test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Proposal for Removing the Alt-Penalties in STO
commodoreshrvk
Member Posts: 477 Arc User
Having different "professions" in a game naturally leads players to want to create alternate characters to experience gameplay from different angles. As such, most players fill their character slots and some (like myself) even go so far as to have one of each profession for each faction. In addition, as we all know, we went through a year of hell in STO a while back where there was very little content infused into the game. During that time, many players who stuck with STO decided to create numerous alternate characters to level them up to continue enjoying the game with fresh starts. Some players have even up to 16+ alternates. Now, these alternates benefit Cryptic monetarily in several ways with the first coming from purchasing additional character slots, BOFF slots, BOFFs, and other services. Unfortunately, as development grows in the game, the benefit of having these alts diminishes with how grindy the game is becoming. This ultimately leads to less cash.
What is an "alt-penalty"? Well that is any action in this game where you have to grind across multiple toons rather than for the goals of your account. Admittedly things like the DOFF system, Faction-Specific Systems, and reputation system are going to have to remain character or at least faction-specific. The grindy course development has taken escalated the "alt-penalty". What I propose is that several of the new currencies and items be made "account-bound" rather than "character-bound". This frees up the player to once again play the game more how they want to play it, a goal often stated by Cryptic development many times.
Account Accessible
Now this last part takes my proposal for reducing the "Transitional Item Currencies" HERE and would simply add that to a third pane of the Inventory UI. All ?transitional item currencies? for the entire account would go there and be accessible there.
Account-Bound
The following currencies should be moved to account bound and "account holding" should be viewed and accessed from the top box in the last page of the inventory UI:
Lobi Crystals
By making Lobi Crystals account bound, this allows players to open lockboxes on any toon then outfit any alt they see fit. That allows more free purchase of items, especially those that are character bound. In addition, Lobi Crystals should be moved from a "Transitional Item currency" to a numeric currency like dilithium etc..
Dilithium Ore (unrefined should be removed see my previous proposal HERE)
The dilithium grind is a notorious one and my previous proposal here should address the fundamental issues wrong with the currency. By making Dilithium Ore pool account-wide, again offers more flexibility to the player. Because Dilithium Ore can be transferred all to one toon via the Dilithium Exchange, there is no reason not to do this.
Energy Credits
Again, we can already pool all of our ECs in our account bank. But the system is rather clunky, requiring deposit and withdrawl. Everything should just go into the account bank and then be withdrawn from the amount by the system as it does now per character, shifting it up levels.
Faction Specific Bound
It is an improper design to force players to have to grind the same content on different characters to allow them to advance. Why does it matter which faction-specific character ran the content, the player did put in their work in doing the content but is penalized then for having alts. Thus, the following currencies should be moved to faction-specific account bound, the second box in the second page of the inventory UI:
Reptutation Marks and all associated ?Transitional Item Currencies
Both Omega and Romulan marks denote a player has run a certain set of content. However, the current system forces players to re-run or re-grind on each alt individually. Now these should not be open account-wide but rather faction-wide. Again, this frees up the player to enjoy the content without having the penalty hanging over their head of they will have to do this for every single alt. Again, they can play the game they want to play it.
Fleet Marks and Fleet Credits
Again, same as above. It is redundant design to score players contributions to a fleet per character rather than per account. From a player's perspective it is difficult to justify why this is done because they have run the appropriate content. It also forces the player to do unnecessary re-grinding on alternate characters. The only catch is if the player has alts spread across multiple fleets per faction. But, even then, it gives the player the choice and the right where to invest their Fleet Marks.
What is an "alt-penalty"? Well that is any action in this game where you have to grind across multiple toons rather than for the goals of your account. Admittedly things like the DOFF system, Faction-Specific Systems, and reputation system are going to have to remain character or at least faction-specific. The grindy course development has taken escalated the "alt-penalty". What I propose is that several of the new currencies and items be made "account-bound" rather than "character-bound". This frees up the player to once again play the game more how they want to play it, a goal often stated by Cryptic development many times.
Account Accessible
Now this last part takes my proposal for reducing the "Transitional Item Currencies" HERE and would simply add that to a third pane of the Inventory UI. All ?transitional item currencies? for the entire account would go there and be accessible there.
Account-Bound
The following currencies should be moved to account bound and "account holding" should be viewed and accessed from the top box in the last page of the inventory UI:
Lobi Crystals
By making Lobi Crystals account bound, this allows players to open lockboxes on any toon then outfit any alt they see fit. That allows more free purchase of items, especially those that are character bound. In addition, Lobi Crystals should be moved from a "Transitional Item currency" to a numeric currency like dilithium etc..
Dilithium Ore (unrefined should be removed see my previous proposal HERE)
The dilithium grind is a notorious one and my previous proposal here should address the fundamental issues wrong with the currency. By making Dilithium Ore pool account-wide, again offers more flexibility to the player. Because Dilithium Ore can be transferred all to one toon via the Dilithium Exchange, there is no reason not to do this.
Energy Credits
Again, we can already pool all of our ECs in our account bank. But the system is rather clunky, requiring deposit and withdrawl. Everything should just go into the account bank and then be withdrawn from the amount by the system as it does now per character, shifting it up levels.
Faction Specific Bound
It is an improper design to force players to have to grind the same content on different characters to allow them to advance. Why does it matter which faction-specific character ran the content, the player did put in their work in doing the content but is penalized then for having alts. Thus, the following currencies should be moved to faction-specific account bound, the second box in the second page of the inventory UI:
Reptutation Marks and all associated ?Transitional Item Currencies
Both Omega and Romulan marks denote a player has run a certain set of content. However, the current system forces players to re-run or re-grind on each alt individually. Now these should not be open account-wide but rather faction-wide. Again, this frees up the player to enjoy the content without having the penalty hanging over their head of they will have to do this for every single alt. Again, they can play the game they want to play it.
Fleet Marks and Fleet Credits
Again, same as above. It is redundant design to score players contributions to a fleet per character rather than per account. From a player's perspective it is difficult to justify why this is done because they have run the appropriate content. It also forces the player to do unnecessary re-grinding on alternate characters. The only catch is if the player has alts spread across multiple fleets per faction. But, even then, it gives the player the choice and the right where to invest their Fleet Marks.
Post edited by commodoreshrvk on
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
This very much. I have 14 Characters at VA (9 Fed 5 KDF) and i very much dread the grind involved in getting them all through the new REP system, especially since i have to do it on every char if i want access to the stf sets etc, as they are all bound to cahracter.
Come up with a different solution here Cryptic, pls. Making them account bound for instance would help a lot.
If I'm understanding this point, you are basically trying to say that all items which are not strictly per-character equipment should automatically be accessible account-wide?
While I can see where this would be convenient, and while there are already workarounds for anything that's not bound, I don't see this one flying. Unless I am misinterpreting?
Lobi--
I agree these should be account-bound and that they ought to be kept as a numeric, not a kind of item that occupies inventory slots.
Dilithium--
As you say, there's already a way to shift this around. And there's at least one good reason not to... it would make it more difficult to account for which character is spending what, both for the system and for the player.
Energy Credits--
There's already a solution in place (more than one, actually) for redistributing EC's. It doesn't need to be transparent.
Reputation Marks--
The system was not designed around accounts, but around characters. They want people to be able to replay the game and making the benefits essentially "account-wide" defeats that purpose. Spreading marks over to characters that didn't play through the content doesn't make sense on a lot of levels. Each individual character should earn it themselves.
I don't deny your proposal makes it more convenient. I just don't see it happening.
Fleet Marks--
Again, this system was designed around characters in fleets, not accounts. Yes, again I don't deny that being able to distribute them as you please no matter which character earned them would be more convenient on many levels. It would also benefit players who have characters that are not in fleets, so that they could shift fleet marks to character that are.
However, I see Cryptic's design for endgame play revolving heavily around fleets. They'd be trying to encourage people to participate in fleet play, not enable them to selectively avoid it.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
For the first year, year and a half of the game, I limited myself to a 'mere' 4 characters (VAs), three Feds, one for every profession, and one KDF character. During the content draught, I started leveling one more fed of each profession. I got 3 more to VA on Tribble after the reset. At this point, though, the game's rate of progression, even through the Doff system, is so fast that I'm at 9 Federation VAs, and 3 KDF LGs on Holodeck.
Now, I still only really consider the original four my mains. It does not occur to me, the notion of driving all 12 characters to cap out each and every feature. I did want them to make the STF tech drops account bound, as it was rather annoying, to need it one character and get it on a character that didn't, in a game that doesn't hand out loot quite like conventional MMOs do (with lots more variation, subclasses that didn't vye for the same gear, and rolling against other players who did) but that's kind of behind us now, with the reputation system on the horizon.
For those who are going to put an awful lot of alts through the same systems, though, I think the least they could do, without doing all the work for the players, is to maybe, once you hit T5 in a reputation system, CXP category, or whatever, you get an accolade much like the Veteran ones, account wide, that boosts your progress through the system in question on all characters by say 20%.
The Lobi, yes, should be account bound. If people are going to replay all four feature series during a lobi rerun, and pool it, good for them. That's an awful lot of effort, and it won't get you that much, that fast. Alternatively, they can just pull those rewards - since just the 20 doesn't even buy you a personal weapon anymore, the loss would be minimal - or again with the accolades, go a route where the accolades are tied to a claim-once-only (or claim once only per X days/weeks/months) box of Lobi on the Z-store. Or from the NPC at Drozana.
Dilithium I'd like to be able refine across an account in one go. Still this would be a fairly minimal bit of progress. I still have to log in into my oodles of alts, if and when I'm farming them, to turn in all those doff assignments. Really wouldn't save that much time.
As for energy credits, I don't think so. Those are fine the way they are as far as I'm concerned. Same for Fleet Marks.
You are correct, things such as commodities data samples etc... that are choking our inventories could benefit from something like this along with making them "items on demand". Yes there are workarounds, mailing to your alts, loading and removing from the account bank, etc.. Those workarounds are very messy and I imagine the mail system is clogged at times when heavy transferring is going on. The point is, these items do not need to be character-specific.
Does the system really track "character-specific" or "account-specific" actions. I don't see why this would even need to be tracked character-specific.
Yes, there are methods, account bank, exchange listing, and character trades...but again all of these work-arounds are entirely unnecessary.
Believe me I don't see any of this ever being implemented either. I figured it was good to get the issues down on the table and provide a more streamlined solution. The system as it now stands defeats having any alternate characters. Making things "account-wide" does not defeat the system; however, because you as a player are still playing the content. You are still doing the missions. You are just doing it on your favorite character(s) with no cost to benefiting your other characters. You will still have to earn the same amount of marks, dilithium, etc...only this way the PLAYER gets to choose on which character and how rather than having it dictated to them.
Same as above. Why must players be benefited yet penalized by the same system. It is irrelevant which character I choose to provision projects with as the end result is the same. Again, making things such as Fleet Marks Faction Specific or even Fleet-Specific per account does in no way take away from the system. It only takes alternatives away from the player.
It would certainly be more convenient. However, it should probably be accompanied with a boost to the EC limit.
With some of the rarer items going for 40% of the current cap, 1 billion EC isn't as insane as it used to be. Currently, you can steer clear of the limit by distributing your ECs between alts, but if the currency becomes account-wide, the cap will become harder to avoid.
+1
I like this idea, a lot. It would make the alt-grind less tiresome without removing it altogether.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
No thanks
Items on specific characters are their property (and not all of my characters even get along)
Again this encourages the "smaller" side to get robbed by the larger
This is anti ferengi
except to preserve individual rights to their own work?
Which means if "Mr Main" wants to he can steal from "Lt Com Alt"
and you have no independence
you see this as a penalty
some of us DON'T
Again character independence is effected
Alts allow you to gain massive amounts of marks if you know what you are doing
Your ideas are all very well but some of us have Alternates who are not all "farmers"
Please remember to check the dates of threads; and if you find an old thread which violates the PWE Community Rules and Policies just report it and avoid posting in it.
Please bear in mind that re-posting in "necro'd" threads is considered a form of spamming.
Note that you're more than welcome to post in an existing active topic or to start a new thread on the topic if there are no active topics already.
Live Long and Prosper,
Bluegeek
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek