The Reputation system was never intended to be a source of Energy Credits being generated into the Economy. Consoles, for example, were selling well in excess of 10,000 EC apiece to vendors. Allowing that to stay in place would have caused an unintended glut of new EC into the game world, unbalancing a portion of the overall Economy that is generally considered healthy in its current state.
These items can be sold on the Exchange to other players, but will not yield any EC if sold to a vendor.
Unbalancing a portion of the overall economy? Really? Have you checked the exchange lately? Its completely unbalanced, many things you need now are way out of price of anyone except those who have been here since beta and playing every day, you know, those with no life at all except STO...
And its an artificial economy, who cares if its unbalanced? It really doesnt exist, and no rule of economics apply to it, certainly not supply and demand, because there is no reality to it.....
The Reputation system was never intended to be a source of Energy Credits being generated into the Economy. Consoles, for example, were selling well in excess of 10,000 EC apiece to vendors. Allowing that to stay in place would have caused an unintended glut of new EC into the game world, unbalancing a portion of the overall Economy that is generally considered healthy in its current state.
These items can be sold on the Exchange to other players, but will not yield any EC if sold to a vendor.
Um there will be so many of those consoles, I ask you what is the point of selling them to players when they probably already have 30+?
I have 40 of the useless shield re-sequencer consoles, and that was after one week of play!! :rolleyes:
Um there will be so many of those consoles, I ask you what is the point of selling them to players when they probably already have 30+?
I have 40 of the useless shield re-sequencer consoles, and that was after one week of play!! :rolleyes:
a) They're hardly useless... useless to you maybe... but not to everyone
b) So did I... but I discovered that after I got into the store, there were a lot more consoles available then the ones I received. I took a quick inventory, and discovered that I was getting maybe the same 5 or 6, but there were other ones.
c) At tier 1 you really only have access to the free drops from tier 1. As you progress up, you get not only the old tier but the new tier, meaning your chances of getting that one exact tactical console you want at tier 5 is miniscule. You may get lucky, or you may not.
a) They're hardly useless... useless to you maybe... but not to everyone
b) So did I... but I discovered that after I got into the store, there were a lot more consoles available then the ones I received. I took a quick inventory, and discovered that I was getting maybe the same 5 or 6, but there were other ones.
c) At tier 1 you really only have access to the free drops from tier 1. As you progress up, you get not only the old tier but the new tier, meaning your chances of getting that one exact tactical console you want at tier 5 is miniscule. You may get lucky, or you may not.
the sci ones in their current format are half the bonus of a purple MK XII, less then half of a Rommy sci console. the procs are nice, but unless you don't need those sci skills your hurting your self bad. you need two consoles to match one for sci bonus, so depending ont he consoles you use, you get half your orginal bonus, to cut something out to get the same amount to one skill. and with sci skills needing a lot of skill, and a lot of skills for each one to get the most out of them, if this is worth it is highly debatable.
the sci ones in their current format are half the bonus of a purple MK XII, less then half of a Rommy sci console. the procs are nice, but unless you don't need those sci skills your hurting your self bad. you need two consoles to match one for sci bonus, so depending ont he consoles you use, you get half your orginal bonus, to cut something out to get the same amount to one skill. and with sci skills needing a lot of skill, and a lot of skills for each one to get the most out of them, if this is worth it is highly debatable.
Yeah, the consoles all seem a bit sub-par. Not that I can even use some of them with all the universals I've got.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
The biggest problem I see with Dyson rep is it's very specialised in fighting Voth. This wouldn't be much of a problem if it was content people would do over and over again, which I suspect most won't. Don't get me wrong, it's really fun and some of it is vastly more fun and challenging than ESTFs, it's just it's not as good for dilithium grinding as STFs.
Now I understand there's two problems there, one being that STFs give too much of a reward (you can get something like 8300 dilithium from 5 runs on a bad day) and that you probably don't want to make the grind too easy.
Anyway, I'll only review the stuff I've managed to test.
Dyson Reputation powers
All in all rather nice. Hard to tell how effective T3 & T4 are though. Defiance of course is excellent, being a ground version of GDF.
Dyson sponsorship token
Worked like a charm on an alt, though I first had to run a normal project then cancel it to make the sponsorship project appear.
Dyson store
Protonic Polaron ground weapons - The problem with ground weapons vs space weapons as a whole is that space weapons have a greater chance of proccing simply due to the number of them. To get the most out of this type you'd probably need to use a mini-gun. Not bad, but can't see me dropping my antiproton pulsewave for one.
Protonic Polaron space weapons - Not bad and should add an extra bit of DPS when combined with the CrtH consoles. I suspect their real power will be revealed when fighting tanking players using resilient shields.
Science Consoles - Quite nice. If I weren't using field gens I'd probably switch to these in a flash, especially the shield HP versions. Probably very useful for sci ships.
Engineering consoles - Okay, their effective rather depends on if you're fighting Voth.
Dyson ground set
Dyson ground armour - Probably the best the ground set has to offer. Rather comparable to the MACO ground set, but better when crouching.
Dyson ground weapon - A bit meh really, feels like an afterthought to make a full ground set.
Dyson PSG - It's a toss up as to which is better between the MACO and the Dyson PSG. The Nukara Strikeforce PSG though has them both beaten (20% energy resist and higher cap, vs MACO's 10% energy resist and Dysons 20% antiproton only resist). Like the ground weapon it's something I'd likely only take to complete the set.
2-piece set bonus - Antipodal synergies - Nice Voth centric defense. Maco 2-piece has it beat in my opinion.
3-piece set bonus - Hunker down - Pretty damn useful, especially if you're low on health.
Dyson space set (incomplete)
Dyson Regenerative Shield Array - Pretty nice for a regen shield, especially the hyper shield regen. I suspect though it'll be best on sci-ships or carriers since it's regen doesn't really make for the low cap on cruisers and escorts (given that there's very little difference between their caps nowadays). Yeah, I'll most likely be sticking to my elite fleet shields.
Dyson space set Protonic Arsenal(incomplete)
Experimental Proton weapon - Looking at this weapon I see the logic behind the original dyson generic weapon type consoles. As it is this weapon is at a disadvantage. Also I'm not sure the weapon proc is working right, as I was getting lots of crits with it but it hardly ever procced at the rate you'd expect it would at 50%.
If the tactical consoles were put back the way they were, this weapon could be rather nasty, especially as part of a 2/3-piece set from the looks of things, what with the bonuses making it able to work with FAW and CRF.
Speaking of the ground set, as the poster above me was, anyone wonder how the "Knockback Immunity" of Hunker Down fares against the broken OP knockback of swords?
More of a hull tanking deflector, which given the Voths shield bypassing attacks (transphasic bleedthrough, grav well) is probably a good idea.
That said it's nothing special. Unlike the Nukara deflector which focused on both shield cap and shield healing, this seems to focus just on the hull cap. Unlike the Borg and Omega deflector, it has no special stats (liek acc or power bonuses).
Combat Engines:-
Rather fast engines(the fastest out of, which is definitely a plus and probably good for non-evading cruisers. The power bonuses are pretty good also. Not Hyper impulse engines, but still very good for being combat engines. Thumbs up.
Hyper-injection Warp Core:-
It's a pretty standard W>E warpcore for the most part, with the added twist of getting a buff to speed and turnrate depending on how many points you have in driver coils.
Don't think I'd give up either the Elite fleet or the spire warp core for it, I like AMP too much.
Regenerative Shield Array:-
A much better regen shield than the Borg one, but arguably inferior to the elite fleet regen shield.
2-piece set bonus - Shielded Critical Systems - Nice for fighting Voth I suppose, if you haven't already got points in inertial dampers and power insulators. Feels rather inferior to the 2-piece borg, but then everything does.
3-piece set bonus - Proton Barrage - Probably very useful in PvP, but I suspect for PvEers it's not all that attractive given how few buffs NPCs use. I spent a good deal of time trying to find a Voth ship to test it on in the contested zone, but nearly all of them used up their buffs before I had a chance to hit them with it.
As mentioned though, it might be too useful in PvP, especially when combined with gravwell and it's short CD.
4-piece set bonus - Reactive Shielding - Obviously works pretty well with the regen shield, making up for it's low alpha resistance.
Conclusion:-
Personally I'll be sticking to my 2-piece Borg (the 2-piece bonus is way too good to give up) or 2-piece Omega, the spire or elite fleet warp core and my Elite Fleet Resilient shield... In fact that's the real problem here with regards to choosing equipment, the Borg set is STILL that good even after a nerf.
The Dyson space set should be really good for carriers and sci-ships though, especially given how the proton barrage is boosted by aux levels (okay, so it's only a little).
Please change the colors for the Protonic Polaron Beams.
I haven't seen them personally in-game yet, but from the pictures I have seen of them, they seem to be incredibly similar to the colors used by Plasma weapons, and honestly, that is incredibly boring.
My color suggestions: light blue, gold/yellow, red.
Anything really, except more plasma-like green.
The Reputation system was never intended to be a source of Energy Credits being generated into the Economy. Consoles, for example, were selling well in excess of 10,000 EC apiece to vendors. Allowing that to stay in place would have caused an unintended glut of new EC into the game world, unbalancing a portion of the overall Economy that is generally considered healthy in its current state.
These items can be sold on the Exchange to other players, but will not yield any EC if sold to a vendor.
I realize you don't want to dump EC into the system, but you do know that we can run multiple doff assignments (experimental warp core upgrade, experimental impulse engine upgrade, etc) for items that go straight into the vendor, and do this on multiple characters. I don't think a couple of consoles worth 10k are going to be more than a drop in the bucket compared to what we can farm already.
Defiance:
Been playing around with this trying to find a way to slot it in to gameplay. Currently it feels like a noob-trap power. Specifically - using it when I have the choice of using a hypo or another heal such as Honour Guard/Adapted Maco gets me killed when I would otherwise have survived.
The issue stems from a number of factors:
* 1000 resistance sounds awesome, but its really just taking me to 74% resist, compared to the usual 55%.
* The heal is very weak to begin with
* The heal is slowly delivered as a HoT
* The activation time combined with the <50% health requirement means that the player is delayed by an extra few seconds from activating an ability that would take them out of a hyper-vulnerable state.
I ran into only two instances where I successfully used this ability and where I was satisfied by it. Once with the double strength version of the health buff in the ground combat zone; the other when kiting the VRex around at the [Redacted] silos as I stalled for time till backup could arrive.
What stands out is that in neither of those instances was I really in jeopardy like regular combat - the VRex doesnt do much damage when he's on high health and you are kiting, and the super buffed health case I still had nearly 600 HPs left.
I'd suggest putting an extra initial 150 hp pulse of health in, and halving the heal over time in compensation.
Please change the colors for the Protonic Polaron Beams.
I haven't seen them personally in-game yet, but from the pictures I have seen of them, they seem to be incredibly similar to the colors used by Plasma weapons, and honestly, that is incredibly boring.
My color suggestions: light blue, gold/yellow, red.
Anything really, except more plasma-like green.
Protonic Polaron Beams are dark blue with red particles. The actual Experimental Proton weapons are using placeholder art. Those will be coming soon.
The Reputation system was never intended to be a source of Energy Credits being generated into the Economy. Consoles, for example, were selling well in excess of 10,000 EC apiece to vendors. Allowing that to stay in place would have caused an unintended glut of new EC into the game world, unbalancing a portion of the overall Economy that is generally considered healthy in its current state.
These items can be sold on the Exchange to other players, but will not yield any EC if sold to a vendor.
How many equipment requisition boxes do you expect a player to receive per day? Is it really so much that the extra EC would become a problem? If it is indeed the case that too many of these boxes will be generated, then I expect the items won't sell for much on the Exchange, because most players would have more items than they want.
I understand that these boxes are meant to give players a nice reward. But the problem with randomly generated rewards is that most of the time, players receive something they don't want. So rather than being a reward, the item becomes something the player wants to get rid of. Perhaps, players should be allowed to choose their reward: either (a) an item, (b) Dyson marks, or (c) fleet marks.
I realize you don't want to dump EC into the system, but you do know that we can run multiple doff assignments (experimental warp core upgrade, experimental impulse engine upgrade, etc) for items that go straight into the vendor, and do this on multiple characters. I don't think a couple of consoles worth 10k are going to be more than a drop in the bucket compared to what we can farm already.
Unless the doff system is not utilized that heavily among other players. Everyone will probably run rep at least once. Of course they could just set the price at 5k each to justify the time spent deleting the useless items. 2500 at a vendor or less through the replicator doesn't seem to break the system when they have item drops included in foundry missions that can be abused.
PvE Jem'Hadar motto:Participation Ribbonsare life.
Terrible idea.
Why do we have Joint Command Comm... (something :eek:),
This will just even more complicate things for new players. Now they will have 8 types of currencies in rep system.
If this is because the "weekend warriors" i dont see any difference. They could just
earn marks during the weekend.
Even more important, i got used to sell marks for dillitium, what now?
When they apply this type of rep to other reputation, we will probably get 1 omega command comm.. and something like 10 omega marks on elite stf even if we are at 100.000 reputation ???
Terrible idea.
Why do we have Joint Command Comm... (something :eek:),
This will just even more complicate things for new players. Now they will have 8 types of currencies in rep system.
If this is because the "weekend warriors" i dont see any difference. They could just
earn marks during the weekend.
Even more important, i got used to sell marks for dillitium, what now?
When they apply this type of rep to other reputation, we will probably get 1 omega command comm.. and something like 10 omega marks on elite stf even if we are at 100.000 reputation ???
And having to purchase Commodities, use up expertise, and Marks is better than using up one Commendation to complete a project? The stuff used up in Reputations are not currencies. Currencies mean that there is some sort of Economy associated with them. So Energy Credits, Dilithium, Zen, and Gold Pressed Latinum are the only currencies in the game. There are Fleet Credits and Lobi, but that is similar to Arcade Tokens instead of currencies. Marks are just a project input and if people want to consider Marks as a currency, then particle traces and data samples are currencies as well since they fill the same roles. There is no use for Marks, Particle Traces, and Data samples outside of Projects and Crafting.
Your entire argument just boiled down to a strawman, nobody said it was better but you trying to divert the fact what is proposed isnt a solution, whatever you want ti argue its not, marks are a curreny and who said that? Cryptic because were are marks tracked under? Energy Credits, Dilithium and Gold Pressed Latinum ... the UI treats it as a currency because its is.
Regardless you are completely avoiding new players have to tackle on 4 reputations each with their own "marks", doing them at once would still require 2 months even with this "new and improved" system, that is unavoidable and tackling one at a time just makes it 8 months ... at one point exactly this became "too long"? 2 years?
I am pointing at the issue here, as they keep piling Reputation systems they are extending the time it takes for a new player to be be able to be at the same level as older players, entry point gets pushed back and back.
of course there are solutions, why not just ditch the whole "select your marks" and just give them all to the player? this would ease the issue to a degree but still no solution.
My post was just about contributing to the projects not to any other part of the reputation system. There might be better ways than the Sponsporship system, but I am fine with it so won't discuss it further. Contributing to the current projects require me to earn enough Marks, make sure I have enough expertise, and make sure I have the right commodities to complete the project. For veteran players, expertise is not a concern. For commodities, I would have to either stockpile enough commodities or go to some vendor each day. Compared to contributing one Commendation for doing a daily, then it is far easier to contribute. I don't have to travel to some vendor and I don't have to worry about not having enough expertise if I am playing a new character.
Marks are under the Assets Tab and I would agree that Marks are an Asset, but they are not a currency. There are some things that should be in the Assets Tab like BNP and VCI. However, I can understand Lobi not being in the Assets Tab due to being able to trade them to other alts, but they can use the same method that allows us to transfer Energy Credits between alts. If Cryptic had a Currency window in the Assets Tab with Marks under it, then Cryptic would consider Marks as a currency. However, until there is a dev response saying that Marks, Commendations, BNPs, VCI, and others are currencies, then the only currencies that exist are Energy Credits, Zen, Dilithium, and Gold Pressed Latinum and the only reason why I include GPL as a currency is due to the fact that while there is no GPL driven economy in STO, Star Trek uses GPL as a currency.
My post was just about contributing to the projects not to any other part of the reputation system. There might be better ways than the Sponsporship system, but I am fine with it so won't discuss it further. Contributing to the current projects require me to earn enough Marks, make sure I have enough expertise, and make sure I have the right commodities to complete the project. For veteran players, expertise is not a concern. For commodities, I would have to either stockpile enough commodities or go to some vendor each day. Compared to contributing one Commendation for doing a daily, then it is far easier to contribute. I don't have to travel to some vendor and I don't have to worry about not having enough expertise if I am playing a new character.
Marks are under the Assets Tab and I would agree that Marks are an Asset, but they are not a currency. There are some things that should be in the Assets Tab like BNP and VCI. However, I can understand Lobi not being in the Assets Tab due to being able to trade them to other alts, but they can use the same method that allows us to transfer Energy Credits between alts. If Cryptic had a Currency window in the Assets Tab with Marks under it, then Cryptic would consider Marks as a currency. However, until there is a dev response saying that Marks, Commendations, BNPs, VCI, and others are currencies, then the only currencies that exist are Energy Credits, Zen, Dilithium, and Gold Pressed Latinum and the only reason why I include GPL as a currency is due to the fact that while there is no GPL driven economy in STO, Star Trek uses GPL as a currency.
And why exactly do we need Dyson Joint Command Commendations??
I said currencies, i know they are not currencies, i am just saying why? Why complicate thing with another type of =something that is not even currency=??
Why not just keep marks and get over with it?
And why exactly do we need Dyson Joint Command Commendations??
I said currencies, i know they are not currencies, i am just saying why? Why complicate thing with another type of =something that is not even currency=??
Why not just keep marks and get over with it?
The Commendations are so that people who don't have time to play the game for very long and still need to grind the rep. The Commendation lets those people get 2,000 XP for the Dyson's Rep with one piece of content (10 minute daily in the Sphere, 15 minute PVE Queued event, etc). You only get ONE (1) a day (with the exception of turning 250 marks into 5 via the rep system) so its not something clogging your inventory.
Marks are used for the 1 hour XP project (which costs 10 marks) or to purchase Rep Gear like the Voth Set.
The commendations are pretty much there to make life easier on the leveling up of the Rep System, especially for people who have little or no time to spend in STO on a daily basis.
And having to purchase Commodities, use up expertise, and Marks is better than using up one Commendation to complete a project? The stuff used up in Reputations are not currencies. Currencies mean that there is some sort of Economy associated with them. So Energy Credits, Dilithium, Zen, and Gold Pressed Latinum are the only currencies in the game. There are Fleet Credits and Lobi, but that is similar to Arcade Tokens instead of currencies. Marks are just a project input and if people want to consider Marks as a currency, then particle traces and data samples are currencies as well since they fill the same roles. There is no use for Marks, Particle Traces, and Data samples outside of Projects and Crafting.
The devs got rid of the old marks of merit and what not out of a concern of too many "currencies."* They act as the current marks do, since they were used to buy gaer, and now they buy gear and xp, so a lot of us have stuck with that terminology. Whatever you want to call them, it is getting ridiculous.
*"currencies" was their word
PvE Jem'Hadar motto:Participation Ribbonsare life.
The Commendations are so that people who don't have time to play the game for very long and still need to grind the rep. The Commendation lets those people get 2,000 XP for the Dyson's Rep with one piece of content (10 minute daily in the Sphere, 15 minute PVE Queued event, etc). You only get ONE (1) a day (with the exception of turning 250 marks into 5 via the rep system) so its not something clogging your inventory.
Marks are used for the 1 hour XP project (which costs 10 marks) or to purchase Rep Gear like the Voth Set.
The commendations are pretty much there to make life easier on the leveling up of the Rep System, especially for people who have little or no time to spend in STO on a daily basis.
Nice.
What about people who cant play at all, are they getting anything.
Just kidding
I am just saying there is no difference between grinding 250 marks on the weekend for 5 days and grinding 5 Commendations on the weekend for 5 days.
This was not necessary, we are just confusing the new players with more stuff with complicated long names. (I am not a new player :P)
I disagree, I have several friends who think these are necessary. Its meant to cut down on the amount of time you need to complete rep assignments. Its also handy for people who have multiple characters they are leveling. I have one friend who has 15 seperate characters he plays evenly simply because he enjoys making new character builds all the time. Rep grind is absolutely horrid for him on the current system but the new one will allow him the chance to get to use all those characters equally and not focus on just doing rep for 5+ hours every day.
In all honestly they're not a currency. You're trying establish a label on them because they're a reward. The Commendation is a token to redeem the 2000 XP you earned by doing a daily because you're only supposed to get that once a day. Sticking 2000 XP into the mission proper could have glitched and allowed people to get multiples of that experience. It's not a currency is an itemized form of experience to get around logisitic issues that would have messed with planned experience gain.
The conversion of Marks to Commendations is supposed to be a reward for those who spend a significant amount of time in the Dyson's Sphere. I'm trying to remember what interview it was, but one of the devs, (CaptGeko, I believe) made the point that this is to reward those weekend warriors. It's basically this: "Hey, you spent an hour in the sphere today, good for you. Here, turn it into tokens so that you can get your rep up and going during the work week when you can't play for very long. " Those players get their Reps filled in the same amount of time as someone who's not as busy and are rewarded for it. They're just a wrapper for the Experience.
And for the record, I am not a new player either and I found no issue understanding this. New players learn as they play and by playing with others. It's our responsibility as players to help players get better. That's why we have these forums don't we? And zone chat or our fleets. If someone is confused they need to ask the question, not having people just jump up and say "New players won't understand this." The rep system as is, confuses players. This isn't that big of a change to make it unintelligible.
The devs got rid of the old marks of merit and what not out of a concern of too many "currencies."* They act as the current marks do, since they were used to buy gaer, and now they buy gear and xp, so a lot of us have stuck with that terminology. Whatever you want to call them, it is getting ridiculous.
*"currencies" was their word
The reason for getting rid of the old Marks was that they were completely meaningless after you outleveled them not due to there being too many "currencies". Why earn any Mark of Exploration II when by the time you earn enough to use them, all the gear you can purchase with them is outdated? So no, they didn't work in the same way as the current Marks do. The only Marks that were of any use were the Mark of Exploration X, Mark of Honor X, and Emblems. These old Marks were equivalent to Arcade Tokens not currencies.
The reason for getting rid of the old Marks was that they were completely meaningless after you outleveled them not due to there being too many "currencies". Why earn any Mark of Exploration II when by the time you earn enough to use them, all the gear you can purchase with them is outdated? So no, they didn't work in the same way as the current Marks do. The only Marks that were of any use were the Mark of Exploration X, Mark of Honor X, and Emblems. These old Marks were equivalent to Arcade Tokens not currencies.
I get that they are equivalent in other games but they were called currency when they were dumped by the makers of the game, so it is kind of a generalization that the community stuck with.
They work the way marks do now in the since that they bought gear from a closed store and the marks themselves were not tradeable and what not. Granted the gear was less useful but in concept they still worked the same way as the omega marks in their purchasing a KCB, with other added materials to make it a little extra umph. Its just that the KCB and the rep marks could buy better stuff, in fact the rep marks can buy obsolete items too.
Rep marks have added usefulness, but that would be expected a couple years later of any feature.
PvE Jem'Hadar motto:Participation Ribbonsare life.
I'd have to agree with a few of the comments here in some respects: The biggest problem of the difference between this system and all previous systems is how much the other systems took in energy credits and dilithium and such that, frankly, will never be recoverable even should you change systems for all those old reputations. And while I love this new system, there will be that nagging thing in the back of my mind that I grinded my way through tons of dilithium and energy credits to get to where I am. The least you could have done was used the underused latinum :-D
Beyond that, as a casual player I can see great advantages to this.
I was looking at the accolades today and with each Tier accolade it says "a mission has been added to your log." So does this mean we will be getting missions like the Romulan reputation?
Also, will there be a nice package of items given to us upon reaching T5 like the other rep.?
Other than that, I love the new changes to the reputation. They need to be implemented on the other reputations stat.
Comments
Unbalancing a portion of the overall economy? Really? Have you checked the exchange lately? Its completely unbalanced, many things you need now are way out of price of anyone except those who have been here since beta and playing every day, you know, those with no life at all except STO...
And its an artificial economy, who cares if its unbalanced? It really doesnt exist, and no rule of economics apply to it, certainly not supply and demand, because there is no reality to it.....
Um there will be so many of those consoles, I ask you what is the point of selling them to players when they probably already have 30+?
I have 40 of the useless shield re-sequencer consoles, and that was after one week of play!! :rolleyes:
a) They're hardly useless... useless to you maybe... but not to everyone
b) So did I... but I discovered that after I got into the store, there were a lot more consoles available then the ones I received. I took a quick inventory, and discovered that I was getting maybe the same 5 or 6, but there were other ones.
c) At tier 1 you really only have access to the free drops from tier 1. As you progress up, you get not only the old tier but the new tier, meaning your chances of getting that one exact tactical console you want at tier 5 is miniscule. You may get lucky, or you may not.
the sci ones in their current format are half the bonus of a purple MK XII, less then half of a Rommy sci console. the procs are nice, but unless you don't need those sci skills your hurting your self bad. you need two consoles to match one for sci bonus, so depending ont he consoles you use, you get half your orginal bonus, to cut something out to get the same amount to one skill. and with sci skills needing a lot of skill, and a lot of skills for each one to get the most out of them, if this is worth it is highly debatable.
Yeah, the consoles all seem a bit sub-par. Not that I can even use some of them with all the universals I've got.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Now I understand there's two problems there, one being that STFs give too much of a reward (you can get something like 8300 dilithium from 5 runs on a bad day) and that you probably don't want to make the grind too easy.
Anyway, I'll only review the stuff I've managed to test.
Dyson Reputation powers
All in all rather nice. Hard to tell how effective T3 & T4 are though. Defiance of course is excellent, being a ground version of GDF.
Dyson sponsorship token
Worked like a charm on an alt, though I first had to run a normal project then cancel it to make the sponsorship project appear.
Dyson store
Protonic Polaron ground weapons - The problem with ground weapons vs space weapons as a whole is that space weapons have a greater chance of proccing simply due to the number of them. To get the most out of this type you'd probably need to use a mini-gun. Not bad, but can't see me dropping my antiproton pulsewave for one.
Protonic Polaron space weapons - Not bad and should add an extra bit of DPS when combined with the CrtH consoles. I suspect their real power will be revealed when fighting tanking players using resilient shields.
Science Consoles - Quite nice. If I weren't using field gens I'd probably switch to these in a flash, especially the shield HP versions. Probably very useful for sci ships.
Engineering consoles - Okay, their effective rather depends on if you're fighting Voth.
Dyson ground set
Dyson ground armour - Probably the best the ground set has to offer. Rather comparable to the MACO ground set, but better when crouching.
Dyson ground weapon - A bit meh really, feels like an afterthought to make a full ground set.
Dyson PSG - It's a toss up as to which is better between the MACO and the Dyson PSG. The Nukara Strikeforce PSG though has them both beaten (20% energy resist and higher cap, vs MACO's 10% energy resist and Dysons 20% antiproton only resist). Like the ground weapon it's something I'd likely only take to complete the set.
2-piece set bonus - Antipodal synergies - Nice Voth centric defense. Maco 2-piece has it beat in my opinion.
3-piece set bonus - Hunker down - Pretty damn useful, especially if you're low on health.
Dyson space set (incomplete)
Dyson Regenerative Shield Array - Pretty nice for a regen shield, especially the hyper shield regen. I suspect though it'll be best on sci-ships or carriers since it's regen doesn't really make for the low cap on cruisers and escorts (given that there's very little difference between their caps nowadays). Yeah, I'll most likely be sticking to my elite fleet shields.
Dyson space set Protonic Arsenal(incomplete)
Experimental Proton weapon - Looking at this weapon I see the logic behind the original dyson generic weapon type consoles. As it is this weapon is at a disadvantage. Also I'm not sure the weapon proc is working right, as I was getting lots of crits with it but it hardly ever procced at the rate you'd expect it would at 50%.
If the tactical consoles were put back the way they were, this weapon could be rather nasty, especially as part of a 2/3-piece set from the looks of things, what with the bonuses making it able to work with FAW and CRF.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
http://youtu.be/CIkx-bWZAtw
For anyone who's been playing for awhile, or at least since S7 when swords were changed, this won't be much of a surprise.
Vanilla Ground PvP information
Deflector:-
More of a hull tanking deflector, which given the Voths shield bypassing attacks (transphasic bleedthrough, grav well) is probably a good idea.
That said it's nothing special. Unlike the Nukara deflector which focused on both shield cap and shield healing, this seems to focus just on the hull cap. Unlike the Borg and Omega deflector, it has no special stats (liek acc or power bonuses).
Combat Engines:-
Rather fast engines(the fastest out of, which is definitely a plus and probably good for non-evading cruisers. The power bonuses are pretty good also. Not Hyper impulse engines, but still very good for being combat engines. Thumbs up.
Hyper-injection Warp Core:-
It's a pretty standard W>E warpcore for the most part, with the added twist of getting a buff to speed and turnrate depending on how many points you have in driver coils.
Don't think I'd give up either the Elite fleet or the spire warp core for it, I like AMP too much.
Regenerative Shield Array:-
A much better regen shield than the Borg one, but arguably inferior to the elite fleet regen shield.
2-piece set bonus - Shielded Critical Systems - Nice for fighting Voth I suppose, if you haven't already got points in inertial dampers and power insulators. Feels rather inferior to the 2-piece borg, but then everything does.
3-piece set bonus - Proton Barrage - Probably very useful in PvP, but I suspect for PvEers it's not all that attractive given how few buffs NPCs use. I spent a good deal of time trying to find a Voth ship to test it on in the contested zone, but nearly all of them used up their buffs before I had a chance to hit them with it.
As mentioned though, it might be too useful in PvP, especially when combined with gravwell and it's short CD.
4-piece set bonus - Reactive Shielding - Obviously works pretty well with the regen shield, making up for it's low alpha resistance.
Conclusion:-
Personally I'll be sticking to my 2-piece Borg (the 2-piece bonus is way too good to give up) or 2-piece Omega, the spire or elite fleet warp core and my Elite Fleet Resilient shield... In fact that's the real problem here with regards to choosing equipment, the Borg set is STILL that good even after a nerf.
The Dyson space set should be really good for carriers and sci-ships though, especially given how the proton barrage is boosted by aux levels (okay, so it's only a little).
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Please change the colors for the Protonic Polaron Beams.
I haven't seen them personally in-game yet, but from the pictures I have seen of them, they seem to be incredibly similar to the colors used by Plasma weapons, and honestly, that is incredibly boring.
My color suggestions: light blue, gold/yellow, red.
Anything really, except more plasma-like green.
I realize you don't want to dump EC into the system, but you do know that we can run multiple doff assignments (experimental warp core upgrade, experimental impulse engine upgrade, etc) for items that go straight into the vendor, and do this on multiple characters. I don't think a couple of consoles worth 10k are going to be more than a drop in the bucket compared to what we can farm already.
Been playing around with this trying to find a way to slot it in to gameplay. Currently it feels like a noob-trap power. Specifically - using it when I have the choice of using a hypo or another heal such as Honour Guard/Adapted Maco gets me killed when I would otherwise have survived.
The issue stems from a number of factors:
* 1000 resistance sounds awesome, but its really just taking me to 74% resist, compared to the usual 55%.
* The heal is very weak to begin with
* The heal is slowly delivered as a HoT
* The activation time combined with the <50% health requirement means that the player is delayed by an extra few seconds from activating an ability that would take them out of a hyper-vulnerable state.
I ran into only two instances where I successfully used this ability and where I was satisfied by it. Once with the double strength version of the health buff in the ground combat zone; the other when kiting the VRex around at the [Redacted] silos as I stalled for time till backup could arrive.
What stands out is that in neither of those instances was I really in jeopardy like regular combat - the VRex doesnt do much damage when he's on high health and you are kiting, and the super buffed health case I still had nearly 600 HPs left.
I'd suggest putting an extra initial 150 hp pulse of health in, and halving the heal over time in compensation.
Protonic Polaron Beams are dark blue with red particles. The actual Experimental Proton weapons are using placeholder art. Those will be coming soon.
That..... sounds perfect.
How many equipment requisition boxes do you expect a player to receive per day? Is it really so much that the extra EC would become a problem? If it is indeed the case that too many of these boxes will be generated, then I expect the items won't sell for much on the Exchange, because most players would have more items than they want.
I understand that these boxes are meant to give players a nice reward. But the problem with randomly generated rewards is that most of the time, players receive something they don't want. So rather than being a reward, the item becomes something the player wants to get rid of. Perhaps, players should be allowed to choose their reward: either (a) an item, (b) Dyson marks, or (c) fleet marks.
Unless the doff system is not utilized that heavily among other players. Everyone will probably run rep at least once. Of course they could just set the price at 5k each to justify the time spent deleting the useless items. 2500 at a vendor or less through the replicator doesn't seem to break the system when they have item drops included in foundry missions that can be abused.
Why do we have Joint Command Comm... (something :eek:),
This will just even more complicate things for new players. Now they will have 8 types of currencies in rep system.
If this is because the "weekend warriors" i dont see any difference. They could just
earn marks during the weekend.
Even more important, i got used to sell marks for dillitium, what now?
When they apply this type of rep to other reputation, we will probably get 1 omega command comm.. and something like 10 omega marks on elite stf even if we are at 100.000 reputation ???
And having to purchase Commodities, use up expertise, and Marks is better than using up one Commendation to complete a project? The stuff used up in Reputations are not currencies. Currencies mean that there is some sort of Economy associated with them. So Energy Credits, Dilithium, Zen, and Gold Pressed Latinum are the only currencies in the game. There are Fleet Credits and Lobi, but that is similar to Arcade Tokens instead of currencies. Marks are just a project input and if people want to consider Marks as a currency, then particle traces and data samples are currencies as well since they fill the same roles. There is no use for Marks, Particle Traces, and Data samples outside of Projects and Crafting.
My post was just about contributing to the projects not to any other part of the reputation system. There might be better ways than the Sponsporship system, but I am fine with it so won't discuss it further. Contributing to the current projects require me to earn enough Marks, make sure I have enough expertise, and make sure I have the right commodities to complete the project. For veteran players, expertise is not a concern. For commodities, I would have to either stockpile enough commodities or go to some vendor each day. Compared to contributing one Commendation for doing a daily, then it is far easier to contribute. I don't have to travel to some vendor and I don't have to worry about not having enough expertise if I am playing a new character.
Marks are under the Assets Tab and I would agree that Marks are an Asset, but they are not a currency. There are some things that should be in the Assets Tab like BNP and VCI. However, I can understand Lobi not being in the Assets Tab due to being able to trade them to other alts, but they can use the same method that allows us to transfer Energy Credits between alts. If Cryptic had a Currency window in the Assets Tab with Marks under it, then Cryptic would consider Marks as a currency. However, until there is a dev response saying that Marks, Commendations, BNPs, VCI, and others are currencies, then the only currencies that exist are Energy Credits, Zen, Dilithium, and Gold Pressed Latinum and the only reason why I include GPL as a currency is due to the fact that while there is no GPL driven economy in STO, Star Trek uses GPL as a currency.
And why exactly do we need Dyson Joint Command Commendations??
I said currencies, i know they are not currencies, i am just saying why? Why complicate thing with another type of =something that is not even currency=??
Why not just keep marks and get over with it?
The Commendations are so that people who don't have time to play the game for very long and still need to grind the rep. The Commendation lets those people get 2,000 XP for the Dyson's Rep with one piece of content (10 minute daily in the Sphere, 15 minute PVE Queued event, etc). You only get ONE (1) a day (with the exception of turning 250 marks into 5 via the rep system) so its not something clogging your inventory.
Marks are used for the 1 hour XP project (which costs 10 marks) or to purchase Rep Gear like the Voth Set.
The commendations are pretty much there to make life easier on the leveling up of the Rep System, especially for people who have little or no time to spend in STO on a daily basis.
TRIBBLE Hydra! Hail Janeway!
The devs got rid of the old marks of merit and what not out of a concern of too many "currencies."* They act as the current marks do, since they were used to buy gaer, and now they buy gear and xp, so a lot of us have stuck with that terminology. Whatever you want to call them, it is getting ridiculous.
*"currencies" was their word
Nice.
What about people who cant play at all, are they getting anything.
Just kidding
I am just saying there is no difference between grinding 250 marks on the weekend for 5 days and grinding 5 Commendations on the weekend for 5 days.
This was not necessary, we are just confusing the new players with more stuff with complicated long names. (I am not a new player :P)
In all honestly they're not a currency. You're trying establish a label on them because they're a reward. The Commendation is a token to redeem the 2000 XP you earned by doing a daily because you're only supposed to get that once a day. Sticking 2000 XP into the mission proper could have glitched and allowed people to get multiples of that experience. It's not a currency is an itemized form of experience to get around logisitic issues that would have messed with planned experience gain.
The conversion of Marks to Commendations is supposed to be a reward for those who spend a significant amount of time in the Dyson's Sphere. I'm trying to remember what interview it was, but one of the devs, (CaptGeko, I believe) made the point that this is to reward those weekend warriors. It's basically this: "Hey, you spent an hour in the sphere today, good for you. Here, turn it into tokens so that you can get your rep up and going during the work week when you can't play for very long. " Those players get their Reps filled in the same amount of time as someone who's not as busy and are rewarded for it. They're just a wrapper for the Experience.
And for the record, I am not a new player either and I found no issue understanding this. New players learn as they play and by playing with others. It's our responsibility as players to help players get better. That's why we have these forums don't we? And zone chat or our fleets. If someone is confused they need to ask the question, not having people just jump up and say "New players won't understand this." The rep system as is, confuses players. This isn't that big of a change to make it unintelligible.
TRIBBLE Hydra! Hail Janeway!
The reason for getting rid of the old Marks was that they were completely meaningless after you outleveled them not due to there being too many "currencies". Why earn any Mark of Exploration II when by the time you earn enough to use them, all the gear you can purchase with them is outdated? So no, they didn't work in the same way as the current Marks do. The only Marks that were of any use were the Mark of Exploration X, Mark of Honor X, and Emblems. These old Marks were equivalent to Arcade Tokens not currencies.
I get that they are equivalent in other games but they were called currency when they were dumped by the makers of the game, so it is kind of a generalization that the community stuck with.
They work the way marks do now in the since that they bought gear from a closed store and the marks themselves were not tradeable and what not. Granted the gear was less useful but in concept they still worked the same way as the omega marks in their purchasing a KCB, with other added materials to make it a little extra umph. Its just that the KCB and the rep marks could buy better stuff, in fact the rep marks can buy obsolete items too.
Rep marks have added usefulness, but that would be expected a couple years later of any feature.
Beyond that, as a casual player I can see great advantages to this.
Also, will there be a nice package of items given to us upon reaching T5 like the other rep.?
Other than that, I love the new changes to the reputation. They need to be implemented on the other reputations stat.