I'm not sure if it's been mentioned in the last 26 pages but also keep in mind that someday they are probably going to increase the level cap again in which case there will be more points to spend.
The latest round of skill changes, including the complete overhaul of Ground skills, went live on Tribble yesterday. Already, since the roll-out, weve received a ton of feedback that ranges from full-on support to outright rage. In order to clarify some of the decisions that have gone into these changes, we wanted to address some of the primary points of concern thatve so far been raised. We hope this will help calm some fears about the direction were going with these changes, and the intentions behind them.
1) We wanted a true split of resources, not being forced to sacrifice my full-space spec for ground.
This is almost exactly what you got. Then its not what we wanted was it? It cant be almost and still be what we want.
As was posted yesterday, the actual spending power lost for Space skills was only around a magnitude of 8% on average across all ranks, despite being asked to now spend 25% of your points on Ground skills. That is unacceptable to my build, which Ive tailored for my play style.
In other words, as it sits right now, you havent been asked to sacrifice much, and have been given a new pool of additional skill points that must be spent on Ground skills. Not only are more skill points being given to players, we also reduced the cost of high-tier skills that were highly sought-after. Im being asked to sacrifice much in the way of additional armor, and crit severity and damage. In an escort, where I need all I can get, especially the armor.
In addition to the skill split changes, your Space buying power is being watered down slightly by the addition of one new T1 skill (Drive Coils), and a new T4 skill (Starship Threat Generation). This was going to happen whether we split the skill pools or not, and is potentially skewing some folks' interpretations of their total buying power. That would be great, if my character (Fed VA) had actually had those skills on Tribble... try again. Also I would likely only buy in to Driver Coils and not batteries, so my build would not change much.
2) I never play Ground (or Space) missions, why should I have to spend points in skills I never use?
Because, to put it bluntly, thats the way the game is intended to be played. Your choice in which content to lock yourself out of is a choice that you are free to make for yourself. However, by making that decision, you should accept responsibility for the repercussions of that decision (which include: much less content, less customization options when you ignore bridge officer gear, and fewer options to advance your character and receive rewards). I accept that I will get less gear and stuff from only doing space. But I also dont care, because I avoid ground like the plague anyway... only doing it if I need to. And Ive not had much trouble in the ground portions I have had to play...
Star Trek Online has always been intended to be BOTH a Space & Ground game, and it was never intended to have either set of systems exist in isolation from the other. Thats great, but you should accept that people are going to only want one or the other, and not try to force everyone to play both (and spec for both) because YOU want us to. Also, you shouldnt have intentions as to how a game will be played when that game is an MMO... it just wont work, and you will alienate players.
Just as bluntly, Id like to admit that the Skill System has, up until this point, been broken. It failed to meet design intentions, and allowed for aberrant behavior in the form of ignoring one type of gameplay or the other. The majority of the feedback we are hearing at this time seems to be linked to the expectation that the old system was working as intended, which was simply not the case. I know that change is bad and change is scary, but I ask that you also take into consideration the fact that this is just as much a fix to a system that was not working as intended, as it is a streamline and polish. The skill system was broken to begin with? Then you never should have released with such a broken system. Its not our fault you couldnt make it work from the get go, so dont punish us now...
3) Why not just reward Ground XP for Ground Missions, and Space XP for Space Missions?
This is a much more complicated procedure than this simple request makes it sound. In practice, it would require a complete rebalance of the entire game, including every single mission and reward table, from Level 1 to 50, to ensure that players advance at the proper pace from the content currently available. It would also require an examination of every bit of content we implement moving forward, forcing our content team to adhere to a rigid set of this much space, this much ground guidelines when inventing new missions, rather than letting the storytelling take them where they will.
And thats only the tip of the iceberg for this particular challenge. So no, we cant just do that. This idea was actually discussed and abandoned long ago due to the unwieldy issues that such a delicate balancing act would require on an ongoing basis. I'll give you this... I dont think such a system would work anyway...
4) I have fewer points than I need to create the build that I want.
In examining the builds referenced by the majority of folks making this claim, Ive noticed a few commonalities:
* Lots of maxed-out, 9-rank skills.
It is not necessary to max out any skill under the new system, for a few reasons:
The last 3 ranks of any skill nets you a benefit of 15% max. Many powers/abilities multiply this variable by a fraction (<1) to calculate the actual skill benefit, resulting in a variance that maxes out at a 15% effect, but is frequently far lower... as little as 1% of this in some cases.
In addition to this, every ability that includes a variable effect (damage, e.g.) has a built-in variance of between 10% and 20% (before crits are calculated, if applicable). This is why using a power will return a wide variety of figures instead of a single, fixed and predictable effect.
And, as the new UI illustrates more clearly, you gain the largest amount of benefit in any particular skill by spending only 3 points in it. More than 50% of the total possible available skill.
When you consider all of these factors in tandem, it's questionable as to whether those last 3 ranks really benefit a player. They remain an option for those seeking to scratch out the last tiny bit of an edge over their opponent, but are by no means a necessity to an effective build.
If I dont need all 9 why have them at all, considering 6 is now the points you need for any Captain trainable skill...
* Lots of points in skills that were previously unavailable.
Claiming these are intrinsic to your build is a misconception when you consider the logic of the situation...
The following space skills did not exist, and you were incapable of improving the associated stats, prior to Season 5:
- Starship Threat Control
- Driver Coil This and the above, still not on my Fed VA
- Starship Batteries This is useless.... and I use batteries all the time.
- Power Insulators
- Interial Dampers
- Sensors (partially...)
Spending points in the above skills is a new benefit that was previously unattainable under any circumstances. They are new. They are gravy. They improve you without sacrificing anything, and can be easily ignored without changing the combat experience you had prior to Season 5.
In addition to these brand new skills, all of the following skills were previously improved by specific Ship Type skills that could not be used in multiple classes of ships, necessitating respecs if you wanted to switch from (for example) a Cruiser to an Escort:
- Starship Stealth
- Structural Integrity
- Starship Impulse Thrusters
- Starship Hull Plating
- Starship Armor Reinforcements
Spending points in the above skills nets you a larger bonus per rank than the previously-attainable bonuses if you were fully specced in all skills associated with a specific ship class. Recall that these ship bonuses were previously spread across a large number of skills, requiring an enormous skill point investment.
Additionally, the new bonuses now apply to any ship you fly, regardless of the class or rank.
All of the aforementioned statements must be taken into consideration when evaluating the actual combat readiness of any particular skill build, and that seems to be a fact that many players are overlooking when reviewing the recent skill changes.
5) Youre not listening to our feedback, anyway.
Obviously this is not true, as I hope this post illustrates. We do our best to consider as many angles of an issue as possible, as well as the players' best interest. The simple fact that this is on Tribble (the Test Server) is because we want to hear your feedback on these changes.
That being said, there still exist a number of sticky issues that we simply don't have answers for at this time. Instead of giving you any sort of half-answer, we will get back to you as we learn more.
Please continue to raise your concerns and criticisms in a constructive manner. Your feedback is extremely valuable to us in this endeavor and we hope you never feel otherwise.
My responses are in red, and in line with the quoted text.
You're taking choices away from your users... and regardless of if we never should have had them at all... we do... and taking that away is going to end badly for you as a company.
Remove the required ground points, let us spend the paoints the way we want to spend them, and keep your userbase happy... we can always stop playing your game, and giving your our money... and I do for see many people doing that if the required points stay,
Some of the complaints do have merit, while others just seem to be complaining for selfish reasons.
Reminds me a bit of the Runescape forums, where a lot of people who play so called "Pure" characters(maxed out 1 combat skill while keeping others minimized in order to gain a tactical advantage in level matched PvP) keep complaining whenever quests and content is released that has requirements in multiple combat skills and thus locking them out of the content, despite the fact that their playstyle is never anything the Developers ever intended or support.
But thomas, with all these new skill systems, could you please see if people can get a set of complementary "Retrain Tokens", now that you can no longer re-spec In-Game?
Many of us have already used up our retrain tokens long ago trying to learn the old skill system and figure out a build that works, and others never even recieved their Free Rank reward Retrain Tokens, as they were not retroactive when implemented.
2) I never play Ground (or Space) missions, why should I have to spend points in skills I never use?
Because, to put it bluntly, thats the way the game is intended to be played.Are you paying my sub/buying my CP? Then why are you telling me how to play the game then?
Your choice in which content to lock yourself out of is a choice that you are free to make for yourself. However, by making that decision, you should accept responsibility for the repercussions of that decision (which include: much less content, less customization options when you ignore bridge officer gear, and fewer options to advance your character and receive rewards). Punishing someone who pays to enjoy a game is good business? Has Cryptic accepted responsibility for delivering mediocrity over and over again?
Star Trek Online has always been intended to be BOTH a Space & Ground game, and it was never intended to have either set of systems exist in isolation from the other. Then, why are they isolated? The players didn't design this system.
Just as bluntly, Id like to admit that the Skill System has, up until this point, been broken. It failed to meet design intentions, and allowed for aberrant behavior in the form of ignoring one type of gameplay or the other.Aberrant behaviour: Telling paying customers HOW to enjoy their free time. The majority of the feedback we are hearing at this time seems to be linked to the expectation that the old system was working as intended, which was simply not the case. I know that change is bad and change is scary,Good change is welcome, Bad change is indeed BAD. Also quick change is even worse, because neither side is properly prepared. In this case, the skill system is a mess. Still. but I ask that you also take into consideration the fact that this is just as much a fix to a system that was not working as intended, as it is a streamline and polish. Streamlining and polishing away your loyal base of customers?
BTW, I play all the content (what little there is). I have never needed a point into ground, ever. Perhaps the streamlining and polishing needs to be in designing better npc's.. and a better challenge? Or you can continue to convince yourselves that stripping choice away from the veteran players is a good thing...
Didn't Netflix try something like that not long ago?
The latest round of skill changes......(too much to quote that I want to reply to)
You know what, I would say so much about what you wrote, but I'll leave you with one thing. Take a lesson from Star Wars Galaxies and the "fixes" they made to their character development(CU anyone?) and the amount of subscriptions lost due to it. They said the same things, that the system wasn't working as intended, it was unbalanced, people only focused on certain aspects of the game and left themselves out of others. Look where that game is now.
Assigning Skillpoints so that the Accept button was not greyed out was very cumbersome and many people might not figure that out and wonder why it just doesn't work.
This must change, it's awful.
It's also no TRUE split, as still the same pool is used. It is more a forced percentage that must be spent into Ground and Space.
The idea was to separate points for both trees and give people some choices where they would like to invest in in the various trees.
As it is it's neither a true split nor fun at all. It's very restrictive and barely leaves choices, especially in the ground tree.
frankly i think the forced 75/25 skill split is a VERY bad idea and comes at a very bad time and will generate hate and anger that the playerbase just cant take right now and make gameplay for players who run full specs either way harder for a silly reason.
heres why
1. full spec (either ground or space) players are forced to spend skill points that will not help them at all in there build and takes away from them points that would have been put to skills needed for that particular build
2. many players only do space or ground and not the other forceing them to put points into skills that they will proably NEVER use nor WANT
3. the players that do both ground and space usually make diffrent charicters for those roles (being full specs of which ever one they want) as with #1 it forces them to spend points away from what is needed for that charicter
4. all of the above points will lead to (as it already has) anger and hate over it, its simply a VERY bad idea for a game thats not quite doing as well as it should and would lead to negitive repercussions among the playerbase and people might and sometimes will stop playing (paying) becuse of it
possable changes to be made to make this better
1. completly split gound from space in the skill tree and make it so like it is now you can spend as many points in each tree them being seprate but both trees haveing the max amount as the other
example: a mission gives you 100exp that 100exp goes to both the ground and space skill tree giveing each 100exp and the skill point cap is the same for both trees lets say 100k both trees have sci tac and eng branches that you can spend points in but there is not enought points for either to get every possable skill much as it is now for space (this requires the restructoring of the ground skill tree to be simlaler to the space one that is no skills are forbidden based on if your a tac sci or eng ) (kits would have to be restructored so as that they can all be used buy other proffession players like a tac kit can be used by a sci captain) (OR change ground captain skills so that they get more powers and make kits smaller and universal gerneral tac sci and eng kits but make very good kits for them remained locked for the proffesssion they match) <-- kinda compilcated might make a thread based on it
2. keep the restructored ground skills but remove the forced 75/25 split (more extreamish but it might be easy to impliment )
thats all the thoughts i have on this sorry for the wall'o text
I'd like to thank BorticusCryptic for his post explaining the dev side of things, and for going into the rationale behind the changes. I'll be sure to keep all that in mind when providing additional feedback.
After playing around a bit more, I am finding that my earlier reactions concerning the armour damage resist and weapon training skills do seem to hold up in practice. When my damage resists are already at 35% from armour, accolades, etc alone, it quite simply doesn't take an entire 9 ranks of the skill to raise my resistences to the cap. I can predict players being unhappy if they put a bunch of skill points into this on Holodeck but got literally zero benefit from the investment after expecting their characters to be a lot sturdier.
Do please take a look for cases like weapon damage where something was previously affected by multiple skills (such as rifle damage going from 3 skills to 2) and verify that the total possible bonus remains constant unless it is a deliberate design decision to reduce the total possible bonus.
I'd also like it if you didn't have to spec a set amount of points into lower tiers to rank up. Why not let us spend our points on whatever skills we want within space or ground, even with the enforced caps? Maybe I need more admiral skills and less captain ones.
I haven't read the entire thread yet myself, but this is a good idea I am in favor of myself. Restrict the skill tiers by rank instead of skill points for each tier.
My other suggestion based on what I have been reading is to increase the skill point total pool so we have more spending flexibility to offset the forced 75/25 split.
One more thing, Borticus. Ive heard these changes (and the F2P conversion as a whole) being likend to the NGE and Star Wars Galaxies. That was a PR nightmare... dont make the same foolish mistake and risk losing your player base...
So what about separate pools then? That's what a lot of people asked for I've noticed.
Say at Vice Admiral, you can have 274,000 space skill points, and 91,000 ground skill points.
And as a bonus, let's give 1000 extra points that you can spend on either skill sets.
Does that sound better?
Edit: In case you didn't notice, that is functionally identical to what we have on Tribble now.
One more thing, Borticus. Ive heard these changes (and the F2P conversion as a whole) being likend to the NGE and Star Wars Galaxies. That was a PR nightmare... dont make the same foolish mistake and risk losing your player base...
this close to F2P launch and you're just NOW warning them?
but seriously, they've been told what to do by PW, and this is how the game's going. they can influence it in better directions, but they can't completely change it, unless they want to lose their jobs and have STO shut down right now, instead of years later
i don't want that to happen, and i suspect many don't want that either, despite their issues with Cryptic
You know what, I would say so much about what you wrote, but I'll leave you with one thing. Take a lesson from Star Wars Galaxies and the "fixes" they made to their character development(CU anyone?) and the amount of subscriptions lost due to it. They said the same things, that the system wasn't working as intended, it was unbalanced, people only focused on certain aspects of the game and left themselves out of others. Look where that game is now.
One more thing, Borticus. Ive heard these changes (and the F2P conversion as a whole) being likend to the NGE and Star Wars Galaxies. That was a PR nightmare... dont make the same foolish mistake and risk losing your player base...
Sigh.
This is no where close to the CU/NGE. No where close at all.
I don't understand why people don't see that having separate points for ground and space and having a split is functionality identical. It's the same as if they added a separate set of ground points and then reduced the space cap slightly due to the fact that it wasn't intended for people to go pure space with all their points.
Part of me hopes that they further reduce skill cost slightly so instead of an 8% loss in space skills it's like a 5% loss because than at that point there really won't be much to complain about...
So what about separate pools then? That's what a lot of people asked for I've noticed.
Say at Vice Admiral, you can have 274,000 space skill points, and 91,000 ground skill points.
And as a bonus, let's give 1000 extra points that you can spend on either skill sets.
Does that sound better?
That sounds like exactly what is on Tribble right now (minus the 1000 extra points)...
That sounds like exactly what is on Tribble right now (minus the 1000 extra points)...
Actually, we do have that 1000 point variance on Tribble. As noted in the dev log, there's a small amount of points that can be tossed to either space or ground, at least on my character on Tribble, that's how much I found I had that could go to either.
Love the UI changes, the green-yellow-red indicators are a plus, even if no explanation is given.
I don't like the Skill Split, like nearly everyone else, I avoid Ground Combat like the plague. I don't want to spec into ground, I don't need to spec into ground, I shouldn't have to spec into ground.
For some reason, no matter how I rebalance my skill points, I always have 1000 points left over, bug?
The latest round of skill changes, including the complete overhaul of Ground skills, went live on Tribble yesterday. Already, since the roll-out, weve received a ton of feedback that ranges from full-on support to outright rage. In order to clarify some of the decisions that have gone into these changes, we wanted to address some of the primary points of concern thatve so far been raised. We hope this will help calm some fears about the direction were going with these changes, and the intentions behind them.
/snip
5) Youre not listening to our feedback, anyway.
Obviously this is not true, as I hope this post illustrates.
/snip
Please continue to raise your concerns and criticisms in a constructive manner. Your feedback is extremely valuable to us in this endeavor and we hope you never feel otherwise.
... In spades Good Sir, in spades.
People may disagree with Borticus' / Cryptic's position on the issue. They may be unhappy about it. But I don't see how anyone could ask for a more thoughtful and professional (yet personable) reply.
How epic was Borticus' response? So epic that someone should give it it's own thread.
This is no where close to the CU/NGE. No where close at all.
I don't understand why people don't see that having separate points for ground and space and having a split is functionality identical. It's the same as if they added a separate set of ground points and then reduced the space cap slightly due to the fact that it wasn't intended for people to go pure space with all their points.
Part of me hopes that they further reduce skill cost slightly so instead of an 8% loss in space skills it's like a 5% loss because than at that point there really won't be much to complain about...
That sounds like exactly what is on Tribble right now (minus the 1000 extra points)...
You missed the point of what I said. They have the same attitude towards people that SOE did with the CU. The community screamed that is was a bad idea, but they didn't listen and implemented it anyway. Guess what happened. The server populations were cut in half in the first month. People cancelled. A lot of them. In order to make money, they need people playing. To keep people playing, don't commit the cardinal sin of MMOs.... don't try to dictate how people play their toons after the game is live. If a major part of the system isn't working as intended, don't release. If that's just double talk(which I'm suspecting it is) then they need to suck it up and move on. Customers pay the bills, when the people "in-charge" realize that, they might change their tone. If they don't like it, that's fine, shut the servers down. We can move on. They lose our money and someone else gets it. This shouldn't be a power struggle because the customer will always come out ahead.
If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions about the split or UI update please post them here.
Let me tell you how much I hate this 75/25 system. Completely. I'm not someone who throws around the word hate lightly.
Give us our points and let us spend them how we want. We're your customers. Between this and the attack ship lottery, I'm about ready to toss my lifetime subscription.
Before you dismiss my opinion because you already have my money; you should review my C-Store purchases. The only thing that stopped me from owning every Fed ship in the game is that the C-store won't let me purchase more ship slots. I have every purchasable item on the fed side and some on the KDF. I've dropped $100 just trying to get the attack ship. I spend a ton of money on this game; that doesn't mean I won't walk away.
I hear the Old Republic MMO is pretty good. Now is not the time to alienate your players.
I can't max out the Lt. Cmdr rank ground skills, and the character is a Commander. Should we not be able to max out whichever skills we're the right rank for? Regardless of whether it's ground or space? This seems broken to me. You can see from the screenshot I clearly have enough skill points to spend, and it's not being able to that isn't sitting right with me.
That's the point of the new system. You're not allowed to max out a build.
Most usability research done for websites indicate that hiding things "beneath the fold" of the initial view of a website actually has little impact in how many people see it, so we're inclined to favor one vertical scroll bar like the current setup instead of risking the hassle of a vertical AND horizontal scroll bar that a vertical layout could create.
And that ^ is why they pay Thomas the big bucks. :cool:
I did think that the horizontal layout mock up was kind of cool, but overall, (not to sound like one of those 'Cryptic lovers' or anything;)) I have to agree with Thomas on this one. Having the power bars themselves going vertical looks pretty neat and all, but really up or to the right are equally familiar ways to represent an 'increase' or 'gain' of some kind (like the on screen volume display on most TVs these days to pick a very similar and common interface). At least I think that up or right are equally familiar, at least that's my cultural bias which I'm attributing to my 'western world' status. I can't speak for people originating from 'parts East', but I suppose cultural mileage (so to speak) may vary.
Let me tell you how much I hate this 75/25 system. Completely. I'm not someone who throws around the word hate lightly.
Give us our points and let us spend them how we want. We're your customers. Between this and the attack ship lottery, I'm about ready to toss my lifetime subscription.
Before you dismiss my opinion because you already have my money; you should review my C-Store purchases. The only thing that stopped me from owning every Fed ship in the game is that the C-store won't let me purchase more ship slots. I have every purchasable item on the fed side and some on the KDF. I've dropped $100 just trying to get the attack ship. I spend a ton of money on this game; that doesn't mean I won't walk away.
That sums up my feeling pretty well also, except that I have been paying a monthly sub since launch! :eek:
There is no way I will continue to play, or pay if this forced split goes live. I can't see paying for something thats supposed to be fun and entertaining, and being forced into something like this.
Judging from the posts herand other conversations I have had with fleet members and random ppl online, there are many many people who plan to leave if this happens. Surprisingly, some of them are die-hard STO fans like myself, that never thought they would utter those words.
You missed the point of what I said. They have the same attitude towards people that SOE did with the CU. The community screamed that is was a bad idea, but they didn't listen and implemented it anyway. Guess what happened. The server populations were cut in half in the first month. People cancelled. A lot of them. In order to make money, they need people playing. To keep people playing, don't commit the cardinal sin of MMOs.... don't try to dictate how people play their toons after the game is live. If a major part of the system isn't working as intended, don't release. If that's just double talk(which I'm suspecting it is) then they need to suck it up and move on. Customers pay the bills, when the people "in-charge" realize that, they might change their tone. If they don't like it, that's fine, shut the servers down. We can move on. They lose our money and someone else gets it. This shouldn't be a power struggle because the customer will always come out ahead.
While I cant say that I agree with everything that Cryptic is doing, I still think that this skill change isnt as big of a deal as people think. Unfortunately most people get as far as the word "split" and then it turns to rage.
The question then is this: if with the rebalanced skill cost you were able to get the same amount of skills that you can on holodeck, would a skill split even be an issue?
frankly i think the forced 75/25 skill split is a VERY bad idea and comes at a very bad time and will generate hate and anger that the playerbase just cant take right now and make gameplay for players who run full specs either way harder for a silly reason.
This is a bad time, but partly because there are so many changes at once. Unfortunatly some of them need to be happening right now and if the skills were to change at all, this is the right time for them to change. The base does have a lot to be upset about, and I hope that the 'full spec' crowd will give clear, rational, and constructive enough feedback for Cryptic to be able to come to at least a reasonable compromise.
1. full spec (either ground or space) players are forced to spend skill points that will not help them at all in there build and takes away from them points that would have been put to skills needed for that particular build
This post pretty much convinced me that the point pools should be split. I totally believe the poster honestly believes what he is saying and from his post I realized that it is entirely the fault of the shared pool that has led him to his opinion. The points should be split, with the spending caps split as well and adjusted to where ever Cryptic wants them to be set to. This way the full spec crowd can see the thing that they seem to be missing because of the current 'shared pool' -- the fact that the only reason they have those 'wasted points' to spend on ground is because Cryptic put them in the pool... to be spent on ground. If the pools were split and each pool capped at the place where Cryptic wants it capped, then at least we could be arguing about raising the [skill point] cap, and 'what is the total number of skills that it is reasonable to be able to set to 9' which is really the bottom line of this discussion.
... And you don't have to reingineer the points so that they come from ground/space respectivly -- just take 25% of all points awarded and dump them into the ground pool.
Your idea to force us to spend skill points in the ground is 19 months too late. You should have done this in the spring of 2010 but for some incomprehensible reason you waited till now. I understand that your trying to kill the twinkies, but I've had close to 700 days to learn how to be a superior twinkie & now you're trying to punish me for being able to read & use my brain. Regardless, you are taking my freedom of choice away & I find your take it or leave it attitude astonishing.
Although I never played Champions online, I do remember how you promised those players that they could have mirror uniforms in this game exclusively. A few months later you stabbed your loyal customers in the back & offered mirror uniforms in the almighty c-store. Cloaking has been broken since 01-11-11 & you outright lied to us & said you'd fixed it. Mind meld has been broken since last May & as far as I can tell you have not replied to one ticket on the subject. I'm sure you're aware that this list could go on, & on, & on... Now it seems you're trying to drive us, the people who remember things like this, out of the game so you don't have to deal with us anymore. Either that or kill this game in it's entirety so you can devote the current staff to some other project.
You are shooting yourselves in the foot & I am positive you're going to upset so many loyal customers that no amount of loving Star Trek will keep them here in this beta@best game. If you're banking on having this game available for the May 2013 release of JJ Abrams Star Trek movie to boost your profits I think your seriously miscalculating & underestimating the Star Trek fan base. I hope you enjoy the unemployment line because thats where your headed fellas & I know I will never buy another Cryptic product ever again & I will advise anyone I know who is interested to stay away from your products.
BTW- it took an enormous amount of restraint on my part to keep this post as clean as it is.
Excellent response. As a prior comment said about this being reminiscent of when Blizzard shut down PvP twinks...it totally is. "I wanna play the way I want to play!!! /cry" It's all about people wanting to stomp "non-pure" builds into space dust and feeling good about their superiority. The tears...the delicious tears.
It needs to be said...but to all of you throwing around "Change it or I'm leaving!!!"
We usually design for 1024x768 or maybe even lower.
Although my "big" computer does run at a higher resolution, I occasionally find myself playing on the laptop at almost that exact resolution, I appreciate this.
1) We wanted a true split of resources, not being forced to sacrifice my full-space spec for ground.
This is almost exactly what you got.
As was posted yesterday, the actual spending power lost for Space skills was only around a magnitude of 8% on average across all ranks, despite being asked to now spend 25% of your points on Ground skills.
In other words, as it sits right now, you havent been asked to sacrifice much, and have been given a new pool of additional skill points that must be spent on Ground skills. Not only are more skill points being given to players, we also reduced the cost of high-tier skills that were highly sought-after.
...
A fair part of the problem with this issue goes directly back to the space tree revamp.
There was a significant loss of buying power as many skills were split up into a number of different skills, some were combined, and several were made noticeably more expensive.
Overall the end result, in my personal case, is that every character ended up sacrificing ground entirely, and still came up short of their old space skill loadout and performance. Yet, I made sure every one of them had at least a smattering of ground skills in the original system. In fact it is entirely impossible to recreate the old builds in the new system because of the way skills were split and moved around without more skill points. And that is, of course, before factoring in the new loss for the ground split.
2) I never play Ground (or Space) missions, why should I have to spend points in skills I never use?
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Star Trek Online has always been intended to be BOTH a Space & Ground game, and it was never intended to have either set of systems exist in isolation from the other.
...
I generally agree with this point, however, the old system has spoiled us. We like to be able to focus, and with this system, we can't even pretend to do that. If you guys gave us a much bigger buffer say 20-30000 points that we could focus on space or ground with, I know I would be happier at least. I don't find all of the ground skills interesting or worth speccing into, yet I pretty much have to spend points in them anyway.
4) I have fewer points than I need to create the build that I want.
In examining the builds referenced by the majority of folks making this claim, Ive noticed a few commonalities:
* Lots of maxed-out, 9-rank skills.
...
The problem is, people used to rank to 9 where they wanted to in the old system. No, not everwhere, they still had to make sacrifices, and it was not particularly cost effective there either. However the new system is far tighter, and I for one have very few skills at 9, they are spread rather thin on Holodeck. On Tribble it is even worse. 9 is virtually unaffordable for anything but ground skills.
Additionally, speccing to 3 in skills is directly analagous to only ranking the tier 1 and 2 skills from the old system, which together gave 48%. A single rank in the T3-5 skill would give you 58%, yet people still spent to 9 there, and if not maybe they did 7-7-5 which is equivalent to rank 6 in the current system for many skills.
But again, going to 9 is just not realistic. As much as I agree with what you're saying, the problem is that it is largely unrealistic to even attempt it because skill points are much tighter.
* Lots of points in skills that were previously unavailable.
Claiming these are intrinsic to your build is a misconception when you consider the logic of the situation...
The following space skills did not exist, and you were incapable of improving the associated stats, prior to Season 5:
- Starship Threat Control
- Driver Coil
- Starship Batteries
- Power Insulators
- Interial Dampers
- Sensors (partially...)
Spending points in the above skills is a new benefit that was previously unattainable under any circumstances. They are new. They are gravy. They improve you without sacrificing anything, and can be easily ignored without changing the combat experience you had prior to Season 5.
I personally definitely do not skill these unless I need to make the next rank and have no where better to spend them, the exception sensors, which is definitely not a new skill.
As a science ship captain, one of the things I want to be able to do is detect and hunt cloaking ships! Sensors was always able to be improved in the original system, tied to Sensor Array, which conveniently also buffed subsystem targetting which is also innate to science ships. Now those two functions are split, and sensors is more expensive to skill up, while also inexplicably, despite skilling sensors, I know for a fact my stealth detection rating in season 5 is only about 60% of what it used to be in season 4.
Another issue that contributes to this problem is the fact that with the condensed skill tree, there are plenty of ways to find yourself forced to spend points somewhere you don't actually want to just so you can get to the next tier. Would I totally skip the new skills if I could put those points into skills I actually want in the next tier? Heck yes.
In addition to these brand new skills, all of the following skills were previously improved by specific Ship Type skills that could not be used in multiple classes of ships, necessitating respecs if you wanted to switch from (for example) a Cruiser to an Escort:
- Starship Stealth
- Structural Integrity
- Starship Impulse Thrusters
- Starship Hull Plating
- Starship Armor Reinforcements
Spending points in the above skills nets you a larger bonus per rank than the previously-attainable bonuses if you were fully specced in all skills associated with a specific ship class. Recall that these ship bonuses were previously spread across a large number of skills, requiring an enormous skill point investment.
Additionally, the new bonuses now apply to any ship you fly, regardless of the class or rank.
This is not quite true. Stealth was improved by the engineering tree, specifically Aux performance, aux maintenance, and engineering training, or whatever the tier 1 was called. Stealth improvements are also rather irrelevant. The best factor to staying cloaked is distance and always has been. Cloak detection is absolutely not very worthwhile in practice, except for hunting fleeing, battle cloaking BOPs.
Hull resistance was improved by one of the attack pattern skill line. Which one I don't recall, but those three skills that buffed attack patterns were incredibly valuable skills because of the passives they had, accuracy, defense, and hull resistance.
Also I personally didn't switch ships, if I wanted to fly a ship, I built a character for it from the ground up, so such things never bothered me.
All of the aforementioned statements must be taken into consideration when evaluating the actual combat readiness of any particular skill build, and that seems to be a fact that many players are overlooking when reviewing the recent skill changes.
Quite true, and again I can say without question that I have lost capabilities going from season 4 to season 5, and will lose still more based on the split tree.
And of course this doesn't even touch on the huge glaring issues with the science tree. It has been a pet issue of mine since I realized it almost two years ago. Science has no passive effects.
Why did people spec into the old attack pattern line, even if they didn't use attack patterns? The passives! Why do science ships spend so much in the tactical and engineering trees? Again, the passives are worth every point spent. And why did science ships not take a wide range of science skills? No decent passives, meaning if you aren't clicking on the associated BOFF power for that skill, you have skill points doing nothing for you. This is exacerbated by the fact that using high aux science powers do not help you kill things faster than using weapon power, not in PVE, and only a few help in PVP, but typically only help your team since the science ship itself isn't going to get the kill on their own, and the powers also have long cooldowns.
Think about it, if I spec into subspace decompilers, countermeasure systems, graviton generators, and particle generators, I can't use them all as often as I can use weapons or more shield power/hull strength. I can fire off scramble sensors, photonic shockwave, charged particle burst, and gravity well, and then what? My target is still alive. My powers are on cooldown for another 45-60s. So I have to rely on my pew pew or my team's pew pew, but my science is done for a long while, and a lot of good those skills did me, right? Yes in PVP the dynamic can change, and the right power at the right time can be great. But at the wrong time, it is completely ineffective.
And absolutely nothing has changed with season 5. The science skill tree is still ~60% useless to non-science ships, while the other trees remain extremely relevant to science ships. And a science ship is very much advised to skip as many science skills as possible and focus on one particular build. This goes very much against the intent of the revised system I believe, because it means science ships are not particularly versatile because they can't realistically afford to skill up a wide variety of science skills, nor does it actually get them anything for their troubles.
5) Youre not listening to our feedback, anyway.
Obviously this is not true, as I hope this post illustrates. We do our best to consider as many angles of an issue as possible, as well as the players' best interest. The simple fact that this is on Tribble (the Test Server) is because we want to hear your feedback on these changes.
That being said, there still exist a number of sticky issues that we simply don't have answers for at this time. Instead of giving you any sort of half-answer, we will get back to you as we learn more.
Please continue to raise your concerns and criticisms in a constructive manner. Your feedback is extremely valuable to us in this endeavor and we hope you never feel otherwise.
I think much of this feeling has to do with a general lack of two way communication, and a lack of understanding what the dev goals are because of that lack of communication. I know its not easy, but posts like this, even telling us "no" to various things helps us understand what the goals are and the design choices. It also helps us know which points may be immoveable and which points we can negotiate with, and find compromise solutions, rather than rage against the whole thing.
There's no real easy solution to this, I guess. For my part, one of the first things I do when I look at a new window is see if there's a scroll bar and scroll to the bottom to take everything in right away.
Easy solution right here (and you don't even have to pay me for it):
Make the scrollbar a -different- color than the rest of the UI. With the UI being almost 100% Blue or Red, it's easy to miss certain UI elements. Make certain elements stand out more by using different colors.
Even with what Jeremy said in mind, I still find the reasons flawed for what I want to do with my characters. One of them is okay being hybrid to an extent. But the other is built for SPACE. And now I can't get the exact space build I want because the freaking point cap won't let me. I can't even get any T5 skills beyond one with 1 point.
For my build, survivability is a must (Escort) as is firepower. It hass hit a point that I can't specialize for such anymore because the caps ultimately force me to give up one aspect of the essentials and buy into ground. Its seriously messed up.
Now I'm not saying ground is useless. Both characters indeed end up doing ground anyway. But for my more specialized builds the only skills I'd ever WANT to touch would be the ones that affect Orbital Strike, Turrets/Generators, Shield Durability, and Armor Durability. That's it. Four areas of ground combat. I'd like to be able to focus more in space so I can do what my characters SPECIALIZE in for their respective ship choices.
Being forced to spread out takes away a lot from my builds such as Shield/Hull HP of my ship, or some of its firepower, or maybe even lose its speed/turning. Or worse, a combination of these would be lost because of the way its set up now. And this is on a pair of characters that avoid PvP like the plague and are more or less space-centric (with one being slightly more ground spec'd prior to these changes).
So what would I like? Remove the caps and let us spend our points where we want to again. Or rescale skill points so we can get our builds back to what they are on Holodeck current while still giving us the points you would want us to spend in ground to maintain that 75/25 ratio.
Besides that I will say that the new UI looks slick. The color coding that tells us when we're starting to get less out of the skill we're buying into is a nice touch (though I would still max out specific skills anyway because my builds call for it and go low to midway on others for training nodes so I could make a little money from those).
Comments
Maybe.
My responses are in red, and in line with the quoted text.
You're taking choices away from your users... and regardless of if we never should have had them at all... we do... and taking that away is going to end badly for you as a company.
Remove the required ground points, let us spend the paoints the way we want to spend them, and keep your userbase happy... we can always stop playing your game, and giving your our money... and I do for see many people doing that if the required points stay,
Reminds me a bit of the Runescape forums, where a lot of people who play so called "Pure" characters(maxed out 1 combat skill while keeping others minimized in order to gain a tactical advantage in level matched PvP) keep complaining whenever quests and content is released that has requirements in multiple combat skills and thus locking them out of the content, despite the fact that their playstyle is never anything the Developers ever intended or support.
But thomas, with all these new skill systems, could you please see if people can get a set of complementary "Retrain Tokens", now that you can no longer re-spec In-Game?
Many of us have already used up our retrain tokens long ago trying to learn the old skill system and figure out a build that works, and others never even recieved their Free Rank reward Retrain Tokens, as they were not retroactive when implemented.
Because, to put it bluntly, thats the way the game is intended to be played. Are you paying my sub/buying my CP? Then why are you telling me how to play the game then?
Your choice in which content to lock yourself out of is a choice that you are free to make for yourself. However, by making that decision, you should accept responsibility for the repercussions of that decision (which include: much less content, less customization options when you ignore bridge officer gear, and fewer options to advance your character and receive rewards). Punishing someone who pays to enjoy a game is good business? Has Cryptic accepted responsibility for delivering mediocrity over and over again?
Star Trek Online has always been intended to be BOTH a Space & Ground game, and it was never intended to have either set of systems exist in isolation from the other. Then, why are they isolated? The players didn't design this system.
Just as bluntly, Id like to admit that the Skill System has, up until this point, been broken. It failed to meet design intentions, and allowed for aberrant behavior in the form of ignoring one type of gameplay or the other.Aberrant behaviour: Telling paying customers HOW to enjoy their free time. The majority of the feedback we are hearing at this time seems to be linked to the expectation that the old system was working as intended, which was simply not the case. I know that change is bad and change is scary,Good change is welcome, Bad change is indeed BAD. Also quick change is even worse, because neither side is properly prepared. In this case, the skill system is a mess. Still. but I ask that you also take into consideration the fact that this is just as much a fix to a system that was not working as intended, as it is a streamline and polish. Streamlining and polishing away your loyal base of customers?
BTW, I play all the content (what little there is). I have never needed a point into ground, ever. Perhaps the streamlining and polishing needs to be in designing better npc's.. and a better challenge? Or you can continue to convince yourselves that stripping choice away from the veteran players is a good thing...
Didn't Netflix try something like that not long ago?
You know what, I would say so much about what you wrote, but I'll leave you with one thing. Take a lesson from Star Wars Galaxies and the "fixes" they made to their character development(CU anyone?) and the amount of subscriptions lost due to it. They said the same things, that the system wasn't working as intended, it was unbalanced, people only focused on certain aspects of the game and left themselves out of others. Look where that game is now.
This must change, it's awful.
It's also no TRUE split, as still the same pool is used. It is more a forced percentage that must be spent into Ground and Space.
The idea was to separate points for both trees and give people some choices where they would like to invest in in the various trees.
As it is it's neither a true split nor fun at all. It's very restrictive and barely leaves choices, especially in the ground tree.
heres why
1. full spec (either ground or space) players are forced to spend skill points that will not help them at all in there build and takes away from them points that would have been put to skills needed for that particular build
2. many players only do space or ground and not the other forceing them to put points into skills that they will proably NEVER use nor WANT
3. the players that do both ground and space usually make diffrent charicters for those roles (being full specs of which ever one they want) as with #1 it forces them to spend points away from what is needed for that charicter
4. all of the above points will lead to (as it already has) anger and hate over it, its simply a VERY bad idea for a game thats not quite doing as well as it should and would lead to negitive repercussions among the playerbase and people might and sometimes will stop playing (paying) becuse of it
possable changes to be made to make this better
1. completly split gound from space in the skill tree and make it so like it is now you can spend as many points in each tree them being seprate but both trees haveing the max amount as the other
example: a mission gives you 100exp that 100exp goes to both the ground and space skill tree giveing each 100exp and the skill point cap is the same for both trees lets say 100k both trees have sci tac and eng branches that you can spend points in but there is not enought points for either to get every possable skill much as it is now for space (this requires the restructoring of the ground skill tree to be simlaler to the space one that is no skills are forbidden based on if your a tac sci or eng ) (kits would have to be restructored so as that they can all be used buy other proffession players like a tac kit can be used by a sci captain) (OR change ground captain skills so that they get more powers and make kits smaller and universal gerneral tac sci and eng kits but make very good kits for them remained locked for the proffesssion they match) <-- kinda compilcated might make a thread based on it
2. keep the restructored ground skills but remove the forced 75/25 split (more extreamish but it might be easy to impliment )
thats all the thoughts i have on this sorry for the wall'o text
After playing around a bit more, I am finding that my earlier reactions concerning the armour damage resist and weapon training skills do seem to hold up in practice. When my damage resists are already at 35% from armour, accolades, etc alone, it quite simply doesn't take an entire 9 ranks of the skill to raise my resistences to the cap. I can predict players being unhappy if they put a bunch of skill points into this on Holodeck but got literally zero benefit from the investment after expecting their characters to be a lot sturdier.
Do please take a look for cases like weapon damage where something was previously affected by multiple skills (such as rifle damage going from 3 skills to 2) and verify that the total possible bonus remains constant unless it is a deliberate design decision to reduce the total possible bonus.
Cheers!
I haven't read the entire thread yet myself, but this is a good idea I am in favor of myself. Restrict the skill tiers by rank instead of skill points for each tier.
My other suggestion based on what I have been reading is to increase the skill point total pool so we have more spending flexibility to offset the forced 75/25 split.
Say at Vice Admiral, you can have 274,000 space skill points, and 91,000 ground skill points.
And as a bonus, let's give 1000 extra points that you can spend on either skill sets.
Does that sound better?
Edit: In case you didn't notice, that is functionally identical to what we have on Tribble now.
but seriously, they've been told what to do by PW, and this is how the game's going. they can influence it in better directions, but they can't completely change it, unless they want to lose their jobs and have STO shut down right now, instead of years later
i don't want that to happen, and i suspect many don't want that either, despite their issues with Cryptic
Sigh.
This is no where close to the CU/NGE. No where close at all.
I don't understand why people don't see that having separate points for ground and space and having a split is functionality identical. It's the same as if they added a separate set of ground points and then reduced the space cap slightly due to the fact that it wasn't intended for people to go pure space with all their points.
Part of me hopes that they further reduce skill cost slightly so instead of an 8% loss in space skills it's like a 5% loss because than at that point there really won't be much to complain about...
That sounds like exactly what is on Tribble right now (minus the 1000 extra points)...
Actually, we do have that 1000 point variance on Tribble. As noted in the dev log, there's a small amount of points that can be tossed to either space or ground, at least on my character on Tribble, that's how much I found I had that could go to either.
... In spades Good Sir, in spades.
People may disagree with Borticus' / Cryptic's position on the issue. They may be unhappy about it. But I don't see how anyone could ask for a more thoughtful and professional (yet personable) reply.
How epic was Borticus' response? So epic that someone should give it it's own thread.
:cool:
Wait... Wha ?!
You missed the point of what I said. They have the same attitude towards people that SOE did with the CU. The community screamed that is was a bad idea, but they didn't listen and implemented it anyway. Guess what happened. The server populations were cut in half in the first month. People cancelled. A lot of them. In order to make money, they need people playing. To keep people playing, don't commit the cardinal sin of MMOs.... don't try to dictate how people play their toons after the game is live. If a major part of the system isn't working as intended, don't release. If that's just double talk(which I'm suspecting it is) then they need to suck it up and move on. Customers pay the bills, when the people "in-charge" realize that, they might change their tone. If they don't like it, that's fine, shut the servers down. We can move on. They lose our money and someone else gets it. This shouldn't be a power struggle because the customer will always come out ahead.
Let me tell you how much I hate this 75/25 system. Completely. I'm not someone who throws around the word hate lightly.
Give us our points and let us spend them how we want. We're your customers. Between this and the attack ship lottery, I'm about ready to toss my lifetime subscription.
Before you dismiss my opinion because you already have my money; you should review my C-Store purchases. The only thing that stopped me from owning every Fed ship in the game is that the C-store won't let me purchase more ship slots. I have every purchasable item on the fed side and some on the KDF. I've dropped $100 just trying to get the attack ship. I spend a ton of money on this game; that doesn't mean I won't walk away.
I hear the Old Republic MMO is pretty good. Now is not the time to alienate your players.
That's the point of the new system. You're not allowed to max out a build.
And that ^ is why they pay Thomas the big bucks. :cool:
I did think that the horizontal layout mock up was kind of cool, but overall, (not to sound like one of those 'Cryptic lovers' or anything;)) I have to agree with Thomas on this one. Having the power bars themselves going vertical looks pretty neat and all, but really up or to the right are equally familiar ways to represent an 'increase' or 'gain' of some kind (like the on screen volume display on most TVs these days to pick a very similar and common interface). At least I think that up or right are equally familiar, at least that's my cultural bias which I'm attributing to my 'western world' status. I can't speak for people originating from 'parts East', but I suppose cultural mileage (so to speak) may vary.
That sums up my feeling pretty well also, except that I have been paying a monthly sub since launch! :eek:
There is no way I will continue to play, or pay if this forced split goes live. I can't see paying for something thats supposed to be fun and entertaining, and being forced into something like this.
Judging from the posts herand other conversations I have had with fleet members and random ppl online, there are many many people who plan to leave if this happens. Surprisingly, some of them are die-hard STO fans like myself, that never thought they would utter those words.
That's just how bad this forced split idea is.
While I cant say that I agree with everything that Cryptic is doing, I still think that this skill change isnt as big of a deal as people think. Unfortunately most people get as far as the word "split" and then it turns to rage.
The question then is this: if with the rebalanced skill cost you were able to get the same amount of skills that you can on holodeck, would a skill split even be an issue?
This is a bad time, but partly because there are so many changes at once. Unfortunatly some of them need to be happening right now and if the skills were to change at all, this is the right time for them to change. The base does have a lot to be upset about, and I hope that the 'full spec' crowd will give clear, rational, and constructive enough feedback for Cryptic to be able to come to at least a reasonable compromise.
This post pretty much convinced me that the point pools should be split. I totally believe the poster honestly believes what he is saying and from his post I realized that it is entirely the fault of the shared pool that has led him to his opinion. The points should be split, with the spending caps split as well and adjusted to where ever Cryptic wants them to be set to. This way the full spec crowd can see the thing that they seem to be missing because of the current 'shared pool' -- the fact that the only reason they have those 'wasted points' to spend on ground is because Cryptic put them in the pool... to be spent on ground. If the pools were split and each pool capped at the place where Cryptic wants it capped, then at least we could be arguing about raising the [skill point] cap, and 'what is the total number of skills that it is reasonable to be able to set to 9' which is really the bottom line of this discussion.
Although I never played Champions online, I do remember how you promised those players that they could have mirror uniforms in this game exclusively. A few months later you stabbed your loyal customers in the back & offered mirror uniforms in the almighty c-store. Cloaking has been broken since 01-11-11 & you outright lied to us & said you'd fixed it. Mind meld has been broken since last May & as far as I can tell you have not replied to one ticket on the subject. I'm sure you're aware that this list could go on, & on, & on... Now it seems you're trying to drive us, the people who remember things like this, out of the game so you don't have to deal with us anymore. Either that or kill this game in it's entirety so you can devote the current staff to some other project.
You are shooting yourselves in the foot & I am positive you're going to upset so many loyal customers that no amount of loving Star Trek will keep them here in this beta@best game. If you're banking on having this game available for the May 2013 release of JJ Abrams Star Trek movie to boost your profits I think your seriously miscalculating & underestimating the Star Trek fan base. I hope you enjoy the unemployment line because thats where your headed fellas & I know I will never buy another Cryptic product ever again & I will advise anyone I know who is interested to stay away from your products.
BTW- it took an enormous amount of restraint on my part to keep this post as clean as it is.
Excellent response. As a prior comment said about this being reminiscent of when Blizzard shut down PvP twinks...it totally is. "I wanna play the way I want to play!!! /cry" It's all about people wanting to stomp "non-pure" builds into space dust and feeling good about their superiority. The tears...the delicious tears.
It needs to be said...but to all of you throwing around "Change it or I'm leaving!!!"
CAN I HAVE YOUR STUFF!??
Although my "big" computer does run at a higher resolution, I occasionally find myself playing on the laptop at almost that exact resolution, I appreciate this.
A fair part of the problem with this issue goes directly back to the space tree revamp.
There was a significant loss of buying power as many skills were split up into a number of different skills, some were combined, and several were made noticeably more expensive.
Overall the end result, in my personal case, is that every character ended up sacrificing ground entirely, and still came up short of their old space skill loadout and performance. Yet, I made sure every one of them had at least a smattering of ground skills in the original system. In fact it is entirely impossible to recreate the old builds in the new system because of the way skills were split and moved around without more skill points. And that is, of course, before factoring in the new loss for the ground split.
I generally agree with this point, however, the old system has spoiled us. We like to be able to focus, and with this system, we can't even pretend to do that. If you guys gave us a much bigger buffer say 20-30000 points that we could focus on space or ground with, I know I would be happier at least. I don't find all of the ground skills interesting or worth speccing into, yet I pretty much have to spend points in them anyway.
The problem is, people used to rank to 9 where they wanted to in the old system. No, not everwhere, they still had to make sacrifices, and it was not particularly cost effective there either. However the new system is far tighter, and I for one have very few skills at 9, they are spread rather thin on Holodeck. On Tribble it is even worse. 9 is virtually unaffordable for anything but ground skills.
Additionally, speccing to 3 in skills is directly analagous to only ranking the tier 1 and 2 skills from the old system, which together gave 48%. A single rank in the T3-5 skill would give you 58%, yet people still spent to 9 there, and if not maybe they did 7-7-5 which is equivalent to rank 6 in the current system for many skills.
But again, going to 9 is just not realistic. As much as I agree with what you're saying, the problem is that it is largely unrealistic to even attempt it because skill points are much tighter.
I personally definitely do not skill these unless I need to make the next rank and have no where better to spend them, the exception sensors, which is definitely not a new skill.
As a science ship captain, one of the things I want to be able to do is detect and hunt cloaking ships! Sensors was always able to be improved in the original system, tied to Sensor Array, which conveniently also buffed subsystem targetting which is also innate to science ships. Now those two functions are split, and sensors is more expensive to skill up, while also inexplicably, despite skilling sensors, I know for a fact my stealth detection rating in season 5 is only about 60% of what it used to be in season 4.
Another issue that contributes to this problem is the fact that with the condensed skill tree, there are plenty of ways to find yourself forced to spend points somewhere you don't actually want to just so you can get to the next tier. Would I totally skip the new skills if I could put those points into skills I actually want in the next tier? Heck yes.
This is not quite true. Stealth was improved by the engineering tree, specifically Aux performance, aux maintenance, and engineering training, or whatever the tier 1 was called. Stealth improvements are also rather irrelevant. The best factor to staying cloaked is distance and always has been. Cloak detection is absolutely not very worthwhile in practice, except for hunting fleeing, battle cloaking BOPs.
Hull resistance was improved by one of the attack pattern skill line. Which one I don't recall, but those three skills that buffed attack patterns were incredibly valuable skills because of the passives they had, accuracy, defense, and hull resistance.
Also I personally didn't switch ships, if I wanted to fly a ship, I built a character for it from the ground up, so such things never bothered me.
Quite true, and again I can say without question that I have lost capabilities going from season 4 to season 5, and will lose still more based on the split tree.
And of course this doesn't even touch on the huge glaring issues with the science tree. It has been a pet issue of mine since I realized it almost two years ago. Science has no passive effects.
Why did people spec into the old attack pattern line, even if they didn't use attack patterns? The passives! Why do science ships spend so much in the tactical and engineering trees? Again, the passives are worth every point spent. And why did science ships not take a wide range of science skills? No decent passives, meaning if you aren't clicking on the associated BOFF power for that skill, you have skill points doing nothing for you. This is exacerbated by the fact that using high aux science powers do not help you kill things faster than using weapon power, not in PVE, and only a few help in PVP, but typically only help your team since the science ship itself isn't going to get the kill on their own, and the powers also have long cooldowns.
Think about it, if I spec into subspace decompilers, countermeasure systems, graviton generators, and particle generators, I can't use them all as often as I can use weapons or more shield power/hull strength. I can fire off scramble sensors, photonic shockwave, charged particle burst, and gravity well, and then what? My target is still alive. My powers are on cooldown for another 45-60s. So I have to rely on my pew pew or my team's pew pew, but my science is done for a long while, and a lot of good those skills did me, right? Yes in PVP the dynamic can change, and the right power at the right time can be great. But at the wrong time, it is completely ineffective.
And absolutely nothing has changed with season 5. The science skill tree is still ~60% useless to non-science ships, while the other trees remain extremely relevant to science ships. And a science ship is very much advised to skip as many science skills as possible and focus on one particular build. This goes very much against the intent of the revised system I believe, because it means science ships are not particularly versatile because they can't realistically afford to skill up a wide variety of science skills, nor does it actually get them anything for their troubles.
I think much of this feeling has to do with a general lack of two way communication, and a lack of understanding what the dev goals are because of that lack of communication. I know its not easy, but posts like this, even telling us "no" to various things helps us understand what the goals are and the design choices. It also helps us know which points may be immoveable and which points we can negotiate with, and find compromise solutions, rather than rage against the whole thing.
Easy solution right here (and you don't even have to pay me for it):
Make the scrollbar a -different- color than the rest of the UI. With the UI being almost 100% Blue or Red, it's easy to miss certain UI elements. Make certain elements stand out more by using different colors.
See? How hard was that?
For my build, survivability is a must (Escort) as is firepower. It hass hit a point that I can't specialize for such anymore because the caps ultimately force me to give up one aspect of the essentials and buy into ground. Its seriously messed up.
Now I'm not saying ground is useless. Both characters indeed end up doing ground anyway. But for my more specialized builds the only skills I'd ever WANT to touch would be the ones that affect Orbital Strike, Turrets/Generators, Shield Durability, and Armor Durability. That's it. Four areas of ground combat. I'd like to be able to focus more in space so I can do what my characters SPECIALIZE in for their respective ship choices.
Being forced to spread out takes away a lot from my builds such as Shield/Hull HP of my ship, or some of its firepower, or maybe even lose its speed/turning. Or worse, a combination of these would be lost because of the way its set up now. And this is on a pair of characters that avoid PvP like the plague and are more or less space-centric (with one being slightly more ground spec'd prior to these changes).
So what would I like? Remove the caps and let us spend our points where we want to again. Or rescale skill points so we can get our builds back to what they are on Holodeck current while still giving us the points you would want us to spend in ground to maintain that 75/25 ratio.
Besides that I will say that the new UI looks slick. The color coding that tells us when we're starting to get less out of the skill we're buying into is a nice touch (though I would still max out specific skills anyway because my builds call for it and go low to midway on others for training nodes so I could make a little money from those).