Howdy. I've been playing STO for awhile now, longer than the age of my current account suggests, and I think the game is great. That said, I think there's a rather... Obvious... Way to make the game better. Just read my wall of text and see if you agree or not, post your opinions in the thread and we'll talk about it.
This is basically an overhaul of the way skillpoints work at their foundation.
Step 1: Move the space skill tree from the captain profile to the ship profile.
Step 2: Combine all skillpoints (Bridge Officer, ground, space) into a single skillpoint pool with no cap on how many you can earn, similar to how the bridge officer skill points currently work.
Step 3: Put a limit onto how many skillpoints can be allocated to a ship, based on it's tier. Admiral level ships, for example, still can only have 300k skillpoints allocated to them. Lower level ships can have less.
Step 4: Unassociate skillpoints from the rank process. Base rank on commendations. Missions, PvP, Assignments, etc, give a number of commendations based on how long they are expected to take or run, get enough commendations and you earn a level or a rank, whatever. The important part here is that it be unassociated with skillpoints, which are now unlimitted. If you really wanted, you could assign accolades to every quest in the game and other things, and base level on accolades. Wouldn't that be a hoot.
Step 5: Set the game up such that the tier of ship you are running determines your character's level/rank for the purpose of space combat and space based queues. The maximum gear a Miranda class ship can equip is Mk II, the commander level ships cap out at Mk VI, etc. This prevents folks from entering STF's with junk ships, and allows folks to hang out in lower level areas and such. This has an advantage for free to play players via not putting them in pvp scenerios and missions where their ships are wildly outclassed by their level. Yes, there will be twinking as a result. Lower level pvp is interesting, so I actually don't have much issue with that, and most of the good gear for lower levels is mission reward stuff anyway, so I don't have much problem with it as it's increadibly easy to obtain.
Step 6: Trainable BOff abilities. What to do about those. Either the currently trainable level 3 abilities that are mostly just a hastle involving finding a captain of the appropriate type can just go to the boff trainers, or they can always be taught by captains regardless of skillpoints, or some other method of getting things like torpedo high yield 3 can be made, perhaps a doff assignment or something. It's not really that important, just more a consideration to be made.
This setup has one increadibly major feature associated to it, and a few things that would need to be considered by Cryptic.
The major feature: You could spec your ships how you intend to use them, and not your captain. This allows a massive amount of fluidity for captains that simply isn't here at the moment. If you got bored with your escort, you could hop into your science ship, and it would be spec'd how you'd like your science ship to be spec'd. This is essentially multiple profiles.
Major considerations:
1: Respec tokens would be... Wonky. Owning c-store ships means you can always reset them for "free" by discharging them and claiming them again, your only loss being the skillpoints spent on them. Respecing something like a Sov or any other dilithium based ship would be more a pain, requiring either their value in dilithium, or spending a respec token. So what to do with respec tokens? Well, if the game tracks total skillpoints gained, respec tokens could unassign all skillpoints you have spent on currently owned boffs, currently owned ships, and your ground skillpoints, and then reset your spendable skillpoints to your cap. A possible, yet annoying, solution might be to set the first time one claims a c-store ship on a character to be free, subsequent claims costing increasing values of dilithium, until possibly the 5th claim it caps off at costing the same amount as purchasing a regular ship of that level.
2: Ship Slots would increase in value by an insane amount. Just something to note.
3: Ships could then have unique skills associated to them. The sky is the limit on what one can do with ships when the skill tree is actually on them.
4: Probably should allow folks to have more than one of the same ship type. No real reason not to, and the ships could be spec'd differently.
5: The value of character slots might decrease as a result.
The value of the player character is already low, and Engineer or a Science player can PvP Solo Vs a Tactical Player. There should be big differences between the classes, and there really isn't. Your idea is good about basing the teir on the ship instead of the player. I think they should do more, like there should be a different teir of skills a player could learn between classes.
The Bridge Officers should also play a more vital roll in the game than just giving you abilities. Since we get an unlimited supply of Bridge Officer Skill Points, we might as well put them into some use. Instead of the player learning skills like "Starship Energy Weapons" or "Starship Warp Core Efficiency", those should be learned by the Bridge Officers. The Captian of a starship is the one giving the commands, not behind the stations. The Bridge officers should have their own tree of skills the player could choose to put points in to better the performance of the ship. A ship is not run by her captain, but her crew, the captain leads the crew.
But I do agree with the over all idea that the Space Skillpoints should be Overhauled.
I disagree with most of what Rellimtime82 said. There is a huge difference in how a tac plays vs eng currently, regardless of ship. How you tank, kill etc, is very dependent on "class." For instance, my VA eng has incredible survivability, regardless of which ship I play. My tac officer can survive fairly well, but without the few powers of the eng, doesn't quite last as well. His survivability is very dependent on Boffs to live through an encounter, while my eng has to run his boffs with a more attack oriented style to kill. They have completely different play styles even when in similar ships. I haven't played much on a sci, but lacking the survivable boosts an eng gets, or the attack boosts that a tack has, i imagine ill have to orient my boffs to do a mix, and depend on subnuc and scan to buy me the time ill need to live. In the end they will all work just as well as the others, but the way I play then, and thus build them changes.
All this said, the proposal here gives me the option to build something fun, and not performance. I could build my eng a escort, and play with torps, and not have to constantly respec my char (or destroy my cruiser spec), to switch my build, or heaven forbid buy a dozen character slots so I can have every spec I want.
The option here allows us to basically try out new things, have a setup for STFs, switch to PvP, and then go into solo mode and enjoy a few episodes. By buying multiple ships which also means we have to earn the right, or cash shop the right, for these "alternative builds"
I was hoping for something like the City of Heroes (a past Cryptic game that recent got a feature) like "alt builds." But this option still brings in money for cryptic by encouraging you to buy dilith/C points, while still making us earn the skill points.
In summary, it gives us reason to keep playing once we are all mark 12 gears up and bored. We can actually try something new, without losing past viability.
No. All this amounts to is a very cumbersome form of dual spec.
The major feature: You could spec your ships how you intend to use them, and not your captain. This allows a massive
{does massive really belong here?} amount of fluidity for captains that simply isn't here at the moment. If you got bored with your escort, you could hop into your science ship, and it would be spec'd how you'd like your science ship to be spec'd. This is essentially multiple profiles.
And at its worse it just further promotes the ******* child that is the modular ship design concept and derp derp pocket sub nucs and miracle workers.
It does amount to allowing dual specs/profiles. That was essentially the main point of the post.
However, it has more features than just that. It limits whom can bring what to what instances, and ensures that lowbie ships aren't running around in end game PvP and STF's. It also means you can expect a general threat/competency level of __ when you see a ship class, instead of having to think about what level they are.
As for modular design, why do you have a problem with science captains in escorts, or tactical captains in cruisers, etc? It's not really a big deal, I'd say the vast majority of your build is dependent on your boffs, which in turn is ship choice, followed probably by your choice of gear, followed by your skill point expenditures, and finally in very last place is your captain abilities. The captain choice as it currently stands is very minor of a difference for space, only determining if you are slightly more capable of dealing damage, slightly more survivable, or slightly more annoying with debuffs.
You've also not explained how it's cumbersome, or how it causes any more issue with modular ship design than any other dual spec/profile system. Can you elaborate there? It's definitely a change from what is currently in existence, but the system itself is far from cumbersome, it's in fact very straight forward and largely intuitive, relying mostly on mechanics from systems that currently exist, such as the boff system.
It is cumbersome because all your stated goals could be accomplished much more simply. It's cumbersome because it would involve me as a player performing essentially the same operation over for each new ship I gained. Not just new tier of ship or different class of ship, but each ship period. Just having multiple spec ability would fix this without any overt hassle. Restricting ques by ship tier is not entirely relevant as that is something that could be done independently of any sort of skill system and in fact has been discussed before.
When you take away from the captain and put the skills on the ship, even if you say its only semantics, you open the door to further dilute the ship classes and captain abilities. I would not say that captain choice is minor. How could it possibly be minor when currently it determines the availability of a handful of clutch abilities? Bridge officer abilities are available to anyone. Captains powers are not. Do I have a problem with cruisers running attack patterns? Of course I do. Its silly. Do I have a problem with escorts instant healing to full? Having across the board power boosts? Drain resistance? Of course I do. These aren't slight differences. These are things that determine what you fly and who's in the captains seat.
3: Ships could then have unique skills associated to them. The sky is the limit on what one can do with ships when the skill tree is actually on them.
This is nice but I don't see where you supported this anywhere in your post. I'm sure you realize that would involve some serious reworking of the skills trees as you could no longer just slap a truncated version of the current skills onto ships according to tier. What you will actually get, instead of this noble idea, is people stacking the most and best abilities they can into the most maneuverable hull available to them. This is what captains abilities were designed for.
So wait, your argument Thissler is that, its better for players to get bored and fed up with game play, and quit, over having options? Ive got 3 maxed characters at this point, one has his ultimate gear, one is on his penultimate gear, and one is a week away from being fully geared. Without room to grow on any characters, whats the point of me playing any longer? If I stop playing, they aren't making money from me. After 2 months of play, and the purchase of 2 ships, there is nothing left for me to do or spend money on other than buy character slots, and grind up more max leveled, end equipped people. But with having the choice of building various ships (read choice, not mandatory, so someone like you that doesn't want the "hassle" of trying different specs and such, doesn't have to "go through the hassle") I would more than likely buy some more cash shop ships, and get those geared up, so i can play different stuff as I get bored. I would go from 3 options, to lets see, 3 chars, each having a minimum of 3 builds, some having 4, so it would take lets say 3+3+4=10 ships. So I would have 10 options, 10 ships to gear up. Sure I am less likely to buy character slots at that point, but im more likely to but 1200/1600/2000 cost ships. Its win/win for me and cryptic, as they will make far more money with me buying a half dozen ships, rather than me quitting. This change doesn't affect you, since you wont have to set up a ton of ships (well your basically have to respec each tier for free, but with as few points as are spent in lower tiers, it wont really make life any more of a hassle) but does make the company more money in the end.
And money is what pays for devs, servers, and services. So while this change helping keep the game alive, and helping keep players interested, also doesn't really change how someone "must" play. It becomes a choice. The only non choice is to remove low level junk ships from wasting slots in end game content. I personally am tired of commander level ships in STF's ruining run after run after run.
Hmm, appears to be an interesting idea but overly complex for the problem you think needs solving... Plus it's likely to involve tons of work (and testing and bug fixing) when there's probably much simpler options available... I.e. purchaseable or earnable alt spec slots.
Comments
The Bridge Officers should also play a more vital roll in the game than just giving you abilities. Since we get an unlimited supply of Bridge Officer Skill Points, we might as well put them into some use. Instead of the player learning skills like "Starship Energy Weapons" or "Starship Warp Core Efficiency", those should be learned by the Bridge Officers. The Captian of a starship is the one giving the commands, not behind the stations. The Bridge officers should have their own tree of skills the player could choose to put points in to better the performance of the ship. A ship is not run by her captain, but her crew, the captain leads the crew.
But I do agree with the over all idea that the Space Skillpoints should be Overhauled.
All this said, the proposal here gives me the option to build something fun, and not performance. I could build my eng a escort, and play with torps, and not have to constantly respec my char (or destroy my cruiser spec), to switch my build, or heaven forbid buy a dozen character slots so I can have every spec I want.
The option here allows us to basically try out new things, have a setup for STFs, switch to PvP, and then go into solo mode and enjoy a few episodes. By buying multiple ships which also means we have to earn the right, or cash shop the right, for these "alternative builds"
I was hoping for something like the City of Heroes (a past Cryptic game that recent got a feature) like "alt builds." But this option still brings in money for cryptic by encouraging you to buy dilith/C points, while still making us earn the skill points.
In summary, it gives us reason to keep playing once we are all mark 12 gears up and bored. We can actually try something new, without losing past viability.
If it were up to me, we would be able to upgrade a miranda all the way through the game and have tier 5 of it.
In the absence of that, something similar to the OP's idea would be...nice.
The major feature: You could spec your ships how you intend to use them, and not your captain. This allows a massive
{does massive really belong here?} amount of fluidity for captains that simply isn't here at the moment. If you got bored with your escort, you could hop into your science ship, and it would be spec'd how you'd like your science ship to be spec'd. This is essentially multiple profiles.
And at its worse it just further promotes the ******* child that is the modular ship design concept and derp derp pocket sub nucs and miracle workers.
It does amount to allowing dual specs/profiles. That was essentially the main point of the post.
However, it has more features than just that. It limits whom can bring what to what instances, and ensures that lowbie ships aren't running around in end game PvP and STF's. It also means you can expect a general threat/competency level of __ when you see a ship class, instead of having to think about what level they are.
As for modular design, why do you have a problem with science captains in escorts, or tactical captains in cruisers, etc? It's not really a big deal, I'd say the vast majority of your build is dependent on your boffs, which in turn is ship choice, followed probably by your choice of gear, followed by your skill point expenditures, and finally in very last place is your captain abilities. The captain choice as it currently stands is very minor of a difference for space, only determining if you are slightly more capable of dealing damage, slightly more survivable, or slightly more annoying with debuffs.
You've also not explained how it's cumbersome, or how it causes any more issue with modular ship design than any other dual spec/profile system. Can you elaborate there? It's definitely a change from what is currently in existence, but the system itself is far from cumbersome, it's in fact very straight forward and largely intuitive, relying mostly on mechanics from systems that currently exist, such as the boff system.
When you take away from the captain and put the skills on the ship, even if you say its only semantics, you open the door to further dilute the ship classes and captain abilities. I would not say that captain choice is minor. How could it possibly be minor when currently it determines the availability of a handful of clutch abilities? Bridge officer abilities are available to anyone. Captains powers are not. Do I have a problem with cruisers running attack patterns? Of course I do. Its silly. Do I have a problem with escorts instant healing to full? Having across the board power boosts? Drain resistance? Of course I do. These aren't slight differences. These are things that determine what you fly and who's in the captains seat.
3: Ships could then have unique skills associated to them. The sky is the limit on what one can do with ships when the skill tree is actually on them.
This is nice but I don't see where you supported this anywhere in your post. I'm sure you realize that would involve some serious reworking of the skills trees as you could no longer just slap a truncated version of the current skills onto ships according to tier. What you will actually get, instead of this noble idea, is people stacking the most and best abilities they can into the most maneuverable hull available to them. This is what captains abilities were designed for.
And money is what pays for devs, servers, and services. So while this change helping keep the game alive, and helping keep players interested, also doesn't really change how someone "must" play. It becomes a choice. The only non choice is to remove low level junk ships from wasting slots in end game content. I personally am tired of commander level ships in STF's ruining run after run after run.