Virusdancer had this beautiful idea to improve STO's captain class system:
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You're ready to pick your first ability - you have two options. That's right, it's not a case that you automatically get one of the five above - but you have a choice of two for each one. Okay, maybe it's a choice of two for four of the five (odd how this looks like the rep system, eh? 4 choices and a fixed? Wonder if they've been thinking about this too?).
It would not be as open as the rep system choices - it would be more along the lines of how the Romulan and Omega rep vary - each offers a choice of an offensive or defensive passive, but they are not the same choices for each. Romulan offers +3% crit, while Omega offers +30 Weapon Skill - both offensive passives, but different.
So for Tac, Eng, and Sci - each would have a choice of an "offensive" or "defensive" ability for each of the first four abilities... each would reflect the nature of the career.
A Tac offensive ability would not be the same as a Sci offensive ability would not be the same as an Eng offensive ability. The same for the defensive option for each.
A person could build a more offensive Engineer, a more defensive Tactical, or even a 50/50 offensive/defensive Science... or the defensive Engineer, 50/50 Tac, etc, etc, etc, etc.
What do you think about it?
Personally, I think that would be an awesome improvement if done right, allowing each captain some individuality beyond the choice of a ship/kit. Many issues I have with the engineer and tactical classes could be solved very easily, if the selectable powers were set up right.
So, what do you think?
Comments
better use the old idea - give us new mixed kits and let us have new stats/abilities through future reputations
Agreed. The first skill "rebalancing" was quite enough a kick-in-the-crotch for the lifetime of this game.
R.I.P
This is what SWTOR did and I like it. Once I chose to be a Bounty hunter Igot to choose to be either a Powertech or a mercenary. That allowed me to choose Tank/Healer or Tank/Damage. But I think it would need a complete reboot for STO to do this, So maybe in "STO 2"
Use a mechanic similar to the Romulan/Omega grind, but call it "Extension course training" or something similar. Incremental rewards to include: The ability to carry a second ground kit from another career path, the selection of one character skill for ground and/or space, etc.
because there are ship layouts, kits, BOFF powers, captain powers, PVE encouters, like every litte bit balanced around the skills as they are now.
you can play everything you want in the range of your class - just choose your kit and adjust skillpoints.
i do not think it is a good idea to limit us like SWTOR does.
I'm all for it. Though as Duath pointed out it may take a complete revamp of the engine.
R.I.P
It would be great to freely pick my abilities and kit powers but it would defeat the purpose of having careers and it did afterall motivate me to have one of each class since I wanted to try out all abilities.
It is somewhat interesting if you go back and look at what "specialization" each of the captains had... not quite what translated over to STO.
One of the things that frustrates me and yet I find rewarding at the same time, is the complexity of the choices we do have. Instead of picking one of two options each time, which may not suit your play style, you can customize it to your liking all the way through using the current system. If you made a sci toon choose between graviton or particle generators, why not be able to choose both?
The choices we currently have allow us to set our toons the way we want to set them up. If we go down that pick skill a or b as your upgrade thing, we will ultimately have choices we won't like to make and therefore be made to change how we play to utilize the upgrades we were forced to select, or select an upgrade that doesn't necessarily suit the play style.
Again, it's a great idea for the folks that naturally fall into certain play types, but it's a really bad idea for the folks that like the ability to customize to their play style.
You misunderstood it.
It's not oversimplifying by any means. It's making it more complex.
You're going from automatically taking the five innate abilities - to being able make a choice from two options for four of them. The fifth one, would remain whatever Fleet ability is provided for your career choice.
The skill build would remain the same.
BOFF selection et al would remain the same.
You would go from picking a career that gives you five abilities to picking a career where you have eight choices you can make.
For example, as it currently works - if you pick Tac, you get:
Attack Pattern Alpha @ Lt
Fire on My Mark @ LCdr
Tactical Initiative @ Cmdr
Go Down Fighting @ Capt
Tactical Fleet @ RA/MG
With what I suggested in that other thread on the other hand, you'd have:
@ Lt - pick either an offensive or defensive ability
@ LCdr - pick either an offensive or defensive ability
@ Cmdr - pick either an offensive or defensive ability
@ Capt - pick either an offensive or defensive ability
@ RA/MG - you get Tactical Fleet
Each of the offensive/defensive abilities would be Tac flavored if you were a Tac. They would be Eng flavored or Sci flavored if you were an Eng or a Sci. For the fifth, Sci would get Science Fleet and Eng would get Engineering Fleet.
We currently do not have any choice. We're given five innate abilities that may not fit our playstyle in the least, they may not fit our concept of the particular career in the least, they may not even make sense in regard to what we see from BOFFs and DOFFs in the game in the least...
...no, it's not simplifying nor limiting choice in the least.
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i get a headache. i think Cryptic did want to avoid it too by giving us the skillpoint system we now currently have.
i'Ve been thinking. So if they just free'd the abilities we have now to be accessible by EVERY "class", everybody would take the same abilities = there would be several "cookie cutter" builds and nothing else.
Your initial idea is good, but i do not think that such a big skill system change is going to happen. The math behind it is very complex and i can imagine the balance issues which would take a LOOOOONG time to address. Look at the bug of the new "shield regen" skill from the reputation.
Did you know that the initial plan was let us grind so much skillpoints that we can fill up ALL skills?
I will not comment on space, cause it is pretty ok now, going more into ground - i think there are plans to give us craftable kits, where we can choose the abilities ourselves, also cross-class. This would require a change of the current skill table, but with 5 more lvls worth of skillpoints, it should be possible to effectively get a ground skill of another class going.. (some healing for a tac, dmg buff for sci..etc)
Perhaps as soon as the S8 hits.
Anyway, i think they should first finish KDF and bring the 3rd faction, prior to increasing LVL cap.
About the trinity, if we remove it to have the GW2 messy fight, no thanks. STO is already about who is doing the most damage for most content. If you do low damage, but you are an asset to your team by healing them, tanking... you won't earn a lot of reward from many group encounter. And you will probably fail optional in eSTF.
This is a very good idea.
Prior to STO's revamping of the skill system, I honestly always wanted it to be expanded so players could have more freedom in choosing what they want and not necessarily be class restricted.
For instance players could opt to train into melee weaponry or martial arts, and advanced weapons were restricted to Tacticals that unlocked the ability.
Anyone could do first aid, but of course Medics were the masters of it.
And there would be a ton of different trees players could choose from. Like into abilities, would they train into strength and carry more equipment or focus more into dexerity?
Though don't think Cryptic is going to revise the system in such a major fashion.
You mean like Bashir and his engineering courses?
It's talking about adding choices for innate captain abilities gained at various levels. If you don't want to change the existing abilities, then don't; they'll still be there to choose from. It could affect how you decide to allocate skill points, but it doesn't have to.
Heck, I'd like to take that a step further and do something about the general innate powers for space. I never use Ramming Speed or Abandon Ship, for example. They are wasted powers for me, and probably for others. I wouldn't mind seeing alternatives for those, too.
The only "downside" is the usual one that happens anytime the Devs introduce a new ability. Stuff has to get tweaked and rebalanced. Well, this is an MMO... that's going on all the time anyway.
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There you go. Exactly right. Starfleet officers are established to employ wildly-varied skills.
True, but wasn't something like this one of the stated goals for the Reputation system? A way to have non-career-specific character progression?
I'd say that the Rep system doesn't quite seem to fit something like this, though. I think we're talking about a way to pick up odd skills as you go, rather than having influence and experience with a certain subfaction and picking up new abilities that way.
I would rather not see class-specific abilities basically open for selection by anybody. No Tac officers with Rotate Shield Frequencies III, for example. I'd rather see new generic abilities that either extend or compliment the the others.
Replacing Ramming Speed and Abandon Ship with useful powers being a strong secondary goal in addition to the main idea of giving players a choice of career abilities.
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Virus Dancer's idea has merit, but my concern is (to be brutally honest) - I don't have faith in Cryptic's ability to have 8 choices that are equally balanced vs. each other and also retain the current functionality of the "good" powers that are available now.
In other words, I'm not in favor of revamps like this because I'm not convinced the end result will be better than what we have - there is the potential to be better but potential and results are two very separate things in STO.
On the other hand, the innate powers like abandon ship, ramming speed, etc, are in desperate need of a revamp IMO.
This is the place where general functionality could be added to every single career choice allowing for a set of abilities that basically everyone has access to as a soft-equalizier across careers.
These powers should be, in my opinion:
> Less powerful than full captain powers.
> Be fairly unique or stronger than BOFF powers
> Have an uptime/usage frequency in between High CD Captain powers and High CD BOFF powers (90s to 180s range of CDs for example).
> Should fulfill a role of "things any ship should be able to do" with inspiration drawn from canon/shows
This, all day long.
On "cookie-cutter" builds: as much as I dislike that it happens - it's ging to happen no matter the system. With what we have now, look at the build requests in the various forums ... that's looking for someone else's idea of success. So, openning up ability options will just create the same thing. Once its discovered that X is better than Z ability, it won;t matter what Cryptic does to Z because X will become the "default" ability to choose.
On craftable kits: THAT is exactly what Cryptic could do ... should do. They wouldn't need to change the current crafting system at all either. Sure, the cost would be high ... but if I spend the time and effort, then I deserve to have a kit very few people have and that makes my toon more special
Fianlly, I agree on getting KDF more meaningful first. Although I'm ok with letting the 3rd faction slide in favor of the previous suggestions, as long as the 3rd faction starts better than KDF starts now, then bring it on.
I'll grant that there is associated risk that it would not be implemented well.
This, especially this. Here's an opportunity to gain access to a general, slightly weaker version of Tractor Beam. Or any number of other useful, optional, not necessarily game-breaking abilities.
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That and craftable kits, which they have also mentioned in the past, would add more than enough customization choices for anybody.
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