The drawback of making kits an "a la carte" system is that it means that every power must be ensured to be balanced to be equally strong/useful as any other, otherwise, the min/maxing choice is obvious - pick the few stand-outs and ditch the rest.
If you keep kits as a mandatory mix of powers, you can have a stinker mixed with one of the great ones.
Of course, it might be that the state of "kit balance" is such that it doesn't really matter, because they are good kits and bad kits already. In that case, whatever and good luck.
---
Special Devices as universal kit powers - sounds okay to me, though a similar concern as above applies - are all special devices equally strong, and if not, will you rebalance them?
It might also be good to know what devices would be affected and what not.
Summon Horta Devices for example, should they work as kit power or do they stay devices? What about the frequency remodulator?
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Custom kits powers.... I think I will have lots of fun with those.
Though, that is providing my devices, stay as devices.
It's not as if we a laden down with choice for the device slots is it, 1 tribble buff at a time, so carry 1 tribble. Health boost and shield boost.... on looooong cool downs (not very useful). Plus a few mission items.... not exactly spoilt for choice and there is talk of taking some away
IMHO, there's the accompanying change which would add a lot:
Get rid of training BO ground skills and make their ground abilities kit items as well. Four kit item slots for a commander rank, five for a first officer. Introduce trait respecs for BOs as well.
I might also argue for doing the same with space abilities too as it could create considerably more interesting use of the new quick loadout system.
The drawback of making kits an "a la carte" system is that it means that every power must be ensured to be balanced to be equally strong/useful as any other, otherwise, the min/maxing choice is obvious - pick the few stand-outs and ditch the rest.
If you keep kits as a mandatory mix of powers, you can have a stinker mixed with one of the great ones.
Of course, it might be that the state of "kit balance" is such that it doesn't really matter, because they are good kits and bad kits already. In that case, whatever and good luck.
---
Special Devices as universal kit powers - sounds okay to me, though a similar concern as above applies - are all special devices equally strong, and if not, will you rebalance them?
It might also be good to know what devices would be affected and what not.
Summon Horta Devices for example, should they work as kit power or do they stay devices? What about the frequency remodulator?
Or you have set bonuses. Maybe even overlapping sets.
You maybe smoke grenade, tactical initiative, overwatch, and security escort grant a four piece set bonus but smoke grenade is also part of a four piece set bonus with draw fire, rally cry, and motion accelerator.
I would like for them to allow Sci, Tac, or Engies able to pick from all the career path abilities for the kits. But they can only choose ONE ability from a career that isn't your current career. As for items/consumables, leave them as such and not make them part of the kits.
I would like for them to allow Sci, Tac, or Engies able to pick from all the career path abilities for the kits. But they can only choose ONE ability from a career that isn't your current career. As for items/consumables, leave them as such and not make them part of the kits.
That's a really interesting idea.
Things like the Horta might be universal kit items...
But then you might also have the fifth hit power be a universal slot.
Though, really, I think classes and ground skills need to get re-examined anyway. I think it would be more interesting if, instead of having classes for Captains (and first officers), we had:
A dedicated ground skill point pool.
Science, Tactical, and Engineering skills available to all captains.
Fold down the skills into 5 tiers instead of 10.
You start with a universal kit slot. Each tier you max out in Sci/Tac/Eng opens up a kit slot of that type.
So that way, for example, a captain of any focus could take the Tac melee skills and open up one Tac kit power.
I would feel very upset if non-consumable devices became kit powers and took up slots.
Agree with all comments before on this subject.
Also, what about people who have VERY RECENTLY spent thousands of fleet creds and dilithium on kits from the spire and embassy?
If such a revamp was taking place, there needs to be some form of refund (turning back in kits to get dil/fleet creds returned) mechanism, otherwise this will be daylight robbery and I will have had enough of such behaviour from the devs.
This was a good idea until someone decided that somehow devices count as kit powers? Please, they're that little bit of fun in a backpack, not kit powers. Devices should stay separate, and if anything we need to give ground combat a boost to get more people, especially those who hate the limited scope of what's available on ground, back into the flow. Limiting what is available isn't going to do that.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
I would feel very upset if non-consumable devices became kit powers and took up slots.
Agree with all comments before on this subject.
Also, what about people who have VERY RECENTLY spent thousands of fleet creds and dilithium on kits from the spire and embassy?
If such a revamp was taking place, there needs to be some form of refund (turning back in kits to get dil/fleet creds returned) mechanism, otherwise this will be daylight robbery and I will have had enough of such behaviour from the devs.
How is it daylight robbery? All kits will be converted into their base components.
This was a good idea until someone decided that somehow devices count as kit powers? Please, they're that little bit of fun in a backpack, not kit powers. Devices should stay separate, and if anything we need to give ground combat a boost to get more people, especially those who hate the limited scope of what's available on ground, back into the flow. Limiting what is available isn't going to do that.
This has been a topic with Geko forever but, basically, he wants people using consumable items and doesn't want there to be any non-consumable devices.
This has been a topic with Geko forever but, basically, he wants people using consumable items and doesn't want there to be any non-consumable devices.
So it's a personal vendetta? That's kinda lame, is there an actual reason?
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
Why would you turn items that are currently devices into kit powers? all it leads is to people having to compromise on kit load-outs! We're going to have to have to choose between powers. They're still dictating what we can equip and what we cant! Its bad enough having items such as sub space modulator being limited to one per person instead of one per ship. I like the idea of the customizable kits and I know many in my fleet would agree, but Items that are currently classed as devices either leave them as that or give us an extra universal slot or two in the kits as well as the four power slots. And why do I get the feeling that it will end up like the active doffs, I.E. if you have a fabrication engineer active on space you cant have another on active ground. They're was a previous thread concerning kit powers started by Adjudicator Hawk before Christmas I think. So if they want feed back they should try reading the comments left there.
But for me I say if It's currently a device item then leave it a device item!
This has been a topic with Geko forever but, basically, he wants people using consumable items and doesn't want there to be any non-consumable devices.
So in order to make more kit powers used they turn them in to skills.... and then he wants to turn non-consumables in to further kit powers... making them LESS used, how on earth does that logic follow. Might be more tempted to use consumables if it wasnt for the fact that all share a cooldown anyway. I mean this is going to be daft, what about tribbles etc ? We going to have those changed too?
For the non consumable device slots as kit abilities to work, those abilities would have to be rebalanced with the Kit abilities we already have to make them worth taking. And they'd have to be upgradable.
i agree also,and in my opinion it will make players (like me) who do not do much ground mission,do even less mission on ground,just look at pvp,they put more dilithium reward for them and less for stf,did it make us play more pvp.....NO....this will happen also with ground mission.
i hope they will leave kit and device he way they are....
I was onboard until he said he wanted stuff like the SoP and Cane put on kits. If his goal is to make me use consumables more it will fail, I don't use them now and I wont use them after, I have no reason to. I also wonder if he wants to shove all my little fuzzy tribbles into a metal box and hook them somewhere on my person.:mad:
The new Priority One Podcast with CaptainGeko revealed that Season 9 will feature a new kit revamp. (Listen to Interview, jump to 25:10 for Kit Revamp)
Apparently, all kits will be broken up into individual abilities. It will then be possible to slot five kit abilities into the kit slot at level 50. However, they also plan to convert non-consumable devices, such as the Shard of Possibilities, Ophidian Cane, and the Frosted Boots into Universal kit powers. As a result, players would be forced to decide between existing class kit abilities and non-consumable devices. Geko did ask for feedback, thus I decided to start a thread on the subject.
For me personally, I'd prefer that all items currently classified as devices to remain as such. The kit revamp itself will be great, players will be able to choose between their various kit abilities. However, I think devices should remain in their current state, it adds an additional level of customization to characters. If they were converted to universal kit abilities, we would lose a level of customization and we'd be further limited on the number of usable non-consumable abilities.
^^^^YES to everything you said! The set-up with kits has always been a big pain for me as far as ground combat goes. No matter what kit I use or what class I was playing there was always at least one kit ability I didn't like but I was stuck with because of the pre-made kits! Now I can mix and match like I've always wanted!
But making non-consumable devices "universal" kits sucks as it puts us on the path to ground kit lock-boxes.
Well sucks to be you them since its abundant clear he doesnt even read the forums and of course I never seen Cryptic taking feedback in account unless is in support of their decisions.
^^^^Sad but very true. Cryptic does what ever they want doesn't care if the players like it or not. Unless it's the PvP'ers crying for something to get a nurf.
I think this could work very well with consumable revamp. I have some thoughts on consumables here and in other games and the psychology of opt-in vs. opt-out systems.
But the gist of what I'd go for would also involve making consumables a non-inventory item... and I think I could demonstrate how that would provide more benefit to both players and Cryptic even with the bag space it would free up. I'm debating whether I need to supply visuals for how I'd revamp consumables along with this.
There is nothing positive that can be said about such a hypothetical change. I stand by that statement. I am 100% opposed to converting ground devices into kit powers unless they allow kits with 9 powers in them, which you know they will not do. -edit- OR if they reduced the cooldowns on some of the 'device powers' so that you could trigger them more than once every 5 or 10 minutes. /edit
But fine, you want me to say something nice. In theory I like the idea of splitting all of the existing kit powers into individual things that can be combined as desired by the player; it'd be a good thing (and would be a good addition to a general crafting overhaul, hint hint Cryptic) and would allow players to have only the abilities that they actually want and none that they don't want.
However, one reason that kit powers are segregated right now is that certain combinations are guaranteed to be overpowered which means a ground powers nerf would likely be rolled out alongside this system. Cryptic has already had to deal with players hot swapping kits by making certain objects or effects unspawn when the kit is removed and a new one is slotted, this would essentially reverse that by allowing the kits to be combined.
"Hot swapping"? I've never been able to swap my ground kit while I was in combat, so please explain what your talking about?
I'm just afraid that the revamp will kill specialty builds. Can we get an extra slot for dedicated kits, like say Medical?
One reason why I have always HATED ground combat in STO is BECAUSE of the specialty builds. Everyone always expecting my Sci captain to run a medic kit to the point were I no longer run anything else. This would be a good thing as it would help me to add different abilities and still do some healing.
This has been a topic with Geko forever but, basically, he wants people using consumable items and doesn't want there to be any non-consumable devices.
People tend to hate consumables. Nobody wants a "one shot" they want something reliable, not a pointless resource sink, especially since STO is full of resource sinks. With Fleet Projects and Reputation projects (which, hey, use STO's crappy consumables) there are enough resource sinks.
I hate consumables. Especially in STO. I find it flat out insulting that there DOff assignments in Engineering to craft batteries and the like which require Dilithium, STO's real-money-exchange currency. Sorry folks, but a health kit isn't worth ONE Dilithium never mind TEN...
People tend to hate consumables. Nobody wants a "one shot" they want something reliable, not a pointless resource sink, especially since STO is full of resource sinks. With Fleet Projects and Reputation projects (which, hey, use STO's crappy consumables) there are enough resource sinks.
I hate consumables. Especially in STO. I find it flat out insulting that there DOff assignments in Engineering to craft batteries and the like which require Dilithium, STO's real-money-exchange currency. Sorry folks, but a health kit isn't worth ONE Dilithium never mind TEN...
See.... This is my thinking as well. Consumables are an "opt in". The natural state is not having any. There's a lot of research showing that even with incredibly favorable purchases or pension plans in real life, people don't like opt ins but they will tolerate or participate in opt outs.
This has been a topic with Geko forever but, basically, he wants people using consumable items and doesn't want there to be any non-consumable devices.
Make the BOFF AI smart enough to use consumables other than the hypo and people will absolutely use them.
But I give almost all my non consumable devices to my boffs and if they became kit items, ground combat would totally lose 99% of it's fun side. And seriously, a kit slot for a tribble buff?
Yes to swappable kit powers, but no to devices counting as kit powers unless we get 9 kit slots and all our boffs get kits too.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
This has been a topic with Geko forever but, basically, he wants people using consumable items and doesn't want there to be any non-consumable devices.
It would seem most of the game disagrees. I consider consumables a pain and little else. Really expensive ones rot in my bank unused forever. The only consumables I use are large hypos, large shield charges, and batteries in space - and the latter is almost always as an emergency subsystem restart.
I foresee this change, if it goes through, as adding little but frustration to ground-based combat. There are much better ways to do this.
I also see it as a major disadvantage in terms of fighting the Borg, if the frequency rotator ends up a "kit power." As-is it's a hassle and a pain to have to slot one in the devices slots with one of these things before you get an STF ground set - I don't even bother fighting Borg on ground until I do on most toons.
The only way I can see this working is if the "devices" are made much more effective, and in the case of the ground pets, much less buggy, and have a significantly reduced cooldown. And does NOT require captain powers to be slotted - I fear the day that comes.
If I were to design the system I'd put in kit harnesses or something like that. 4-5 profession-specific abilities, 1-2 "universal." Possibly have slight variations on it for different harnesses. Still have the devices slots, but you can stick an extra device in one of the universal slots. But that's just me.
Comments
If you keep kits as a mandatory mix of powers, you can have a stinker mixed with one of the great ones.
Of course, it might be that the state of "kit balance" is such that it doesn't really matter, because they are good kits and bad kits already. In that case, whatever and good luck.
---
Special Devices as universal kit powers - sounds okay to me, though a similar concern as above applies - are all special devices equally strong, and if not, will you rebalance them?
It might also be good to know what devices would be affected and what not.
Summon Horta Devices for example, should they work as kit power or do they stay devices? What about the frequency remodulator?
Keep calm, and continue firing photon torpedoes.
Though, that is providing my devices, stay as devices.
It's not as if we a laden down with choice for the device slots is it, 1 tribble buff at a time, so carry 1 tribble. Health boost and shield boost.... on looooong cool downs (not very useful). Plus a few mission items.... not exactly spoilt for choice and there is talk of taking some away
They're the only reason my device slots aren't empty, thank you very much. :mad:
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
IMHO, there's the accompanying change which would add a lot:
Get rid of training BO ground skills and make their ground abilities kit items as well. Four kit item slots for a commander rank, five for a first officer. Introduce trait respecs for BOs as well.
I might also argue for doing the same with space abilities too as it could create considerably more interesting use of the new quick loadout system.
Or you have set bonuses. Maybe even overlapping sets.
You maybe smoke grenade, tactical initiative, overwatch, and security escort grant a four piece set bonus but smoke grenade is also part of a four piece set bonus with draw fire, rally cry, and motion accelerator.
You can't get both set bonuses.-
That's a really interesting idea.
Things like the Horta might be universal kit items...
But then you might also have the fifth hit power be a universal slot.
Though, really, I think classes and ground skills need to get re-examined anyway. I think it would be more interesting if, instead of having classes for Captains (and first officers), we had:
A dedicated ground skill point pool.
Science, Tactical, and Engineering skills available to all captains.
Fold down the skills into 5 tiers instead of 10.
You start with a universal kit slot. Each tier you max out in Sci/Tac/Eng opens up a kit slot of that type.
So that way, for example, a captain of any focus could take the Tac melee skills and open up one Tac kit power.
Agree with all comments before on this subject.
Also, what about people who have VERY RECENTLY spent thousands of fleet creds and dilithium on kits from the spire and embassy?
If such a revamp was taking place, there needs to be some form of refund (turning back in kits to get dil/fleet creds returned) mechanism, otherwise this will be daylight robbery and I will have had enough of such behaviour from the devs.
...#LLAP...
How is it daylight robbery? All kits will be converted into their base components.
This has been a topic with Geko forever but, basically, he wants people using consumable items and doesn't want there to be any non-consumable devices.
I don't want my Shard taking up a kit slot.
I don't want my Cane taking up a kit slot.
Get the point, Geko?
So it's a personal vendetta? That's kinda lame, is there an actual reason?
But for me I say if It's currently a device item then leave it a device item!
So in order to make more kit powers used they turn them in to skills.... and then he wants to turn non-consumables in to further kit powers... making them LESS used, how on earth does that logic follow. Might be more tempted to use consumables if it wasnt for the fact that all share a cooldown anyway. I mean this is going to be daft, what about tribbles etc ? We going to have those changed too?
i hope they will leave kit and device he way they are....
Cy
^^^^YES to everything you said! The set-up with kits has always been a big pain for me as far as ground combat goes. No matter what kit I use or what class I was playing there was always at least one kit ability I didn't like but I was stuck with because of the pre-made kits! Now I can mix and match like I've always wanted!
But making non-consumable devices "universal" kits sucks as it puts us on the path to ground kit lock-boxes.
[/SIGPIC]
^^^^Sad but very true. Cryptic does what ever they want doesn't care if the players like it or not. Unless it's the PvP'ers crying for something to get a nurf.
[/SIGPIC]
But the gist of what I'd go for would also involve making consumables a non-inventory item... and I think I could demonstrate how that would provide more benefit to both players and Cryptic even with the bag space it would free up. I'm debating whether I need to supply visuals for how I'd revamp consumables along with this.
"Hot swapping"? I've never been able to swap my ground kit while I was in combat, so please explain what your talking about?
[/SIGPIC]
One reason why I have always HATED ground combat in STO is BECAUSE of the specialty builds. Everyone always expecting my Sci captain to run a medic kit to the point were I no longer run anything else. This would be a good thing as it would help me to add different abilities and still do some healing.
[/SIGPIC]
People tend to hate consumables. Nobody wants a "one shot" they want something reliable, not a pointless resource sink, especially since STO is full of resource sinks. With Fleet Projects and Reputation projects (which, hey, use STO's crappy consumables) there are enough resource sinks.
I hate consumables. Especially in STO. I find it flat out insulting that there DOff assignments in Engineering to craft batteries and the like which require Dilithium, STO's real-money-exchange currency. Sorry folks, but a health kit isn't worth ONE Dilithium never mind TEN...
See.... This is my thinking as well. Consumables are an "opt in". The natural state is not having any. There's a lot of research showing that even with incredibly favorable purchases or pension plans in real life, people don't like opt ins but they will tolerate or participate in opt outs.
Make the BOFF AI smart enough to use consumables other than the hypo and people will absolutely use them.
But I give almost all my non consumable devices to my boffs and if they became kit items, ground combat would totally lose 99% of it's fun side. And seriously, a kit slot for a tribble buff?
Yes to swappable kit powers, but no to devices counting as kit powers unless we get 9 kit slots and all our boffs get kits too.
Less choices, less customization.
It would seem most of the game disagrees. I consider consumables a pain and little else. Really expensive ones rot in my bank unused forever. The only consumables I use are large hypos, large shield charges, and batteries in space - and the latter is almost always as an emergency subsystem restart.
I foresee this change, if it goes through, as adding little but frustration to ground-based combat. There are much better ways to do this.
I also see it as a major disadvantage in terms of fighting the Borg, if the frequency rotator ends up a "kit power." As-is it's a hassle and a pain to have to slot one in the devices slots with one of these things before you get an STF ground set - I don't even bother fighting Borg on ground until I do on most toons.
The only way I can see this working is if the "devices" are made much more effective, and in the case of the ground pets, much less buggy, and have a significantly reduced cooldown. And does NOT require captain powers to be slotted - I fear the day that comes.
If I were to design the system I'd put in kit harnesses or something like that. 4-5 profession-specific abilities, 1-2 "universal." Possibly have slight variations on it for different harnesses. Still have the devices slots, but you can stick an extra device in one of the universal slots. But that's just me.
Exactly...
Lifetime Sub since June 2010