With the old system, while admittedly it was confusing as all heck, the skills were more specific in their scope. So it was much easier to spend your skills points, and specialize in what you wanted to do well, while ignoring the skills that didn't effect you at all.
However, with the new skill system, while admittedly their are less skills all told, they have much broader scopes, meaning that its harder to specialize in only certain skills that only effect your ship, meaning your skill points actually go just as far as before. However with the increase in skill points cost, its harder to get the skills you want.
This is coupled by the effect when there are skills you don't want, at lower levels, say batteries, but skills you do want at higher levels, say Auxiliary Power. By still being gated into skills that matter to me, by being forced to take skills I don't or won't use at all, my remaining skill points go even less far.
My suggestion is that under the new skill system, while I agree that lower level skills should require higher costs (say 200% more for tier 1) higher tiers have a progressively less increased cost (so tier 2 costs say 175%, tier 3 150%, tier 4 125 %).. Also fold all tier 5 skills into tier 4 so that all the ship systems are under the same tier.
I just HATE the new system, it's even more confusing than it was before.
And I really HATE all the important survival skills are at Tier 5, thus making it harder for Cruisers to survive. :mad:
Right now my Vor'cha Refit turns worse than a Galaxy, and the weapon systems are just junk.
My Healing Potential has dropped 20% at the same time.
Fully skilled into Tactical, my Beams are now 100 points less and my cannons 300 points less powerful.
I am giving the V2 of the Skill System a massive thumbs down! To be honest, I'm so angry, I'm just not going to test anymore until the skill system is re-revamped.
Yeah, so far, not too impressed... I used to be able to spec into exactly what I wanted, now, there's not enough skill points to even get what I had before. My weapon power used to be maxed out in my escort... now, it's no where near max.
Not happy.
EDIT:
And my Prometheus turns like a freaking tug-boat.... VERY NOT HAPPY
If I wanted to make a heavy DPS character with zero survivability, its incredibly easy. Add in any survivability and it becomes even worse.
Science Officers probably have it the next worse, since not only do they need access to many of their top tier science skills, but also access to the Auxiliary power level in engineering.
Tank Engineers have it even worse. All the hull tanking abilities are VERY high up in the tree, and the shield tanking abilities aren't very low level either. Add in that cruiser turn rates are horrible and would highly benefit from any skill that would improve that, and it goes even higher. Add in that there are no agro skills, you can only get it from doing high enough damage to the enemy, it gets even worse.
You can't spec yourself as effectively. In essence this is a global nerf.
Additionally, and this is what upsets me the most, this is the prime opportunity for Cryptic to finally fix the skill tree, this game was never meant to have a skill cap, and here we're getting a new skill tree, its the prime time for them to make the tree work with the cap, and they're not doing that. They're exacerbating the issue.
In all honesty the current holodeck tree is much better... in fact all I'd say is change just the SHIP AND SHIP WEAPONS skills only and leave everything the same, keep everything costing 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, and then things might actually work.
as it is now, this is just a nerf, a bad one, i've honestly never heard so many members of my fleet pondering leaving for for a bad decision like this, and cryptic, you've made a lot of bad decisions.
If I wanted to make a heavy DPS character with zero survivability, its incredibly easy. Add in any survivability and it becomes even worse.
Science Officers probably have it the next worse, since not only do they need access to many of their top tier science skills, but also access to the Auxiliary power level in engineering.
Tank Engineers have it even worse. All the hull tanking abilities are VERY high up in the tree, and the shield tanking abilities aren't very low level either. Add in that cruiser turn rates are horrible and would highly benefit from any skill that would improve that, and it goes even higher. Add in that there are no agro skills, you can only get it from doing high enough damage to the enemy, it gets even worse.
This... it really is a global nerf... and does NOTHING to help people switch from Escort to Cruiser to Science Vessels... in fact, it makes it even more troublesome to do so, since now, for an Escort to work, you are spending all your points on DPS... but for Cruisers to work, you need survivability, which you can't get if your main is Escorts, and Science needs energy, which they can't get if they want to live or do any damage....
This... it really is a global nerf... and does NOTHING to help people switch from Escort to Cruiser to Science Vessels... in fact, it makes it even more troublesome to do so, since now, for an Escort to work, you are spending all your points on DPS... but for Cruisers to work, you need survivability, which you can't get if your main is Escorts, and Science needs energy, which they can't get if they want to live or do any damage....
Seriously. This is horrible.
More than a Global Nerf, its a major kick in the pants to every STO player there is!
As I mentioned above, my KDF Eng captaining a Vor'cha Refit, it's now turns worse than a Galaxy and all my Heals are 20% less than they were. Making my heal build - useless!
And now i just speced on my Federation Tactical / Sovereign, and she too turns like a Galaxy. Furthermore, prior to the patch my Tactical was well ground speced, now there is no skills available for ground! That reduced my Ground fighting capacity severely as a Tactical!
No matter what I seem to do with my points, I keep being left with 100. I'm sat here almost banging my head against the desk trying to figure out where I can tweak my build to get the points spent but no matter what I do, I'm still faced with points left over.
Also, why does it appear I have to spend 6750/6700 points in the Tier 1 skills to unlock Tier 2?
More than a Global Nerf, its a major kick in the pants to every STO player there is!
As I mentioned above, my KDF Eng captaining a Vor'cha Refit, it's now turns worse than a Galaxy and all my Heals are 20% less than they were. Making my heal build - useless!
And now i just speced on my Federation Tactical / Sovereign, and she too turns like a Galaxy. Furthermore, prior to the patch my Tactical was well ground speced, now there is no skills available for ground! That reduced my Ground fighting capacity severely as a Tactical!
This honestly is the WORST UPDATE EVER! :mad:
Agreed. I used to have a decent amount in ground, as well as all I needed in Tactical and Eng/Sci to do dps and survive an attack for more than 5 seconds (still, even then I was instakilled). Now... as I said in the other post, space combat will end up being worse than ground combat 1.0 was... space pvp will die altogether... and our previous work on making sure all the other content and STFs were balanced just got thrown down the toilet.
Agreed to the above posters, i actually lost a lot of DPS to this system, also shield heal and so on.
Plus, the core point was also not met this time: Ground and space skills need a separate skill pool, otherwise you have yet again two options:
- Suck in space
- Suck on ground
What I would like to see:
-Separated skill points for Space and ground, gained separately but without SP loss (Meaning 72K space X ground)
- More ground skills to make sense
- XP costs back to normal
- Damage gained from skill back to normal (Weapons having once dealt 5k deal 4800 now)
- Stop forcing us to spend X skill points in total to unlock the next tier and make it more progressive.
Make it more like: x points in skill X unlock the next skill of this row an make the character level play a greater role in return
e.g.:
X points shield emitters ---> Starship shield systems--->Starship Power Insulators--> Inertial dampener-->Starship counter measures
Just as an example. It is imho better than spending X skill points in total to gain the next skill tier.
Another option would be separating skill points from XP and giving us 1 SP per level;
therefore a total of 51 Skill points to allocate with some skills having more than one rank and others less (To a max of 5 ranks per skill)
I actually had a pretty good space/ground balance before the revamp:
Now:
- Space looks meh
- Ground horrible
This is probably due to the fact that a Holodeck can have 4 full fledged t5 skills while a tribble char can't.( I think the max is exactly 3 fully fledged skills now
Also why is there a skill to increase cloaking efficiency when it also increases by allocating points to AUX?
Plus on the Gal X you have about 5030 Stealth without the cloaking skill and just 5080 with it...(tested on two tacs having the Gal X)
I would say 'considerably buff it', but the last this game needs is a super cloaked Bird of Prey-R.
My suggestion is to remove, replace or integrate it into another skill.
I have to agree with everyone else that said this new skill tree system is bad for the player. The only way I see it remotely working is to lower the skill point costs to their original levels.
I don't have enough experience with the old tree to say "the new one sucks" but a couple of things do leap out.
Sci stuff (my holodeck toon is a sci cap) seems to be heavily weighted towards the more expensive end of things, with 3 at T5. To make things worse, the resistances to those sci powers are T4.
Having (as an example) Hazard Emitters boosted by an engineering skill seems, well, wrong.
You need to spell out exactly what skills are affected for each box I can put skills in- it is still is as clear as mud in most cases.
My character/ship is significantly less able than before- even after jettisoning almost ALL ground skills my toon had, I still can't build a space spec that is even close to what I had before. Maybe you are looking to crank down the power of builds, but I think the 50% increase in skill costs is too much.
I went from an effective space build/fair ground build to a less effective space build/mediocre (if that) ground build.
What i don't like is that every power is supposed to be influenced by only 1 skill but Gravity Well uses both Graviton Generators AND Particle Generators
No matter what I seem to do with my points, I keep being left with 100. I'm sat here almost banging my head against the desk trying to figure out where I can tweak my build to get the points spent but no matter what I do, I'm still faced with points left over.
They ninja upped the skill cap 50 points and some people are using the lack of patch notes about it to lord over other people for being stupid and not knowing about the non-announced update. :rolleyes:
Other than the fact that if one does design for all abilites then over-specializing in a particular performance role means you are highly vulnerable to those abilites, I have little issue at first glance.
Will test more.
It does seem to reinforce the Healer, Controller and Blaster archetypes and has the classic weakness of them if one specs to fill one of those roles. Generalization may be the name of the game under F2P.
Tier 1
SS Weapons training: 9
SS Batteries: 9
SS Hull Repair: 9
SS Flow Capacitor: 9
SS Shield Emitters: 9
Assualt Training: 0
Close Combat training: 0
Away Team Leader: Engineer: 0
Away team Leader: Science: 0
Away team Leader: Tactical: 2
Tier 2
SS Energy Weapons: 9
SS Projectile Weapons: 9
Structual Integrity: 9
SS Subsystem Repair: 0
SS Warp Core efficiency: 5
SS Power Insulator: 0
SS Shield systems: 9
Security: 0
Soldier: 0
Special Forces: 0
Tier 3
SS Maneuavers: 9
SS Target systems: 9
SS Electro-Plasma systems: 5
SS Impulse Thrusters: 9
SS Warp Core Potential: 9
SS Graviton Generators: 0
SS Particle Generators: 0
FireArms: 0
Grenades: 0
Martial Arts: 0
Tier 4
SS Attack Patterns: 9
SS Stealth: 0
SS Engine Performance: 0
SS Hull Plating: 9
SS Shield Performance: 9
SS Intertial Dampeners: 5
SS Sensors: 5
Stealth: 0
Tactics: 0
Threat Control: 0
Tier 5
SS Energy Weapon Specialization: 4
SS Projectile Weapon Specialization: 5
SS Armor Reinforcments: 4
SS Auxullary Performance: 0
SS Weapons Performance: 4
SS Counter Measure Systems: 0
SS Subspace Decompiler: 0
Advanced Warfare: 0
Close combat Protection: 0
Squad Command: 0
Possibly a carreer bonus of extra SP in our own carreer choice is needed?
I just HATE the new system, it's even more confusing than it was before.
And I really HATE all the important survival skills are at Tier 5, thus making it harder for Cruisers to survive. :mad:
Right now my Vor'cha Refit turns worse than a Galaxy, and the weapon systems are just junk.
My Healing Potential has dropped 20% at the same time.
Fully skilled into Tactical, my Beams are now 100 points less and my cannons 300 points less powerful.
I am giving the V2 of the Skill System a massive thumbs down! To be honest, I'm so angry, I'm just not going to test anymore until the skill system is re-revamped.
Well turned out exactly as i feared... they cut away a big protion of potential damage/healing/effects while makeing even less skill useable...
To me, it seems like this new skill system is attempting to import that stupid Trinity into STO... and I HATE it.
The flexibility is something I loved about STO. Now you pretty much have to pick a role and devote yourself to it, or pretty much be sucky to mediocre at multiple things.
I'm not a fan of this new system. The old skill system wasn't even that confusing, in my opinion.
To me, it seems like this new skill system is attempting to import that stupid Trinity into STO... and I HATE it.
The flexibility is something I loved about STO. Now you pretty much have to pick a role and devote yourself to it, or pretty much be sucky to mediocre at multiple things.
I'm not a fan of this new system. The old skill system wasn't even that confusing, in my opinion.
Bring it back.
^THIS^
Now I dont have to post anymore, thanks!
Well... the new system really kills the ability to hybrid, I am a tac/eng mix and do pretty well, but under the new system I either work one class or die horribly.
I don't understand how people are dying or are 50% less effective...I did the Klingon defend the fuel depot mission before the patch and after the patch and reskill and was much more effective after the patch.
I don't understand how people are dying or are 50% less effective...I did the Klingon defend the fuel depot mission before the patch and after the patch and reskill and was much more effective after the patch.
I could not say.
I found it extremely easy as a Tac to run around in Ker'rat and remain unscathed until I was TB'ed (which I put no points in to defending against)
I don't understand how people are dying or are 50% less effective...I did the Klingon defend the fuel depot mission before the patch and after the patch and reskill and was much more effective after the patch.
Depends on your build Startruck. The fundamental flaw of the old skill system was it rewarded certain builds over others, because of highly inflated skill point costs.
The new skill system has the exact same fundamental flaw. It rewards certain builds over others. If I build my science skills around tier 2 or tier 3, I can now build more for dps and hulls and resistance.
DPS comes quickly in the system, tier 2 and healing in tier 3, so then you can spec for survivability. Any other kind of utility and it becomes less worth the exp spent.
To me, it seems like this new skill system is attempting to import that stupid Trinity into STO... and I HATE it.
The flexibility is something I loved about STO. Now you pretty much have to pick a role and devote yourself to it, or pretty much be sucky to mediocre at multiple things.
I'm not a fan of this new system. The old skill system wasn't even that confusing, in my opinion.
Bring it back.
Agreed 100%..... the whole skill system is ..to borrow a term from my favorite band "stupified" now.
I cant spec up to get the same power levels on my ship, I have lost skills that I was previously able to train.... I can only hope this is some of the balancing issues refered to in the dev blog.
I miss the variety of skills you can train in. On holodeck I have several toons, each one specializing in space or ground, and 2 that are balanced. I feel like I really wont have this option anymore.
I pay 50% more to be 75% less effective nice conversion, oh and you will feel it!! Unless that is all my nerfed consoles.
Unless they are adding in more points for the ground tree or points that can only be spent on one tree or the other (perish the thought space and ground XP) this does not fix the issue of everyone speccing into space and not ground.
I think it is time to give this a name we can all refer it to as this whole trainwreck of a beta plods along.
My suggestion is we start calling everything pre the F2P release, pre-D (pre dilithium). This will give us and the gaming community a nice point of reference to the other sci-fi mishap some years ago.
We can all say things like this on the intwerwebs:
"Pre-D I could specilize more and be more effective in space combat than you are now..."
"Pre-D was a fun time, we could play the game we wanted to play it...."
"Pre-D just needed more systems and content...."
The funny thing, well sad thing is - Gozer just spent months revamping the STFs to a point where he and the players like them. Now a global nerf on players and consoles tosses all that dev time out the window. Wait until he gets back from vacation.
Yeah this is going to have to be adjusted so as to not continue to waste resources.
The funny thing, well sad thing is - Gozer just spent months revamping the STFs to a point where he and the players like them. Now a global nerf on players and consoles tosses all that dev time out the window. Wait until he gets back from vacation.
Yeah this is going to have to be adjusted so as to not continue to waste resources.
I'm gonna run some STFs now... What I expect going in:
1) Space combat will be slow and painful (like ground combat used to be). I will get my escort blown to bits because in order to even get my dps levels close to the old numbers, I had to sacrifice all my survivability.
2) Ground combat will again be slow and painful, simply because I had to spend all my skill points in space!
3) STFs that took 30-60 mins will once again take 2-3 hrs with multiple wipes.
Comments
And I really HATE all the important survival skills are at Tier 5, thus making it harder for Cruisers to survive. :mad:
I am giving the V2 of the Skill System a massive thumbs down! To be honest, I'm so angry, I'm just not going to test anymore until the skill system is re-revamped.
Not happy.
EDIT:
And my Prometheus turns like a freaking tug-boat.... VERY NOT HAPPY
If I wanted to make a heavy DPS character with zero survivability, its incredibly easy. Add in any survivability and it becomes even worse.
Science Officers probably have it the next worse, since not only do they need access to many of their top tier science skills, but also access to the Auxiliary power level in engineering.
Tank Engineers have it even worse. All the hull tanking abilities are VERY high up in the tree, and the shield tanking abilities aren't very low level either. Add in that cruiser turn rates are horrible and would highly benefit from any skill that would improve that, and it goes even higher. Add in that there are no agro skills, you can only get it from doing high enough damage to the enemy, it gets even worse.
You can't spec yourself as effectively. In essence this is a global nerf.
Additionally, and this is what upsets me the most, this is the prime opportunity for Cryptic to finally fix the skill tree, this game was never meant to have a skill cap, and here we're getting a new skill tree, its the prime time for them to make the tree work with the cap, and they're not doing that. They're exacerbating the issue.
In all honesty the current holodeck tree is much better... in fact all I'd say is change just the SHIP AND SHIP WEAPONS skills only and leave everything the same, keep everything costing 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, and then things might actually work.
as it is now, this is just a nerf, a bad one, i've honestly never heard so many members of my fleet pondering leaving for for a bad decision like this, and cryptic, you've made a lot of bad decisions.
This... it really is a global nerf... and does NOTHING to help people switch from Escort to Cruiser to Science Vessels... in fact, it makes it even more troublesome to do so, since now, for an Escort to work, you are spending all your points on DPS... but for Cruisers to work, you need survivability, which you can't get if your main is Escorts, and Science needs energy, which they can't get if they want to live or do any damage....
Seriously. This is horrible.
More than a Global Nerf, its a major kick in the pants to every STO player there is!
As I mentioned above, my KDF Eng captaining a Vor'cha Refit, it's now turns worse than a Galaxy and all my Heals are 20% less than they were. Making my heal build - useless!
And now i just speced on my Federation Tactical / Sovereign, and she too turns like a Galaxy. Furthermore, prior to the patch my Tactical was well ground speced, now there is no skills available for ground! That reduced my Ground fighting capacity severely as a Tactical!
This honestly is the WORST UPDATE EVER! :mad:
No matter what I seem to do with my points, I keep being left with 100. I'm sat here almost banging my head against the desk trying to figure out where I can tweak my build to get the points spent but no matter what I do, I'm still faced with points left over.
Also, why does it appear I have to spend 6750/6700 points in the Tier 1 skills to unlock Tier 2?
Agreed. I used to have a decent amount in ground, as well as all I needed in Tactical and Eng/Sci to do dps and survive an attack for more than 5 seconds (still, even then I was instakilled). Now... as I said in the other post, space combat will end up being worse than ground combat 1.0 was... space pvp will die altogether... and our previous work on making sure all the other content and STFs were balanced just got thrown down the toilet.
For my scie toon this is hell!
Please, reduce the skill points cost!
Plus, the core point was also not met this time: Ground and space skills need a separate skill pool, otherwise you have yet again two options:
- Suck in space
- Suck on ground
What I would like to see:
-Separated skill points for Space and ground, gained separately but without SP loss (Meaning 72K space X ground)
- More ground skills to make sense
- XP costs back to normal
- Damage gained from skill back to normal (Weapons having once dealt 5k deal 4800 now)
- Stop forcing us to spend X skill points in total to unlock the next tier and make it more progressive.
Make it more like: x points in skill X unlock the next skill of this row an make the character level play a greater role in return
e.g.:
X points shield emitters ---> Starship shield systems--->Starship Power Insulators--> Inertial dampener-->Starship counter measures
Just as an example. It is imho better than spending X skill points in total to gain the next skill tier.
Another option would be separating skill points from XP and giving us 1 SP per level;
therefore a total of 51 Skill points to allocate with some skills having more than one rank and others less (To a max of 5 ranks per skill)
I actually had a pretty good space/ground balance before the revamp:
Now:
- Space looks meh
- Ground horrible
This is probably due to the fact that a Holodeck can have 4 full fledged t5 skills while a tribble char can't.( I think the max is exactly 3 fully fledged skills now
Also why is there a skill to increase cloaking efficiency when it also increases by allocating points to AUX?
Plus on the Gal X you have about 5030 Stealth without the cloaking skill and just 5080 with it...(tested on two tacs having the Gal X)
I would say 'considerably buff it', but the last this game needs is a super cloaked Bird of Prey-R.
My suggestion is to remove, replace or integrate it into another skill.
Sci stuff (my holodeck toon is a sci cap) seems to be heavily weighted towards the more expensive end of things, with 3 at T5. To make things worse, the resistances to those sci powers are T4.
Having (as an example) Hazard Emitters boosted by an engineering skill seems, well, wrong.
You need to spell out exactly what skills are affected for each box I can put skills in- it is still is as clear as mud in most cases.
My character/ship is significantly less able than before- even after jettisoning almost ALL ground skills my toon had, I still can't build a space spec that is even close to what I had before. Maybe you are looking to crank down the power of builds, but I think the 50% increase in skill costs is too much.
I went from an effective space build/fair ground build to a less effective space build/mediocre (if that) ground build.
This has got to change...
They ninja upped the skill cap 50 points and some people are using the lack of patch notes about it to lord over other people for being stupid and not knowing about the non-announced update. :rolleyes:
STO is getting dumber.
Will test more.
It does seem to reinforce the Healer, Controller and Blaster archetypes and has the classic weakness of them if one specs to fill one of those roles. Generalization may be the name of the game under F2P.
Tier 1
SS Weapons training: 9
SS Batteries: 9
SS Hull Repair: 9
SS Flow Capacitor: 9
SS Shield Emitters: 9
Assualt Training: 0
Close Combat training: 0
Away Team Leader: Engineer: 0
Away team Leader: Science: 0
Away team Leader: Tactical: 2
Tier 2
SS Energy Weapons: 9
SS Projectile Weapons: 9
Structual Integrity: 9
SS Subsystem Repair: 0
SS Warp Core efficiency: 5
SS Power Insulator: 0
SS Shield systems: 9
Security: 0
Soldier: 0
Special Forces: 0
Tier 3
SS Maneuavers: 9
SS Target systems: 9
SS Electro-Plasma systems: 5
SS Impulse Thrusters: 9
SS Warp Core Potential: 9
SS Graviton Generators: 0
SS Particle Generators: 0
FireArms: 0
Grenades: 0
Martial Arts: 0
Tier 4
SS Attack Patterns: 9
SS Stealth: 0
SS Engine Performance: 0
SS Hull Plating: 9
SS Shield Performance: 9
SS Intertial Dampeners: 5
SS Sensors: 5
Stealth: 0
Tactics: 0
Threat Control: 0
Tier 5
SS Energy Weapon Specialization: 4
SS Projectile Weapon Specialization: 5
SS Armor Reinforcments: 4
SS Auxullary Performance: 0
SS Weapons Performance: 4
SS Counter Measure Systems: 0
SS Subspace Decompiler: 0
Advanced Warfare: 0
Close combat Protection: 0
Squad Command: 0
Possibly a carreer bonus of extra SP in our own carreer choice is needed?
Well turned out exactly as i feared... they cut away a big protion of potential damage/healing/effects while makeing even less skill useable...
The flexibility is something I loved about STO. Now you pretty much have to pick a role and devote yourself to it, or pretty much be sucky to mediocre at multiple things.
I'm not a fan of this new system. The old skill system wasn't even that confusing, in my opinion.
Bring it back.
^THIS^
Now I dont have to post anymore, thanks!
Well... the new system really kills the ability to hybrid, I am a tac/eng mix and do pretty well, but under the new system I either work one class or die horribly.
This is something that I can agree on. The system does appear to be going back to Tank/Blaster /Controller.
I could not say.
I found it extremely easy as a Tac to run around in Ker'rat and remain unscathed until I was TB'ed (which I put no points in to defending against)
Depends on your build Startruck. The fundamental flaw of the old skill system was it rewarded certain builds over others, because of highly inflated skill point costs.
The new skill system has the exact same fundamental flaw. It rewards certain builds over others. If I build my science skills around tier 2 or tier 3, I can now build more for dps and hulls and resistance.
DPS comes quickly in the system, tier 2 and healing in tier 3, so then you can spec for survivability. Any other kind of utility and it becomes less worth the exp spent.
Agreed 100%..... the whole skill system is ..to borrow a term from my favorite band "stupified" now.
I cant spec up to get the same power levels on my ship, I have lost skills that I was previously able to train.... I can only hope this is some of the balancing issues refered to in the dev blog.
I miss the variety of skills you can train in. On holodeck I have several toons, each one specializing in space or ground, and 2 that are balanced. I feel like I really wont have this option anymore.
Unless they are adding in more points for the ground tree or points that can only be spent on one tree or the other (perish the thought space and ground XP) this does not fix the issue of everyone speccing into space and not ground.
I think it is time to give this a name we can all refer it to as this whole trainwreck of a beta plods along.
My suggestion is we start calling everything pre the F2P release, pre-D (pre dilithium). This will give us and the gaming community a nice point of reference to the other sci-fi mishap some years ago.
We can all say things like this on the intwerwebs:
"Pre-D I could specilize more and be more effective in space combat than you are now..."
"Pre-D was a fun time, we could play the game we wanted to play it...."
"Pre-D just needed more systems and content...."
The funny thing, well sad thing is - Gozer just spent months revamping the STFs to a point where he and the players like them. Now a global nerf on players and consoles tosses all that dev time out the window. Wait until he gets back from vacation.
Yeah this is going to have to be adjusted so as to not continue to waste resources.
I'm gonna run some STFs now... What I expect going in:
1) Space combat will be slow and painful (like ground combat used to be). I will get my escort blown to bits because in order to even get my dps levels close to the old numbers, I had to sacrifice all my survivability.
2) Ground combat will again be slow and painful, simply because I had to spend all my skill points in space!
3) STFs that took 30-60 mins will once again take 2-3 hrs with multiple wipes.