test content
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc

Why the simplification of the skill tree went over the top - by a lot!

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
As almost everyone, I agree to the diagnosis of the problems with the old tree and thus I welcome a general redo.

But unfortunately I have to agree to most of the recent critique on the new version too:

- It is almost impossible to specialize as skills are too broad: E.g It is a very bad idea to combine the efficency skills. Before it was possible to favour a certain energy setting by not skilling the energy setting where you usualy have a high setting anyway - Now rendered impossible. Or that different skills influenced different healing abilities - that was a good thing.

- Most skills are important for most players causing a very strong egalitarianism over all characters.

- Almost complete reduction of skill "interaction effects": As now there is basically only one skill making a significant impact on a certain ability, it is much harder to realy squize the last bit out of a ability. Before, a good build was basically created by finding out which skills go well with each other. Now its all the same, further causing everyone to be more or less identical.

- This problem might be best seen if you consider that captain abilities cannot be influenced by any skill anymore.

- Even stronger weights that teams and fleet-skills don't influence any other skills anymore. To give you a temporary buff was basically the idea of the teams and thier healing only a nice add-on. This is just another factor that eleminates a possibility to be realy good at one thing.

- All in all, individuality and the impact of understanding the game mechanics is greatly removed. One example: Before I was able to buff target subsystems to -97 now around 80 seems max.

- I am also very uncertain if sci/eng/tac captains can choose from the same number of skills with about the same "strength". Eng skills seem to be overproportionally important.

If generating transparency was the main goal, eliminating interacting influences was realy the wrong way. It would have been so much easier and better to just replace the "impacts e.g. ability X" in the discription of the skill with a full list of abilities that are affected.

If the impact of skill and game-understanding shoudl be eleminated in favour of equal chance for new and old players, I have a better idea: Just let us play dice: There everybody has the same chances and skill doesn't matter!

This is not a rage post as it is clear that the current version is in development. On the other hand, there has to be feedback to actually "evolve" the system. ;)
Post edited by Unknown User on
«1

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    I agree with almost everything you said, and you've said more eloquently then I've been able to.

    The fundamental flaw of the old system was that it favored certain BO skills were much more cost effective to spec into then other BO skills, due to their individual required supporting skills in the tier tree. This has not fundamentally changed, just certain skills have been shifted about, making different skills more cost effective and others less cost effective.

    Add in that I need to take X number of skills in order to raise my access to the next tier still and that I'm fundamentally limited to the number of BO skills I have access to at any given moment, if most of my BO skills that I would like to use are supported by Tier 5 skills, I have to improve a number of BO skills and systems that I don't want to specialize in. For example under the new system, if I don't want to use ship batteries, it doesn't matter I still must improve them to have access my tier 2 skills. (Caveat: this is under the assumption that Heretic was right and that ground skills will no longer be able to be chosen with space exp and vice versa).

    Also, while they have decreased the number of skill choices by 50%, they have raised the skill costs by 50%, meaning that any skill that requires a tier 5 skill to be highly effective is still net equal in cost effectiveness, meaning they haven't fixed a darn thing.

    What they've done is basically given us the same net amount of skill points, but made the skills they've given us more important, meaning we've actually gotten a net loss in skill points.

    Tack on the nerfing of many of the engineering consoles and we gain an even bigger net loss.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    Sounds like you've put a lot of thought into the system, which is cool, but surprising, seeing as how it just came out a few hours ago. I've only had time to do one space combat mission, so I don't have much feedback, but I can say this much:

    * I don't like that some skills cost multiples of 50 instead of 100. It was impossible for me to spend all my skillpoints (I kept ending up with 100 left no matter how I divided the points where I wanted them) since the first tier now costs 150.

    *It seems as though power levels got a bit of a nerf unless you pump all your points into all the Performance skills. Before the skill change, I used 90/60 for my cruiser's weapons and shields and my modified power levels were 109/102. Now they are 102/92. I'm not particularly happy about that, as I worked very hard to get a setup that had both weapons and shields over 100.

    *Too many of the skills are useful. I felt like I just didn't have enough points to cover space, let alone ground. If Cryptic is planning to split the trees as they have said, this wouldn't be much of a problem if the amount of skillpoints we have now is reserved entirely for space and we get a new, separate pool of additional points for ground.

    *Initial combat performance seems mixed. On some groups I was tearing through ships like tissue paper. However, a single Galor gave me more trouble than I'd like.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    I'm a little upset over the Bonus Defense tweak of the last three hours.
    With a maxed Skill set influencing Defense I went from a 120% down to 70% while logged out of the game.
    I can understand 120% being to high but 70% is 10% less than the old system and just highlights how proper traits are gonna be in demand more for combat.

    Is this a permanent thing?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    the way i see to fix the lack of specialization is to raise the level cap, and add a new tier of skills that makes you specialize into: ship type(class), weapon type(phaser, photon, etc...), pistol/rifle/assault/melee, energy type, kit subclass. basically, one skill for each thing you can specialize in and enhances everything about that specialization
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    I agree with you churchland, I also made a quick post about it.
    There are some positive things, and alot of negative as well.

    And added some more useless skills to it like Stealth Skilling for cloak and MES.


    I'd rather have them add Fireworks skilling to the Skilltree

    :p:p:p
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    I don't see it as an oversimplification.

    I see it as an undersimplification.

    It may not be in time for F2P but what I think the skill tree needs is:

    -No longer affecting specific powers.
    -Mutually exclusive skill choices and pre-req skills to guide people towards the overall intended approach,which is to force a degree of specialization while making players successful in whatever specialization to choose.
    - Bigger buffs in the areas we specialize, to really, REALLY underscore the choices. So if I sacrifice all shield powers to focus on engine power and turnrate, I think the turnrate gain should be substantially more than it is on live, not a bit less.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    * I don't like that some skills cost multiples of 50 instead of 100. It was impossible for me to spend all my skillpoints (I kept ending up with 100 left no matter how I divided the points where I wanted them) since the first tier now costs 150.

    You need to earn 50 more SP.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    As far as I'm concerned, the only point where the previous skilltree was weak was in its implementation of skills of Captain tier and higher.

    For example, photon projectiles versus plasma. Deflector Field vs Deflector Dish. Shield Performance versus Weapon Performance.

    The game would've been served pretty well by having several of those skill entries pushed to match the levels of others. All weapon energy skills could've been shoved at Commander rank to make them equal to the phasers/disruptors/photons/quantums. Most of the Captain science skills could've been shoved to Commander and the more exotic capstones like Astrometric could've been made Tier 4. All Power Efficiency skills could've stayed as Tier 3s (all of them) and the Power Performance could've all been tucked in Tier 4.

    It wouldn't have been a huge revamp, but the hypocrisy behind the system could've been much reduced, and player choice significantly enhanced beyond minmaxing. There is also in my eye no obligation to stack skills into the Admiral rank just to give the admiral tier something. Oh, and hey, perhaps not requiring players to pay as much the exorbitant prices of the Captain and Admiral tiers would allow to spare more points for ground skills, Mm?

    The starship command skills could be inconvenient at times, but they did accomplish one thing: the declaration "My captain is an expert commanding this ship. He knows all the ins-and-outs of it and his prior experience commanding science vessels makes him that much better at it."

    So, basically, aside from what I pointed out above, I consider the skill revamp a wasteful investment. There was no need to go that far. The Skill system did need an overhaul... but frankly, I always thought the overhaul that was needed was to make it more explanatory and turn the UI more graphically intuitive. What they have going there is the same ****-poor layout they've had from the beginning. How about showing colored bars that could let me visually see how much I gain from investing in energy weapons, then beam weapons and then a particular energy type?

    I'm serious. The UI needs to be better and more attractive. Most of the skill hijinks currently going on is... pretty much futile.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    Six-beam cruisers seem to have gotten the shaft big-time - with all my weapons maxed and two (now +3.5 :mad:) consoles I'm still not hitting the 125+ weapons power I got on Holodeck *sigh*
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    Destinii The OP of that post is translating a generalized build to a generalized build. I wonder if the outcome would be the same with a specialized build. Especially when you consider how diminishing returns should add in on such min/max builds.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    I don't see it as an oversimplification.
    I see it as an undersimplification.

    My Biggest concern was (and is) the elemination of complexity regarding the interaction of skills and abilities.

    Gekko and Rivera mentioned thoses reasons for the changes
    • Starfleet/KDF Training skills kept players from changing ships
    • Tactical skills discouraged players from using anything but Phaser, Disruptors, Photons and Quantums
    • Skills are confusing - What the heck does Astometrics do anyway?! It has been very confusing to cross reference which skills are affecting which abilities.

    As said, I agree to the first two and to to the way they approch the solution.
    I even partially agree to the third point but here the proposed solution makes STO a more trivial, worse game.
    The solution should not be to remove complexety but to explain things better.
    As said, I consider the old tree confusing because e.g. in the skill discription you don't see I full list of influenced abilities but examples. But the fact that several skills AND abilities (like Sci-Team/-Fleet) influenced several abilities makes the STO mechanics special and interesting to play with and motivates to continue to tweak your toons (this is a big part of the long term motivation for STO).
    If by maxing out one skill it is clear that you maxed out the result for a certain ability, there is little romm for twinkering, individuality and specialisation.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    piwright42 wrote: »
    Destinii The OP of that post is translating a generalized build to a generalized build. I wonder if the outcome would be the same with a specialized build. Especially when you consider how diminishing returns should add in on such min/max builds.

    It is now impossible to min/max. Period.

    Making PvP specializations completely useless.

    Would love to actually find Destinii in PvP... looking over some of his excuses for logic so far has lead me to believe I'd have little trouble ripping him to shreds...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    Zoberraz wrote: »
    As far as I'm concerned, the only point where the previous skilltree was weak was in its implementation of skills of Captain tier and higher.

    For example, photon projectiles versus plasma. Deflector Field vs Deflector Dish. Shield Performance versus Weapon Performance.

    The game would've been served pretty well by having several of those skill entries pushed to match the levels of others. All weapon energy skills could've been shoved at Commander rank to make them equal to the phasers/disruptors/photons/quantums. Most of the Captain science skills could've been shoved to Commander and the more exotic capstones like Astrometric could've been made Tier 4. All Power Efficiency skills could've stayed as Tier 3s (all of them) and the Power Performance could've all been tucked in Tier 4.

    It wouldn't have been a huge revamp, but the hypocrisy behind the system could've been much reduced, and player choice significantly enhanced beyond minmaxing. There is also in my eye no obligation to stack skills into the Admiral rank just to give the admiral tier something. Oh, and hey, perhaps not requiring players to pay as much the exorbitant prices of the Captain and Admiral tiers would allow to spare more points for ground skills, Mm?

    The starship command skills could be inconvenient at times, but they did accomplish one thing: the declaration "My captain is an expert commanding this ship. He knows all the ins-and-outs of it and his prior experience commanding science vessels makes him that much better at it."

    So, basically, aside from what I pointed out above, I consider the skill revamp a wasteful investment. There was no need to go that far. The Skill system did need an overhaul... but frankly, I always thought the overhaul that was needed was to make it more explanatory and turn the UI more graphically intuitive. What they have going there is the same ****-poor layout they've had from the beginning. How about showing colored bars that could let me visually see how much I gain from investing in energy weapons, then beam weapons and then a particular energy type?

    I'm serious. The UI needs to be better and more attractive. Most of the skill hijinks currently going on is... pretty much futile.
    Churchland wrote: »
    My Biggest concern was (and is) the elemination of complexity regarding the interaction of skills and abilities.

    Gekko and Rivera mentioned thoses reasons for the changes
    • Starfleet/KDF Training skills kept players from changing ships
    • Tactical skills discouraged players from using anything but Phaser, Disruptors, Photons and Quantums
    • Skills are confusing - What the heck does Astometrics do anyway?! It has been very confusing to cross reference which skills are affecting which abilities.

    As said, I agree to the first two and to to the way they approch the solution.
    I even partially agree to the third point but here the proposed solution makes STO a more trivial, worse game.
    The solution should not be to remove complexety but to explain things better.
    As said, I consider the old tree confusing because e.g. in the skill discription you don't see I full list of influenced abilities but examples. But the fact that several skills AND abilities (like Sci-Team/-Fleet) influenced several abilities makes the STO mechanics special and interesting to play with and motivates to continue to tweak your toons (this is a big part of the long term motivation for STO).
    If by maxing out one skill it is clear that you maxed out the result for a certain ability, there is little romm for twinkering, individuality and specialisation.

    I agree with these posts. I dont believe the entire tree needs to be simplified, just ship and energy type skills. The complexity of the current skill tree would be removed by simply explaining which abilities the skill enhances in a clear and concise manner (i.e a complete list in the the skill information window!).
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    Hakaishin wrote:
    It is now impossible to min/max. Period.

    Making PvP specializations completely useless.

    Would love to actually find Destinii in PvP... looking over some of his excuses for logic so far has lead me to believe I'd have little trouble ripping him to shreds...

    Her, tyvm.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    Hakaishin wrote:
    It is now impossible to min/max. Period...

    Actually you're wrong. Its incredibly easy to min/max under the new system. In fact, under the new system, with the new point cost, if you maximize your damage potential, you'll incredibly suck at cc and survivability. What they've made it impossible to do is be great at one thing, and average in another, and minimal in the third.

    What you will find in PvP is that its much the same as before. Kill the damage dealers because now they're even more paper cannons, and let the cruisers spec'd for survivability alone because they're not doing near as much dps and can be ignored. You'll end up with in the end two juggernaught battleships, plinking away at their super-hulls with BB guns.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    Churchland wrote: »
    As almost everyone, I agree to the diagnosis of the problems with the old tree and thus I welcome a general redo.

    But unfortunately I have to agree to most of the recent critique on the new version too:

    - It is almost impossible to specialize as skills are too broad: E.g It is a very bad idea to combine the efficency skills. Before it was possible to favour a certain energy setting by not skilling the energy setting where you usualy have a high setting anyway - Now rendered impossible. Or that different skills influenced different healing abilities - that was a good thing.

    - Most skills are important for most players causing a very strong egalitarianism over all characters.

    - Almost complete reduction of skill "interaction effects": As now there is basically only one skill making a significant impact on a certain ability, it is much harder to realy squize the last bit out of a ability. Before, a good build was basically created by finding out which skills go well with each other. Now its all the same, further causing everyone to be more or less identical.

    - This problem might be best seen if you consider that captain abilities cannot be influenced by any skill anymore.

    - Even stronger weights that teams and fleet-skills don't influence any other skills anymore. To give you a temporary buff was basically the idea of the teams and thier healing only a nice add-on. This is just another factor that eleminates a possibility to be realy good at one thing.

    - All in all, individuality and the impact of understanding the game mechanics is greatly removed. One example: Before I was able to buff target subsystems to -97 now around 80 seems max.

    - I am also very uncertain if sci/eng/tac captains can choose from the same number of skills with about the same "strength". Eng skills seem to be overproportionally important.

    If generating transparency was the main goal, eliminating interacting influences was realy the wrong way. It would have been so much easier and better to just replace the "impacts e.g. ability X" in the discription of the skill with a full list of abilities that are affected.

    If the impact of skill and game-understanding shoudl be eleminated in favour of equal chance for new and old players, I have a better idea: Just let us play dice: There everybody has the same chances and skill doesn't matter!

    This is not a rage post as it is clear that the current version is in development. On the other hand, there has to be feedback to actually "evolve" the system. ;)

    this...............
    I agree with you churchland, I also made a quick post about it.
    There are some positive things, and alot of negative as well.

    And added some more useless skills to it like Stealth Skilling for cloak and MES.


    I'd rather have them add Fireworks skilling to the Skilltree

    :p:p:p

    and this, unless you redesign stealth in this game this is just a useless SP sink. like the old subsystems repair
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    Yeah, the stealth choice seemed a ninja handicap given to those that cloak ingame.

    Though the new Skill tree has stopped my DOffing addiction for the time being :D
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    Cuffs wrote: »
    Actually you're wrong. Its incredibly easy to min/max under the new system. In fact, under the new system, with the new point cost, if you maximize your damage potential, you'll incredibly suck at cc and survivability. What they've made it impossible to do is be great at one thing, and average in another, and minimal in the third.

    What you will find in PvP is that its much the same as before. Kill the damage dealers because now they're even more paper cannons, and let the cruisers spec'd for survivability alone because they're not doing near as much dps and can be ignored. You'll end up with in the end two juggernaught battleships, plinking away at their super-hulls with BB guns.

    You cannot maximize your damage. Even putting as many points as you can SOLELY into your ability to pump out damage, you still can't achieve them all (mostly due to the fact you are forced to put points where they aren't needed just to hit the next tier, and you're completely jypped at Admiral).

    God help you as a Cruiser or Sci... you have nearly twice as many skills you have to allocate to in order to do your job effectively. If Tacs are jypped, you're INCREDIBLY jypped.

    Again I reiterate, with fact... min/maxing is no longer possible.

    Since you don't seem to understand what min/maxing means... The definition is to minimize what is unnecessary for your very specific specialization in combat, and completely maximizing your effectiveness at that goal.

    With the new system as it is now, you will find yourself short changing yourself even in your specialty. Guaranteed.

    Perhaps not so much if the tier restrictions were removed altogether.

    @Destinii: I suppose an apology for assumption is in order, though to be openly blunt, I wouldn't care if you were an "it". You'd get the same treatment regardless, which is only fair.

    I don't agree with you. It is fairly obvious you don't agree with me (and a great number of those present). That's fine. I don't quarrel you for that.

    Only your lack of understanding (or perhaps even a lack of willingness to understand) another perspective. Granted, I'm brash... but I've no trouble admitting when wrong. Wife makes sure of that.

    I do not approach the skill tree with the perspective of wanting to play on ground. I do not approach it with the perspective of killing the same Tactical Cube in Khitomer Accord for the 50,000,000th time. I enjoy space PvP, so every statement I make is in that regard.

    When you understand that perspective and can offer proper feedback on that note, I may have a different opinion.

    Here's hoping.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    No I know what min/maxing is, so don't treat me like a moron. With having the ability to place three skills to 8 in tier 5, and all the other dps skills coming much further down, you can practically maximize your dps, considering that the ninth point in any of these skills is not cost effective unless you want the mk III skill it provides.

    Which in what you'll really be missing by not taking star ship energy weapons specialization to 9 is the loss of directed energy modulation III, which you can probably pick up from a BO anyway.

    So no, technically you can't maximize you're dps, but cost-effectively functionally you can. But then those concepts may be beyond you, considering how condescending some of your posts have been, so I'm not expecting you to fully understand what I'm trying to explain. par of the course when dealing with the internet I suppose.

    Now that said, what I do agree with you on your min/maxing comment is that why the heck are we being forced to take skills that we don't need, in order to maximize our effectiveness on our role on our team? There were a number of skills I had to discard, because they couldn't be effectively used anymore because of the higher effective skill costs.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    You're still incorrect about being able to 100% your damage output with the new system, but I suppose it is pointless to bother explaining. You're adamant it works perfectly.

    Condescending... Funny part is that I wasn't condescending to you at all. You honestly didn't seem to understand how min/maxing worked, since the new system doesn't permit it to full effectiveness (in the case of tanking or healing as examples, good luck min/maxing that).

    If you have found a way to do so, I implore a screenshot of your skill point setup on Tribble. Perhaps you are correct and I am doing something wrong.

    Until proven however I am unfortunately inclined to believe you had to make cessions somewhere in your specialty to make room for other points in your specialty, especially at admiral.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    Hakaishin wrote:
    @Destinii: I suppose an apology for assumption is in order, though to be openly blunt, I wouldn't care if you were an "it". You'd get the same treatment regardless, which is only fair.

    I don't agree with you. It is fairly obvious you don't agree with me (and a great number of those present). That's fine. I don't quarrel you for that.

    Only your lack of understanding (or perhaps even a lack of willingness to understand) another perspective. Granted, I'm brash... but I've no trouble admitting when wrong. Wife makes sure of that.

    I do not approach the skill tree with the perspective of wanting to play on ground. I do not approach it with the perspective of killing the same Tactical Cube in Khitomer Accord for the 50,000,000th time. I enjoy space PvP, so every statement I make is in that regard.

    When you understand that perspective and can offer proper feedback on that note, I may have a different opinion.

    Here's hoping.

    I don't have any unwillingness to understand another perspective. I just think its *much* too early in the skill revision to get *so* worked up over it. Heck, I'm not even sure all the skills are working as intended. I'm not noticing any benefit of "Starship Warp Core Potential" right now, unless the top tier Starship Weapon Performance doesn't provide a 1-1 increase in power. I see there being many tweaks to the skill tree in the coming weeks.

    I can understand your point about not wanting to spend any of your 72750 on Ground skills. However, the way you're speccing your skills now assumes we'll have all 72750 for space skills after ground gets moved to its own pool, hence necessitating your need to get 9s in everything at low levels. We just don't know what the split (if there is one) is going to be, hence my statement that speccing for just space might not be the optimal way of testing currently.

    While I've PVPed in the past, it's not something I enjoy (in any game). I won some when I did, I lost some. I don't know exactly what the ramifications of the skill changes are going to be with PvP since I don't, but without more testing than just making a couple of builds in the very limited time the new system has been in game, I don't think its fair to just write it off. (On a side note, I don't think it's fair right now to not allow unlimited respeccing so people can test the system, either.) The thing is that all PvPers are mostly in the same boat, so right now, nobody knows exactly what is going to work and how, again, without more testing.

    That's *my* perspective on things. I hope it makes it a little clearer where I'm coming from too.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    Hakaishin wrote:
    You're still incorrect about being able to 100% your damage output with the new system, but I suppose it is pointless to bother explaining. You're adamant it works perfectly.

    Condescending... Funny part is that I wasn't condescending to you at all. You honestly didn't seem to understand how min/maxing worked, since the new system doesn't permit it to full effectiveness (in the case of tanking or healing as examples, good luck min/maxing that).

    If you have found a way to do so, I implore a screenshot of your skill point setup on Tribble. Perhaps you are correct and I am doing something wrong.

    Until proven however I am unfortunately inclined to believe you had to make cessions somewhere in your specialty to make room for other points in your specialty, especially at admiral.

    Anyway after editting my position, no you can't fully maximize your dps, but you can cost effectively functionally do it. This considering that no one else will be able to do it either means that you're dps will be maximized across the board with dps. Even if you wanted to crank it up to 9 in all three tier 5 dps venues, its not cost effective to, just like it wasn't cost effective to raise your tier 1s under the old system from 7 to 9.

    But otherwise I agree with you, its impossible to hard cap out your dps anymore, there is more of a functional soft cap going on.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    Destinii wrote:
    I don't have any unwillingness to understand another perspective. I just think its *much* too early in the skill revision to get *so* worked up over it. Heck, I'm not even sure all the skills are working as intended. I'm not noticing any benefit of "Starship Warp Core Potential" right now, unless the top tier Starship Weapon Performance doesn't provide a 1-1 increase in power. I see there being many tweaks to the skill tree in the coming weeks.

    I can understand your point about not wanting to spend any of your 72750 on Ground skills. However, the way you're speccing your skills now assumes we'll have all 72750 for space skills after ground gets moved to its own pool, hence necessitating your need to get 9s in everything at low levels. We just don't know what the split (if there is one) is going to be, hence my statement that speccing for just space might not be the optimal way of testing currently.

    While I've PVPed in the past, it's not something I enjoy (in any game). I won some when I did, I lost some. I don't know exactly what the ramifications of the skill changes are going to be with PvP since I don't, but without more testing than just making a couple of builds in the very limited time the new system has been in game, I don't think its fair to just write it off. (On a side note, I don't think it's fair right now to not allow unlimited respeccing so people can test the system, either.) The thing is that all PvPers are mostly in the same boat, so right now, nobody knows exactly what is going to work and how, again, without more testing.

    That's *my* perspective on things. I hope it makes it a little clearer where I'm coming from too.

    Then my assumptions were incorrect, and for that I do genuinely apologize.

    I do cede to several of your points. I still take the stance I've taken in general, though you are correct.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    Hakaishin wrote:
    Then my assumptions were incorrect, and for that I do genuinely apologize.

    I do cede to several of your points. I still take the stance I've taken in general, though you are correct.

    Sorry I got a little worked up myself.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    Cuffs wrote: »
    Anyway after editting my position, no you can't fully maximize your dps, but you can cost effectively functionally do it. This considering that no one else will be able to do it either means that you're dps will be maximized across the board with dps. Even if you wanted to crank it up to 9 in all three tier 5 dps venues, its not cost effective to, just like it wasn't cost effective to raise your tier 1s under the old system from 7 to 9.

    But otherwise I agree with you, its impossible to hard cap out your dps anymore, there is more of a functional soft cap going on.

    Then as mentioned - min/maxing is impossible, since the very essence of the term is to epitomize your potential for a specialty in a team setting.

    You're forced to make cessions. Whether minor or major, they are cessions and your effectiveness reduced from what it otherwise should be in a min/max build.

    Not only this, but while you're not 100% effective in your specialty, you are forced to sacrifice everything else, just to be less-than-100% in that specialty.

    You're not even being rewarded for your sacrifices.

    I enjoy specialty builds. It allowed me to take ships and abilities that others in the past had considered impractical (the Galaxy-X a good example) and make it work very effectively. This spice allowed for some great times in PvP.

    Yes, you can still have a "decent" spec build... but with the old system, I can hard cap my DPS and still have the ability to put some points into defensive measures. Or even ground, if I wanted. Or crowd control.

    Now I can't even cap one objective, even at the sacrifice of everything else in the game.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    So after doing a little experimentation, I discovered that the only thing I couldn't fully maximize was that my star ships weapons performance was stuck at an 8 instead of a 9. Every tactical skill (including stealth) is at 9. I also but nines into starship batteries (for the weapon batteries), Electro-Plasma Systems, Warp Core Potential (to increase energy flow to weapon systems) and graviton generator (for the grav well). Particle Generators was at a 5 (for photonic shock wave).

    So I will contend if you're going to have an issue over 750 experience and one point in starship weapons performance not being min/maxed, well then I must conceed you one point, you can not min max your dps by 750 exp. Unless you want to say that photonic shock wave is also a very important part of your dps chain, and then I owe you a bit more exp.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    Cuffs wrote: »
    So after doing a little experimentation, I discovered that the only thing I couldn't fully maximize was that my star ships weapons performance was stuck at an 8 instead of a 9. Every tactical skill (including stealth) is at 9. I also but nines into starship batteries (for the weapon batteries), Electro-Plasma Systems, Warp Core Potential (to increase energy flow to weapon systems) and graviton generator (for the grav well). Particle Generators was at a 5 (for photonic shock wave).

    So I will contend if you're going to have an issue over 750 experience and one point in starship weapons performance not being min/maxed, well then I must conceed you one point, you can not min max your dps by 750 exp. Unless you want to say that photonic shock wave is also a very important part of your dps chain, and then I owe you a bit more exp.

    No, with that considered, I actually cede.

    For DPS.

    Do that for a tank or healer.

    I suppose every PvPer in the game can just swap to a Defiant or MVAM.

    Fleet Escorts will now be obsolete, since their entire niche is their increased survivability.

    And God help us Tactical Cruiser captains... LOL...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    Hakaishin wrote:
    No, with that considered, I actually cede.

    For DPS.

    Do that for a tank or healer.

    I suppose every PvPer in the game can just swap to a Defiant or MVAM.

    Fleet Escorts will now be obsolete, since their entire niche is their increased survivability.

    And God help us Tactical Cruiser captains... LOL...

    No I agree with you totally on the other points. DPS is the only one I could min/max, and has been the basis of my argument. Even with min/maxing dps, I literally min/maxed dps. Ironically, because of the grav well and tractor beam, it doesn't have bad CC, just not great CC. Survivability though relies completely on tier 1 and tier 2 skills.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    Cuffs wrote: »
    No I agree with you totally on the other points. DPS is the only one I could min/max, and has been the basis of my argument. Even with min/maxing dps, I literally min/maxed dps. Ironically, because of the grav well and tractor beam, it doesn't have bad CC, just not great CC. Survivability though relies completely on tier 1 and tier 2 skills.

    A chunk of it does, but certainly not all (perhaps half would be a fair allocation).

    Shield power, just one example (and a big part of survivability) is not in T1-2.

    But, as Destinii mentioned that I honestly have no choice but to agree with, this is the first 48 hours since the patch.

    The likelihood is that it will be changed at least half a dozen times before live.

    Hence why I do not hesitate to post my observations, so that the developers may read them, and have an opinion from one of the many "obnoxious, condescending pvpers".
Sign In or Register to comment.