Cryptic used the Rep system, as well as the starbases, to add seemingly necessary tasks and items that cost a ton of dilithium. This discourages players from converting all their dilithium to Zen and encourages many to use Zen to buy dilithium. Cryptic obviously isn't going to remove any dilithium sinks.
However, they could make the Rep system account-wide and leave the dilithium costs intact for each character. So, if your second toon hit lvl 50 and wanted a Cutting Beam, the project would be available for them immediately, but it would still cost them 500 omega marks and 15,000 dilithium. Cryptic loses nothing, only gains a happy altaholic who will end up spending even more dilithium to dress out his various toons now that the huge grind is out of the way.
Personally, I don't care if I even finish T5 on my main toon, and I won't touch it only any of the others. If I could, I'd spend the dilithium (potential ZEN) to load out all 6 of my toons in T5 rep gear in a heartbeat. But if I have to schedule a daily appointment with STO for another month to do so... no. No, I'll just keep my pink diamonds, thank you.
Missing the point keep up.... Zen unlock is not for gear... its for tier 5 rep you'd still have to grind your gear so the dil sink is still in play.... just remove the bloody time sink aspect.... =D
I'd love account wide rep but i dont see it happening.... hence I wave the carrot of a Zen unlock in hopes they budge on the timesink....
This is the part where Cryptic takes the dive and PvP space and ground are transformed into something that is remembered for a hole decade! possibly two!!
.....
Lyndon Brewer: 20% chance to capture enemy ship for 60 seconds on successful use of boarding party.
...New players coming in would still have to do these things before being able to purchase the unlocks for alts etc. you see? but it would eliminate the rep system grind for the those of us that hate it... the purpose of this thread.... if rep is the endgame in STO then god help us all... cause its all end and no game (no fun either)...
I guess for me it's not the grind, or even the time involved, but rather the almost total lack of stuff to do in the meantime. I think it's fair to say that any player who has maxed out all 3 reps will be able to do every single mission, fleet action and STF in their sleep with 4 notable exceptions: No Win, because that is still a fun challenge (at least for me). Hive Ground for the same reason (if you even like ground). Hive Space because spammable 20k range one hit 112,000 crit kills, +10000 stealth detection, 2 minute cooldown regen probes and spammable plasma energy bolts is not most people's idea of fun (and that's just on normal atm). And lastly, Terradome, which fun as it is, apart from the fact that 90% of players don't even know it exists which makes finding the necessary 5 players difficult at best, it's so bugged and the rewards are so out of sync with the rest of the game that most players will do it once if at all, look at their now not-so-shiney Blue Mk X Polyalloy Armor, and say "pfffff, what a waste of an hour, let's never do that again..."
LoR did bring with it a lot of new content and new players who perhaps aren't as jaded as some of us, but in terms of endgame stuff, new fleet actions and general stuff for those of us who remember everything from the first appearance of feature episodes, to the launch of LoR, I think we got two, three new things? It's overall total lack of end game content that will slowly kill this game, Rep/Fleet grind fatigue is just a symptom of a much larger issue.
I will concede, however, (contrary to a post I made in another thread) that maybe there should be some kind of 're-rep' discount, but it's my view that the express zen bypass route might, perhaps inevitably, lead to even the pretence of free 2 play going out the window as the system is seen to make money, gets transferred to 1st characters and becomes the standard, and we'll end up with a SWTOR 'free 2 try until level X' type system. While it is still technically totally free to play in terms of silver access to all but a few unimportant shineys, the game is already monetized enough as it is.
I feel that more/less rep would be (or feel like) less of an issue if there was actually a reasonable and regular supply of newer stuff to do during those 20 hour waits. Sure, you can do pvp, or grind with your fleet or whatever, but let's face it, the fleet grind gets just as boring as the rep stuff especially when all the projects are on cooldowns and as for pvp, while it's still fun at whatever level your character is, there is simply a gear gate if you are serious enough about it to have more than 2 or 3 toons.
"So my fun is wrong?"
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
+1 No arguments from me. I have a queue of characters but there is no way I'm going through the grind(s) on all of them.
+2.
I won't lie, i really enjoyed the rep grind the first time. But no way i am doing it again. Waiting for last tier to complete for romulan and then i will be going back to SWTOR. I wish i had played this game more but i like to play alts and current system just discourages me to do so.
So i will be going back to SWTOR, it has much better account wide rep system.
I'll have 5th char at T5 omega in three days. Only takes a couple of minutes of clicking and done. The delay is annoying, people raging and deleting chars because its soo haard to click the buttons make no sense
I have no problems grinding for the gear on every single character. Why do I need to wait one month on every single character for something I've already done countless times? Please make the system at least Faction wide.
Cryptic is hurting itself in terms of potential sales for alts with this.
Ive done the rep system on 6 toons now because you need atleast 1 set of rep gear for stfs if you don't want to be riddled with injuries every time you die but that's it. I just bought 1 set on those 6. it was painful enough to grind out my main and buy everything for him im not about to do it for 6 others and sorry you can add all the more reps you want its not gonna change my opinion one way or another. even the OVERPOWERED web mines, im not even bothering to grind out 500 nukara marks to buy those because after 7 toons the grind has been sucked out of me.
Probably because (after Thursday's patch); all T5 Rep projects will give out a fairly big reward of the appropriate Marks and Dilithium. And since some power levelers can get a new character to 50 in hours - that would be a large source of essentially free dilithium; which can be converted to Zen via the exchange, etc - cutting into their bottom line in the long run.
Completely missing the point that the zen you buy from the exchange with dilithium is first bought by players for real money THEN sold on the exchange.
Just to clarify:
Player A buys Zen with RL Money and posts it on the exchange in order to obtain dilithium without having to grind for it.
Player B grinds for dilithium and buys Zen from the exchange in order to purchase Zen Store items.
Cryptic/PWE makes EXACTLY the same amount of money as it would have if player B had bought the Zen directly.
Conclusion: There is actually no reason at all for Cryptic to NOT make the rep grind easier to unlock on alts.
One of the things that gives STO it's appeal is the fact that we can make so many different characters with different skill sets and different ships, gear etc.
The single best way for Cryptic/PWE to make MONEY is to eliminate the tedious grind of the rep system so people with RL jobs that pay well, but leave little time for grinding, can BUY ZEN and SELL IT to the grinders for dilithium to purchase that rep gear for the brand new shiny ZEN STORE SHIP they just bought.
***
Speaking strictly for myself, if it weren't for rep grind tedium I would have at least two more characters, a KDF and Romulan Engineer. Since the ships I would need for them would be cruisers that I don't have unlocked on my tac and sci characters, I would likely be spending at least 5K if not 10K zen on ships alone. Whether I bought the zen directly or from the exchange is irrelevant, because of the points I made earlier.
***
MY SOLUTION: (makes TONS of money for Cryptic/PWE)
Once a player has unlocked ALL THREE Tier Five reputations on a single character, they unlock the following account wide:
1. 20 hour time gate on projects reduced to four hours. (even better if it were 2 minutes like gear projects)
2. The ability to buy Multiple Choice Mark Packages from the Dilithium Store. The player could either grind the dilithium in the content of their choice, or BUY ZEN and use the exchange to obtain it.
Costume unlocks and Titles would still require the player to complete the optional objectives. This would keep the titles valid for the purists.
(P.S. Cryptic, you should really hire me. I'll work dirt cheap and make you all flithy stinking rich with ideas like this. "I got a million of them" ... LOL ... no really I do...)
After reading everyone comments, I've realized how sad this situation is.
So many people giving ideas, complaints (or alternatives) and yet nothing has been done. I didn't know this game had some bugs since Launch (wasn't that 3 years ago).
Again,...nothing gets done. So it's safe to say that our words fall on def ears. That only leaves us with two choices:
1. Stop playing the game, and eventually cryptic will realize how much money they're loosing (and amassing a large amount of "bad mouthing" on the internet in the meantime). This will force them to make a massive 5 GB patch to correct all the years of complaints (and to return former players back to the game).
2. Keep playing the game but purpsoly not spend any zen. But then Cryptic may play "chess" with it's STO player and force them into spending zen.
One day Cryptic will be free from their Perfect World overlord. Until that day comes, they will continue to pamper the whales of this game, and ignore everyone that isn't a whale.
I grinded all 3 current reps to T5 on 2 characters. The fact that there is another one coming soon just affirmed my intention NOT to create any more characters in STO... well, except dilithium farmers and mules to store all my equipment, that is.
Considering what you have to invest in order to max out gear in other MMOs, the grind in STO isn't too bad. What it boils down to is that STO players seem to be spoiled when compared to those of other games.
Instant levelling, quick access to best-in-slot gear, no ranked pvp reward system, reputation gated solely by real-time and not by skill/ingame-time/organization and endgame content en par with basic low-level dungeons in other games, plus the fact that endgame gear doesn't become obsolete.
People in here are complaining about the fact that it takes a bit of time to equip their n-th alt with top-notch, best in slot endgame gear, which already requires a low amount of effort to start with. An average ingame-time of 15-20 minutes/day will get your character to T5 reputation with all 3 factions in about a month.
Other games make you grind the same (raid) dungeons for 3-4 hours 2-3 times a week to get second-rate gear which in turn you need to replace every few weeks to stay competative. It's the same grind in every game out there, it's part of the basic mmo-concept. People who don't grasp that might be better off playing Skyrim & co., where - when it becomes too time consuming or difficult - you can just advance via console commmands...
I agree that leveling is way to fast, heck i leveled a rommie with only doffing over the course of a month. But there is a necessity to the the fast leveling because of rather boring lower level missions and very linear game play.
I don't have a problem of taking so long to get stuff, I just hate that it is the same set of missions every night to get the stuff together for the grind. If they are going to do this create some sort of saga to accomplish, like put together a optional reward for completing all space and ground stfs. Then have a 20 hr cooldown and give that optional out again. Ther are just too few doing ground elite to be able to pug it or even get a team all that quickly in ESTF chat.
STO could be much more engaging, but right now it feels like they are waiting on something, and in the mean time just putting some reps as a carrot for the massive boredom beating we are to endure.
PvE Jem'Hadar motto:Participation Ribbonsare life.
I would like to see rep account wide, but am not sure how bad a programming hurdle it would be. A possible work around would be a special mission you run after you achieve a tier:
The rep could be made "account wide" by giving out boxes of "rep points" for completion of each tier that is worth 1 rep level on another toon. That box is account bound.
I will illustrate what I mean: I complete Omega Tier 1 on fed tac toon. On unlock of T1 Omega part of the reward is a box for 5000 Omega Reputation XP (account bound) that I can transfer to any toon. I transfer it to Fed Eng toon, I have instant Omega Tier 1 there, perhaps this "mission" could have a dilithium input too for convenience. Once I unlock the Tier 1 project then I get another box, to transfer to my kdf sci and rinse repeat.
When my fed tac gets Tier2 unlocked then he gets a box for 15000 Omega reputation to pass to the next one. This allows for a daisy chain of your toons. Put a time gate of even a week on it I don't care, it is pointless to time gate it but I don't care. This way you are getting rep for the next toon without grinding the missions. I feel this will allow me to get back into my KDF characters again. And consider outfitting my rommie.
PvE Jem'Hadar motto:Participation Ribbonsare life.
Completely missing the point that the zen you buy from the exchange with dilithium is first bought by players for real money THEN sold on the exchange.
Just to clarify:
Player A buys Zen with RL Money and posts it on the exchange in order to obtain dilithium without having to grind for it.
Player B grinds for dilithium and buys Zen from the exchange in order to purchase Zen Store items.
Cryptic/PWE makes EXACTLY the same amount of money as it would have if player B had bought the Zen directly.
Conclusion: There is actually no reason at all for Cryptic to NOT make the rep grind easier to unlock on alts.
One of the things that gives STO it's appeal is the fact that we can make so many different characters with different skill sets and different ships, gear etc.
The single best way for Cryptic/PWE to make MONEY is to eliminate the tedious grind of the rep system so people with RL jobs that pay well, but leave little time for grinding, can BUY ZEN and SELL IT to the grinders for dilithium to purchase that rep gear for the brand new shiny ZEN STORE SHIP they just bought.
SO many do miss this, if I buy a 3 piece set with dilithium procured zen then I allowed my efforts to support someone else buying dilithium with their cash, which Cryptic received. if no one converted dilithium to zen then no one would buy zen to convert it to dilithium.
Some have more time than money and that time in its own way is critical to the income of Cryptic even if their bank accounts never exchange digits.
PvE Jem'Hadar motto:Participation Ribbonsare life.
Has anyone seen or heard of anything new coming down the pike for this problem for reputation and if so where would I look? And yes I've tried google :P
The rep system has ran STO down. It was a bad idea and now 6-8 months later we are now seeing the effects it has had on the game. It was a bad idea that pandered to people who were lazy and were not willing to play the game. At 3-4 hr per Fed it takes nearly 8hr work for 3 guys.this dose not including time for the K.D.F. No one wants to work star trek online as a full time job everyday for the sake of the rep system. There was nothing wrong with playing the game. Just go back to what the game was per-season 7.
Agree 100% Rep system was a bad idea from the start. Let us grind it on one toon, and the rest get it maxed, or have one mission to so that gets them to T5.
There WILL be a point where the reputation system and faction size will become too large for new players that making it per character locked will stop all new players from unlocking the reputation system on more than one character. Just before that happens cryptic will change the reputation system to account locked and give out less rewards for completing it. I believe it was talked about recently that in season 9 they wanted to rework the reputation system so I bet something like this will happen.
If you think about it the reputation is already getting there and any new reputation added or faction added will most definitely have to make this happen. Right now you have a possible of 12 unique characters you can create. Times that by 3 reputations systems that's 36 reputations total. I can no imagine doing all that work. Adding another reputation or faction just seems out of the question when you see it in plain text like this.
I have 4 toons and one is done with the rep system two will be done this week but the 4 will take some time and in not making anymore because of the rep system. I would like to link two toons to one rep system you still need to grind but it would not be so bad.
...If you think about it the reputation is already getting there and any new reputation added or faction added will most definitely have to make this happen...
Do you think we are at that point now? We could conclude that the fleetbase, embassy, and dilithium mine are large scale reputation systems, which contribute to the player's overall stress level. Dealing with the reputation system and one other holding can be daunting. Even though players are not tackling all four of them at once, they are getting stressed from dealing with just two systems. Keep in mind that our conversation has barley touched upon the expense, time, and grinding necessary to obtain items.
Generic Reputation System Process:
Step 1: Grind to complete each individual project.
Step 2: Grind to claim each individual tier.
Step 3: Grind to unlock store item(s) and/or to obtain a tier specific item(s).
Step 4: Grind to buy a specific store item.
Step 5: Repeat...
Players are jumping in and out of the game, so they can bring multiple avatars up to tier five. I do not think Cryptic fully understands what has happened.
Here is the major conundrum... After you have obtained everything you desire, what do you actually do with them? What is next? Players put in all that time and effort, so they can obtain new items for grinding? Didn't Cryptic recently say they were not going to raise the level cap? Outside of getting involved with the horrible PvP system, the reason for obtaining any of the endgame items does not exist.
According to the recent season eight interviews, the main focus is going to be on endgame and featured episodes. I can see a few problems surfacing. (1) Will the new featured episodes allow you to level over 50? (2) Will the new endgame content add to the overall grinding? (3) Will Cryptic make enough stfs, so that the sense of repetition diminishes? (4) Will creating complex stfs slow down everyone's progress? (5) Will they nerf the reward system as a result of the new changes?
I think there is a serious problem with Cryptic's plans.
I think "Star Trek" fans are smart enough to see the treadmill, which Cryptic has created with the endgame content. Everyone one is grinding resources, so they can race down a never-ending hallway. Even though it looks like you are making progress, the reality is that there is no actual destination.
Cryptic needs to nerf the resource requirements and cool down timers for everything.
Indeed. This is why I have chosen to put STO aside for now. This Rep grind, and grinding in general, has completely put me off.. which is unfortunate because STO has the potential to be a great game.. if only it didn't have grind.
"You hurt me long ago; my wounds bled for years. Now you are back, but I am not the same."
Here is the major conundrum... After you have obtained everything you desire, what do you actually do with them? What is next? Players put in all that time and effort, so they can obtain new items for grinding? Didn't Cryptic recently say they were not going to raise the level cap? Outside of getting involved with the horrible PvP system, the reason for obtaining any of the endgame items does not exist.
I think "Star Trek" fans are smart enough to see the treadmill, which Cryptic has created with the endgame content. Everyone one is grinding resources, so they can race down a never-ending hallway. Even though it looks like you are making progress, the reality is that there is no actual destination.
Cryptic needs to nerf the resource requirements and cool down timers for everything.
Making the grind faster and easier, only hastens the progress to that void at the end of the road. As said there's nothing to do once you get there.
That's what the cooldowns are for. They are the greatest rep system bottleneck. No matter how much crazy grinding you do ~ you'll always take the same amount of time as the next guy to get there.
If rep was going to be account wide, you'd see the resource sinks and cooldowns increase x3 (at least) as that's the number of free characters everyone gets.
I would prefer this, as it would make managing the whole thing a lot easier, but then you lose the power to choose, and you become forced to play 3 characters to keep pace.
Not having the time or willingness to do these things is not Cryptic's fault. Not having worthwhile endgame content to use all this shiny stuff on is.
In my humble opinion the reputation system should be account based, and the grinding relating to it adjusted accordingly. In addition doff reputation system ie the 10 different rep systems like diplomacy and trade, and science, and espionage, etc should be account based.
Comments
Totally. If this is the best we're going to get, I might as well jump ship now.
Missing the point keep up.... Zen unlock is not for gear... its for tier 5 rep you'd still have to grind your gear so the dil sink is still in play.... just remove the bloody time sink aspect.... =D
I'd love account wide rep but i dont see it happening.... hence I wave the carrot of a Zen unlock in hopes they budge on the timesink....
www.elitedefensestarfleet.com
/channel_join PublicEliteSTF
PublicEliteSTF Channel Info: bit.ly/PublicEliteSTFV2
WE WANT A KDF BOP 3 PACK!!
.....
cause sometimes its party time!
I guess for me it's not the grind, or even the time involved, but rather the almost total lack of stuff to do in the meantime. I think it's fair to say that any player who has maxed out all 3 reps will be able to do every single mission, fleet action and STF in their sleep with 4 notable exceptions: No Win, because that is still a fun challenge (at least for me). Hive Ground for the same reason (if you even like ground). Hive Space because spammable 20k range one hit 112,000 crit kills, +10000 stealth detection, 2 minute cooldown regen probes and spammable plasma energy bolts is not most people's idea of fun (and that's just on normal atm). And lastly, Terradome, which fun as it is, apart from the fact that 90% of players don't even know it exists which makes finding the necessary 5 players difficult at best, it's so bugged and the rewards are so out of sync with the rest of the game that most players will do it once if at all, look at their now not-so-shiney Blue Mk X Polyalloy Armor, and say "pfffff, what a waste of an hour, let's never do that again..."
LoR did bring with it a lot of new content and new players who perhaps aren't as jaded as some of us, but in terms of endgame stuff, new fleet actions and general stuff for those of us who remember everything from the first appearance of feature episodes, to the launch of LoR, I think we got two, three new things? It's overall total lack of end game content that will slowly kill this game, Rep/Fleet grind fatigue is just a symptom of a much larger issue.
I will concede, however, (contrary to a post I made in another thread) that maybe there should be some kind of 're-rep' discount, but it's my view that the express zen bypass route might, perhaps inevitably, lead to even the pretence of free 2 play going out the window as the system is seen to make money, gets transferred to 1st characters and becomes the standard, and we'll end up with a SWTOR 'free 2 try until level X' type system. While it is still technically totally free to play in terms of silver access to all but a few unimportant shineys, the game is already monetized enough as it is.
I feel that more/less rep would be (or feel like) less of an issue if there was actually a reasonable and regular supply of newer stuff to do during those 20 hour waits. Sure, you can do pvp, or grind with your fleet or whatever, but let's face it, the fleet grind gets just as boring as the rep stuff especially when all the projects are on cooldowns and as for pvp, while it's still fun at whatever level your character is, there is simply a gear gate if you are serious enough about it to have more than 2 or 3 toons.
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
+2.
I won't lie, i really enjoyed the rep grind the first time. But no way i am doing it again. Waiting for last tier to complete for romulan and then i will be going back to SWTOR. I wish i had played this game more but i like to play alts and current system just discourages me to do so.
So i will be going back to SWTOR, it has much better account wide rep system.
It is. Thankfully you don't need to do it more than once unless you actually want to.
Or have convinced yourself that you need to because epeen despite not wanting to. But we both know you're not that easily manipulated by shinies.
Kinda of sad, PWE overlords must be behind that.
Cryptic is hurting itself in terms of potential sales for alts with this.
Completely missing the point that the zen you buy from the exchange with dilithium is first bought by players for real money THEN sold on the exchange.
Just to clarify:
Player A buys Zen with RL Money and posts it on the exchange in order to obtain dilithium without having to grind for it.
Player B grinds for dilithium and buys Zen from the exchange in order to purchase Zen Store items.
Cryptic/PWE makes EXACTLY the same amount of money as it would have if player B had bought the Zen directly.
Conclusion: There is actually no reason at all for Cryptic to NOT make the rep grind easier to unlock on alts.
One of the things that gives STO it's appeal is the fact that we can make so many different characters with different skill sets and different ships, gear etc.
The single best way for Cryptic/PWE to make MONEY is to eliminate the tedious grind of the rep system so people with RL jobs that pay well, but leave little time for grinding, can BUY ZEN and SELL IT to the grinders for dilithium to purchase that rep gear for the brand new shiny ZEN STORE SHIP they just bought.
***
Speaking strictly for myself, if it weren't for rep grind tedium I would have at least two more characters, a KDF and Romulan Engineer. Since the ships I would need for them would be cruisers that I don't have unlocked on my tac and sci characters, I would likely be spending at least 5K if not 10K zen on ships alone. Whether I bought the zen directly or from the exchange is irrelevant, because of the points I made earlier.
***
MY SOLUTION: (makes TONS of money for Cryptic/PWE)
Once a player has unlocked ALL THREE Tier Five reputations on a single character, they unlock the following account wide:
1. 20 hour time gate on projects reduced to four hours. (even better if it were 2 minutes like gear projects)
2. The ability to buy Multiple Choice Mark Packages from the Dilithium Store. The player could either grind the dilithium in the content of their choice, or BUY ZEN and use the exchange to obtain it.
Costume unlocks and Titles would still require the player to complete the optional objectives. This would keep the titles valid for the purists.
(P.S. Cryptic, you should really hire me. I'll work dirt cheap and make you all flithy stinking rich with ideas like this. "I got a million of them" ... LOL ... no really I do...)
So many people giving ideas, complaints (or alternatives) and yet nothing has been done. I didn't know this game had some bugs since Launch (wasn't that 3 years ago).
Again,...nothing gets done. So it's safe to say that our words fall on def ears. That only leaves us with two choices:
1. Stop playing the game, and eventually cryptic will realize how much money they're loosing (and amassing a large amount of "bad mouthing" on the internet in the meantime). This will force them to make a massive 5 GB patch to correct all the years of complaints (and to return former players back to the game).
2. Keep playing the game but purpsoly not spend any zen. But then Cryptic may play "chess" with it's STO player and force them into spending zen.
I agree that leveling is way to fast, heck i leveled a rommie with only doffing over the course of a month. But there is a necessity to the the fast leveling because of rather boring lower level missions and very linear game play.
I don't have a problem of taking so long to get stuff, I just hate that it is the same set of missions every night to get the stuff together for the grind. If they are going to do this create some sort of saga to accomplish, like put together a optional reward for completing all space and ground stfs. Then have a 20 hr cooldown and give that optional out again. Ther are just too few doing ground elite to be able to pug it or even get a team all that quickly in ESTF chat.
STO could be much more engaging, but right now it feels like they are waiting on something, and in the mean time just putting some reps as a carrot for the massive boredom beating we are to endure.
The rep could be made "account wide" by giving out boxes of "rep points" for completion of each tier that is worth 1 rep level on another toon. That box is account bound.
I will illustrate what I mean: I complete Omega Tier 1 on fed tac toon. On unlock of T1 Omega part of the reward is a box for 5000 Omega Reputation XP (account bound) that I can transfer to any toon. I transfer it to Fed Eng toon, I have instant Omega Tier 1 there, perhaps this "mission" could have a dilithium input too for convenience. Once I unlock the Tier 1 project then I get another box, to transfer to my kdf sci and rinse repeat.
When my fed tac gets Tier2 unlocked then he gets a box for 15000 Omega reputation to pass to the next one. This allows for a daisy chain of your toons. Put a time gate of even a week on it I don't care, it is pointless to time gate it but I don't care. This way you are getting rep for the next toon without grinding the missions. I feel this will allow me to get back into my KDF characters again. And consider outfitting my rommie.
SO many do miss this, if I buy a 3 piece set with dilithium procured zen then I allowed my efforts to support someone else buying dilithium with their cash, which Cryptic received. if no one converted dilithium to zen then no one would buy zen to convert it to dilithium.
Some have more time than money and that time in its own way is critical to the income of Cryptic even if their bank accounts never exchange digits.
I would have bought it if it was a lock box ship.
Reputation grind - not again, thank you.
Toon A which is Tier 5 rep... has a new mission which will get toon B to tier 5.
Toon A then sends Toon B then key it needs to begin the mission to get to Tier 5.
Now... to avoid the dilithium spam (reward for hitting tier 5) we... dump a week timer on this get to tier 5 rep thing and boom.
funny thing is....it takes almost a week to refine all that dil that was rewarded
If you think about it the reputation is already getting there and any new reputation added or faction added will most definitely have to make this happen. Right now you have a possible of 12 unique characters you can create. Times that by 3 reputations systems that's 36 reputations total. I can no imagine doing all that work. Adding another reputation or faction just seems out of the question when you see it in plain text like this.
Generic Reputation System Process:
Step 1: Grind to complete each individual project.
Step 2: Grind to claim each individual tier.
Step 3: Grind to unlock store item(s) and/or to obtain a tier specific item(s).
Step 4: Grind to buy a specific store item.
Step 5: Repeat...
Players are jumping in and out of the game, so they can bring multiple avatars up to tier five. I do not think Cryptic fully understands what has happened.
Here is the major conundrum... After you have obtained everything you desire, what do you actually do with them? What is next? Players put in all that time and effort, so they can obtain new items for grinding? Didn't Cryptic recently say they were not going to raise the level cap? Outside of getting involved with the horrible PvP system, the reason for obtaining any of the endgame items does not exist.
According to the recent season eight interviews, the main focus is going to be on endgame and featured episodes. I can see a few problems surfacing. (1) Will the new featured episodes allow you to level over 50? (2) Will the new endgame content add to the overall grinding? (3) Will Cryptic make enough stfs, so that the sense of repetition diminishes? (4) Will creating complex stfs slow down everyone's progress? (5) Will they nerf the reward system as a result of the new changes?
I think there is a serious problem with Cryptic's plans.
I think "Star Trek" fans are smart enough to see the treadmill, which Cryptic has created with the endgame content. Everyone one is grinding resources, so they can race down a never-ending hallway. Even though it looks like you are making progress, the reality is that there is no actual destination.
Cryptic needs to nerf the resource requirements and cool down timers for everything.
Making the grind faster and easier, only hastens the progress to that void at the end of the road. As said there's nothing to do once you get there.
That's what the cooldowns are for. They are the greatest rep system bottleneck. No matter how much crazy grinding you do ~ you'll always take the same amount of time as the next guy to get there.
If rep was going to be account wide, you'd see the resource sinks and cooldowns increase x3 (at least) as that's the number of free characters everyone gets.
I would prefer this, as it would make managing the whole thing a lot easier, but then you lose the power to choose, and you become forced to play 3 characters to keep pace.
Not having the time or willingness to do these things is not Cryptic's fault. Not having worthwhile endgame content to use all this shiny stuff on is.