Season 9 is starting to look a lot more like smoke and mirrors at this point....
instead of introducing harder content or taking some content and giving it another (nightmare mode) will just take away from the general player base because people got frustrated at how easy things have become when they earn the gear they worked for.....
The one question I would like all of you to ask is, "If I were making this from the ground-up, with a blank slate, how would I make it?"
I'll answer that directly with a single word.
Integrated.
There are a ton of mechanisms in game which have imbalances in them.
That [REDACTED] Valdore console is a pretty obvious one.
PvP is another.
There are lots of areas of the game that could use a scorched earth approach.
Thing is, doing it incrementally is a terrible idea, at least on holodeck.
So, here's my suggestion.
Run this on tribble. Then, before exporting the one change over to holodeck, take the scorched earth route with whatever other mechanism you want to tinker with and so on.
And when you've got 5 or 6 changes working well as units AND playing nicely with other, export to holodeck.
Stop exporting single changes over to holodeck from tribble.
Instead, use tribble to see how they interact before sending them live.
Well, okay, I can see why something like this is necessary but I certainly don't have to like it.
Passives are what ultimately make characters feel powerful. This news feels like taking away those options.
If someone ranks up to T5 in four Reputations, they have 16 ground and 16 space passives to choose from. Indeed, this mechanic takes half of that away right off the bat.
What's the incentive to grind T5 in each Reputation?
I do have one suggestion to ease the pain.
Extend the "loadouts" functionality to Reputation Traits. That way, we can create our Reputation "sets" and instantly load them when we're out of combat.
Or, give us a "Trait" bar on the HUD and let us swap them out "Quick Equip" style.
Or both.
Because if you don't, most of us are going to tend to want to "Set and Forget" so we can just play the dang game instead of fiddling with bits. And we will certainly feel as if we have lost a lot in the translation.
We do NOT want the game bogging down because somebody has to stop after every encounter and flip passives around. We DON'T want to hold up starting a map while we select a new set of passives.
Give us that Quality of Life feature to go with this, and you will restore much of our feeling of being powerful and adaptable while preventing the proliferation of passive creep this change is aimed at.
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
I have run 11 toons all the way through the rep system and was worried about doing yet another. Now I won't every have to bother with the rep system again!!! YESSSSSSSSSSS!!
There is no reason for me to bother doing any more grinding or any more reps as you might come along after doing more hard work and just cut it in half.
You are not simplifying things by giving us 4 to choose from and then switch around as we now have even more things to worry about managing.
removing 8 powers that did different things and replacing them with 4 that do double of the original thing does not equal out as Hawk's 8 nickles vs 4 dimes analogy tries to make you believe.
But since you are suddenly so concerned with power creep lets go for the full monty:
Lets nerf the amount of similar doffs you can stack to only 1 doff of each type - so reduce the 3 purple tech doffs down to a max of 1 as an example.
Let's nerf the amount of the same traits you can stack down to only 1 - so no 3x Inspirational Leader
Let's be honest Hawk - those types of nerfs would level the gap between new lvl 50 players and long time players significantly more than this reps system nerf.
Oh wait - the rep system took lots of time to grind - but the other things can be pay to win!! Scratch those changes I suggested then.
But when you have invested time and effort and potentially money as some players do into the games reputation system to get something as advertised out of it to then have it taken away is theft.
I will not support that!
ok when did you have to spend real money to do the rep system ??? if you spent money to buy EC than that your fault as you can gain all rep with no real money expended .....now go sit down
This has nothing to do with PvP. It has everything to do with keeping the expected performance of players within targeted bounds, and keeping those targets reasonable for the difference between a max-geared/specced player and a min-geared/specced player.
PvP is very good at highlighting corner cases of systems where things work poorly. Almost universally, those cases are actually really bad PvE design too. In a game where the PvP and PvE rules are the same, if you see something really frustrating in PvP, it probably shouldn't be that way in PvE either. That doesn't mean we wouldn't change it if PvP weren't in the game - it just means it would be harder to find or identify the offending systems imbalance.
pvp is were everything in the system is pushed to the limit, were you can find everything's breaking point, were things prove themselves OP or UP.
this is a great change, power creep was out of control, and yes the difference between a fulled reped out character and a fresh 50 was way to large. im glad they are as concerned with the runaway power creep as i am, this is a much more scalable wile fair system
Reputations are all about "fighting the thing". That is to say, Omega rep is about fighting the Borg. Dyson rep is about fighting the Voth. Any new rep will be about fighting the critters that spawn int he content that give you marks for that rep.
This is a valid point, but actually.... not a lot of their powers are really faction specific. IF the bonuses were like " 30% damage against borg", I would agree. But most of the rep powers are universally useful.
Absolutely agree, and we all wish we'd had this system in place when we launched the Nukara rep. We didn't, but we can't let past oversight stand as the only reason not to make a change that actually improves how the game works as a game.
This is still a bad thing to do. It shatters the trust between the game's provider and the game's player.
This will never happen. More Reputation Slots could be given out via a game mechanic at some point, so I guess you could argue there could be a time cost or an effort cost to get another slot. But we are not charging people for Reputation Trait slots - please don't propagate fearmongering nonsense.
All right. Making reputation powers add more slots as a mechanic could make new reputations somewhat appealing.
Sure, if all the powers you want come from two reps, then you shouldn't feel compelled to do the others! Our goal as designers is to make them all desirable under different conditions, so that everyone wants to collect them all eventually. But realistically, yes, you may feel less compelled to do some content with these limited choices.
This will make the grind less, and make future reputations not appealing. Of course, making future rep powers very powerful would counter this....but that would add more powercreep in place of the old one.
I'm sorry you feel these changes are taking something from you. I assure you, this is not our intent. I completely understand why many of you are feeling that way, and I empathize with that feeling as a player. The one question I would like all of you to ask is, "If I were making this from the ground-up, with a blank slate, how would I make it?" Taking a step back from the emotional charge that comes from change, uncertainty, and different-ness, what would the best, most systemic, most fair, most consistent set of rules be for an alternate progression system that rewards participation in content?
We think this new system is the answer to that question. As I've mentioned repeatedly, though, all of this is subject to feedback on Tribble, and in any case where our stated goals are not being met, we will work swiftly to make this new system meet those goals.
Honestly, I think I could min max my main character to be even more powerful under the new system.
Its not really a balance problem. Its the problem of taking away something we already earned and used.
Now....if the problem is that new players cant get their powers up quick enough, than why not nerf the powers slightly, and make the reputation earning faster?
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
Ok so by your math, which i dont agree with btw, in 10 years we'll have 100. If this game makes it.
by not being able to use all of my passives that I currently can use, I will have lost half of what I grinded for. that math is op plz dont nerf tho ok ok
But you can still use ALL the passives you have grinded for.... just not all at once.
Your logic is fail. You have lost nothing at all.
The game has simply changed and we can now only trait 4 at a time. They are not going to take any of them away from you... simply limit the number you can have active.
They are also buffing almost all of them... you are also going to be able to slot multiple tier 4 from the same rep.... in many ways this is a major buff. Depending on how your ship is setup.
You are reacting instead of assimilating what they are saying. This isn't a nerf its a change.
They are also clearly stating they have many more reps coming... and for that to make sense there has to be a limit. We KNOW rep 5 is coming shortly. You can be assured more will be coming after. Will we make it to 10 in 12 months... perhaps now that they won't be worried about creep we will.... or perhaps we will only have 6 or 7 in 12 months... still same issue... with 6 reps (assuming they only add one more in the next 12 months). That is still 12 passives in total. Surely you can see how that would cause major issues in terms of balancing content to be playable for new players at all while still not being mind numbing boring for players with that level of power creep on there side.
Technically, the majority of the active powers are for space.
Isn't it 50/50 right now? For space there's the Tholian refraction and Romulan Cloak. For ground there's the Borg Nanites and isn't there a Voth damage resistance thing?
I'm sorry you feel these changes are taking something from you. I assure you, this is not our intent.
I do not feel you are taking something from me, you objectively are taking something from me. Whether or not it is your intent to do so is irrelevant; you are still doing so.
You see.... While I have been against some of the recent changes, I am now seeing this one as a positive. I am dreading the grind towards Nukara T4/T5 and Romulus T4/T5. I can now regulate how I play. If the passives in a rep system are inferior to the ones I have, I can now ditch an entire system without worry.
That was forseeable.
For everyone but Cryptic it seems.
No doubt. lol
At least they are doing something to fix the issue now though.
To defend them a little bit though... these types of mechanic limit changes have happened in pretty much every MMO that has been live for over 2 years.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! This change is epic.
Anti powercreep, more diversity...lovely idea and I don't think anyone thought of it!
Will the traits be saveable in loadouts?
They should be saveable in loadouts. I'm not sure if the first pass will contain this feature, since loadouts are programmer-driven and I'm not a programmer, but long term they should work together.
Jeff "Adjudicator Hawk" Hamilton
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
I'm of two minds about this. There is a capacity for variety here.
In theory, two people who have completed all four current reps can now have completely different Rep passive builds. This on its face is quite interesting. Different rep builds could either completely unbalance an all other things being equal match drastically in favor of one player, or they could completely nullify the advantages. If I understand the thinking, it's like in games where you have a specific number of modifications that you could use on a gun or a sword. Like materia slots. Now no one would be allowed to equip every mod on a single weapon making a world ender gun, so you have limits.
The issue of course is that these are not modifications for our weapons as we know them, they are basically supposed to be skills that our Captain and crews learn from fighting these enemies. They are experience based. These are supposed to be things that our crews learn how to do. Now they are being treated like modifications to our ship that has limited space. Where is that computer core component we were asking about a while back? These are algorithms that would go there.
On the other hand this presents a huge challenge to the Devs. First for every single rep they introduce from here on out, they have to come out with passives that are truly spectacular so that they can unseat one or two of the established rep passives from someone's build. Which in it's own way is its own kind of power creep. And as for the veteran vs rookie theory, if the new rep powers are that spectacular then the rookies would grab them first and not be at such a disadvantage...which kind of defeats the purpose of being a veteran. Though it would certainly help with alts.
There are some great things here, the adjustment to the Omega Rotating Weapon Frequency is much needed since it was introduced.
Here is a question that I have, I didn't even skim the 29 pages before so I don't know if this has been asked and answered...but will these Rep Traits be stored in the loadout builds? And are you guys gonna do something similar for ground, so we won't have to manually swap out the rep traits when swapping between fighting the Tholians and the Borg.
Lastly I noticed the plus damage rep traits. And they are pretty much the way they've always been, just applied differently. But could we get some bonus acc mods? I have a 2 accuracy phaser that misses a whole cycle in my FAW3 sometimes....that is unsat.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
if we had 200 Reputation powers, the difference between a fresh max-level character and one whod spent hundreds of hours at endgame would just be too large for them to play together.
So your saying that a buckfaced raw captain should be able to go head to head with a committed player who spends hours in game...
I would love to have seen the mess caused by a just promoted captain Joe Bloggs going head to head with either Janeway or Picard......
One of the most fundemental things with military is those with experience and hard work survive and those that dont fall by the wayside.....
It would be better to introduce a ranking system that puts players of the same or similar levels of skill together and if there are not enough players of the same ilk then do a temporary passives decrease like you do when entering borg alerts in sector space.
Looks like your going down the same road as Star wars Galaxies, but hey what do I know I am just a source of revenue.........
How about adding reputation set bonuses, slotting two or more powers from each tier (Omega Tier 1 & 2, Nukara Tier 1 & 2 for example) of a particular reputation will grant you an increase to stat effectiveness from each of the slotted passive powers.
But you can still use ALL the passives you have grinded for.... just not all at once.
Your logic is fail. You have lost nothing at all.
The game has simply changed and we can now only trait 4 at a time. They are not going to take any of them away from you... simply limit the number you can have active.
They are also buffing almost all of them... you are also going to be able to slot multiple tier 4 from the same rep.... in many ways this is a major buff. Depending on how your ship is setup.
You are reacting instead of assimilating what they are saying. This isn't a nerf its a change.
They are also clearly stating they have many more reps coming... and for that to make sense there has to be a limit. We KNOW rep 5 is coming shortly. You can be assured more will be coming after. Will we make it to 10 in 12 months... perhaps now that they won't be worried about creep we will.... or perhaps we will only have 6 or 7 in 12 months... still same issue... with 6 reps (assuming they only add one more in the next 12 months). That is still 12 passives in total. Surely you can see how that would cause major issues in terms of balancing content to be playable for new players at all while still not being mind numbing boring for players with that level of power creep on there side.
I can use them all right now at the same time.
When this goes live I WILL not be able to do so.
If you can't realize that 8>4, well then there isn't much I can do to make you realize that.
It was poor planning and a lack of vision to do this as it is, if it was like this from the start it would be a non issue.
But when I have grinded for ****, then that **** gets taken away, it is a nerf. Plain and simple.
I don't give a damn about pvp, only pve, sothere will be set passives that will be worth using, and ones that are not when you have to make a decision. So it will be just like I said, you will not be using the ones that aren't worth using.
Comments
That was forseeable.
For everyone but Cryptic it seems.
instead of introducing harder content or taking some content and giving it another (nightmare mode) will just take away from the general player base because people got frustrated at how easy things have become when they earn the gear they worked for.....
/boggle
Why bother to work towards passives and actives in which you will never need?
Just pick and choose.
I'll answer that directly with a single word.
Integrated.
There are a ton of mechanisms in game which have imbalances in them.
That [REDACTED] Valdore console is a pretty obvious one.
PvP is another.
There are lots of areas of the game that could use a scorched earth approach.
Thing is, doing it incrementally is a terrible idea, at least on holodeck.
So, here's my suggestion.
Run this on tribble. Then, before exporting the one change over to holodeck, take the scorched earth route with whatever other mechanism you want to tinker with and so on.
And when you've got 5 or 6 changes working well as units AND playing nicely with other, export to holodeck.
Stop exporting single changes over to holodeck from tribble.
Instead, use tribble to see how they interact before sending them live.
Passives are what ultimately make characters feel powerful. This news feels like taking away those options.
If someone ranks up to T5 in four Reputations, they have 16 ground and 16 space passives to choose from. Indeed, this mechanic takes half of that away right off the bat.
What's the incentive to grind T5 in each Reputation?
I do have one suggestion to ease the pain.
Extend the "loadouts" functionality to Reputation Traits. That way, we can create our Reputation "sets" and instantly load them when we're out of combat.
Or, give us a "Trait" bar on the HUD and let us swap them out "Quick Equip" style.
Or both.
Because if you don't, most of us are going to tend to want to "Set and Forget" so we can just play the dang game instead of fiddling with bits. And we will certainly feel as if we have lost a lot in the translation.
We do NOT want the game bogging down because somebody has to stop after every encounter and flip passives around. We DON'T want to hold up starting a map while we select a new set of passives.
Give us that Quality of Life feature to go with this, and you will restore much of our feeling of being powerful and adaptable while preventing the proliferation of passive creep this change is aimed at.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
I have run 11 toons all the way through the rep system and was worried about doing yet another. Now I won't every have to bother with the rep system again!!! YESSSSSSSSSSS!!
There is no reason for me to bother doing any more grinding or any more reps as you might come along after doing more hard work and just cut it in half.
You are not simplifying things by giving us 4 to choose from and then switch around as we now have even more things to worry about managing.
removing 8 powers that did different things and replacing them with 4 that do double of the original thing does not equal out as Hawk's 8 nickles vs 4 dimes analogy tries to make you believe.
But since you are suddenly so concerned with power creep lets go for the full monty:
Lets nerf the amount of similar doffs you can stack to only 1 doff of each type - so reduce the 3 purple tech doffs down to a max of 1 as an example.
Let's nerf the amount of the same traits you can stack down to only 1 - so no 3x Inspirational Leader
Let's be honest Hawk - those types of nerfs would level the gap between new lvl 50 players and long time players significantly more than this reps system nerf.
Oh wait - the rep system took lots of time to grind - but the other things can be pay to win!! Scratch those changes I suggested then.
ok when did you have to spend real money to do the rep system ??? if you spent money to buy EC than that your fault as you can gain all rep with no real money expended .....now go sit down
pvp is were everything in the system is pushed to the limit, were you can find everything's breaking point, were things prove themselves OP or UP.
this is a great change, power creep was out of control, and yes the difference between a fulled reped out character and a fresh 50 was way to large. im glad they are as concerned with the runaway power creep as i am, this is a much more scalable wile fair system
This is a valid point, but actually.... not a lot of their powers are really faction specific. IF the bonuses were like " 30% damage against borg", I would agree. But most of the rep powers are universally useful.
This is still a bad thing to do. It shatters the trust between the game's provider and the game's player.
All right. Making reputation powers add more slots as a mechanic could make new reputations somewhat appealing.
This will make the grind less, and make future reputations not appealing. Of course, making future rep powers very powerful would counter this....but that would add more powercreep in place of the old one.
Honestly, I think I could min max my main character to be even more powerful under the new system.
Its not really a balance problem. Its the problem of taking away something we already earned and used.
Now....if the problem is that new players cant get their powers up quick enough, than why not nerf the powers slightly, and make the reputation earning faster?
Want some Brie or some Gouda with that Whine?
Defending The Galaxy By Breaking One Starfleet Regulation After The Next.
But you can still use ALL the passives you have grinded for.... just not all at once.
Your logic is fail. You have lost nothing at all.
The game has simply changed and we can now only trait 4 at a time. They are not going to take any of them away from you... simply limit the number you can have active.
They are also buffing almost all of them... you are also going to be able to slot multiple tier 4 from the same rep.... in many ways this is a major buff. Depending on how your ship is setup.
You are reacting instead of assimilating what they are saying. This isn't a nerf its a change.
They are also clearly stating they have many more reps coming... and for that to make sense there has to be a limit. We KNOW rep 5 is coming shortly. You can be assured more will be coming after. Will we make it to 10 in 12 months... perhaps now that they won't be worried about creep we will.... or perhaps we will only have 6 or 7 in 12 months... still same issue... with 6 reps (assuming they only add one more in the next 12 months). That is still 12 passives in total. Surely you can see how that would cause major issues in terms of balancing content to be playable for new players at all while still not being mind numbing boring for players with that level of power creep on there side.
Isn't it 50/50 right now? For space there's the Tholian refraction and Romulan Cloak. For ground there's the Borg Nanites and isn't there a Voth damage resistance thing?
I do not feel you are taking something from me, you objectively are taking something from me. Whether or not it is your intent to do so is irrelevant; you are still doing so.
LESS REP PASSIVE NERFS.
plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Why worry about grinding stuff I do not need?
No problems now.
No doubt. lol
At least they are doing something to fix the issue now though.
To defend them a little bit though... these types of mechanic limit changes have happened in pretty much every MMO that has been live for over 2 years.
They should be saveable in loadouts. I'm not sure if the first pass will contain this feature, since loadouts are programmer-driven and I'm not a programmer, but long term they should work together.
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
https://youtube.com/channel/UCJZ5FBJ9bFaZ6yAFiNpZiRQ/featured?view_as=subscriber
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CaptainCidStorm
In theory, two people who have completed all four current reps can now have completely different Rep passive builds. This on its face is quite interesting. Different rep builds could either completely unbalance an all other things being equal match drastically in favor of one player, or they could completely nullify the advantages. If I understand the thinking, it's like in games where you have a specific number of modifications that you could use on a gun or a sword. Like materia slots. Now no one would be allowed to equip every mod on a single weapon making a world ender gun, so you have limits.
The issue of course is that these are not modifications for our weapons as we know them, they are basically supposed to be skills that our Captain and crews learn from fighting these enemies. They are experience based. These are supposed to be things that our crews learn how to do. Now they are being treated like modifications to our ship that has limited space. Where is that computer core component we were asking about a while back? These are algorithms that would go there.
On the other hand this presents a huge challenge to the Devs. First for every single rep they introduce from here on out, they have to come out with passives that are truly spectacular so that they can unseat one or two of the established rep passives from someone's build. Which in it's own way is its own kind of power creep. And as for the veteran vs rookie theory, if the new rep powers are that spectacular then the rookies would grab them first and not be at such a disadvantage...which kind of defeats the purpose of being a veteran. Though it would certainly help with alts.
There are some great things here, the adjustment to the Omega Rotating Weapon Frequency is much needed since it was introduced.
Here is a question that I have, I didn't even skim the 29 pages before so I don't know if this has been asked and answered...but will these Rep Traits be stored in the loadout builds? And are you guys gonna do something similar for ground, so we won't have to manually swap out the rep traits when swapping between fighting the Tholians and the Borg.
Lastly I noticed the plus damage rep traits. And they are pretty much the way they've always been, just applied differently. But could we get some bonus acc mods? I have a 2 accuracy phaser that misses a whole cycle in my FAW3 sometimes....that is unsat.
So your saying that a buckfaced raw captain should be able to go head to head with a committed player who spends hours in game...
I would love to have seen the mess caused by a just promoted captain Joe Bloggs going head to head with either Janeway or Picard......
One of the most fundemental things with military is those with experience and hard work survive and those that dont fall by the wayside.....
It would be better to introduce a ranking system that puts players of the same or similar levels of skill together and if there are not enough players of the same ilk then do a temporary passives decrease like you do when entering borg alerts in sector space.
Looks like your going down the same road as Star wars Galaxies, but hey what do I know I am just a source of revenue.........
They said you'll be able to swap them out for free at any time. You just have to be out of combat.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
I can use them all right now at the same time.
When this goes live I WILL not be able to do so.
If you can't realize that 8>4, well then there isn't much I can do to make you realize that.
It was poor planning and a lack of vision to do this as it is, if it was like this from the start it would be a non issue.
But when I have grinded for ****, then that **** gets taken away, it is a nerf. Plain and simple.
I don't give a damn about pvp, only pve, sothere will be set passives that will be worth using, and ones that are not when you have to make a decision. So it will be just like I said, you will not be using the ones that aren't worth using.
I'll still be playing though but will save time, money and aggravation. Thanks D'Angelo.
Officially Nerfed In Early 2410
The point is that they knew the system would be over crowded and necessitate change, but sold you tokens that would for sure be useless in no time.
https://youtube.com/channel/UCJZ5FBJ9bFaZ6yAFiNpZiRQ/featured?view_as=subscriber
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CaptainCidStorm
Barring any local catastrophes, you should be able to test this on Thursday on Tribble.
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
That bit right there is pure gold.