The respec thing works, I respec'ed one of my toon once for a brand new breen ship build and I head in infected and noticed none of my rep passives were working (was tier 4 at the time). I was pleasantly surprised when I checked the rep status, I noticed I could choose all over again the entire rep skill tree. So I am confirming that the entire rep passives are reset giving you a chance to set them all up again at the cost of a respec token (both for romulan and omega rep). Not bad imho.
Thank you for posting this info. They need to put it in big text and sticky it somewhere. Many players have had this question.
by now i am and yes, the unlocks are not exactly what i had hoped for, but this feedback about the actual *gameplay experience* if you can call it that, not about the more or less shiny items at the end of it.
overall some interesting replies in the thread, thx
@ Eppoh tagging:
if 5 minutes of Eppoh tagging (including travel time from ESD and back) gives 400 Romulan Marks (which translates to 8000 Dilithium!) then i would expect a half hour Mine Trap to give MORE than lousy ~50 or so marks.
the time invested vs. reward just doesn't fit here.
Eppoh tagging seems to me like it is the easy way out if you do not like any of the actual content, and personally i feel like i have CHEATED with the Winter Eppohs that supplied me with well over 1000 Rom Marks per character and pretty much completed Tier 4+5 for me without touching the PvE queue again.
And Mine Trap is FUN! (if you dont have AFK leechers or a fail group...)
I can only guess that the creators of Eppoh tagging were overly proud of their achievement to put a faction agnostic Targ Breeding game into STO and want everybody to love it so they put real high rewards in there.
IMHO it would be interesting to see how much Eppoh tagging would still be going on if it would reward, only 40 - 25 Romulan Marks for an Elder (which effectively would be a fair number).
And personally... i can only say why the hell should i care about Eppohs?
I wanted Targ Breeding! Targs are Trek! Targs are COOL, and only the idea of a combat Targ... WANT!
Eppohs...? those are the cute MMO thingy for the 13 year old girls.
I am REALLY NOT the target audience for this, and now that i'm done with Romulan Rep 5 you will not see me doing any Eppoh stuff again.
I just wanted to summarise my thoughts on the reputation system. First up, I want to say that I actually generally like the reputation system; it's a great way to add minor factions (even if we hope the Romulans get more later on) with access to new bonuses and goodies. However, it has a lot of rough edges that need to be resolved so while this is all the stuff I want to see fixed, I want people to bear in mind that I don't actually dislike the Reputation system:
General Reputation System Funding Projects
While funding fleet projects as individual items (x communication arrays, x officers etc.) is fine due to the sheer size and cost of fleet projects, doing this for reputation system projects is more annoying than anything else. I'd like to see projects reduced in what they require, and simply list what they need with a big "Begin" button to set them going; make it as easy as possible!
For example, the basic experience projects might require something like 30 marks, 8,000 expertise and 30,000 energy credits. When you hit "Begin" these are deducted from your account and the project begins, nice and simple; if you don't have enough of one of the requirements it'll be highlighted in red, and the button will be greyed out, what could be easier?
Only projects with much more specific requirements should have the separate items to provide, such as requisition projects where it's more characterful that you would trade shield generators to develop a new shield system.
Store Unlocks
All the store unlock feature achieves is to discourage people from wanting to unlock a reputation faction's store, as they have no idea of what the unlocked items will be like or how much they'll cost; not without coming to the forums or finding someone in chat to tell them at least.
This mechanic should be ditched in favour of simply unlocking store items as you complete each tier. It'll suck for people that have already unlocked store items, but it might actually encourage more people to use the reputation system store without having to go away and do some reading to figure out which unlocks are worth the effort.
Store Purchases
Store purchases really shouldn't cost Dilithium only. When you compare the costs to fleet provisions the cost is more than double for what should technically be worse items (thanks for [Dmg]x3 on fleet weapons this probably isn't true but let's ignore that for now). I think that Reputation store items should be subsidised by marks in a similar way to fleet weapons so that the costs are more reasonable, requiring only some grind to get ahold of most of it.
Requisitions
I love the requisitioned bonuses, but I'm not sure about the handling of different levels of items. Personally I think that it would be better for requisitions to be treated like store unlocks are now; you undertake a (cheaper) project to co-develop the technology, maybe even temporarily assign some duty officers to it. This then unlocks the appropriate Mk X, Mk XI, or Mk XII item in the store for you to buy.
For people that already have one or more requisition items there should then be upgrade projects. These will appear if you have the appropriate item equipped or in your inventory, allowing you to swap it for the higher level version at a reduced cost (compared to buy a whole new one). So for example if you have M.A.C.O Shields Mk X then you would see a project to upgrade them to Mk XI (once you've unlocked the Mk XI item), and it would only cost the difference, rather than the full price of the Mk XI item.
Item Set Bonuses
One of the problems introduced with multi-level sets is that set-bonuses don't apply if you have a set of mixed levels. So for example if you have a borg set with two items of Mk X level, and one of Mk XI then you'll only receive the 2-piece bonus at Mk X. The item sets need to be adjusted so that items of a higher level still count for lower level bonuses. So in the example you would still receive the 3-piece bonus, but the Mk X level one only; if you had two Mk XI items and one Mk X then you'd receive the Mk XI 2-piece bonus, but only the Mk X 3-piece bonus, and the same again for mixed Mk XI and Mk XII. If you had one Mk X, one Mk XI and one Mk XII then you'd get the 2-piece Mk XI bonus, and the 3-piece bonus for Mk X.
Ability Respec
I think it's pretty much a must that the reputation system add a project to each faction, allowing players to change their Reputation system abilities for each tier. Currently the choices aren't always obvious, or require some research to find out what effect they really have, and there's no option to experiment with each ability before settling for one.
With a respec project it would be easy, if a bit time consuming, to change your abilities as you wish and actually try different combinations.
New Romulus PvE Rewards
These need to be double at least to compete with the Epohh farming mini-game. It's pretty silly when a Starfleet Vice Admiral is running around after rabbits because rescuing captured fleets is worth practically nothing by comparison! The space missions barely reward 20 marks, but it needs to be at least double that to be worth it.
On that issue, the PvE missions need Elite varieties to compete with the Task Force Omega ones, offering double again the marks, along with a healthy amount of Dilithium to buy your new toys with.
Daily Epohh Tagging
Please reduce the time for Epohh duty officer assignments to 20 hours; with them set to 24 hours you have to be ready exactly when the current assignment finishes otherwise you end up with it becoming later and later each day until you're no longer able to get it done during your normal time online. Even worse is when the damned shard maintenance occurs, which is smack in the middle of when I would normally like to be online on my Wednesdays off, which prevents me from getting online to start the next assignment. The Reputation experience projects are good in this regard as that four hour difference means you can guarantee they're ready to be started again first thing.
Make Plasma Proud
Not strictly related to the Romulan Reputation system, but given the number of shields out there with plasma resistance (all the Omega ones) someone needs to take a look at how plasma now stacks up. Ideally I'd like to see the borg set (which I actually use) ditch plasma resistance in favour of a small extra bonus to its regenerative abilities. Leave the M.A.C.O and Honour Guard sets as they are since fighting Borg is what they're for, but the borg regenerative shields should be about regeneration. Maybe do the same to the Omega Force set since it's supposed to be about hit-and-run rather than slugging it out toe-to-toe with a borg fleet, so should focus on that rather than resisting plasma.
Task Force Omega Anti-Borg Weapons
I think a lot of people are missing the old anti-borg space weapons (except for those that still have them ), and I'd like to see a return as well. However, I'd like to see them return as something different; specifically I'd like to see them become normal weapons without a specific anti-borg element, as it never made any sense to me in the first place, as the whole threat of the Borg is their ability to adapt so having a weapon that can hurt them doesn't make a lot of sense.
I'd rather see borg ground and space weapons come with a bound ability that allows them to rapidly cycle through different frequencies. This would cause all such weapon(s) to fire a little more rapidly, changing colour with each phase shift. In effect what would happen is that each hit would gain every basic weapon proc for the duration of the (slow to cool-down) ability. So the barrage would have a 2.5% chance to disable a subsystem, a 2.5% chance to apply a damage debuff, a 2.5% chance to drain power levels, a 2.5% chance to drain shields, a 2.5% chance to apply plasma fire, and +20% critical severity. For space weapons the ability would only effect anti-borg space weapons. For ground weapons the borg would be unable to adapt to the barrage fired.
The idea is that it'd be the kind of ability that is designed to overcome the borg's ability to adapt, but can also be useful against other enemies, which is pretty much how it should be since the Borg aren't uniquely vulnerable to anything, that's kind of why they need to be defeated in the first place. Depending on the strength of the ability it could be added in place of a third weapon bonus, but I think it would be nice. Kind of like how the Romulan plasma weapons are Very Rare with only two bonuses, because they have the extra proc from Disruptor weapons.
I'm not sure that a proc cycling ability for your Borg space weapons would be useful (Is it passive or activated manually?). A lot of people have their builds centered around their proc. For example, flow caps for polaron and tetryon, crit chance consoles for AP etc.
I'm not sure that a proc cycling ability for your Borg space weapons would be useful (Is it passive or activated manually?). A lot of people have their builds centered around their proc. For example, flow caps for polaron and tetryon, crit chance consoles for AP etc.
They'd still work, the idea is that you'd get your normal weapon proc plus the proc for every other energy weapon type as well, for as long as the ability is active. Basically it's just a short burst of extreme frequency changes, that take effect as if you were firing weapons of every type, all at the same time.
Must agree with the repeting research for three toons is tiresome, havent finished one yet to level 5 but when i do I can finaly get the final bit for my old sets that was pot luck chance of getting the correct borg bits.
one of the major problems I see with the Reputation-System (Task-Force-Omega and New-Romulus) is "what should I do with all those marks when I finished the system?".
At the moment you have got only the options to turn the marks into Dilithium or requisition sets (if you do a 13 day grind for Dilithium for one complete one Mk XII space-set).
In season 6 we had the possibility to get Doffs for our EDCs, now I've got about 400 Borg-Neural-Processors and nothing else then Dilithium to get for them...
Now to the store unlocks: The costs for each item (Dilithium) are too high. For example: You can do the Requisition-Project for the Romulan Experimental Plasma Beam Array (15,000 Dilithium + a few EC) or you can buy Plasma Beam Arrays from the Store-Unlock for more then 25,000 Dilithium (so more then 10,000 additional Dilithium for worse weapons, just to be able to equip more then one on a starship).
Ok, on my Atrox with only 3 normal Beam-Arrays that's a minor issue, but an all-beam Cruiser those costs simply suck (your Dilithium out of your pocket).
I wouldn't mind if you would need Romulan-Marks to purchase items from the stores, but make all those items cost less (for example 10,000 less Dilithium per Romulan Mk XII Plasma Space-Weapon).
Another idea would be to make those embassy projects cost less Dilithium and require some Romulan-Marks instead (that would really give you a reason for continued Epohh-Tagging).
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
To alleviate some of the "buying x, then xi, then xii" they could offer an upgrade option, say 70% off from what the previous item cost while requiring that item as part of the upgrade (and destroying it).
The numbers:
Item X = 20,000 ec (worth of commodities)
Item X = 15,000 dil
Item X = 500 marks
Item XI = 40,000 ec (worth of commodities)
Item XI = 30,000 dil
Item XI = 1000 marks
Item XI (upgraded) = 30,000 ec
Item XI (upgraded) = 20,000 dil
Item XI (upgraded) = 700 marks
Item XI (upgraded) requires Item X
This will reward patient players that save up their marks and dil on item sets and encourage people to go through the system instead of flying through to T5 without running any other projects.
Said NO to Arc. Gets punished by not being given a free outfit, free lobi, and free shuttle. Now forced to use Arc's site when trying to get to STO site. Still not rewards for beta testing the Arc website by force. Bravo Cryptic.
Okay, so since we can't easily change reputation tier abilities, I held off on choosing my tier IV abilities until today. However in the end I opted for both shield boosting abilities; while I was initially tempted by the kinetic damage proc it didn't seem worth it overall (only about +18 damage per hit on average).
However, the bonus shield regeneration isn't showing up on my ship's shield regeneration rate? Is there some way to confirm whether the super shield ability is working or not? I'm in system space but the value is exactly as it was before choosing that ability.
I also do not see any new numbers when lookin at my shield regen rate for my breen ship with omega or borg (others dont show any regen numbers i.e maco or jem). Anyhow you can see if you look in your toons passive list, at the bottom ull see superior shield regen there and if you hover you should get the same as me as in it states the passive gives you 262.5 shield regen every 6 sec tho i have no idea if thats out of combat or in combat or both. As well as i do not know why it does not add on to the value of the shields regen rate in that ui section for ur ship when in space like orbit of esd but not sector space.
As well as i do not know why it does not add on to the value of the shields regen rate in that ui section for ur ship when in space like orbit of esd but not sector space.
It could possibly be because your shields are offline when you're in sector space... because nothing is shooting at you... and your shields are always fully recharged when you re-enter system space.
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
Anyhow you can see if you look in your toons passive list
Where is the passive list? The only place I've found to view current affects is over my shield readout but that only usually shows power bonuses, assignment reward effects and temporary buffs/debuffs. Is there a complete list to view?
The Reputation system seems to be for the hardcore gamers who spend hours or the entire day playing the game. I come one once a day, for about an hour or so, and get bored pretty quick. I did well with Elite STF's and enjoyed them, and the rewards made sure the work paid off. Now, the reputation system requires FAR too much work, and far too much time. Time and EC/marks/etc that i DO NOT have.
The Reputation system should have been much simpler than it is now. It's far too complicated and to be honest, as a gamer, I cannot even be bothered to get into something like that or try to understand it. All I need to know is "donate donate and donate" to unlock stuff. Why can't it be that simple, but with less "donate" and more "earn"?
Just bring back the store at DS9 again, STO. It makes the game far more enjoyable knowing what the heck they are doing.
We already invested to the time gather the resources for the projects. What's next? A cooldown timer once we add a resource? The cooldown timers are just plain silly.
Lets be honest here, the whole reputation system isn't exactly a hard slog is it? I've only been here for about 8 weeks and already I have both Romulan and Omega reps to Tier 5, the MK X shields/engines/deflector plus the Omega Torp/cutting beam/assimilated console set and I am currently working on my MK XII Omega gear for my new Fleet ship. I should also point out that I have invested a grand total of ?14.99 into this game, mostly for inventory slots and a Captain retrain token, everything else has been earned the "hard" way.
Nothing in STO, save for perhaps the extravagant Dil costs on Starbase/Embassy projects and the rather low Dil refine rate, is as bad as you lot are making it out to be. So what if you have to wait 20 hours? Will it kill you? You mention "time spent gathering resources" like you had to go out in a field and hunt for blades of grass of a specific colour and length, at night, in a hurricane. The most effort I had to expend on my Rep stuff was running a couple of dailies for the Romulan stuff and having a hoot in some Estf's.
The only other point I saw made here that I wholeheartedly agree with is the "You can only buy these in stacks of 20" issue, that is something Cryptic REALLY need to sort out as it serves no gameplay, canon nor character progression purpose but does serve to alienate existing customers.
All in all I think some people here may want to consider going to play old school beat em ups on their SNES with all the cheatcodes on if they want everything now, now, now.
The Reputation system seems to be for the hardcore gamers who spend hours or the entire day playing the game. I come one once a day, for about an hour or so, and get bored pretty quick. I did well with Elite STF's and enjoyed them, and the rewards made sure the work paid off. Now, the reputation system requires FAR too much work, and far too much time. Time and EC/marks/etc that i DO NOT have.
The Reputation system should have been much simpler than it is now. It's far too complicated and to be honest, as a gamer, I cannot even be bothered to get into something like that or try to understand it. All I need to know is "donate donate and donate" to unlock stuff. Why can't it be that simple, but with less "donate" and more "earn"?
Just bring back the store at DS9 again, STO. It makes the game far more enjoyable knowing what the heck they are doing.
I tried to formulate a decent response to this in my head, but all I keep getting is an image of one the minions from Despicable Me saying "Wuuut?". How can you, with a straight face, claim the rep system is complicated? One hour of gameplay, if thats all you really have, is more than enough to secure both enough Romulan AND Omega marks to finance 2 projects a day.
As for Dil, well my only piece of advice would be DOFF MISSIONS!!!!! These net me around 1-2k Dil a day and take approximately 5 minutes to put in place. Then there is the mining mission which nets 1k Dil and takes all of 10 minutes plus the 980 Dil from the Estf you can run in under 15 minutes. See how it all adds up and how little time and effort it actually takes?
I respectfully suggest you stick to "pick up and play" console games, as most MMO's either require grinding for hours and hours, day after day, or (as is the case with MMO's such as EVE Online) massive time sinks. Neither of which seem suited to your apparent lack of gameplay time. In short, the problem is at your end, not Cryptics.
Comments
Thank you for posting this info. They need to put it in big text and sticky it somewhere. Many players have had this question.
but best try this out on tribble before you do it on holodeck.
@OP
at the time of posting i was not Tier 5 yet.
by now i am and yes, the unlocks are not exactly what i had hoped for, but this feedback about the actual *gameplay experience* if you can call it that, not about the more or less shiny items at the end of it.
overall some interesting replies in the thread, thx
@ Eppoh tagging:
if 5 minutes of Eppoh tagging (including travel time from ESD and back) gives 400 Romulan Marks (which translates to 8000 Dilithium!) then i would expect a half hour Mine Trap to give MORE than lousy ~50 or so marks.
the time invested vs. reward just doesn't fit here.
Eppoh tagging seems to me like it is the easy way out if you do not like any of the actual content, and personally i feel like i have CHEATED with the Winter Eppohs that supplied me with well over 1000 Rom Marks per character and pretty much completed Tier 4+5 for me without touching the PvE queue again.
And Mine Trap is FUN! (if you dont have AFK leechers or a fail group...)
I can only guess that the creators of Eppoh tagging were overly proud of their achievement to put a faction agnostic Targ Breeding game into STO and want everybody to love it so they put real high rewards in there.
IMHO it would be interesting to see how much Eppoh tagging would still be going on if it would reward, only 40 - 25 Romulan Marks for an Elder (which effectively would be a fair number).
And personally... i can only say why the hell should i care about Eppohs?
I wanted Targ Breeding! Targs are Trek! Targs are COOL, and only the idea of a combat Targ... WANT!
Eppohs...? those are the cute MMO thingy for the 13 year old girls.
I am REALLY NOT the target audience for this, and now that i'm done with Romulan Rep 5 you will not see me doing any Eppoh stuff again.
General Reputation System
Funding Projects
While funding fleet projects as individual items (x communication arrays, x officers etc.) is fine due to the sheer size and cost of fleet projects, doing this for reputation system projects is more annoying than anything else. I'd like to see projects reduced in what they require, and simply list what they need with a big "Begin" button to set them going; make it as easy as possible!
For example, the basic experience projects might require something like 30 marks, 8,000 expertise and 30,000 energy credits. When you hit "Begin" these are deducted from your account and the project begins, nice and simple; if you don't have enough of one of the requirements it'll be highlighted in red, and the button will be greyed out, what could be easier?
Only projects with much more specific requirements should have the separate items to provide, such as requisition projects where it's more characterful that you would trade shield generators to develop a new shield system.
Store Unlocks
All the store unlock feature achieves is to discourage people from wanting to unlock a reputation faction's store, as they have no idea of what the unlocked items will be like or how much they'll cost; not without coming to the forums or finding someone in chat to tell them at least.
This mechanic should be ditched in favour of simply unlocking store items as you complete each tier. It'll suck for people that have already unlocked store items, but it might actually encourage more people to use the reputation system store without having to go away and do some reading to figure out which unlocks are worth the effort.
Store Purchases
Store purchases really shouldn't cost Dilithium only. When you compare the costs to fleet provisions the cost is more than double for what should technically be worse items (thanks for [Dmg]x3 on fleet weapons this probably isn't true but let's ignore that for now). I think that Reputation store items should be subsidised by marks in a similar way to fleet weapons so that the costs are more reasonable, requiring only some grind to get ahold of most of it.
Requisitions
I love the requisitioned bonuses, but I'm not sure about the handling of different levels of items. Personally I think that it would be better for requisitions to be treated like store unlocks are now; you undertake a (cheaper) project to co-develop the technology, maybe even temporarily assign some duty officers to it. This then unlocks the appropriate Mk X, Mk XI, or Mk XII item in the store for you to buy.
For people that already have one or more requisition items there should then be upgrade projects. These will appear if you have the appropriate item equipped or in your inventory, allowing you to swap it for the higher level version at a reduced cost (compared to buy a whole new one). So for example if you have M.A.C.O Shields Mk X then you would see a project to upgrade them to Mk XI (once you've unlocked the Mk XI item), and it would only cost the difference, rather than the full price of the Mk XI item.
Item Set Bonuses
One of the problems introduced with multi-level sets is that set-bonuses don't apply if you have a set of mixed levels. So for example if you have a borg set with two items of Mk X level, and one of Mk XI then you'll only receive the 2-piece bonus at Mk X. The item sets need to be adjusted so that items of a higher level still count for lower level bonuses. So in the example you would still receive the 3-piece bonus, but the Mk X level one only; if you had two Mk XI items and one Mk X then you'd receive the Mk XI 2-piece bonus, but only the Mk X 3-piece bonus, and the same again for mixed Mk XI and Mk XII. If you had one Mk X, one Mk XI and one Mk XII then you'd get the 2-piece Mk XI bonus, and the 3-piece bonus for Mk X.
Ability Respec
I think it's pretty much a must that the reputation system add a project to each faction, allowing players to change their Reputation system abilities for each tier. Currently the choices aren't always obvious, or require some research to find out what effect they really have, and there's no option to experiment with each ability before settling for one.
With a respec project it would be easy, if a bit time consuming, to change your abilities as you wish and actually try different combinations.
New Romulus
PvE Rewards
These need to be double at least to compete with the Epohh farming mini-game. It's pretty silly when a Starfleet Vice Admiral is running around after rabbits because rescuing captured fleets is worth practically nothing by comparison! The space missions barely reward 20 marks, but it needs to be at least double that to be worth it.
On that issue, the PvE missions need Elite varieties to compete with the Task Force Omega ones, offering double again the marks, along with a healthy amount of Dilithium to buy your new toys with.
Daily Epohh Tagging
Please reduce the time for Epohh duty officer assignments to 20 hours; with them set to 24 hours you have to be ready exactly when the current assignment finishes otherwise you end up with it becoming later and later each day until you're no longer able to get it done during your normal time online. Even worse is when the damned shard maintenance occurs, which is smack in the middle of when I would normally like to be online on my Wednesdays off, which prevents me from getting online to start the next assignment. The Reputation experience projects are good in this regard as that four hour difference means you can guarantee they're ready to be started again first thing.
Make Plasma Proud
Not strictly related to the Romulan Reputation system, but given the number of shields out there with plasma resistance (all the Omega ones) someone needs to take a look at how plasma now stacks up. Ideally I'd like to see the borg set (which I actually use) ditch plasma resistance in favour of a small extra bonus to its regenerative abilities. Leave the M.A.C.O and Honour Guard sets as they are since fighting Borg is what they're for, but the borg regenerative shields should be about regeneration. Maybe do the same to the Omega Force set since it's supposed to be about hit-and-run rather than slugging it out toe-to-toe with a borg fleet, so should focus on that rather than resisting plasma.
Task Force Omega
Anti-Borg Weapons
I think a lot of people are missing the old anti-borg space weapons (except for those that still have them
I'd rather see borg ground and space weapons come with a bound ability that allows them to rapidly cycle through different frequencies. This would cause all such weapon(s) to fire a little more rapidly, changing colour with each phase shift. In effect what would happen is that each hit would gain every basic weapon proc for the duration of the (slow to cool-down) ability. So the barrage would have a 2.5% chance to disable a subsystem, a 2.5% chance to apply a damage debuff, a 2.5% chance to drain power levels, a 2.5% chance to drain shields, a 2.5% chance to apply plasma fire, and +20% critical severity. For space weapons the ability would only effect anti-borg space weapons. For ground weapons the borg would be unable to adapt to the barrage fired.
The idea is that it'd be the kind of ability that is designed to overcome the borg's ability to adapt, but can also be useful against other enemies, which is pretty much how it should be since the Borg aren't uniquely vulnerable to anything, that's kind of why they need to be defeated in the first place. Depending on the strength of the ability it could be added in place of a third weapon bonus, but I think it would be nice. Kind of like how the Romulan plasma weapons are Very Rare with only two bonuses, because they have the extra proc from Disruptor weapons.
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
one of the major problems I see with the Reputation-System (Task-Force-Omega and New-Romulus) is "what should I do with all those marks when I finished the system?".
At the moment you have got only the options to turn the marks into Dilithium or requisition sets (if you do a 13 day grind for Dilithium for one complete one Mk XII space-set).
In season 6 we had the possibility to get Doffs for our EDCs, now I've got about 400 Borg-Neural-Processors and nothing else then Dilithium to get for them...
Now to the store unlocks: The costs for each item (Dilithium) are too high. For example: You can do the Requisition-Project for the Romulan Experimental Plasma Beam Array (15,000 Dilithium + a few EC) or you can buy Plasma Beam Arrays from the Store-Unlock for more then 25,000 Dilithium (so more then 10,000 additional Dilithium for worse weapons, just to be able to equip more then one on a starship).
Ok, on my Atrox with only 3 normal Beam-Arrays that's a minor issue, but an all-beam Cruiser those costs simply suck (your Dilithium out of your pocket).
I wouldn't mind if you would need Romulan-Marks to purchase items from the stores, but make all those items cost less (for example 10,000 less Dilithium per Romulan Mk XII Plasma Space-Weapon).
Another idea would be to make those embassy projects cost less Dilithium and require some Romulan-Marks instead (that would really give you a reason for continued Epohh-Tagging).
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
The numbers:
Item X = 20,000 ec (worth of commodities)
Item X = 15,000 dil
Item X = 500 marks
Item XI = 40,000 ec (worth of commodities)
Item XI = 30,000 dil
Item XI = 1000 marks
Item XI (upgraded) = 30,000 ec
Item XI (upgraded) = 20,000 dil
Item XI (upgraded) = 700 marks
Item XI (upgraded) requires Item X
This will reward patient players that save up their marks and dil on item sets and encourage people to go through the system instead of flying through to T5 without running any other projects.
However, the bonus shield regeneration isn't showing up on my ship's shield regeneration rate? Is there some way to confirm whether the super shield ability is working or not? I'm in system space but the value is exactly as it was before choosing that ability.
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
It could possibly be because your shields are offline when you're in sector space... because nothing is shooting at you... and your shields are always fully recharged when you re-enter system space.
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
The Reputation system seems to be for the hardcore gamers who spend hours or the entire day playing the game. I come one once a day, for about an hour or so, and get bored pretty quick. I did well with Elite STF's and enjoyed them, and the rewards made sure the work paid off. Now, the reputation system requires FAR too much work, and far too much time. Time and EC/marks/etc that i DO NOT have.
The Reputation system should have been much simpler than it is now. It's far too complicated and to be honest, as a gamer, I cannot even be bothered to get into something like that or try to understand it. All I need to know is "donate donate and donate" to unlock stuff. Why can't it be that simple, but with less "donate" and more "earn"?
Just bring back the store at DS9 again, STO. It makes the game far more enjoyable knowing what the heck they are doing.
Lets be honest here, the whole reputation system isn't exactly a hard slog is it? I've only been here for about 8 weeks and already I have both Romulan and Omega reps to Tier 5, the MK X shields/engines/deflector plus the Omega Torp/cutting beam/assimilated console set and I am currently working on my MK XII Omega gear for my new Fleet ship. I should also point out that I have invested a grand total of ?14.99 into this game, mostly for inventory slots and a Captain retrain token, everything else has been earned the "hard" way.
Nothing in STO, save for perhaps the extravagant Dil costs on Starbase/Embassy projects and the rather low Dil refine rate, is as bad as you lot are making it out to be. So what if you have to wait 20 hours? Will it kill you? You mention "time spent gathering resources" like you had to go out in a field and hunt for blades of grass of a specific colour and length, at night, in a hurricane. The most effort I had to expend on my Rep stuff was running a couple of dailies for the Romulan stuff and having a hoot in some Estf's.
The only other point I saw made here that I wholeheartedly agree with is the "You can only buy these in stacks of 20" issue, that is something Cryptic REALLY need to sort out as it serves no gameplay, canon nor character progression purpose but does serve to alienate existing customers.
All in all I think some people here may want to consider going to play old school beat em ups on their SNES with all the cheatcodes on if they want everything now, now, now.
Sig by my better half.
I tried to formulate a decent response to this in my head, but all I keep getting is an image of one the minions from Despicable Me saying "Wuuut?". How can you, with a straight face, claim the rep system is complicated? One hour of gameplay, if thats all you really have, is more than enough to secure both enough Romulan AND Omega marks to finance 2 projects a day.
As for Dil, well my only piece of advice would be DOFF MISSIONS!!!!! These net me around 1-2k Dil a day and take approximately 5 minutes to put in place. Then there is the mining mission which nets 1k Dil and takes all of 10 minutes plus the 980 Dil from the Estf you can run in under 15 minutes. See how it all adds up and how little time and effort it actually takes?
I respectfully suggest you stick to "pick up and play" console games, as most MMO's either require grinding for hours and hours, day after day, or (as is the case with MMO's such as EVE Online) massive time sinks. Neither of which seem suited to your apparent lack of gameplay time. In short, the problem is at your end, not Cryptics.
Sig by my better half.