I'm predicting that everyone will simply use the t3 ground/t4 space powers and that in a couple of months we will see another blog announcing another reputation trait revamp simply because nobody uses the lower level ones. And nothing will change. The long time players will still have those hight tier powers (that are being buffed) and new players will have nothing. How is that solving the power creep problem exactly?
The only real issue is that Cryptic didn't put this system in place from day one... still they can't move forward with out fixing the past oversight.
Well, that and the fact that by itself it will have no impact on the stated aim.
This is simply not the biggest problem for power creep. Not the biggest by a country mile.
If power creep is the issue why start here?
Why not take away stacking doffs? Or nerf the Valdore console? Or have a balance pass on BoPs against warbirds? Or one of a myriad of other things that contribute far more to power creep.
As has been rightly said, this is taking away something from players that we ground for in good faith.
Fair enough, such things happen in MMOs from time to time.
What makes it work is if the objective is A) clear recognised as worthwhile and C) seen as proportional.
Well, the stated objective may be clear, but its also incredibly clear that these changes will make it worse.
Those mutually exclusive pairs of passives were designed as mutually exclusive.
Powering them up, as intended, is actually going to create some wicked min/max builds that are far from what was originally envisaged.
Worthwhile? Its certainly a worthwhile aim to tackle power creep. I wonder when you're planning to start.
Proportional? With the rise of the grind recently, I actually take offence at having stuff I've ground for being taken away on such an ill thought through pretext.
Tackle power creep properly. Which means first looking at some of the stuff people pay zen for.
Do that and you can start dealing with things like this.
Rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic is not a useful activity.
My concern will be that they put those extra slots in a fleet holding.
Then it wont be new Va versus old VA, but big fleet versus little fleet.
I am truly sorry, but the ramifications of this proposed change seem not to have been thought through very well......because, by itself, it will do absolutely nothing to address the stated problem.
What it DOES do is allow some lazy design in the next few months.
Rep systems churning out endless DPS passives.
The change allows that while nodding towards controlling power creep.
Perhaps Hawk had what he knows about the new rep in mind when he made his new Va versus vet Va comparison earlier.
Maybe that rep is REALLY op.
makes sense but a wall isnt impassible, someone will get smart and create a hole with a pickaxe one day much to the horror of hawk, who needs dps when you can out think an enemy. need less instant gratification.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I still don't see the reason here. Are you talking about PvE differences between those two or PvP?
He means PVE. That's where the parses come from.
From the PvE standpoint it literally makes no difference if veteran player who dedicated so much energy and time to equip, optimize his character and equipment if he blows up NPCs in 10s or in 20s. The NPC doesn't matter this, only the player who feels powerful, because he has got to this point.
There's an aggressive wave of PVErs who perpetuate an ongoing stereo ... oh come on, you know what it's about! If you're not leet, you noob, you need to go get better gear! L2P! And all that nonsense! You can't tell me you've completely missed any and all elite player vs. noob player friction in the MMO internet universe?
I actually wonder that the next big thing will be that they take away just to justify the introduction of even more powerful ships that they can sell for Zen or $
It's just not infinitely scalable. As I pointed out in the blog, if we had 100 reps in the current live setup, the difference in performance between a fresh 50 and a "complete" 50 would be so immense they wouldn't fit in the same proverbial room.
At what point in your planning did someone go - 'whoops, let's limit this BEFORE we start, in case we do more';
or were you
"doesn't matter - if it works, we'll scale it back. If it doesn't, no harm no foul.."
I'm overly in favour of this - and hopefully other - future scaling back of abilities, traits and passives so that people can design a true toon. Even though THIS is going to be free, you should really consider dropping the price of the RESPEC.
...and, that is why people were angry in that thread. People do not want to grind through five tiers, so they can complete a space or ground set. Players will just walk away. It will take too long. It will be filled with boring and repetitive tasks. You will lose players in the long run.
I hate how the reward sets were spread through five tiers.
Dyson has a horrible reward system.
Omega works because you can complete a set in each tier. Once you prolong the set building, the timegates and resource requirements will scare new players away. ...and, that is why the population declined after people completed Dyson. People saw the future and screamed.
The one constant in MMOs -- PvP whiners always get the nerfbat swung at the main PvE game.
Man, I hate PvPers. :mad:
Is why even if PvP was worth it in this game I never use builds that are on my cruel and unusual arsenal just because of whiners and brown nosers who would ruin the PvE aspect just because they got all the bones broken heh.
Just so I'm clear here...we bust our butts grinding out the reputation system abilities because we're told "hey, you'll get this great gear and awesome abilities!" only then a year later you come back and say "too much awesome-sauce, we're taking it back!"
That is what it sounds like to me. I have been a supporter of Cryptic from the beginning through beta, through the change to free to play, to the grind that has come about with Perfect World. I have the life subscription but I think I am at the stage where they can pretty much count on me not buying another thing from them.
See unlike other MMO developers who constantly fiddle with the game dynamics (e.g. Blizzard), Cryptic really hasn't had a ton of content. I can tell you that type of constant changing the rules without providing other things will drive people away (e.g. Star Wars Galaxies with Sony, Matrix Online with Sony, etc...)
I see you keep using this word. You should stop using it because it doesn't mean what you think it means.
I know exactly what it means thank you.
"furnish with grounds for laying claim"
Therefore by saying someone "FEELS they are entitled" to something you are saying they feel they are OWED a claim to something.
In this case there are people that feel they are OWED an advantage in a game because they spent more time playing it then others.
This would be like a Grand master Chess player feeling like they should be able to move twice .. as they have played the game longer.
A Vet player isn't OWED anything in a video game. Really the experience you gain by playing makes you a better player... Which is why a vertern chess player is almost always much better then a new player.
They don't feel they are "entitled" to a different rule set based on there skill level.
The basic fallacy here is that getting a toon to level 50 is any sort of accomplishment.
You can get a new toon to level 50 in 2 or 3 days.
It takes at least 30 days or so to max a rep system, so say 120 days for 4 systems.
Why shouldn't a well designed, fully repped toon should therefore be ~40x as powerful as a new 50. Decrease that payoff, and you decrease motivation to grind. The coins analogy fails because a tac can now have one or two defensive choices, that goes to zero immediately in the new scheme.
If you want to control the scaling, that's fine. But start with the number of passives/actives we currently have. Force the choices to start in the next season.
Also, as someone who routinely plays ground, the idea of spending half my passives on ground is sickening. What percentage of toons have any ground traits at all? It can't be high. And there's a reason for that. The vast majority of your player base doesn't like your ground system. Maybe 5% of the STF channel calls are for ground and way less than one percent of the OPVP channel calls is for ground.
I'm surprisingly ok with this, anything to make it easier for them to balance is a plus in my book. Because lets be frank they don't have the funds or resources to pump out PvE content as fast as lets say blizzard. In the end as much as people who mostly pve, including me though i do pvp regularly.
Pvp allows for a end game that the only resources involved is making a balanced game, with plenty of good arena modes and other types of battling. Essentially its a low resource end game.
I see why its 4 traits, at the next expansion level cap increase we will have 5 and so on. 1 for each 10 levels. if they do some pve content + level scaling lower level characters should be able to do most end game rep grinding, starting at level 10. Though I would suggest keeping elite level content out until 50.
In this case there are people that feel they are OWED an advantage in a game because they spent more time playing it then others.
This would be like a Grand master Chess player feeling like they should be able to move twice .. as they have played the game longer.
A Vet player isn't OWED anything in a video game. Really the experience you gain by playing makes you a better player... Which is why a vertern chess player is almost always much better then a new player.
They don't feel they are "entitled" to a different rule set based on there skill level.
You either have a) never played an MMO before, or b) never put enough time and effort into one to earn the perks of being a veteran.
Well, that and the fact that by itself it will have no impact on the stated aim.
This is simply not the biggest problem for power creep. Not the biggest by a country mile.
If power creep is the issue why start here?
I don't disagree there are a bunch of other things that are going to REQUIRE a nerf bat if this game is going to survive.
I am not going to complain about this one though... it IS needed. The fact that they are adding another rep right away makes this 100% the time to do it. Before people are whining about loosing yet another rep when they finally do fix it.
I can tell you one good reason to start here... I have had many old game friends pop in to check things out here and there. People that played a lot then left for 6 months a year what ever. They come back and look at the rep system for a few days and then leave.
This change will make that less likely ... in that regard I am happy... at this point some players that return for a bit will already have 2-3 reps done... and be able to jump in right away while they unlock the newer stuff... that is Very very good.
I actually liked that about the Dyson rep. I usually just wait until I hit tier 5 to get Mk XII equipment and skip the lower marks. Not worth it to grind out the marks or the costs of dilithium and energy credits for commodities and such if you're just going to replace it later with better stuff.
Sure some players are griping about the lower mark stuff being removed, but it's probably being removed because most of us do just that: wait until tier 5 to get the Mk XII stuff. If more people obtained the lower mark stuff than people who waited, they probably would have left it in and included it in the Dyson rep.
Not RNG boxes that give me weapons and I serious doubt I am going to get a MACO MK XII Deflector on a T0 RNG Reward box, likely I get a Rare MK XII Antiproton weapon since ...
and contained goodies that could only be found within that reputations Dilithium stores
I know what you mean I pretty much found it annoying because it was always worthless junk it gave me. I was kind of hoping they were out of the grind this up, okay, now pick like 20% of what you grinded to keep... Okay go grind this but oh wait you can't have the new stuff unless you drop some of the old now. Whoever the brain child was that thought this would be well recieved needs to be tested. lol
I'm surprisingly ok with this, anything to make it easier for them to balance is a plus in my book. Because lets be frank they don't have the funds or resources to pump out PvE content as fast as lets say blizzard. In the end as much as people who mostly pve.
Pvp allows for a end game that the only resources involved is making a balanced game, with plenty of good arena modes and other types of battling. Essentially its a low resource end game.
MMO history is rife with examples of no matter what you do to change the mechanics to suit it, people who don't PvP don't PvP, and nothing is going to change that.
So catering the game to the minority of players who PvP by nerfing PvE just drives people away, not makes them suddenly go "hey now I wanna PvP!"
all I'm thinking of is when they bring out more reps with more powers and we have to pay to repec to use them
Dev blog says we will be able to respec our reputation traits free of charge any time we want as long as we're not in combat. I don't think they will charge for it later unless they had a really really good reason for it due to a major change in how things work.
Not RNG boxes that give me weapons and I serious doubt I am going to get a MACO MK XII Deflector on a T0 RNG Reward box, likely I get a Rare MK XII Antiproton weapon since ...
and contained goodies that could only be found within that reputations Dilithium stores
Try reading that bit about Equipment Projects again. For comprehension, this time.
As mentioned in earlier posts, the best compromise is to let the players keep what they have,and start the skill changes with the new Rep,or to keep all Rep skills in PvE and then have to chose the skills for PvP.
That being said,I still feel this is a slap in the face to the players that worked to get what they have. If this was done to appease newer players, then they should just pay their dues and grind like the rest of us did. If not and this just to make a new lvl 50 player closer to equal to a senior lvl 50 player,then why have rep at all just take it out and refund all the players their Exp and EC.
Either way this seems to be an answer to a question that was never asked,and in finding this answer, it unduly seems to hurt the senior players. :mad:
Therefore by saying someone "FEELS they are entitled" to something you are saying they feel they are OWED a claim to something.
In this case there are people that feel they are OWED an advantage in a game because they spent more time playing it then others.
This would be like a Grand master Chess player feeling like they should be able to move twice .. as they have played the game longer.
A Vet player isn't OWED anything in a video game. Really the experience you gain by playing makes you a better player... Which is why a vertern chess player is almost always much better then a new player.
They don't feel they are "entitled" to a different rule set based on there skill level.
People aren't OWED an advantage. If they have spent their time, sponsorships or not, grinding through the reputation system, then they have EARNED it.
Your examples are poor mate, as you seem to be arguing the wrong point. Nobody was asking for a different rule set. Taking away anyone's ability to use skills they have spent time EARNING (key word there) to level the playing field for new players, is the absolute wrong way to go about solving the problem.
If you were to consider each Tier of a rep a level, then right now a max level character would be level 70. If a newer player has now just reached 50, why is it fair, or rather, how is it solving a problem if you take the level 70 character, down to 54, to make it fair for the new guy?
If he wants to have all those rep powers and be able to compete with the max rep people, well, he can go out an earn it like the rest of us have.
A new player coming into the fold and expecting to compete against a guy who is max level, max rep, and has top end gear, then the new player is the one who is acting entitled.
You either have a) never played an MMO before, or b) never put enough time and effort into one to earn the perks of being a veteran.
STO... 16 toons all max rep max gear
Rift... 6 toons all max.
Tor... 1 year of beta where I fully leveled over 30 toons that where all deleted. 8 Toons on that game now though almost all maxed out.
GW2.. one of every class, 1 in full Celestrial junk... the rest all in full exotic gear.
LOTRO... haven't played in a good year or so... but at one time again one of every class all pretty darn close to maxed out on everything.
EVE... got to eve late. I played for 3 or 4 months and just could never feel like I was ever going to get to a point where I was caught up to some of the people I know from other games... so I left.
I have played for 1000s of hours... I do nothing else all day... which is sad but true. However none of this stuff is real my friend. lol The main thing is I am having a good time playing... and believe it or not I play MMOs because I like playing with other people.... and games that don't limit the gap between new and old players end up Dying off.
Every MMO suffers from the same issue though... Long time players that feel they are owed an advantage over new players. In pretty much every game the P and Moen about every little change like this one... calling them Nerfs and pressuring the devs into not improving there games. Sadly the devs that cave end up with junk games that die off. In order for these games to stay relevant and attractive growing healthy games they need to adjust as they go. People throw words like Nerf around easily and with no regard. Truth is in my view Nerfs are good things. I don't care I'm a power gamer I'll adjust and still be 20% better then everyone else. lol
Comments
Well, that and the fact that by itself it will have no impact on the stated aim.
This is simply not the biggest problem for power creep. Not the biggest by a country mile.
If power creep is the issue why start here?
Why not take away stacking doffs? Or nerf the Valdore console? Or have a balance pass on BoPs against warbirds? Or one of a myriad of other things that contribute far more to power creep.
As has been rightly said, this is taking away something from players that we ground for in good faith.
Fair enough, such things happen in MMOs from time to time.
What makes it work is if the objective is A) clear
Well, the stated objective may be clear, but its also incredibly clear that these changes will make it worse.
Those mutually exclusive pairs of passives were designed as mutually exclusive.
Powering them up, as intended, is actually going to create some wicked min/max builds that are far from what was originally envisaged.
Worthwhile? Its certainly a worthwhile aim to tackle power creep. I wonder when you're planning to start.
Proportional? With the rise of the grind recently, I actually take offence at having stuff I've ground for being taken away on such an ill thought through pretext.
Tackle power creep properly. Which means first looking at some of the stuff people pay zen for.
Do that and you can start dealing with things like this.
Rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic is not a useful activity.
makes sense but a wall isnt impassible, someone will get smart and create a hole with a pickaxe one day much to the horror of hawk, who needs dps when you can out think an enemy. need less instant gratification.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Not true, anymore. All of the Reps have been retooled to give out Mark XII gear at all tiers, with a reward cadence similar to that of the Dyson rep. For more details, see http://community.arcgames.com/en/news/star-trek-online/detail/3038363
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
He means PVE. That's where the parses come from.
There's an aggressive wave of PVErs who perpetuate an ongoing stereo ... oh come on, you know what it's about! If you're not leet, you noob, you need to go get better gear! L2P! And all that nonsense! You can't tell me you've completely missed any and all elite player vs. noob player friction in the MMO internet universe?
Man, I hate PvPers. :mad:
At what point in your planning did someone go - 'whoops, let's limit this BEFORE we start, in case we do more';
or were you
"doesn't matter - if it works, we'll scale it back. If it doesn't, no harm no foul.."
I'm overly in favour of this - and hopefully other - future scaling back of abilities, traits and passives so that people can design a true toon. Even though THIS is going to be free, you should really consider dropping the price of the RESPEC.
I hate how the reward sets were spread through five tiers.
Dyson has a horrible reward system.
Omega works because you can complete a set in each tier. Once you prolong the set building, the timegates and resource requirements will scare new players away. ...and, that is why the population declined after people completed Dyson. People saw the future and screamed.
Cryptic is reading the trends wrong.
Is why even if PvP was worth it in this game I never use builds that are on my cruel and unusual arsenal just because of whiners and brown nosers who would ruin the PvE aspect just because they got all the bones broken heh.
That is what it sounds like to me. I have been a supporter of Cryptic from the beginning through beta, through the change to free to play, to the grind that has come about with Perfect World. I have the life subscription but I think I am at the stage where they can pretty much count on me not buying another thing from them.
See unlike other MMO developers who constantly fiddle with the game dynamics (e.g. Blizzard), Cryptic really hasn't had a ton of content. I can tell you that type of constant changing the rules without providing other things will drive people away (e.g. Star Wars Galaxies with Sony, Matrix Online with Sony, etc...)
I know exactly what it means thank you.
"furnish with grounds for laying claim"
Therefore by saying someone "FEELS they are entitled" to something you are saying they feel they are OWED a claim to something.
In this case there are people that feel they are OWED an advantage in a game because they spent more time playing it then others.
This would be like a Grand master Chess player feeling like they should be able to move twice .. as they have played the game longer.
A Vet player isn't OWED anything in a video game. Really the experience you gain by playing makes you a better player... Which is why a vertern chess player is almost always much better then a new player.
They don't feel they are "entitled" to a different rule set based on there skill level.
Why shouldn't a well designed, fully repped toon should therefore be ~40x as powerful as a new 50. Decrease that payoff, and you decrease motivation to grind. The coins analogy fails because a tac can now have one or two defensive choices, that goes to zero immediately in the new scheme.
If you want to control the scaling, that's fine. But start with the number of passives/actives we currently have. Force the choices to start in the next season.
Also, as someone who routinely plays ground, the idea of spending half my passives on ground is sickening. What percentage of toons have any ground traits at all? It can't be high. And there's a reason for that. The vast majority of your player base doesn't like your ground system. Maybe 5% of the STF channel calls are for ground and way less than one percent of the OPVP channel calls is for ground.
Pvp allows for a end game that the only resources involved is making a balanced game, with plenty of good arena modes and other types of battling. Essentially its a low resource end game.
I see why its 4 traits, at the next expansion level cap increase we will have 5 and so on. 1 for each 10 levels. if they do some pve content + level scaling lower level characters should be able to do most end game rep grinding, starting at level 10. Though I would suggest keeping elite level content out until 50.
You either have a) never played an MMO before, or b) never put enough time and effort into one to earn the perks of being a veteran.
I don't disagree there are a bunch of other things that are going to REQUIRE a nerf bat if this game is going to survive.
I am not going to complain about this one though... it IS needed. The fact that they are adding another rep right away makes this 100% the time to do it. Before people are whining about loosing yet another rep when they finally do fix it.
I can tell you one good reason to start here... I have had many old game friends pop in to check things out here and there. People that played a lot then left for 6 months a year what ever. They come back and look at the rep system for a few days and then leave.
This change will make that less likely ... in that regard I am happy... at this point some players that return for a bit will already have 2-3 reps done... and be able to jump in right away while they unlock the newer stuff... that is Very very good.
I actually liked that about the Dyson rep. I usually just wait until I hit tier 5 to get Mk XII equipment and skip the lower marks. Not worth it to grind out the marks or the costs of dilithium and energy credits for commodities and such if you're just going to replace it later with better stuff.
Sure some players are griping about the lower mark stuff being removed, but it's probably being removed because most of us do just that: wait until tier 5 to get the Mk XII stuff. If more people obtained the lower mark stuff than people who waited, they probably would have left it in and included it in the Dyson rep.
I know what you mean I pretty much found it annoying because it was always worthless junk it gave me. I was kind of hoping they were out of the grind this up, okay, now pick like 20% of what you grinded to keep... Okay go grind this but oh wait you can't have the new stuff unless you drop some of the old now. Whoever the brain child was that thought this would be well recieved needs to be tested. lol
MMO history is rife with examples of no matter what you do to change the mechanics to suit it, people who don't PvP don't PvP, and nothing is going to change that.
So catering the game to the minority of players who PvP by nerfing PvE just drives people away, not makes them suddenly go "hey now I wanna PvP!"
Dev blog says we will be able to respec our reputation traits free of charge any time we want as long as we're not in combat. I don't think they will charge for it later unless they had a really really good reason for it due to a major change in how things work.
Try reading that bit about Equipment Projects again. For comprehension, this time.
That being said,I still feel this is a slap in the face to the players that worked to get what they have. If this was done to appease newer players, then they should just pay their dues and grind like the rest of us did. If not and this just to make a new lvl 50 player closer to equal to a senior lvl 50 player,then why have rep at all just take it out and refund all the players their Exp and EC.
Either way this seems to be an answer to a question that was never asked,and in finding this answer, it unduly seems to hurt the senior players. :mad:
People aren't OWED an advantage. If they have spent their time, sponsorships or not, grinding through the reputation system, then they have EARNED it.
Your examples are poor mate, as you seem to be arguing the wrong point. Nobody was asking for a different rule set. Taking away anyone's ability to use skills they have spent time EARNING (key word there) to level the playing field for new players, is the absolute wrong way to go about solving the problem.
If you were to consider each Tier of a rep a level, then right now a max level character would be level 70. If a newer player has now just reached 50, why is it fair, or rather, how is it solving a problem if you take the level 70 character, down to 54, to make it fair for the new guy?
If he wants to have all those rep powers and be able to compete with the max rep people, well, he can go out an earn it like the rest of us have.
A new player coming into the fold and expecting to compete against a guy who is max level, max rep, and has top end gear, then the new player is the one who is acting entitled.
STO... 16 toons all max rep max gear
Rift... 6 toons all max.
Tor... 1 year of beta where I fully leveled over 30 toons that where all deleted.
GW2.. one of every class, 1 in full Celestrial junk... the rest all in full exotic gear.
LOTRO... haven't played in a good year or so... but at one time again one of every class all pretty darn close to maxed out on everything.
EVE... got to eve late. I played for 3 or 4 months and just could never feel like I was ever going to get to a point where I was caught up to some of the people I know from other games... so I left.
I have played for 1000s of hours... I do nothing else all day... which is sad but true. However none of this stuff is real my friend.
Every MMO suffers from the same issue though... Long time players that feel they are owed an advantage over new players. In pretty much every game the P and Moen about every little change like this one... calling them Nerfs and pressuring the devs into not improving there games. Sadly the devs that cave end up with junk games that die off. In order for these games to stay relevant and attractive growing healthy games they need to adjust as they go. People throw words like Nerf around easily and with no regard. Truth is in my view Nerfs are good things. I don't care I'm a power gamer I'll adjust and still be 20% better then everyone else.