneuvers - Defense
Electro-Plasma System - Energy Transfer Rate
Starship Warp Core Potential - bonus power to all systems
Impulse Thrusters - Speed +Turn
Sensors - Stealth Detection, Resist Confuse and Placate
Tier 4
Starship Mines
Starship Torpedo Weapons
Targeting Systems - Acc
Starship Engine Performance - Bonus Engine Power
Starship Shield Performance - Bonus Shield Power
Hull Plating - Energy Dam Res
Countermeasure Systems - Confuse and Placate
Tier 5
Starship Tactics - Weapon Proc
Energy Weapon Specialization - Energy Wep Crit Hit and Severity
Projectile Weapon Specialization - Projectile Wep Crit Hit and Severity
Starship Auxiliary Systems Performance - Bonus Auxiliary Power
Starship Weapon Systems Performance - Bonus Weapon Power
Armor Reinforcements - Physical Dam Res
Graviton Generators - Bonus to Hold, Disable, Knock and Slow
Note, Engineering Team Leader, Science Team Leader, and Tactical Team Leader have been moved to the Career specific trees. They are still Tier 1 skills, and all classes will have access to all 3 skills. These skills, may, however, change once we begin Stage 2 (Ground Skill revamp).
Or course, all Traits, and Items and abilites will be updated to utilize the new skills.
Remember, this is all very early and subject to change. Look for a complete Dev Blog on this subject as this gets closer to release on tribble. Once this new system is released, we will be looking for your feedback and doing lots of tuning and adjustments.
Enjoy!
Comments
Also... what will happen to our traits...?
In most games I can completely specialize in what I want. Why are we being forced into specializing into Ground...?
As a preliminary, it looks like a good start.
One minor tweak:
I presume you intended:
ReTrait Token
just sayin.....
Space Traits and Ground Traits....
We should get to either add a couple or ReTrait......
However, i have to ask....
.... will skills cost dilithium ?
What ever it ends up being... the thing I appreciate the most, is that you took the time to give us an inkling of what's to come.
For what it's worth, what you've put forth so far sounds intriguing.
also..
"but by the time Free to Play is released, we may only have the space skills updated"
Why not wait until t is complete and functional to release it rather than release some half-*** system. I am sure most would rather wait than have some half broken system released to early. I mean isn't that what was wrong with this game at launch? forcing it to release before it was finished.
Why not just keep it at the full levels if you are doubling the cost of those skills? It seems like this could upset some of the few things that are balanced right now.
Second, I understand the need to streamline the skills and make them more understandable, but with the changes you are proposing, people will still be somewhat locked into their specs. DPS Escorts will be throwing everything they have at the tactical skills, while cruisers will likewise be throwing everything into engineering, and science will do the same with their stuff (but since they only have 1 skill? that'll give them options that escorts and cruisers won't have -- a little unbalanced) and each will be at a disadvantage when trying a different type of ship (ie, escorts will have spec'ed into cannons and not extra into shields or hull). I think you need to have an equal number of skills at each tier for each ship type... but again, this doesn't really seem to meet your stated goal of removing the spec requirement for some ships to actually work.
This x1000.
Will Dilithium in any form be a part of the upcoming skill changes?
Z
For example: Starship Beam Weapons: Tier 1: 0-X skillpoints; Tier 2: X-XX; Tier 3: XX-TRIBBLE; etc.
My guess is YES.
This, this, a thousand times, this!
Gecko, THANK YOU for sharing this plan!
I admit I'm intrigued. It's basically a simplification of the space skill tree set. I think that's a rather splendid idea. Will need to chew on this a bit before coming up with more ideas, but very intriguing.
Again, THANK YOU! ^_^
I just wanted to say thank you and I really hope this is something that we're going to see more of from Cryptic as a whole.
Could you give us any word on how respecs without a token will happen in the future?
Seeing as the Merit system is gone, and the in-game method of respeccing gone with it.
i totally agree things need to be a bit clearer and simpler but please dont make it too simple. there needs to be plenty of room for customization. im also not sold on the fact we need to split ground and space. it gave more customization. this seems to reduce that option. if someone wants to be all space or all ground or a mix then im all for that. if someone cant work out why ground is hard based on not having any points there, then thats their own fault.
could it be set up so its split by default but you can turn it off to spec how you like. perhaps golds can spec how they like and silver are locked into split skills. silver get the easy option, golds get more customization.
i was never a fan of the diminishing points as you rank up either. it might be easier if every point gives the same improvements, and it would be nice if we could see what those improvements would be before locking them in. before you just had to put your points in, confirm it and then see if the improvements was worth doing.
Of course it is very early on and this is only my first thought, but as I said this does sound promising. Without further details all I can say is thank you so much for the early details (subject to change) and thank you for finally getting around to unlinking skills to specific ships or weapons, etc.
Much appreciated!
Having said that, do click abilities that benefit from a single skill scale to as high as they could previously by maxing that one skill?
I do have one question however, I know everything is still in flux so you might not be able to give a firm answer, but I'd like to ask you about the "Weapon Proc" skill box. Will we need to fully invest in this box to get back to the 2.5% chance of triggering the weapon proc, or will we increase the proc rate of weapons beyond the 2.5% (maybe up to say 5% or even *gasp* 10%)?
Btw, the double cost is relative, since the number of skills is about half.
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.urlesque.com/media/2010/05/hatereagle.jpg
And it is stated in the OP that every change comes with a free respec, read moar
^ this
you are right no one said anything about charging dilithium for skills. I just wanted to check.
thanks for running it up the flagpole before you put it up. Again, i look forward to a simpler skill system.
oh, one last thing. you wont charge C-point either, right. ( just checking)
I would rather see a branched weapon skill tree. Allocating skill points into tetryon shouldn't cost more than phaser but I feel that they should be separate.
I didn't see anything wrong with specializing in a ship type. I can't say that I'm a fan of the idea but I get that it's meant to help sell c-store ships; it makes sense in that context.
I do like the splitting of space and ground. I'm sure it was needed to balance the difficulty of the missions, especially ground missions since most seem to avoid putting any points into ground skills.
I get what's going here with simplifying the skills but I do feel it's a bit miss-guided. Creating a skill system where everyone basically becomes the same character with different skins is not exactly a compelling experience for the players. IMO.
While I realize that making the game accessible to even the dumbest among us is good for business (at least that is the perception) it doesn't exactly create a compelling gaming experience for those of us who enjoy games with more depth.
The adage 'keep it simple stupid' is not fitting for every scenario.
So I just wanted to say some skills like the cannons are probably not going to be lumped together simply because they are a totally different weapon type like torpedoes and mines are different but it sounds like a good start on their part excited to see where it goes from here.
All the same training same skill nodes (unlocking the ability to train a boff) will still remain available- they will just be assigned to unlock with differnt skills.
Wow, i must say thank you. I do not know how everyone else feels but thank you for asking for our input before changes are made instead of after.
I do like the idea of a new skill set because of the current skillset where you have to do a new skillset for another class ship.
My 'wishful thinking' idea i've shared with my fleetmates was it would be nice to allow us to skill each class ship (escort, cruiser, or science). Or allow our skillset to be bound to each ship. That way i could vamp up my Defiant the way i want to and do something a little different with my Multi-Vector escort ship. I believe that we should be given X amount of Respec tokens to skillset the first few ships and then yes--we have to pay or earn for the other ones.
Same goes with ground... The ability to have us create our away teams for mission specific stuff, save them as group names, and allow us to access the group names in a drop down feature. Each group would be skilled set the way you want it to be.
Just my thoughts.
Again, thank you for including us in the before instead of the after..
Will higher tier skills give higher bonuses?
Well with this new skill tree the players who respec every other day/week won't 'need' too, plus Gold players still get a free respec at every rank and every time they make a change to the skill tree or some skills we get given a free respec.
So if you do manage to use up all your respecs then paying a 'fair' price for one on the C-store or trading Dilithium for C-store points to purchase one once in a blue moon sounds perfectly fair.