Good changes. Sure it'll hurt me (T5 on all reputations), but I can definitely see where you're coming from with regards to power creep and the need to balance high level content for all players, rather than just those with all the reputations (or those with none).
The challenge will be to keep the new abilities from all future reputations fresh and interesting, so that people will want to use them, while stopping any one ability (or set of abilities) from overpowering the others.
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You think just because a few people aren't playing the rep content that they'll lose money?
If you play the game right now and just stand around, that's server traffic. That's money. You still get the freedom to choose what powers you want - this isn't as bad as you guys make it out to be.
Well they could release content instead of changing the game mechanics every now and then. Look at the C-Store how few usable items are there (not the services) and how often new items are beeing added.
I have seen younger games with twice as much content in the store.
Yeah I had quite a few people that I played with since f2p started. I might see like 1 or 2 ppl on my friends list for about 5-10 minutes a day I'm pretty sure that'll fall off even more. It just feels like STO is going back to its Season 4 days. I guess Stahl decided he wasn't going down with the ship lol. I can't say I didn't see this coming though when stuff is about to go terribly bad they bring in the EPH.
People crack me up... they start over 9000 threads saying stop the grind Cryptic... and then when they get one that says "We won't stop the grind but we will at least allow you the option of skipping some if you feel they don't help your build" People flip. lol
Think about it... how much less boring is it going to be... that you may decided to do X Y and Z rep grind on one toon... and a different 3 on another toon. This should make the game 10x less annoying to people running alt toons. Send your sci toons down one rep tree and your tacs down another... sounds great to me.
I'm not honestly affected by this. I've never really cared much about the rep powers since I started playing six months ago, but it would be nice to see what happens now that I no longer have those options.
This looks like a a very PvP specific nerf, AGAIN.
Here's an idea, disable these in PvP, but let everyone else who spend weeks (maybe even months) grinding enjoy their reward as most people will not run more than 1 rep gear set, so the other 3 reps will be a waste of time except for these passive buffs.
Granted, I never cared for half these buffs, but 4 seems to be a bit low when there will be 5 reps. Especially since this means you can still keep 4 activate abilities (which is all the current ones) which can be devastating in their own right.
You are assuming Crypitc cares at all about PvP... they have proven they don't. This has nothing at all to do with PVP... and EVERYTHING to do with people completing End game E mode content in under 60s.
With that in mind ... expect a few more of these types of changes. They can't let the game keep getting power creeped to sillyness. FOR PVE not PvP. They don't care at all about PvP.
People are however leaving this game because the PvE is boring... its boring because you can play for weeks on end while watching TV and not ever see a respawn timer. The game is to easy if you have a max everything toon.
I'm not really sure how I feel about all of this. On one hand I like the idea of being able to freely swap between the abilities and not being slaved to one or the other. On the other hand, though, I rely on a lot of the damage aspects of the rep powers to make up for the shortcomings of the Galaxy-X Dreadnought as far as DPS goes. I know it's not a huge increase but combined together the various damage-dealing or damage resistance reducing powers help a great deal in making the ship feel like it's packing a punch.
On the gripping hand, I'm not sure if ruining the experience of those of us who PVE in order to balance PVP is a very good idea, especially with Cryptic supposedly working on a completely new PVP system. Isn't there a way to keep things generally as they are as far as the PVE game goes and switch the mechanics for PVP? I seem to recall other games that made this exception. The late, great City of Heroes comes to mind.
There's also the illusion of choice going on here; my characters and their ships are already mightily sturdy enough in healing, resistances, shields and health without the rep passives that boost those, so the only real option is to go all out for the increase to base damage and critical hit chance and severity. Now they'll just steamroll the content just that much faster than before.
The issue isn't "fairness" its having a game that doesn't die off. Simple as that.
Add so much endless grind that new players have to catch up on and the game dies. A dead game doesn't make them money.
As a player that has been around awhile and earned all your reps you should want new players to not have to grind for 6 months to get where you where when they started 6 months ago. Have you never recommended a game to a friend before ? Inviting new people to a grind fest is unlikely... or a good way to loose a friend I guess. lol
The DEVS need to swing another 4 or 5 heavy nerf bats yet... so I think you better prepare yourself Mr. Entitlement.
but PvP is dead, you can already do practically every other piece of content at 50 without any extra gear, and it takes ONE month to get the current reps, ,not 6, ONE, so whats the point
It beats back some of the rampant power creep at the upper end while still making it worthwhile to pursue reputations to mix and match passives for your playstyle.
I don't know that the Dyson Crit Severity passives really needed to be doubled like that, but I do think a lot of the other passives have been brought to a level where I will consider whether or not they suite a specific ship.
I do wonder if this system will run into an inverse problem down the road when there are too many rep passive options and simply not enough slots though. It's an issue which currently impacts traits with all the genetic re-sequencers that come out each lockbox and the myriad of universal consoles that simply aren't viable/justifiable. Without 'room' for choice, too many options just breeds a narrow-minded, elitist mindset that defeats the whole purpose.
The compromise might be to expand the number of space and ground slots by one each season you release another reputation. Adding 2 slots every time you add 16 new passives to choose from doesn't seem like a terribly unreasonable middle-ground. Even within 2 years time, a new player would be able to fill all available slots by advancing a single reputation to tier 4 at that rate.
Ok let's do a real comparison. What if you went in to work one day and your boss called a meeting and said..."First, we need something to attract new employees. Second, it's not fair that those of you who have been working here for years are making more money than a new hire. So we will now be cutting the pay in half for all the employees who have been here for years. The fact that you busted your butt to get where you are is irrelevant. And it's not fair that new hires should have to bust their butts as much as you did. This will be better for everyone." Would you think that's a good idea? No? Well why not? Same concept with this rep idea.
I don't care what the header says, I am not now, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be, an "ARC user".
Kind of, kind of not. We're improving almost every single Rep power across the board from a PvE standpoint, bringing them up to the new standard of "How strong should a Reputation Trait power be?" You will have fewer powers now, but each of them will be more impactful than individual powers were before.
Personally, I was very happy with the performance of these passives before this revamp. I was afraid something like this was going to happen when I saw on tribble last week that the tooltips in the passives window had been edited.
I put a lot of time into getting my characters through the reputation system specifically for the reputation passives. Doubling the effectiveness of a few of the reputation passives doesn't change the fact that players are essentially losing half of their work. 4 reputation trait slots just isn't enough. The change to the Tier III New Romulus Reactive Shielding has actually had it's effectiveness cut in half due to double the cooldown. Reversing the math on Medical Nanites, the health bonus is still +0.2 regeneration in combat. The only difference is it now has an additional +0.2 regeneration out of combat. Out of combat regeneration does very little for the player in a PvP match. Indomitable provides me with +13 more hit points and Enhanced Personal Shields provides +8 more shield points over their values on holodeck. Integrated Nanofibers isn't much of anything either; we will get about 0.8% more resistance off of it.
I just don't feel losing half of my reputation passives will be made up by what I see as very minor boosts in their current effectiveness. Having four slots also puts a significant limit on choice. I'd much rather have eight slots with abilities in their holodeck state than four slots with abilities in their tribble state. Even if I had to choose between upcoming Species 8472 reputation passives; at least I wouldn't be losing anything I had already worked toward and obtained.
Having active powers tossed into one category will simply force players to further choose between ground and space. Yes, it is simple enough to switch between the two, but most space players won't even be bothered. It will just be another thing keeping primarily space players from playing ground content. The trait system and the skill tree system both already put heavy penalties on player's ground/space choices. The must sacrifice one in order to do the other. Most of the playerbase sacrifices ground in order to play space with an optimal setup.
Could you please consider making the slot number 8 rather than 4?
Quite, all it means is the "best in slot" just needs to be decided to cover only 8 traits now not 16 or 20 or what ever for the new rep, its not going to stop there being one.
Quoted for truth. There will still be a "best". particularly in light of the fact that DPS is still king.
This looks like a a very PvP specific nerf, AGAIN.
On what planet in what alternate dimension do you see that?
It's very much a very PvE specific change - like 99.99% of the changes are. How can they design balanced PvE content if they've got folks with 0 Rep Passives and folks with 9001 Rep Passives?
They'd have to increase the level cap otherwise, no? So would you prefer that they make this change to Rep or would you prefer that everything else you've worked for becomes useless as they introduce level 60, level 70, level 80...as they introduce Mk XX, Mk XXV, Mk TRIBBLE gear...as they introduce T6, T7, T8+ ships?
Hrmmm...yeah...I'll go with them limiting the number of slottable traits instead.
Wow ... that's a pretty big nerf for every player who has maxed out all reputation trees. However, let me guess, there will be fleet holdings in the near future in which you will sell us additional reputation trait slots for a hefty fee and an abysmal grind?
What its going to do is make most of us long time players lose interest in the game completely more so since it just gets more and more boring.
So if there is anyone left after season 9 goes live they can go to being a zero to a hero because all the good players will be gone roflmao.
Although you do have to ask yourself they have basically disregarded the concerns of 2 past player bases on the sake of a new one coming along but who they got lined up now?
This looks like a a very PvP specific nerf, AGAIN.
Here's an idea, disable these in PvP, but let everyone else who spend weeks (maybe even months) grinding enjoy their reward as most people will not run more than 1 rep gear set, so the other 3 reps will be a waste of time except for these passive buffs.
Granted, I never cared for half these buffs, but 4 seems to be a bit low when there will be 5 reps. Especially since this means you can still keep 4 activate abilities (which is all the current ones) which can be devastating in their own right.
It's not a PvP specific nerf. It might be useful for PvP as well, but it's also important for PVE.
FOr what is Cryptic supposed to balance special events and new missions indicate at hardcore players - people that have already 32 reputation passives boosting their performance, or those that have none?
Think about what this means for new players - new, challenging content could be useless for them because they have yet 8 reputations to grind through to be able to deal with it, quite possibly even existing content might get useless because people say "I rget through Elite STFs in 30 seconds after a single faceroll over the keyboard, buff the Borg!"
It would be terrible for PVE players if reputation grind became mandatory to enjoy new content. Especially if you need to run some of these new content to level the next reputation - by the time you're qualified for it, the older community would have long moved on to the next type of missions, leading to long mission queues.
End result is that no one would be happy. Long wait queues, alts completely discouraged due to excessive grinding necessary to join in the next grind, everyone forced into the same grind path.
There's also the illusion of choice going on here; my characters and their ships are already mightily sturdy enough in healing, resistances, shields and health without the rep passives that boost those, so the only real option is to go all out for the increase to base damage and critical hit chance and severity. Now they'll just steamroll the content just that much faster than before.
It feels a lot like this, yes. There is little reason to increase survivability with reputation powers. (There may be a bit of it in PvP, but in PvE, damage wins.) That would probably require some adjustment in the enemies offensive capabilities, but maybe it will always be like that...
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
On what planet in what alternate dimension do you see that?
It's very much a very PvE specific change - like 99.99% of the changes are. How can they design balanced PvE content if they've got folks with 0 Rep Passives and folks with 9001 Rep Passives?
They'd have to increase the level cap otherwise, no? So would you prefer that they make this change to Rep or would you prefer that everything else you've worked for becomes useless as they introduce level 60, level 70, level 80...as they introduce Mk XX, Mk XXV, Mk TRIBBLE gear...as they introduce T6, T7, T8+ ships?
Hrmmm...yeah...I'll go with them limiting the number of slottable traits instead.
because of course people never do the content with no passives that those with 16 do, oh no wait, thats exactly what already happens.
It will hurt, but I feel this change is inevitable if the plan is to include more reputations. It is technically a nerf, but it does add adaptation options in addition to opening up new configurations not possible before, like a sci running both Auxiliary Power Configurations.
Seriously, its the basic idea of this change.... "The new players cant compete!"
Well, maybe they shouldnt have waited so long to play!
To please both camps, ADD one more passive space/ground with each introduction of new Rep system. All have same amount of slots, but fully rept player has more choices. Also PR wise each new reputation will be a welcomed by all players. Carrot and the grind kind of think.
And yet I find it hard right now to get over the fact that it primarily punishes people who grinded through all that stuff at least for the passive powers.
If I would have known that in advance, I would have exactly looked at which powers I may have use for - since most of the equipment is useless for my purposes anyways.
So... is this design good? Yes. But it should have been like that from the start.
But hey... change is never pretty (that's from Tiber Septim :P).
but PvP is dead, you can already do practically every other piece of content at 50 without any extra gear, and it takes ONE month to get the current reps, ,not 6, ONE, so whats the point
It only takes one month with a rep token. Unless you are suggesting new players are going to come into a 4 year old MMO and be the types of players that will put a diaper on and farm content for 8 hours a day 7 days a week for a month.
I have been around forever and yes spend way to much time in this game.... I am not blind to how actual casual players play these games though.
No there are not new casual players (very few hardcore type game folk jump into games 4 years in if they had an interest in trek they where already here) finishing every rep in a month. I can't quote you a number but I know its longer then 30 days. lol
Thing is Cryptic knows its longer then 30 days as well... they didn't add the rep tokens and make this change with out looking at there player data.
This is also a future proofing of the system. Even if you could argue that it only takes a month right now to finish 4 reps... there will soon be 5... and obviously they won't be stopping there... So in a year from now with 8 reps. How long then for a new players to catch up ?
So, they do this to remove constant increases at the end of the game, so why would people actually keep playing at all then ? They get a good reputation set of gear, enough rep to fill those slots, not really any need to do any further content at all.
They can take this , and their Mk 14 equipment , and their lack of challenging endgame , and their continuous non-stop short sightedness , and their lack of vision and just shove it .
I think Handsome Phaser Guy needs a bit of a photoshop up there ^^^ to show his middle finger as he points toward STO .
PvE: No need to do anything but Max DPS rep passives. New players will have no incentive to grind out top tier rep passives.
PvP: This just gives yet another advantage to those with cloaks as they can tailor their rep passives since they can go out of combat.
And they say that the aim is to curb powercreep? Lol, if they wanted to do that they'd take a nerf bat to doffs. Do that and every uber PvP or PvE DPS epeen build out there would collapse.
It only takes one month with a rep token. Unless you are suggesting new players are going to come into a 4 year old MMO and be the types of players that will put a diaper on and farm content for 8 hours a day 7 days a week for a month.
I have been around forever and yes spend way to much time in this game.... I am not blind to how actual casual players play these games though.
No there are not new casual players (very few hardcore type game folk jump into games 4 years in if they had an interest in trek they where already here) finishing every rep in a month. I can't quote you a number but I know its longer then 30 days. lol
Thing is Cryptic knows its longer then 30 days as well... they didn't add the rep tokens and make this change with out looking at there player data.
This is also a future proofing of the system. Even if you could argue that it only takes a month right now to finish 4 reps... there will soon be 5... and obviously they won't be stopping there... So in a year from now with 8 reps. How long then for a new players to catch up ?
36 days without sponsorship, and it takes me about an hour and a half to two hours a day to get enough for a days rep projects.
Been saying for ages that the number of powers should be limited but really hate that it will likely need a store purchase to repsec out of these very limited selections available at any one time.
Comments
The challenge will be to keep the new abilities from all future reputations fresh and interesting, so that people will want to use them, while stopping any one ability (or set of abilities) from overpowering the others.
-K
Well they could release content instead of changing the game mechanics every now and then. Look at the C-Store how few usable items are there (not the services) and how often new items are beeing added.
I have seen younger games with twice as much content in the store.
Yeah I had quite a few people that I played with since f2p started. I might see like 1 or 2 ppl on my friends list for about 5-10 minutes a day I'm pretty sure that'll fall off even more. It just feels like STO is going back to its Season 4 days. I guess Stahl decided he wasn't going down with the ship lol. I can't say I didn't see this coming though when stuff is about to go terribly bad they bring in the EPH.
Is it a bad thing to not be Forced to grind ? lol
People crack me up... they start over 9000 threads saying stop the grind Cryptic... and then when they get one that says "We won't stop the grind but we will at least allow you the option of skipping some if you feel they don't help your build" People flip. lol
Think about it... how much less boring is it going to be... that you may decided to do X Y and Z rep grind on one toon... and a different 3 on another toon. This should make the game 10x less annoying to people running alt toons. Send your sci toons down one rep tree and your tacs down another... sounds great to me.
this game is becoming a waste of my ****ing time.
You are assuming Crypitc cares at all about PvP... they have proven they don't. This has nothing at all to do with PVP... and EVERYTHING to do with people completing End game E mode content in under 60s.
With that in mind ... expect a few more of these types of changes. They can't let the game keep getting power creeped to sillyness. FOR PVE not PvP. They don't care at all about PvP.
People are however leaving this game because the PvE is boring... its boring because you can play for weeks on end while watching TV and not ever see a respawn timer. The game is to easy if you have a max everything toon.
On the gripping hand, I'm not sure if ruining the experience of those of us who PVE in order to balance PVP is a very good idea, especially with Cryptic supposedly working on a completely new PVP system. Isn't there a way to keep things generally as they are as far as the PVE game goes and switch the mechanics for PVP? I seem to recall other games that made this exception. The late, great City of Heroes comes to mind.
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but PvP is dead, you can already do practically every other piece of content at 50 without any extra gear, and it takes ONE month to get the current reps, ,not 6, ONE, so whats the point
It beats back some of the rampant power creep at the upper end while still making it worthwhile to pursue reputations to mix and match passives for your playstyle.
I don't know that the Dyson Crit Severity passives really needed to be doubled like that, but I do think a lot of the other passives have been brought to a level where I will consider whether or not they suite a specific ship.
I do wonder if this system will run into an inverse problem down the road when there are too many rep passive options and simply not enough slots though. It's an issue which currently impacts traits with all the genetic re-sequencers that come out each lockbox and the myriad of universal consoles that simply aren't viable/justifiable. Without 'room' for choice, too many options just breeds a narrow-minded, elitist mindset that defeats the whole purpose.
The compromise might be to expand the number of space and ground slots by one each season you release another reputation. Adding 2 slots every time you add 16 new passives to choose from doesn't seem like a terribly unreasonable middle-ground. Even within 2 years time, a new player would be able to fill all available slots by advancing a single reputation to tier 4 at that rate.
Personally, I was very happy with the performance of these passives before this revamp. I was afraid something like this was going to happen when I saw on tribble last week that the tooltips in the passives window had been edited.
I put a lot of time into getting my characters through the reputation system specifically for the reputation passives. Doubling the effectiveness of a few of the reputation passives doesn't change the fact that players are essentially losing half of their work. 4 reputation trait slots just isn't enough. The change to the Tier III New Romulus Reactive Shielding has actually had it's effectiveness cut in half due to double the cooldown. Reversing the math on Medical Nanites, the health bonus is still +0.2 regeneration in combat. The only difference is it now has an additional +0.2 regeneration out of combat. Out of combat regeneration does very little for the player in a PvP match. Indomitable provides me with +13 more hit points and Enhanced Personal Shields provides +8 more shield points over their values on holodeck. Integrated Nanofibers isn't much of anything either; we will get about 0.8% more resistance off of it.
I just don't feel losing half of my reputation passives will be made up by what I see as very minor boosts in their current effectiveness. Having four slots also puts a significant limit on choice. I'd much rather have eight slots with abilities in their holodeck state than four slots with abilities in their tribble state. Even if I had to choose between upcoming Species 8472 reputation passives; at least I wouldn't be losing anything I had already worked toward and obtained.
Having active powers tossed into one category will simply force players to further choose between ground and space. Yes, it is simple enough to switch between the two, but most space players won't even be bothered. It will just be another thing keeping primarily space players from playing ground content. The trait system and the skill tree system both already put heavy penalties on player's ground/space choices. The must sacrifice one in order to do the other. Most of the playerbase sacrifices ground in order to play space with an optimal setup.
Could you please consider making the slot number 8 rather than 4?
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Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
Quoted for truth. There will still be a "best". particularly in light of the fact that DPS is still king.
On what planet in what alternate dimension do you see that?
It's very much a very PvE specific change - like 99.99% of the changes are. How can they design balanced PvE content if they've got folks with 0 Rep Passives and folks with 9001 Rep Passives?
They'd have to increase the level cap otherwise, no? So would you prefer that they make this change to Rep or would you prefer that everything else you've worked for becomes useless as they introduce level 60, level 70, level 80...as they introduce Mk XX, Mk XXV, Mk TRIBBLE gear...as they introduce T6, T7, T8+ ships?
Hrmmm...yeah...I'll go with them limiting the number of slottable traits instead.
Nah ... that'll never happen ... . :rolleyes:
So settle for this on the sort term ... !
So if there is anyone left after season 9 goes live they can go to being a zero to a hero because all the good players will be gone roflmao.
Although you do have to ask yourself they have basically disregarded the concerns of 2 past player bases on the sake of a new one coming along but who they got lined up now?
It's not a PvP specific nerf. It might be useful for PvP as well, but it's also important for PVE.
FOr what is Cryptic supposed to balance special events and new missions indicate at hardcore players - people that have already 32 reputation passives boosting their performance, or those that have none?
Think about what this means for new players - new, challenging content could be useless for them because they have yet 8 reputations to grind through to be able to deal with it, quite possibly even existing content might get useless because people say "I rget through Elite STFs in 30 seconds after a single faceroll over the keyboard, buff the Borg!"
It would be terrible for PVE players if reputation grind became mandatory to enjoy new content. Especially if you need to run some of these new content to level the next reputation - by the time you're qualified for it, the older community would have long moved on to the next type of missions, leading to long mission queues.
End result is that no one would be happy. Long wait queues, alts completely discouraged due to excessive grinding necessary to join in the next grind, everyone forced into the same grind path.
It feels a lot like this, yes. There is little reason to increase survivability with reputation powers. (There may be a bit of it in PvP, but in PvE, damage wins.) That would probably require some adjustment in the enemies offensive capabilities, but maybe it will always be like that...
because of course people never do the content with no passives that those with 16 do, oh no wait, thats exactly what already happens.
To please both camps, ADD one more passive space/ground with each introduction of new Rep system. All have same amount of slots, but fully rept player has more choices. Also PR wise each new reputation will be a welcomed by all players. Carrot and the grind kind of think.
And yet I find it hard right now to get over the fact that it primarily punishes people who grinded through all that stuff at least for the passive powers.
If I would have known that in advance, I would have exactly looked at which powers I may have use for - since most of the equipment is useless for my purposes anyways.
So... is this design good? Yes. But it should have been like that from the start.
But hey... change is never pretty (that's from Tiber Septim :P).
It only takes one month with a rep token. Unless you are suggesting new players are going to come into a 4 year old MMO and be the types of players that will put a diaper on and farm content for 8 hours a day 7 days a week for a month.
I have been around forever and yes spend way to much time in this game.... I am not blind to how actual casual players play these games though.
No there are not new casual players (very few hardcore type game folk jump into games 4 years in if they had an interest in trek they where already here) finishing every rep in a month. I can't quote you a number but I know its longer then 30 days. lol
Thing is Cryptic knows its longer then 30 days as well... they didn't add the rep tokens and make this change with out looking at there player data.
This is also a future proofing of the system. Even if you could argue that it only takes a month right now to finish 4 reps... there will soon be 5... and obviously they won't be stopping there... So in a year from now with 8 reps. How long then for a new players to catch up ?
It is like they really want you in a romulan ship..
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Got something better for you :
I don't care .
I give up .
They can take this , and their Mk 14 equipment , and their lack of challenging endgame , and their continuous non-stop short sightedness , and their lack of vision and just shove it .
I think Handsome Phaser Guy needs a bit of a photoshop up there ^^^ to show his middle finger as he points toward STO .
PvP: This just gives yet another advantage to those with cloaks as they can tailor their rep passives since they can go out of combat.
And they say that the aim is to curb powercreep? Lol, if they wanted to do that they'd take a nerf bat to doffs. Do that and every uber PvP or PvE DPS epeen build out there would collapse.
36 days without sponsorship, and it takes me about an hour and a half to two hours a day to get enough for a days rep projects.
Still waiting to be able to use forum titles