Please add your voice to others though its time to Fix and Nerf all the other junk in this game as well.
The only way these nerfs make any lick of sense is catering to the PvP whiners.
The so-called power creep is irrelevant in the PvE game. This game is a grinder, and the rewards need to be good to get people to hop on that wheel. Nerf the rewards and a lot less people are going to hop on that wheel. And I hope that simple math kicks Cryptic in the wallet -- so they think twice before listening to players with opinions similar to yours.
the hole pwe/cryptic strategy with STO is wrong an no limiting with rep powers will ever solve this.
as long as they pretend to do Star Trek without ever looking deeper into ST, Gaming and other MMOs, they will do it wrong.
thats my opp
Your thoughts are very valid. Trust me most of my friends are gone and won't come back even if Cryptic does a complete 180 and makes all the changes needed to get things where they should be. They have fostered a lot of ill will the last few years no doubt... I have days where I almost get myself booted from the forums.
Your right about them just looking around as well... that link I posted to the Lotro Trait system. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to have seen this issue with reps coming. In fact since the first rep people have been saying hey what happnes when we have multiple reps.... no one is going to want to do this on a new player / alt toon.
I am glad to see them at last making at least one change that seems to be a solid MMO developer decision. On the other hand I do agree with what others are sort of saying... why after so long are they doing it now... and how far are they going to go. Are they really going to have to go where they need to go to make this a top tier MMO ? I don't know I'm not convinced either. I have just been commenting on this one change... which is no doubt good and almost exactly what I would have done myself.... so its easy to defend. lol
As usual a change to something that provided a small bit of capability, for a larger nerf than what it is worth.
Also noted that the omega weapon refrequencer is no longer going to be used, so now instead we do a tad bit more kinetic damage which was garbage to begin with, but have to re-frequence our weapons as though this trait never existed.
Great way to go back to square one before S7!!! :mad:
I am sorry but forcing us to only have 4 space and 4 ground is dumb, and replacing them with simple changes as doubling the benefits of some while getting rid or complete changes to others isn't how you get rid of the so called problem.
So instead of having 20 abilities which really wasn't the key issue involved with power creep, we instead get 8 doubly strong possible abilities, while some are completely changed for better or worse.
:mad::mad::mad:
EDIT: Oh and completely forgot to include the new undine rep making possible 25 rep abilities, for which we only get to choose 8 total with this horrid idea and change to the game.
I don't mind giving things up if it is for the good of the game honestly. I also don't really look at as giving them up. I still have them all unlocked and because I fly so many different ships I can think of times where I might slot almost all of the options... so having them unlocked isn't really a bad thing.
The temp consoles are over rated. I know easy to say when you have some TIF. I honestly used the 2 piece for a short while and then decided I didn't like having to run the manhim console which is just unusable really.
Honestly I play mainly to PvP... and I have always looked at all the PvE as just a means to get my ships ready to go... having said that I don't not enjoy the PvE and I will admit at times I just want to play a trek game.
In any event as a PvP guy I can argue hard so you probaly only slighly mis read me if you did at all... I can be more "aggressive" then I ought to be at times.
I don't think this is happening due to any player wine though to be honest... if that was the case I think they would have been changing things that where on more top 5 broken things lists.
After looking at what they are doing and thinking about it a bit this afternoon though I think I see where they are coming from.
I guess we will see now if they stick with 4 back track to 8 or 6... I am sure they won't budge on the cap going forward though.
You might be right about the console set being worthless(not saying you are in anyway corect in that they should put a limit to how many sets you can use) but I won't know until I try it >.>
We are the Borg. Existence as you know it is over. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.
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.
If this is really the case, then this new "system" is unfinished and rather than add more aggravation to the player DO NOT release it until it complete. We all know that "long-term" plans by you guys are often laid to waste. Long-term could mean two-years.
Good thing they are ramping up that nerf bat - two months, man - that's just too much to ask anyone!
I'm sorry, but not everyone can live in their mom's basement and dedicate all their free time to playing a game like you.
/sarcasm off
I'm a lifetime sub, I have max reps on a couple of characters, but unlike you apparently I've played games with such high barriers to entry that new people never join because it's impossible to beat the established players without dedicating a huge amount of time (or money), and you know what happens to these games? THEY DIE.
It's a fact under the current system and enough reps at some point either a newbie is going to see the time required to do ten or twenty grinds and they'll leave because they can't beat any of the content, or the content will become trivial to the vet with all the passives, and I don't want either situation to happen. This change is desperately needed to avoid that.
So as I said in the first one you quoted.... 2 years from now when we have 10+ reps something like this will HAVE to be in place.
^^^ This. This is why they're doing it and doing it now instead of 2 years from now when there are 10+ reps. It causes furor now, but my god the poopocalypse it'd cause in the future?
I believe the OP wants to oust them all. French Revolution style.
Then we put in people that will give the OP and his friends list stuff they want.
I hope this happens and I hope the OP /friends me.
the Op is right this game has gone so far down hill this year im surprised anyone even logs in anymore. Maybe you can give me and the masses who feel the same a reason to log in?
The only way these nerfs make any lick of sense is catering to the PvP whiners.
The so-called power creep is irrelevant in the PvE game. This game is a grinder, and the rewards need to be good to get people to hop on that wheel. Nerf the rewards and a lot less people are going to hop on that wheel. And I hope that simple math kicks Cryptic in the wallet -- so they think twice before listening to players with opinions similar to yours.
Read what Hawk has been saying... this is about PvE. It is NOT irrelevent.
Right now... a fully geared and reped toon... can easily do 30,000+ DPS in a PvE mission run.
A new toon / player coming in with out rep at all and basic new level 50 gear... is going to have to be skilled to put down 5,000.
That is a massive inbalance that is going to make it impossible for them to balance NEW content going forward.
We can't have new content that NEW players can't complete... or can't manage optionals even if they play perfectly.
On the flip side if they make content so that New Level 50 players can do level 50 content without major issues... it becomes super boring for players putting out 30k+ DPS.
SO... with that in mind as a developer Cryptic... This is PART of there solution.
I say part because think it though.
Is this change going to stop fully repped and geared players from pulling 30k ?
The answer is no it won't... not alone... so I think you can safely assume this is just the start my friend. There are more "nerfs" coming.
Relax when they get it right you will still be able to complete your Trek missions both the old favs and the new ones... and you might if they do it right be challenged by the optional objectives. Won't that be nice.
Oh an as a kicker... you won't have to QQ in zone chat that you have a new player on your team either. lol
This makes sense from a certain standpoint. However, this once again puts emphasis on new players instead of long-term veteran players. As with the ESD revamp, your design decisions are undoubtedly saying that player population churn and turn-over rate is more important than people who have dedicated a long portion of their game time to leveling up rep systems.
You are exactly correct. Their entire system from design to zen store is complete burn and churn. However, the number of people 1) interested in playing MMOs, 2) interested in playing sci-fi MMOs, and 3) interested in playing a Star Trek based MMO is finite and a a niche. Sadly when the "burn and churn" model does not yield sufficient income, most of the players will have a distaste for the game by then. The model is not sustainable, but if you look at everything that has been done, it perpetuates this.
While I have stated before that I understand the necessity for rep systems, I think the execution of this is... flawed, to put it lightly.
I think the metrics might defend their decision. Veteran players fall into three categories:
- Lifers
- Subs
- Freeps
Well two of those categories (lifers and freeps) will leave and come back, leave and come back, leave and come back ... for free.
Subs are, I'm guessing, the smallest minority of veteran players. And they keep getting squeezed into being lifers or freeps. At this stage it's probably even far more financially feasible to suck it up and sub till 1k days and go freep, or get the lifetime.
So retention is probably less of an issue for them. But rolling out the red carpet for new players is probably one of their high priority goals. Not for nothing but it's still an eastern MMO company at the helm. The game will keep getting plugged to new players because of that.
So I can see a big picture reason for making new players a priority.
If this is really the case, then this new "system" is unfinished and rather than add more aggregation to the player DO NOT release it until it complete. We all know that "long-term" plans by you guys are often laid to waste. Long-term could mean two-years.
Because then they would also have to delay the Undine Rep.
The new rep is obviously almost ready to role. I would bet this one will work right away with the system as well... I am thinking Hawk was being diplomatic there. Hes not going to say something is 100% good to go if he is not 100% sure it will be or not.
^^^ This. This is why they're doing it and doing it now instead of 2 years from now when there are 10+ reps. It causes furor now, but my god the poopocalypse it'd cause in the future?
Not really, the answer to this is to put in progressively more challenging content not one - two event trickles that are just MOBs with over damage and excess health. You want to combat power creep...start upping the difficulty of content CREATIVELY not in junk ways.
I think the metrics might defend their decision. Veteran players fall into three categories:
- Lifers
- Subs
- Freeps
Well two of those categories (lifers and freeps) will leave and come back, leave and come back, leave and come back ... for free.
Subs are, I'm guessing, the smallest minority of veteran players. And they keep getting squeezed into being lifers or freeps. At this stage it's probably even far more financially feasible to suck it up and sub till 1k days and go freep, or get the lifetime.
So retention is probably less of an issue for them. But rolling out the red carpet for new players is probably one of their high priority goals. Not for nothing but it's still an eastern MMO company at the helm. The game will keep getting plugged to new players because of that.
So I can see a big picture reason for making new players a priority.
I'm familiar with the f2p model encouraging a more robust 'new player experience', and PWE and Cryptic would have too at the time. If I knew this then, they did too. They pay people to know this.
Which is my point... they knew this rep grind business was unpopular, and they knew it would not be infinitely sustainable from the very first design discussions of the reputation system (the Omega Force rep was the first).
There is no possible way they could not have seen this being a problem projected over the long term. To have a dev blog today saying that this is something they're just now getting around to fixing is dishonest. Particularly when reputation grinds are one of the biggest gripes Cryptic has had to deal with in the game.
You are exactly correct. Their entire system from design to zen store is complete burn and churn. However, the number of people 1) interested in playing MMOs, 2) interested in playing sci-fi MMOs, and 3) interested in playing a Star Trek based MMO is finite and a a niche. Sadly when the "burn and churn" model does not yield sufficient income, most of the players will have a distaste for the game by then. The model is not sustainable, but if you look at everything that has been done, it perpetuates this.
I would argue it's not sustainable because the business model revolves around selling lock box ships (and ships generally), and there just comes a point people will have all the ones they want and stop buying new ones. It might be awhile and vary a bit depending on the popularity of a particular lock box though. The rest of the system with some exceptions (dilithium for fleets) isn't monetized.
I'm sorry, but not everyone can live in their mom's basement and dedicate all their free time to playing a game like you.
/sarcasm off
I'm a lifetime sub, I have max reps on a couple of characters, but unlike you apparently I've played games with such high barriers to entry that new people never join because it's impossible to beat the established players without dedicating a huge amount of time (or money), and you know what happens to these games? THEY DIE.
It's a fact under the current system and enough reps at some point either a newbie is going to see the time required to do ten or twenty grinds and they'll leave because they can't beat any of the content, or the content will become trivial to the vet with all the passives, and I don't want either situation to happen. This change is desperately needed to avoid that.
You are wrong.
Look at Eve, its over 10 years old and still going strong. There are other mmo's out there that are still strong after years of operation.
This change, is bs.
You just dont see the light yet. Being, they dont care about the lifers or vets or anything, they care about the poor noob who cant hack the pace :P
I was going to start another 12 toons......Now, i will start none. I can hack it with new toons, why cant noobs handle it? whiners
I believe God created the universe, because he knew we wanted to explore. So, he made us a playground...
The only way these nerfs make any lick of sense is catering to the PvP whiners.
The so-called power creep is irrelevant in the PvE game. This game is a grinder, and the rewards need to be good to get people to hop on that wheel. Nerf the rewards and a lot less people are going to hop on that wheel. And I hope that simple math kicks Cryptic in the wallet -- so they think twice before listening to players with opinions similar to yours.
Exactly.
It's a smoke screen if I have ever seen one.
Now, though, it's all starting to make sense...things like adding the junk boxes to the rep projects, for example. Junk boxes with stuff inside that you can destroy for about as many credits as it takes to do the project. I'm sick of clicking on them to be honest - I have plenty of credits, LOL. But since some folks cry about a few thousand credits being too hard to get - hey anything to make things easier.
If they think those junk boxes are going to be an incentive to do anything, they aren't.
This is about making it as simple as possible for someone to jump in and PvP without any effort whatsoever. Like I said previously, I'm sure soon we will hear about the new PvP content which will be a MOBA Lite, and a package for the Zen store you can buy to instantly get to level 50 (because a few days of DOFFing is too much to ask), and throw you some Mk XII gear so you can jump right in.
Since that group of folks is so well-known for sticking around games, I'm sure it will be a smashing success...
Read what Hawk has been saying... this is about PvE. It is NOT irrelevent.
Right now... a fully geared and reped toon... can easily do 30,000+ DPS in a PvE mission run.
A new toon / player coming in with out rep at all and basic new level 50 gear... is going to have to be skilled to put down 5,000.
That is a massive inbalance that is going to make it impossible for them to balance NEW content going forward.
We can't have new content that NEW players can't complete... or can't manage optionals even if they play perfectly.
On the flip side if they make content so that New Level 50 players can do level 50 content without major issues... it becomes super boring for players putting out 30k+ DPS.
SO... with that in mind as a developer Cryptic... This is PART of there solution.
I say part because think it though.
Is this change going to stop fully repped and geared players from pulling 30k ?
The answer is no it won't... not alone... so I think you can safely assume this is just the start my friend. There are more "nerfs" coming.
Relax when they get it right you will still be able to complete your Trek missions both the old favs and the new ones... and you might if they do it right be challenged by the optional objectives. Won't that be nice.
Oh an as a kicker... you won't have to QQ in zone chat that you have a new player on your team either. lol
I love how you conveniently failed to mention aux to bat technician spam which is what is allowing these min/maxers to achieve 50K+ dps. But by all means, keep lecturing us.
I think the metrics might defend their decision. Veteran players fall into three categories:
- Lifers
- Subs
- Freeps
Well two of those categories (lifers and freeps) will leave and come back, leave and come back, leave and come back ... for free.
Subs are, I'm guessing, the smallest minority of veteran players. And they keep getting squeezed into being lifers or freeps. At this stage it's probably even far more financially feasible to suck it up and sub till 1k days and go freep, or get the lifetime.
So retention is probably less of an issue for them. But rolling out the red carpet for new players is probably one of their high priority goals. Not for nothing but it's still an eastern MMO company at the helm. The game will keep getting plugged to new players because of that.
So I can see a big picture reason for making new players a priority.
But what you fail to see if the fallacy of that. New players are a priority to a point at which them move into the veteran category. So...churn. Always get new players who will hopefully buy lots of shinies...when they have purchased the shinies and realize the max level content of the game is junk highly repetitive grinds...they move on. But Cryptic/PWE already made their money off of them and so in comes the new crop. The "crop" is finite so the business model is not sustainable in the long-term. But that doesn't matter from a business perspective because the company doing such a thing will also "Churn" their games.
You are exactly correct. Their entire system from design to zen store is complete burn and churn. However, the number of people 1) interested in playing MMOs, 2) interested in playing sci-fi MMOs, and 3) interested in playing a Star Trek based MMO is finite and a a niche. Sadly when the "burn and churn" model does not yield sufficient income, most of the players will have a distaste for the game by then. The model is not sustainable, but if you look at everything that has been done, it perpetuates this.
There is a big fix to that built into this system though.
Lets say you so the Undine Rep and then decide to leave STO and go play SC or something else.
Now 6-7 months pass and you decide you miss Trek and STO... and SC isn't what you hoped so you come back.
Now you been gone and you have missed Telaxian / Vidian / and Vulcan Reputations.
So all your previous MAX rep toons are now only done 5 of the 8 Reps.
Everyone else just started the new Savior of Vulcan missions and guess what.... you can jump right in and join in because you already have enough unlocks to be able to continue to compete... and you don't feel like you have to grind 24h a day to catch up on the previous reps you missed.... Heck you might decided you don't even want to do that stuff at all... or you might just decide to do them but not at a GrindCore pace.
This change is making STO ... SC proof.
Thats only a half joke... this game bleeds people all the time... and they come back all the time. Almost everyone of us that has been here since Launch has had a least one period where we left for 2+ months. Many left for up to a year to play other games or because they where just burned on STO.
I know a few months back I had some friends return and they lasted a couple weeks... at which point they where completely turned off because they felt they had to grind like mad to catch up.... and there was no signs of Cryptic letting up on the grinds.
This is the first change they are making that makes GRINDS OPTIONAL ... instead of required and people are upset... boggles my mind honestly.
Not really, the answer to this is to put in progressively more challenging content not one - two event trickles that are just MOBs with over damage and excess health. You want to combat power creep...start upping the difficulty of content CREATIVELY not in junk ways.
1- This game isn't built the way you think it is. There is no tiered progression. There may be somewhat of an illusion of tiered progression. But there is no progressively more challenging content.
2- They're not designing the game that way. They haven't done it. They're not planning to do it. This isn't Dragon Raiding. You don't go from Zone X and Gear Tier Y to the next.
3- The feedback of "make more creative challenge" is all well and good. But no one EVER offers up what that is. What is it you think they can do with their game engine and programming constraints to make their AI more challenging?
You are wrong.
Look at Eve, its over 10 years old and still going strong. There are other mmo's out there that are still strong after years of operation.
This change, is bs.
You just dont see the light yet. Being, they dont care about the lifers or vets or anything, they care about the poor noob who cant hack the pace :P
I was going to start another 12 toons......Now, i will start none. I can hack it with new toons, why cant noobs handle it? whiners
Am I? Why is WoW selling a leveling service then? This is a MMO, not a single player game. What matters is a community, and a community can't survive if it can't attract new members, and nobody is going to join a game if all they have to look forward to is years of mandatory grind. Besides the Eve crackpots apparently, but I'm in the majority who think it's a horrible game.
There is no possible way they could not have seen this being a problem projected over the long term. To have a dev blog today saying that this is something they're just now getting around to fixing is dishonest. Particularly when reputation grinds are one of the biggest gripes Cryptic has had to deal with in the game.
This whole thing feels to me like they had it in the works, and the timing is more an issue of this is finally the rep addition that would make it a problem so now's the time for it.
I'm sorry, but not everyone can live in their mom's basement and dedicate all their free time to playing a game like you.
/sarcasm off
I'm a lifetime sub, I have max reps on a couple of characters, but unlike you apparently I've played games with such high barriers to entry that new people never join because it's impossible to beat the established players without dedicating a huge amount of time (or money), and you know what happens to these games? THEY DIE.
It's a fact under the current system and enough reps at some point either a newbie is going to see the time required to do ten or twenty grinds and they'll leave because they can't beat any of the content, or the content will become trivial to the vet with all the passives, and I don't want either situation to happen. This change is desperately needed to avoid that.
I think you don't understand what sarcasm is, because your first sentence wasn't sarcastic, it was a simple insult.
An ironic insult, no less, since I don't have max reps on any characters - I have multiple characters for collecting Dilith via DOFF missions, but I only have time to play one, one that I have been slowly working up the rep trees. So it sounds like you play much more than I. And now, with this change - I have no desire to - if I'm not going to be able to use the powers granted, why bother. I don't have time to sit and futz with swapping powers all the time - this game already has enough of that with all the gear, DOFF's, etc.
That's because I don't expect to walk into an MMO and have everything handed to me in a few weeks - it's something you play over time.
So you say two months of playing an hour a day is too long to finish the end game. That's ludicrous. 60 hours? That you can spread out over as long as you wish? Saying that's too much is laughable. It's only too much if you are one of those folks that feels the need to do it on many characters over and over - which is not the majority of people, only the "basement" folks you accuse me of being have time for that.
You miss the entire point of an MMO - to keep people playing. This isn't a single-player game you bound through beginning to end and then put away never to play again.
Your post couldn't be more incorrect on any level if you stated that Kirk was a Klingon.
There is a big fix to that built into this system though.
Lets say you so the Undine Rep and then decide to leave STO and go play SC or something else.
Now 6-7 months pass and you decide you miss Trek and STO... and SC isn't what you hoped so you come back.
Now you been gone and you have missed Telaxian / Vidian / and Vulcan Reputations.
So all your previous MAX rep toons are now only done 5 of the 8 Reps.
Everyone else just started the new Savior of Vulcan missions and guess what.... you can jump right in and join in because you already have enough unlocks to be able to continue to compete... and you don't feel like you have to grind 24h a day to catch up on the previous reps you missed.... Heck you might decided you don't even want to do that stuff at all... or you might just decide to do them but not at a GrindCore pace.
This change is making STO ... SC proof.
Thats only a half joke... this game bleeds people all the time... and they come back all the time. Almost everyone of us that has been here since Launch has had a least one period where we left for 2+ months. Many left for up to a year to play other games or because they where just burned on STO.
I know a few months back I had some friends return and they lasted a couple weeks... at which point they where completely turned off because they felt they had to grind like mad to catch up.... and there was no signs of Cryptic letting up on the grinds.
This is the first change they are making that makes GRINDS OPTIONAL ... instead of required and people are upset... boggles my mind honestly.
Why does it matter if 90% of people play PVE anyways? A decent team without reps can still get optionals nowadays so I'm still missing the point you're trying to make here.
This is the first change they are making that makes GRINDS OPTIONAL ... instead of required and people are upset... boggles my mind honestly.
I can only speak for myself, but the only thing about this that upsets me is that they are just now getting around to addressing it instead of fixing this previously when there were fewer rep systems.
Sure, you could make the argument that they could ignore it for the next 2 years when we have 10+ Rep systems, and the furor then would be far more powerful than it is now.
But then if that happened, you would have people saying, "Hey, we might have 10 rep systems now, but just think if they didn't fix this until 2 years from now when we have 20 rep systems. It's better for them to fix it when we have 10 rep systems instead of 20."
My disgust revolves around the fact Cryptic knew rep systems were going to be unpopular, and that the powers granted by them would not be infinitely sustainable. Instead of fixing it then, they fix it later and tell people who have earned those powers to 'suck it up, since the powers we're allowing you to have are more powerful'.
To me, that is fully deserving of the 80 or so pages of outrage we have. Because they knew then, and did not do anything to stop it from getting to this point.
AdjudicatorHawk could be releasing a dev blog on something else today if the early design discussions addressed this issue then instead of saying, "We'll get to it later."
Comments
The only way these nerfs make any lick of sense is catering to the PvP whiners.
The so-called power creep is irrelevant in the PvE game. This game is a grinder, and the rewards need to be good to get people to hop on that wheel. Nerf the rewards and a lot less people are going to hop on that wheel. And I hope that simple math kicks Cryptic in the wallet -- so they think twice before listening to players with opinions similar to yours.
Your thoughts are very valid. Trust me most of my friends are gone and won't come back even if Cryptic does a complete 180 and makes all the changes needed to get things where they should be. They have fostered a lot of ill will the last few years no doubt... I have days where I almost get myself booted from the forums.
Your right about them just looking around as well... that link I posted to the Lotro Trait system. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to have seen this issue with reps coming. In fact since the first rep people have been saying hey what happnes when we have multiple reps.... no one is going to want to do this on a new player / alt toon.
I am glad to see them at last making at least one change that seems to be a solid MMO developer decision. On the other hand I do agree with what others are sort of saying... why after so long are they doing it now... and how far are they going to go. Are they really going to have to go where they need to go to make this a top tier MMO ? I don't know I'm not convinced either. I have just been commenting on this one change... which is no doubt good and almost exactly what I would have done myself.... so its easy to defend. lol
Also noted that the omega weapon refrequencer is no longer going to be used, so now instead we do a tad bit more kinetic damage which was garbage to begin with, but have to re-frequence our weapons as though this trait never existed.
Great way to go back to square one before S7!!! :mad:
I am sorry but forcing us to only have 4 space and 4 ground is dumb, and replacing them with simple changes as doubling the benefits of some while getting rid or complete changes to others isn't how you get rid of the so called problem.
So instead of having 20 abilities which really wasn't the key issue involved with power creep, we instead get 8 doubly strong possible abilities, while some are completely changed for better or worse.
:mad::mad::mad:
EDIT: Oh and completely forgot to include the new undine rep making possible 25 rep abilities, for which we only get to choose 8 total with this horrid idea and change to the game.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
You might be right about the console set being worthless(not saying you are in anyway corect in that they should put a limit to how many sets you can use) but I won't know until I try it >.>
If this is really the case, then this new "system" is unfinished and rather than add more aggravation to the player DO NOT release it until it complete. We all know that "long-term" plans by you guys are often laid to waste. Long-term could mean two-years.
I'm sorry, but not everyone can live in their mom's basement and dedicate all their free time to playing a game like you.
/sarcasm off
I'm a lifetime sub, I have max reps on a couple of characters, but unlike you apparently I've played games with such high barriers to entry that new people never join because it's impossible to beat the established players without dedicating a huge amount of time (or money), and you know what happens to these games? THEY DIE.
It's a fact under the current system and enough reps at some point either a newbie is going to see the time required to do ten or twenty grinds and they'll leave because they can't beat any of the content, or the content will become trivial to the vet with all the passives, and I don't want either situation to happen. This change is desperately needed to avoid that.
^^^ This. This is why they're doing it and doing it now instead of 2 years from now when there are 10+ reps. It causes furor now, but my god the poopocalypse it'd cause in the future?
the Op is right this game has gone so far down hill this year im surprised anyone even logs in anymore. Maybe you can give me and the masses who feel the same a reason to log in?
Read what Hawk has been saying... this is about PvE. It is NOT irrelevent.
Right now... a fully geared and reped toon... can easily do 30,000+ DPS in a PvE mission run.
A new toon / player coming in with out rep at all and basic new level 50 gear... is going to have to be skilled to put down 5,000.
That is a massive inbalance that is going to make it impossible for them to balance NEW content going forward.
We can't have new content that NEW players can't complete... or can't manage optionals even if they play perfectly.
On the flip side if they make content so that New Level 50 players can do level 50 content without major issues... it becomes super boring for players putting out 30k+ DPS.
SO... with that in mind as a developer Cryptic... This is PART of there solution.
I say part because think it though.
Is this change going to stop fully repped and geared players from pulling 30k ?
The answer is no it won't... not alone... so I think you can safely assume this is just the start my friend. There are more "nerfs" coming.
Relax when they get it right you will still be able to complete your Trek missions both the old favs and the new ones... and you might if they do it right be challenged by the optional objectives. Won't that be nice.
Oh an as a kicker... you won't have to QQ in zone chat that you have a new player on your team either. lol
You are exactly correct. Their entire system from design to zen store is complete burn and churn. However, the number of people 1) interested in playing MMOs, 2) interested in playing sci-fi MMOs, and 3) interested in playing a Star Trek based MMO is finite and a a niche. Sadly when the "burn and churn" model does not yield sufficient income, most of the players will have a distaste for the game by then. The model is not sustainable, but if you look at everything that has been done, it perpetuates this.
I think the metrics might defend their decision. Veteran players fall into three categories:
- Lifers
- Subs
- Freeps
Well two of those categories (lifers and freeps) will leave and come back, leave and come back, leave and come back ... for free.
Subs are, I'm guessing, the smallest minority of veteran players. And they keep getting squeezed into being lifers or freeps. At this stage it's probably even far more financially feasible to suck it up and sub till 1k days and go freep, or get the lifetime.
So retention is probably less of an issue for them. But rolling out the red carpet for new players is probably one of their high priority goals. Not for nothing but it's still an eastern MMO company at the helm. The game will keep getting plugged to new players because of that.
So I can see a big picture reason for making new players a priority.
Because then they would also have to delay the Undine Rep.
The new rep is obviously almost ready to role. I would bet this one will work right away with the system as well... I am thinking Hawk was being diplomatic there. Hes not going to say something is 100% good to go if he is not 100% sure it will be or not.
Not really, the answer to this is to put in progressively more challenging content not one - two event trickles that are just MOBs with over damage and excess health. You want to combat power creep...start upping the difficulty of content CREATIVELY not in junk ways.
I'm familiar with the f2p model encouraging a more robust 'new player experience', and PWE and Cryptic would have too at the time. If I knew this then, they did too. They pay people to know this.
Which is my point... they knew this rep grind business was unpopular, and they knew it would not be infinitely sustainable from the very first design discussions of the reputation system (the Omega Force rep was the first).
There is no possible way they could not have seen this being a problem projected over the long term. To have a dev blog today saying that this is something they're just now getting around to fixing is dishonest. Particularly when reputation grinds are one of the biggest gripes Cryptic has had to deal with in the game.
I would argue it's not sustainable because the business model revolves around selling lock box ships (and ships generally), and there just comes a point people will have all the ones they want and stop buying new ones. It might be awhile and vary a bit depending on the popularity of a particular lock box though. The rest of the system with some exceptions (dilithium for fleets) isn't monetized.
You are wrong.
Look at Eve, its over 10 years old and still going strong. There are other mmo's out there that are still strong after years of operation.
This change, is bs.
You just dont see the light yet. Being, they dont care about the lifers or vets or anything, they care about the poor noob who cant hack the pace :P
I was going to start another 12 toons......Now, i will start none. I can hack it with new toons, why cant noobs handle it? whiners
Exactly.
It's a smoke screen if I have ever seen one.
Now, though, it's all starting to make sense...things like adding the junk boxes to the rep projects, for example. Junk boxes with stuff inside that you can destroy for about as many credits as it takes to do the project. I'm sick of clicking on them to be honest - I have plenty of credits, LOL. But since some folks cry about a few thousand credits being too hard to get - hey anything to make things easier.
If they think those junk boxes are going to be an incentive to do anything, they aren't.
This is about making it as simple as possible for someone to jump in and PvP without any effort whatsoever. Like I said previously, I'm sure soon we will hear about the new PvP content which will be a MOBA Lite, and a package for the Zen store you can buy to instantly get to level 50 (because a few days of DOFFing is too much to ask), and throw you some Mk XII gear so you can jump right in.
Since that group of folks is so well-known for sticking around games, I'm sure it will be a smashing success...
I love how you conveniently failed to mention aux to bat technician spam which is what is allowing these min/maxers to achieve 50K+ dps. But by all means, keep lecturing us.
I can't. But ousting the devs won't give you a reason either.
So go play something else?
I hear Trexels is fun.
But what you fail to see if the fallacy of that. New players are a priority to a point at which them move into the veteran category. So...churn. Always get new players who will hopefully buy lots of shinies...when they have purchased the shinies and realize the max level content of the game is junk highly repetitive grinds...they move on. But Cryptic/PWE already made their money off of them and so in comes the new crop. The "crop" is finite so the business model is not sustainable in the long-term. But that doesn't matter from a business perspective because the company doing such a thing will also "Churn" their games.
Now comes the part where we throw our heads back and laugh.
There is a big fix to that built into this system though.
Lets say you so the Undine Rep and then decide to leave STO and go play SC or something else.
Now 6-7 months pass and you decide you miss Trek and STO... and SC isn't what you hoped so you come back.
Now you been gone and you have missed Telaxian / Vidian / and Vulcan Reputations.
So all your previous MAX rep toons are now only done 5 of the 8 Reps.
Everyone else just started the new Savior of Vulcan missions and guess what.... you can jump right in and join in because you already have enough unlocks to be able to continue to compete... and you don't feel like you have to grind 24h a day to catch up on the previous reps you missed.... Heck you might decided you don't even want to do that stuff at all... or you might just decide to do them but not at a GrindCore pace.
This change is making STO ... SC proof.
Thats only a half joke... this game bleeds people all the time... and they come back all the time. Almost everyone of us that has been here since Launch has had a least one period where we left for 2+ months. Many left for up to a year to play other games or because they where just burned on STO.
I know a few months back I had some friends return and they lasted a couple weeks... at which point they where completely turned off because they felt they had to grind like mad to catch up.... and there was no signs of Cryptic letting up on the grinds.
This is the first change they are making that makes GRINDS OPTIONAL ... instead of required and people are upset... boggles my mind honestly.
This would have been better.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
1- This game isn't built the way you think it is. There is no tiered progression. There may be somewhat of an illusion of tiered progression. But there is no progressively more challenging content.
2- They're not designing the game that way. They haven't done it. They're not planning to do it. This isn't Dragon Raiding. You don't go from Zone X and Gear Tier Y to the next.
3- The feedback of "make more creative challenge" is all well and good. But no one EVER offers up what that is. What is it you think they can do with their game engine and programming constraints to make their AI more challenging?
Am I? Why is WoW selling a leveling service then? This is a MMO, not a single player game. What matters is a community, and a community can't survive if it can't attract new members, and nobody is going to join a game if all they have to look forward to is years of mandatory grind. Besides the Eve crackpots apparently, but I'm in the majority who think it's a horrible game.
This whole thing feels to me like they had it in the works, and the timing is more an issue of this is finally the rep addition that would make it a problem so now's the time for it.
I think you don't understand what sarcasm is, because your first sentence wasn't sarcastic, it was a simple insult.
An ironic insult, no less, since I don't have max reps on any characters - I have multiple characters for collecting Dilith via DOFF missions, but I only have time to play one, one that I have been slowly working up the rep trees. So it sounds like you play much more than I. And now, with this change - I have no desire to - if I'm not going to be able to use the powers granted, why bother. I don't have time to sit and futz with swapping powers all the time - this game already has enough of that with all the gear, DOFF's, etc.
That's because I don't expect to walk into an MMO and have everything handed to me in a few weeks - it's something you play over time.
So you say two months of playing an hour a day is too long to finish the end game. That's ludicrous. 60 hours? That you can spread out over as long as you wish? Saying that's too much is laughable. It's only too much if you are one of those folks that feels the need to do it on many characters over and over - which is not the majority of people, only the "basement" folks you accuse me of being have time for that.
You miss the entire point of an MMO - to keep people playing. This isn't a single-player game you bound through beginning to end and then put away never to play again.
Your post couldn't be more incorrect on any level if you stated that Kirk was a Klingon.
Why does it matter if 90% of people play PVE anyways? A decent team without reps can still get optionals nowadays so I'm still missing the point you're trying to make here.
I can only speak for myself, but the only thing about this that upsets me is that they are just now getting around to addressing it instead of fixing this previously when there were fewer rep systems.
Sure, you could make the argument that they could ignore it for the next 2 years when we have 10+ Rep systems, and the furor then would be far more powerful than it is now.
But then if that happened, you would have people saying, "Hey, we might have 10 rep systems now, but just think if they didn't fix this until 2 years from now when we have 20 rep systems. It's better for them to fix it when we have 10 rep systems instead of 20."
My disgust revolves around the fact Cryptic knew rep systems were going to be unpopular, and that the powers granted by them would not be infinitely sustainable. Instead of fixing it then, they fix it later and tell people who have earned those powers to 'suck it up, since the powers we're allowing you to have are more powerful'.
To me, that is fully deserving of the 80 or so pages of outrage we have. Because they knew then, and did not do anything to stop it from getting to this point.
AdjudicatorHawk could be releasing a dev blog on something else today if the early design discussions addressed this issue then instead of saying, "We'll get to it later."