Is STO being modified in a way to discourage alts?

glassguitar

First off:

I love S7. Really. (no being sarcastic)

Tau Dewa Sector is fun, new equips are neato. Not a big fan of New Romulus care bear missions, but Idon;t have to play them so no worries.

My one issue/question is this:

Has PWE/Cryptic decided that a player should not have multiple maxed out alts?

Here's the case:

Keeping up with Romulan/Omega marks is not an issue at all for ONE toon. Run an ISE (oops, the conduit) and a Tau Dewa Patrol and you are stocked in marks for a days worth of project plus a little extra. So running one of each every day and you are on the fast track toward max rep. Add another hour of PvP matches and turn over confiscated contraband and you have hit Dilithium max. Looking at about two hours of gameplay.

Now they add the race to get the new Breen Ship. This is awesome. All I have to do is participate ina daily event 25 times over 35 days and I have a free lockbox grade ship. No idea yet what the time requirements are for this race but heck, it's free.

But wait, I have a KDF toon as well, so now I need to rinse repeat the whole process for that toon. Factor a player that has paid to unlock extra character slots and this could get really tedious.

My question is, is this by design? I somewhat understand that one shsould not be able to have everything on twenty toons for no work, but I would think the Breen Ship gift would have been account bound.

This post is not intended as a complaint. Just wondering if the intent is that we should have to focus on one or two toons at at time, or if this is the unintended effect of the new systems.

Bear in mind I am a completionist, and losing my mind trying to keep my toons on track with rep, and probably the only person alive who preferred the longer time gate for this reason .... LOL.

ajstoner

They are looking to squeeze whatever money they can out of the players--I don't think the intent was to encourage or discourage multiple characters. It used to be that alts were the key to in-game wealth--now, less so.

warpangel

If/when they raise the level cap to 60, will you complain that leveling up multiple toons takes too much playtime?

The rep tiers are just a different style of character advancement. You don't have to do all of your toons at the same time. You probably didn't level them to 50 all at the same time either.

crypticarmsman

Well, I think there were two factors involved:

A lot of players made alts just to farm the Officer Reports Foundry daily mission and SFA/KFA lore missions for Dilithium. That was a quick (under 2 minutes ) 1920 Dilithium per alt - and as each alt had it's own 8000 Dil a day cap - that was a lot of exttra Dill coming into the economy. These alt ALSO made it to Level 50 by doing this; at which pointy they could also farm Dilithium from STFs if one so desired.

Cryptic's dataming as a result, showed a lot of characters getting Dilithium, but rarely reaching the cap - and while they knew a lot was from Foundry 1-click farming - they al;so may have thought a lot was from other sources; and that's why the initial launch of S7 (which also closed the 1-click farming exploit); was so bare on dilithium.

Then after S7 launched, with the exploit closed and a lot more work needed to progress Alts; probably a lot of the 'farming alts' were abandoned by players and they started playing on few characters to get Dil/Make progress. That's when the 8000 a day Dil cap starting slowing Dilithium introduction into the system, hard. Cryptic's response - add stuff that gives Dilithium back in so it is easier to cap Dil on a character; so players will play more alts (you still won't see them bring out all the former Alts they had - but they'l maybe play one or two more and cap them on a daily basis. Still, Dilithium is probably not flowing into the system at the same rate (and there's more Dil sinks) - and some players may be 'hording' Dil until they hit Rep T5, so they can get wjhat they want.

The end result - less Alts playing to just plain quickly farm Dilithium (I'm sure some have their 'system' and are still doing their best at it, but it's not being done 'wholesale' like it was before the 1440 1-click Foundry daily exploit was closed. Most are choosing a few Alt (probably one of each class); and working in the new Rep system to get them geared the way they want them.

That's my speculation anyway.

overlapo

I had this impression as well OP. Other than farming. the reason ppl had alts is that before S6 the game was shallow at the end, the only end content worth playing were the 6 STF missions. So a lot of people experimented with different builds and characters, just to keep it interesting. I know I did...

Right now there is a lot more to do at endgame and people are focusing on their mains rather than the alts. While at some level it bugs me that I can't make my 12 captains grow at the same rate as the main I am focusing on, I think it is a good sign for the health of the game.

As for Cryptic focusing on single characters instead of account wide unlocks, I recall some dev complaining several times about the data footprint caused by the characters in this game. I imagine they will refrain from encouraging people from having 50 alts, like some people had to farm the foundry dailies.

glassguitar

warpangel wrote: »

If/when they raise the level cap to 60, will you complain that leveling up multiple toons takes too much playtime?

The rep tiers are just a different style of character advancement. You don't have to do all of your toons at the same time. You probably didn't level them to 50 all at the same time either.

Again, not a complaint (re-read my post) but rather a question. As far as leveling toons, will probably take less than a week to go from 50-60 using only Mirror Event, so what would the complaint be?

The reason I brought this up in the first place, is that whether by subscription or character slot tokens, alts cost money that goes into the company's coffers. Most active players will end up making at least one toon for each profession, maybe one of each profession for each faction. Some of my in-game friends make one of each race. If players stop making alts because there isn't enough time in a day to work on them all, it takes money away from the company.

I personally decided my KDF Trill Science Officer (Trill as in paid $5 zen to unlock the option for Trill species) will have to be put on the back burner until my main is T5 in both reps, because I was feeling overwhelmed by the amount of time spent grinding ECs for commodities to contribute to projects. I had originally planned to purchase a Fleet BoP for her, since I have grown tired of flying the Vo'Quv. I would have done this with Christmas money, but now the soonest I will even think about it is probably 4 or 5 months from now. $20 worth of zen sales lost. I will however log on once a day and run the stupid Fastest Race on Ice and cash in on a FREE Breen Ship but that is at the cost of the time I would have sent grinding Marks for Rep and Rep Gear. (I can always come back later and grind rep, but the Breen Ship is time limited) More lost income for the company because I surely would have wanted to purchase fleet weapons for the BoP and had to sell some more zen to get enough dilithium to get them quickly. (Since I pretty much only play for PvP, this character becomes worthless once everyone passes her in Rep Tier and has passives I do not have, so I have no reason to invest any resources in the character if I don't have time to farm rep)

So again, not a complaint. Just wondering if the devs did this on purpose. I could be wrong, but IMO the extra income gained from encouraging alting far outweighs what would be lost from those who use alts to dilithium farm. In fact, the single player most likely to generate bucketloads of income for the company is the player with a good job (but not a lot of time for grinding) that wants to have 100 alts and buy fun shiny toys for all of them. You know, different build and load outs etc. (my Tac likes the HE Carrier I spent $25 on, but maybe my Sci would rather fly a D'Kyr or Vesta) If said alts are going to be stuck falling way behind in the Rep System, it will be easy to lose interest in them. ((I do enjoy playing the Episodes, but once is enough for each one. As far as the CONTENT of Season Seven, I think it is very well done, but I really just run the dailies to get the marks for rep so I can have my passives for PvP reasons)

Also, I don't personally have a good suggestion as to how this could be better balanced, but I think there could be some way.

glassguitar

overlapo wrote: »

I had this impression as well OP. Other than farming. the reason ppl had alts is that before S6 the game was shallow at the end, the only end content worth playing were the 6 STF missions. So a lot of people experimented with different builds and characters, just to keep it interesting. I know I did...

Right now there is a lot more to do at endgame and people are focusing on their mains rather than the alts. While at some level it bugs me that I can't make my 12 captains grow at the same rate as the main I am focusing on, I think it is a good sign for the health of the game.

As for Cryptic focusing on single characters instead of account wide unlocks, I recall some dev complaining several times about the data footprint caused by the characters in this game. I imagine they will refrain from encouraging people from having 50 alts, like some people had to farm the foundry dailies.

You make some good points, though I admit, the very last thing I owuld have considered is data footprint .... LOL

As far as alt progression, being a PvP focused player, I like to have different types of toons to play different roles in teams.

logicalspock

Cryptic had a chance to fix things so that they were better for long-time players with lots of alts.

The STFs actually worked very well. All they had to do to fix it was an an accolade reward for reaching a certain number of elite STFs (say 300 and 600 on each different mission) to fix the random drop issue for very unlucky players.

They could have made the game a lot better by letting us trade gear with our other characters, as they originally suggested.

Instead, they completely took out STF reward drops. Now, in addition to grinding out the gear, you also have to pay a lot of dilithium for it. Instead of making the gear and currency tradable with alts, you have to start over again on each alt.

It is all about making EC and dilithium sinks for the game and taking away the "free" gear we got by doing STFs. It might make the elite sets more "fair", but it also makes the STFs even worse for the player.

At the very least, they need to take away the dilithium component and make rewards paid for by Reputation marks and neural processors alone.

twg042370

I still have my KDF alts around to farm contraband and commodities. I take a very slow River of Commerce approach to using them and in the current game economy the minor "profits" I get add up relatively quickly.

But... The gathering rate has been pretty bad this past week and it's been almost pointless to log in and gather the haul for resale.

Regardless, alting is dead if you try to use them in the same way you did a few weeks ago: Quick Dil gathering. But if you take the scenic route, they're still viable.

glassguitar

twg042370 wrote: »

I still have my KDF alts around to farm contraband and commodities. I take a very slow River of Commerce approach to using them and in the current game economy the minor "profits" I get add up relatively quickly.

But... The gathering rate has been pretty bad this past week and it's been almost pointless to log in and gather the haul for resale.

Regardless, alting is dead if you try to use them in the same way you did a few weeks ago: Quick Dil gathering. But if you take the scenic route, they're still viable.

Important to note, that I have no desire to have my alts for dilithium farming. I actually like being able to build different characters and have them able to serve different purposes.

Say for instance a friend needs to get the Optional on Cure Ground to complete the accolades. They message me and ask if I can help. "Sure, no problem," I say and then ask "Who do you have helping so far?" Turns out they have four tactical officers. Well, my trill Science officer (KDF) is an Honor Guard Elite Commander and would be a lot more help than my Fed Tac Elite Commander, since the Science Officer can don the Medic Kit and tank the heck out of Armek.

The neat thing about this game for me is the variety of builds you can get with just three professions, due to the fact we have so many species that are so different in strengths and weaknesses. The nature of grinding Rep Marks and now the Race Event (time sink wise, and ENERGY CREDIT sink wise ((if I need extra Dilithium, I have no issue supporting the business that provides the game by buying zen to speed up the process)) makes it kind of pointless to roll an alt (which requires buying a character slot token, again more money for the company to use to pay devs and keep the servers running) since that alt is now WAY behind on Rep Grinding.

Just wanted to clarify that. I for one would not care at all if zen purchased through the Dilith Exchange was character bound. I guess the fact that everyone assumes that my issue is with ability to dilithium farm answer my own question as to why they made the changes work this way.

twg042370

Everyone assumed it was about the dilithium because all of the changes were about the dilithium. Otherwise you should play alts for the fun of playing alts and none of the changes matter in that case.

bareel

glassguitar wrote: »

First off:

I love S7. Really. (no being sarcastic)

Tau Dewa Sector is fun, new equips are neato. Not a big fan of New Romulus care bear missions, but Idon;t have to play them so no worries.

My one issue/question is this:

Has PWE/Cryptic decided that a player should not have multiple maxed out alts?

Here's the case:

Keeping up with Romulan/Omega marks is not an issue at all for ONE toon. Run an ISE (oops, the conduit) and a Tau Dewa Patrol and you are stocked in marks for a days worth of project plus a little extra. So running one of each every day and you are on the fast track toward max rep. Add another hour of PvP matches and turn over confiscated contraband and you have hit Dilithium max. Looking at about two hours of gameplay.

Now they add the race to get the new Breen Ship. This is awesome. All I have to do is participate ina daily event 25 times over 35 days and I have a free lockbox grade ship. No idea yet what the time requirements are for this race but heck, it's free.

But wait, I have a KDF toon as well, so now I need to rinse repeat the whole process for that toon. Factor a player that has paid to unlock extra character slots and this could get really tedious.

My question is, is this by design? I somewhat understand that one shsould not be able to have everything on twenty toons for no work, but I would think the Breen Ship gift would have been account bound.

This post is not intended as a complaint. Just wondering if the intent is that we should have to focus on one or two toons at at time, or if this is the unintended effect of the new systems.

Bear in mind I am a completionist, and losing my mind trying to keep my toons on track with rep, and probably the only person alive who preferred the longer time gate for this reason .... LOL.

I feel where you are comming from and I have the same problem. To me max level is now max rep instead of level 50 and I too feel the pressure of keeping them all progressing at max speed. I don't really consider most of my toons 'alts' so to speak I just don't really have a 'main' is how I look at it.

Best thing is just keep up with what you have time to keep up with. After all it is not like you leveled them all up to 50 at the same time and this is not much different. That and efficiency is key.

jamesburtchell

bareel wrote: »

I feel where you are comming from and I have the same problem. To me max level is now max rep instead of level 50 and I too feel the pressure of keeping them all progressing at max speed. I don't really consider most of my toons 'alts' so to speak I just don't really have a 'main' is how I look at it.

Best thing is just keep up with what you have time to keep up with. After all it is not like you leveled them all up to 50 at the same time and this is not much different. That and efficiency is key.

Yeah I'm the same. I don't really see any of my toons as main so yeah that's my problem. so i'm trying to get all of them done at the same damn time and its like STO is becoming a frakking job. wait STO became a job when they started to make the stf gear last year

clamyfishstick

as a person with many alts, I say "yes." I've actually pretty much given up on all my alts since I can't even keep up on 1 toon. as a paying customer who purchased max slots, it sucks. but PWE is a grind-fest company and it's obvious they are in charge, not Cryptic... so we are stuck with the terrible state of the game that STO has become.

foundrelic

If they didn't want us to have alts, they wouldn't allow us to have alts.

twg042370

Have you guys considered the possibility it's a plot to make you focus a bit. Or maybe take a few more naps during the day?

xantris

crypticarmsman wrote: »

Well, I think there were two factors involved:

A lot of players made alts just to farm the Officer Reports Foundry daily mission and SFA/KFA lore missions for Dilithium. That was a quick (under 2 minutes ) 1920 Dilithium per alt - and as each alt had it's own 8000 Dil a day cap - that was a lot of exttra Dill coming into the economy. These alt ALSO made it to Level 50 by doing this; at which pointy they could also farm Dilithium from STFs if one so desired.

Cryptic's dataming as a result, showed a lot of characters getting Dilithium, but rarely reaching the cap - and while they knew a lot was from Foundry 1-click farming - they al;so may have thought a lot was from other sources; and that's why the initial launch of S7 (which also closed the 1-click farming exploit); was so bare on dilithium.

Then after S7 launched, with the exploit closed and a lot more work needed to progress Alts; probably a lot of the 'farming alts' were abandoned by players and they started playing on few characters to get Dil/Make progress. That's when the 8000 a day Dil cap starting slowing Dilithium introduction into the system, hard. Cryptic's response - add stuff that gives Dilithium back in so it is easier to cap Dil on a character; so players will play more alts (you still won't see them bring out all the former Alts they had - but they'l maybe play one or two more and cap them on a daily basis. Still, Dilithium is probably not flowing into the system at the same rate (and there's more Dil sinks) - and some players may be 'hording' Dil until they hit Rep T5, so they can get wjhat they want.

The end result - less Alts playing to just plain quickly farm Dilithium (I'm sure some have their 'system' and are still doing their best at it, but it's not being done 'wholesale' like it was before the 1440 1-click Foundry daily exploit was closed. Most are choosing a few Alt (probably one of each class); and working in the new Rep system to get them geared the way they want them.

That's my speculation anyway.

This is my estimation as well. They also did other things that closed other "exploitable" alt behavior, such as adding dilithium costs to reduce the value of upgrinding doffs..

So to the OP, yes, I do believe they are trying to reduce alts. I don't think they are trying to eliminate them, but I don't think they want people with 4+ alts pouring dilithium and tons of doffs into the system. One or maybe two seem reasonably easy to maintain.

chikahiro

To be honest, any sort of end-game activity I've seen discourages alting by virtue of time investment required. You're more productive focusing on a single character than spending your time divided between two, three, four, etc., alts. That said, I think alting is fun, and that makes it important. The nature of the end game, then, forces you to prioritize who you play, who you advance as your 1st priority, etc.

Obviously, this applies to the Breen ship as well.

What makes the game alt-unfriendly to me is the lack of ways to really make characters distinct from one another, mechanically speaking. I can see the content once on each side, play one of each career/class, and get all the ships regardless.

Personally, I'd like to see more ways to differentiate characters, but not necessarily make them more powerful. Just make them more interesting. If you look at Picard, he loved archaeology. Sisko loved baseball. Riker loved music. I'd like to see options to develop characters with side-systems that aren't combat related, can lead to interesting new content, etc.

Maybe a bit silly, but imagine instead of a fleet action, you and three other players did a quartet mini-game? All of you do well, you gain development CXP or something. Or go through ruins for exploration. Stuff like that.

overthetopsigh

I have 7 toons, 2 'dead' ones which i don't use and 5 that I consider equal in playtime. Each one is built differently and serve different purposes. Originally I was planning to have 6, 3 KDF 3 FED one of each specialization.

I for one would've liked to have some kind of account wide unlock so I wouldn't have to run the race on 5 toons, but luckily each race is about 2 minutes long so it's not a big deal this time around.

However the rewards from this event are account bound so I do end up having to choose which toons get which rewards although I would've prefered them all having it. If we could vote and if it mattered I would like it if these gifts (yes this is a gift) didn't require all my toons having to do it. Something like the tribble test rewards where we can pick it up from the c-store would be perfect!