Romulan progression lvl 20-30

nicha0

So we get this new ship, and I've done pretty much exclusively the episodes only at this point. I was mid episode when indoctrination when getting to 20, I'm very close to 29 right now and I've used my new Mogai .. twice. The leveling here is just way too fast, and this is part of the reason why new players are so terrible in space combat. You explain nothing to them really, there is no ability to learn in game, and when you do get to fight, its 2 battles and onto the next ship? No wonder STFs are full of such terrible players.

aebair928

I would have to agree, I was in a warbird before I knew it, now I do explore missions because I really don't want to give her up just yet.

wufangchu

I'm going back to the warbird. Once it all goes live tomorrow, i'll get the warbird and later the assault cruiser ( base 16 turn rate )but i'll mostly focus on building that warbird. The assault cruiser looks like an owl or a perverted Puffen. I cant tell which.. but the warbird is perfect.. Iy just needs a fourth weapon up front ant a stronger hull..

nicha0

Most of it is because of Nimbus, was is very very short, even on my Fed character.. it was just short. Then start to toss in shuttle missions after that, ugh.

wufangchu

Nimbus was short?? Gods, I couldnt wait to get ot of there. it was like oooo tatooine.. gack..

daan2006

one would think you level fast because they don't want you to sped months trying to get to level 32

what im getting at its a test server you leveling fast because they want you to see what works and don't

kalvorax

daan2006 wrote: »

one would think you level fast because they don't want you to sped months trying to get to level 32

what im getting at its a test server you leveling fast because they want you to see what works and don't

yeah buts its the same way on holodeck....you can go from 1 - 50 in a weekend doing just story missions one after the other....truthfully i find most of the leveling in the doff system as that can take months (it took me about 11 months to get to t4 diplomacy, followed right behind with t4 mil, and t4 espionage) and all the endgame content, like the reputation system....which if you had one toon maxed out in either or both, then any alts should start out at T1 for the mk 10 gear...maybe t2, as most of the rep grind is t3+.....but alas its not like that because cryptic likes stupid time gates far too much.

daan2006

cynder2012 wrote: »

yeah buts its the same way on holodeck....you can go from 1 - 50 in a weekend doing just story missions one after the other....truthfully i find most of the leveling in the doff system as that can take months (it took me about 11 months to get to t4 diplomacy, followed right behind with t4 mil, and t4 espionage) and all the endgame content, like the reputation system....which if you had one toon maxed out in either or both, then any alts should start out at T1 for the mk 10 gear...maybe t2, as most of the rep grind is t3+.....but alas its not like that because cryptic likes stupid time gates far too much.

oh I don't disagree with that and I say less then that if you stay up 48 hours and that not counting XP boosters

gpgtx

on the beta after the character wipe i hit lvl 50 in less then 24 hrs with no boosters (two days in the real world as a slept and ate)

i do have the 5% bonus for being a subscriber that was it

nicha0

Levelling too fast causes the devs more problems than they solve. People hit end game and many see the wall of grind, many have no clue how to play.
For me, if you take a look at Nimbus, it plays pretty quickly, but take a look how many episodes it is, its a lot of xp for a short period.

I ended up making it to level 32, got stuck on a bugged episode and quit.

The overall experience is pretty great, but there is always room to improve. This is my opinion of what could be improved, keep in mind that 95% is a positive experience.

The start of Romulan play is fantastic, they give you the gear, Boffs and abilities you need to play pretty effectively. Instead of random Boffs with random abilities, you get story line Boffs with useful abilities like HYT and EPtS, not sure how the Klingon stuff gets through but really the Fed side should get revamped similarly.

Another issue I had was getting the Mogai. I used it 3x before getting my next ship. That is an issue. The Mogai itself is comically way way too manoeuvrable, the ship is massive and you can whip those wings back and forth at crazy speeds.

At level 30 you get a new ship, 30 levels of playing destroyer type ships you are thrown into a cruiser. Bad move. Now I need to retrain all my Boffs (of course I don't know that yet) to use beams and be engineering heavy, losing science officers and tactical abilities. Uh, where do we get all these skill points to totally change our Boff abilities around?

Around this point the story really starts to change. Granted I didn't finish it all, but we went from Tal Shiar brilliant plot to aliens harvesting people? It started out so well, then it slowly degrades until the Tal Shiar are forgotten and you fight aliens that invade colonies without the Tal Shiar? There is a gap here that isn't addressed, and so far doesn't make any sense. While the too races were working together on something, now they seem separate. It feels like we started out in Star Trek, and moved into a awkward copy of a science fiction movie.

My first ship death was during the atmosphere shuttle defense, that is crazy difficult. You get swarmed really fast and have no hope when everything targets you.

So at level 32 I got stuck, on the Elachi or whatever station. I killed the end boss there, used the console, and.. everything showed green on the mission tracker, nothing happened. A few things could have caused this.
There was a message from a Boff about saving everyone or completing the mission, which seems to not really do anything. I never answered that, it must have popped up right in combat and was put off to the side.
I think this was the first place I got wiped on the ground, once earlier on the map. The team was first wiped when a non-targetable flaming spewing drone just kept killing the team, you target it but myself or the Boffs couldn't fire at it. Eventually plasma fires killed it off.
On that final room, I was confused as anything, it told me to use the console and defeat the boss, both were shielded. I ran around the room after killing what seemed to be endless waves of enemies because there was no counter or any indication these waves were going to stop and got wiped like 5x in a room.
Also, if you run back through the station, you notice the people you saved from the tubes respawn.


This is my rant here about the game as a whole and lower levels. Levels 1-49 are really like a game tutorial in STO, you spend so little time in the journey and so much in the grind after it is a shame.

The only problem with levels 1-20ish are problems not unique to Romulans. The game does an absolutely terribly bad job at teaching you how to play. While the fed side is full of tutorial missions, the romulan side is not, so maybe it is slightly worse, but a brand new player starting a Romulan is going to be totally clueless on everything but the basics.

Why such a rush to 50? Don't you want to sell ships? Who would buy a ship you can use 3 times between 20 and 30 for money? If you slow down levelling, you can introduce important parts of the game you are lacking.
1. Actual tutorials
2. Real experience

A fed or rom/fed player has so many options for xp it is insanity, you can't hope to do even a quarter of the content available to you, much less multiple times to learn and refine yourself. Why not break from the story sometimes and get people to patrol systems? Most of those patrols are pretty decent, some are a little bleh, but many are good. A romulan never needs to know that exploration, crafting, fleet actions or anything actually exist, nothing tells them to do this. While story is amazing, rushing from one to another to another is a little unrealistic as well, why not have the character take time out between them and while things are "investigated" so they can explore a system or do something else.

Levelling speed aside there is still no good, in game source of information on how to actually play. What do Boff abilities do? The tool tips are so terrible it isn't funny, how about power levels? weapon configurations, shield or equipment types? Stats aren't enough when you don't know what stats mean. Skill points.. how many players out there have even a semi-decent set up?
Would it be too difficult to create a (or series of) computer to put on ESD, the academies, etc that have a series of menus explaining .. everything? Something people can reference, because that doesn't exist right now. Asking people in zone chat isn't the answer to this, because one question is going to get you ten wrong answers.. because there is no source of info like this in the game.

Examples could be: rapid fire 1/2/3 does %/%/% of normal cannon damage for 10s to a single target. With real numbers. Let people decide if the % for scatter volley or rapid fire is what they want. Here is the real part that becomes useful. Put in situation and usage tips on these abilities. Scatter volley is likely to make you prime target for anything in your path, it will also deal far more damage overall than CRF when multiple targets are around. People should know the positives and negatives.

EPtS, list stats, but people should know this is a passive defense, not a reactive defense, and explain why. Similar with tactical team.

Have a generic shields section, describe which each statistic does. Then subsections with difference shield types, pros, conns and why a resilient shields are great for low hull healing ships, the benefits of regenerative shields, etc.

The text write up is probably a couple days work, most of the players could do it if you let them, but we lack a lot of exact numbers to make them accurate.