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Official Revamped Trait and Reputation Powers System Feedback Thread
coldsnapped
Member Posts: 520 Cryptic Developer
Please post all bugs and feedback on this thread for the newly revamped Trait and Reputation Powers System on Tribble.
Revamped Trait and Reputation Powers System:
Known Issues:
Revamped Trait and Reputation Powers System:
- All owned traits now appear in a single list.
- This allows players to select the desired traits up to the available limit.
- This number depends on what level their captain is.
- This allows players to select the desired traits up to the available limit.
- The Traits window now also includes all powers earned in the personal reputation system.
- This is broken into 3 categories: Space Reputation, Ground Reputation, and Active Reputation.
- When clicking on each section, all earned powers of that type will appear on the right side of the window.
- Players may choose up to 4 space reputation powers, 4 ground reputation powers, and 4 active reputation powers for a total of 12 powers.
- Players may activate or deactivate any of these earned powers at any time.
- Respec tokens for Reputation powers are no longer needed.
- Currently-owned reputation respec tokens will be converted into something of comparable value.
- Further details will come at a later date.
- Currently-owned reputation respec tokens will be converted into something of comparable value.
Known Issues:
- This is still a work in progress.
- Space and Active traits can get into a state of not being able to become active when unchecked.
Post edited by coldsnapped on
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Comments
1
-8 Space, 8 Ground, 4 Actives.
-traits stay as they currently are on holodeck, no buffs
This keeps things exactly as they are and those who have finished all 4 reps are not punished but also stops people from gaining any new powers making them too powerful.
2
-6 Space, 6 Ground, 4 Actives.
-Traits use the buffs with this, maybe 1.5x current levels instead of 2.0x.
We lose 2 passives on both but gain the bonuses making up for it. makes losing the traits not as bad as we only lose 2 each instead of 4.
3
-4 Space, 4 Ground, 4 Actives.
-Traits use the buffs, or maybe 1.5x current levels instead of 2.0x.
-For reaching T5 in every new rep you get +1 passive space and +1 passive ground. (some people have also said every other rep you will get +1 Active)
So for this it does take away the 4/4 that we earned but we get the buffs, and additionally with every rep we hit T5 on we'll get an extra slot back.
IMO this is the best solution since it gives an incentive to complete future reps where as now there is none.
And i want to make that very clear to the devs, this system that you have put out here REMOVES ALL INCENTIVE TO COMPLETE ANY FUTURE REPS. That can not be stressed enough. The majority of my fleet only did the Dyson rep for the passives, many stopped at T4, same with Nukara. Looking at the undine rep right now i literally see only a couple items that i can get at T1 or T2 and then i will have no incentive to complete it.
Unlike many people I've supported the rep system since day one. As someone who was never able to get any mk xii stf gear i was incredibly excited about the reps and i've completed all of them on multiple characters and i've enjoyed them immensely knowing that even if i didn't like any of the items in the rep (nukara/dyson) i was still getting abilities out of it. But now with this new system, unless there is a really great ability or item at T5, i have no reason to complete any rep, and i'm not alone, the over 150 pages of comments in the thread proved that. And of course taking earned content away from people is never a good thing.
I understand the reasoning behind this but there are better ways to do it when what your planned, unless the Undine rep is the last rep and we all know that isn't true.
I strongly urge you to consider these options as alternatives and discuss with us, many of your paying players, and among yourselves so we can hopefully come to a way that everyone can be happy and those of us who have spent our time and money leveling up 4 reps on multiple characters won't feel ripped off and you the developers will be happy with stopping the power creep.
That's not true at all. In fact, this change will give the devs an opportunity to make new traits more powerful and more interesting. So let's say 8 months from now they unleash their new Khazon reputation system. And in it is a special T4 rep power that increases the firing arc on DHCs to 90 degrees. Might you now be tempted to grind that rep and drop one of the choices you previously made?
There will be more carrots attached to more sticks.
My biggest complaint with the rep update isn't limiting the number of passives that can be active at once, it's the elimination of Mk X and XI rep gear. We don't need XII for the PVE content in this game. Give us some tougher content to justify only having that level of gear available, please. We shouldn't have to make our own challenge by not using the weapons we've paid for, since XI rares perform just as well.
But making future traits more desirable by making them more powerful is still another form of power creep, which is why the current system is being changed now.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
This is true. I hope we see more interesting traits, not more powerful ones.
Your of course assuming they're going to do that, as we don't know what the devs will do int he future I don't want to look at it that way.
Of course your right and they could do that, but considering how many people don't do the reps already, and how many do them only for the abilities, i see a system like this possibly destroying the rep system and more and more people ignoring it all together.
Though of course if that happens and they find a huge drop in percentage completion from dyson to undine they'll probably look at this again. But right now as it stand and what the undine rep is, the majority of the people i know are going to flat out ignore it, and that isn't good for the game, and it isn't good for the developers.
*edit* also your example would never happen and as amosov pointed out, the whole point is removing power creep, adding more powerful powers to force us to upgrade would undermine the entire point of this and at that point they should just leave it as is and keep giving us very minor bonuses.
Yes and no. My example was just off the top of my head. But I can forsee them going into SITUATIONALLY more powerful.
Like in my example, they increase the firing arc on DHCs. That isn't useful at all to beam boats.
Another example might be they come out with a trait that increases crit chance to Disruptors. So instead of 5% overall crit chance from the trait currently available, it would be 7.5% crit rate to disruptors.
That's going to be desirable to disruptors users. But not antiproton users. Situationally more desirable.
That's something they've done in the past, and with other games. Something I can see them doing here. And the power creep is slowed down because of the hard cap on the number of traits.
The system will continue to offer carrots. That's what the keep doing. They're trying to curb power creep. Not wipe it out. The game hinges on carrots on sticks. So there has to be incentive. And they will keep adding incentive. This isn't a binary situation. They will keep adding new things for players to want as the game grows.
Nah, it's nowhere near as black and white as that. This is an MMO. And it still has a certain structure. They're not capable of "removing" power creep. They are capable of heading off serious power creep issues before they balloon. That's what this change is really trying to do.
Let's take Hawk's actual blog:
It's all right there in Hawk's own words.
They're trying to curb power creep. Not remove it. Player reaction really went off the charts with this, and it's created some miscommunication. They're not trying to get rid of power creep. They're trying to curb the scaling of these powers.
He even says that they like the appeal of the system's escalating power rewards. That right there is a sign that they will continue to add powers that escalate the rewards.
What they did to curb that and keep it from getting out of control, was to cap the choices.
They plan to keep giving you more of these trait powers and they will make some of them enticing. They say right there that they like doing that.
I'll basically stop bothering with reputation from this point on if this change takes effect, and this effect can be the straw that broke the camel's back for a lot of people.
-thar
All of your examples make things even worse. For example, plasma got an insane boost thanks to the plasma infused science consoles. but was offset due to the fact that most people run shields with plasma resist so in PVE plasma became great but it didn't help much in PVP.
But if you give DHC's 90 degree firing arcs, the entire balance of the game is dead. beam boats would become useless and you'd just ruin the game. As far as adding a chance for just one type of weapon, that brings up the same problem, if there is a rep that's all about one type of weapon, if i don't like that type of weapon i have no reason to play that rep.
it's the same reason why Nukara and Dyson are ignored by so many people, or they just hit T5 for the passives and didn't spend a cent on anything.
Any future powers would be on par with these, and if they were more powerful, that does the exact opposite of what the goal of this was.
he's absolutely right, it's not scalable. The problem is, and the reason why people are pissed, is because they are TAKING AWAY WHAT WE EARNED. That is the #1 reason why people are pissed. Those of us like me who hit T5 rep on multiple characters (and this is BEFORE sponsorships mind you) are getting ripped off. We are losing 50% of what we earned.
Now in response of that they've increased all the abilities 2x or similar. now that actually makes the power creep even worse. Now i'll get +5% crit, +20% severity and 2 abilities with flat out damage boosts? i wouldn't be surprised if the best players easily get a 2-5k DPS boost from this so that actually makes it even worse.
I have absolutly no problem with them capping the choices, as i showed in my first post there are 3 truly great ideas on how to deal with this. Personally my favorite is keeping the powers all exactly as they are and capping us at 8. So the game stays as it is right now and to use future ones you have to get rid of one. That is fair. Of course you'll probably have huge portions of the player base ignoring entire reps because there is no item and no power they want, but there is nothing they can do about that and Cryptic will just have to live with it.
I know as i've said for myself i won't even bother with the Undine rep at all because there is literally no point to be wasting my time with it. I don't want any of the powers and i don't want any of the items, so here is an entire season of content that means nothing to me.
but the only way around that is to do the third concept, where you cap us at 4 but add 1 spot back. and they can even cap us again at 8 if they want. but that at least gives an incentive.
I'm not saying that there is a perfect solution here. there simply isn't. You cant give us 200 passive powers, that's stupid, yet you have to stop the power creep. And at the same time you need to actually give people a reason to do the future reps but you can't put insanely OP powers because that'll defeat the entire purpose of this in the first place. It's a screwed up situation but the current solution is NOT the best one.
this i agree getting rid of mkx and mkxi hits hard as now to get the gear for the grind you have to use random drops or mission gear.
for the longest time i just used the mkxi borg and mkxi maco shield. now any new toon will have to use aegis or good random drop/mission gear untill i have ground enough STFs or other content to get the gear
heck on my alts i still run mkxi as i do not feel like grinding for mkxii i was hoping witht he gear revamp the other sets where getting mkx and mkxi versions
how is this helping new lv50's again? thought this was what the changes where suppose to do
First, the existing reps were not mandatory in all cases either, so its not really significant if future reps are not attractive to you. For example, I only needed T5 on the Romulan reputation with science captains (for the buff to sci skills from the T5 active ability), and on my romulan tac who wanted the experimental beam unlock at T5, but my other tacs and engis stopped grinding it at T4 (the last useful passive) because it was a pain to get the marks and I didnt *NEED* T5 on any of them. Likewise, all of my captains stopped at T4 Nukara rep since there was nothing in T5 that I wanted for any of them (all I really wanted was the web mines). I was not planning to complete T5 Dyson rep either but there wasnt anything esle to do with the commendations, so I ended up getting it anywya. I did eventually finish them all with excess marks from winter epohhs, and with the vet tokens, but the point here is that I didnt feel compelled to get T5 on everything and I dont see why anybody thinks its a sign of great failure if there's less incentive for future reps.
Second, there are many things in the rep rewards that are worth grinidng for. For Romulan rep it was the experimental beam array, for Omega there are the suits and set pieces. All of the rep systems so far have an interesting console at low tier as well. Its simply false to say that lack of additional stacking reps makes all the rest of it irrelevant.
Third, rep marks are easy to get from casual play, and at some point you will do the rep grind just because you have the excess marks. That's what happened to me with commendations and winter epohhs, and I wanted to dump the marks. Its especially easy after the first one gets through, and you can come back and claim the vet token. Getting to T1 usually takes 2 days, T2 usually takes 5 days, and it kind of goes out from there--it only takes a couple of weeks to hit T4 and anybody can feed that with casual, incidental play rewards.
So for all these reasons, I have to say that I find your statement to be flat-out wrong, in multiple regards.
They're not taking away anything from anyone, all they're doing is changing how using the reputation powers works. You will still have access to the same number as before, it's just that all of them won't be constantly active and affecting you.
I for one like this idea because it means that someone will have to think about which reputation abilities to activate for whatever situation they're going into instead of just having 16 (about to be 20) passive abilities affecting them constantly.
Oh, and with the active tier 5s, you'll have the same amount then as you do now, you just won't be able to have 5 readily available on completing the new rep or any future ones.
For me personally its as boring as it was before. 4 slots will be enough for the two crit powers and the two direct dmg increase powers. Thats that. Same stuff on almost every char. Same as now only its less overall and no costs attached to change something you want change. I dont mind nerfs to make the powercreep less creepy so go ahead but i'm quite sure this is the beginning of the end of reps. People might do a rep for 5 new powers, but for the option of maybe using one well i know i wont.
That was my suggestion to change things a little. You would end-up with 4 traits each that are equivalent to 8 of the current passives.
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
4 space passive, 4 ground passive, 2 active
slightly Off-topic: (please....the 10 min CDs SUCK...though you [cryptic] have never been good at determining good CDs for very short powers (Fleet Support and Pirate Distress Call....15 mins is OVERKILL))
Judas! :rolleyes:
Well, I think you mean 2 active traits each, so 2 for space and 2 for ground. Since the Undine-Reputation will offer a new active ground trait (nobody has seen the medical generator with 2.5 km range), if you do it another way, people would simply respec the reputation traits between their Space and Ground-Missions (this will also happen with a general restriction to 4 active traits in total).
The cooldowns on some powers aren't that bad, especially long cooldowns for Pirate-Distress Signal isn't bad, because when I called them the last time during the mirror-invasion, those dumb pirates healed the mirror Dreadnought... Just imagine they would hang around for half an hour!
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
I'm noticing, for example, that the ground trait Identify Vulnerability doesn't tell you any meaningful information when you press the Details button for more info. It only says "Your attacks ignore some of your target's shields in ground combat." In order to find out the actual number you have to make the trait active, then hover over its icon in the active tab.
This may be the only trait that has this issue, but yes, please double check all of them so that their expanded details are verbose.
Additionally please revert the Omega Graviton Pulse module.. it's way more useful to have slower adapting borg than it is to have a 5% chance for kinetic damage.
Joined January 2009
This isn't just an issue with the reputation traits. Not all the trait descriptions were updated with the trait revamp in Legacy of Romulus. Some of those that were updated are missing stats.
Why not balance teams, scale content difficulty on team/gear performance and let the power creep flow?
With this mantra (close the gap, favor the weak) i see no reason to do more reps and the grind for it. when they introduce new shinies (rep-passives AND ships/gear) and the gap will be bigger - guess who will be punished again?
You can choose 4 active reputation powers - but some of them are ground and some are space, right? Why would you make people choose between ground and active slots for space, if the slots can be changed out of combat anyway?
Seems advisable to use the same concept for active powers as for passives - you have slots for ground and you have slots for space.
I suppose with the current number of active abilities available, it doesn't really matter, but again, future proofing ,it will matter, and it will probably mostly lead to a bit of a usability problem, as people switiching betwen ground and space firs thave to slot different actives.
I suggest giving people a number of active ground and active space slots. (2 might work for the currently available reputations, 3 might be if you are willing to leave a single slot open - you could start with 2 and finally increase it to 3 when a 6th reputation becomes available).
What is really the point of adding more power if content is automatically scaled to that extra power? Where is the meaningful change? "Yeah, I deal 1500 damage instead of the 50 0damage I used to! Now my enemies also deal 3 times as much damage and have 3 times as many hit points, too! Awesome, nothing has changed at all, everythnig plays exactly the same, but with bigger numbers". With ability choices, you actually have a chance to create different gameplay.
Increased difficulty -> increased rewards (less grind) of course. quite the same as we have today with normal and elite mode. but today everyone is playing elite because of the increased rewards. doesnt matter if one is able to contribute or has the skill to support the team.
Or in other words the carrot. I miss the carrot.
Just look at the recent time-gated missions they made: you can not loose. it doesnt matter how good you are: if you pug with two or more fresh max-level chars or players in inappropriate builds - expect low rewards. If you only run premades - good luck finding them nowadays. Is this the different gamplay you are talking about? If this is the future, then future sucks.
Standard Traits: Can there be or bring back the distinction between space and ground traits beyond the little icons, i.e separate them. I only have one character that uses ground traits, there really isn't much point to them.
Auxiliary Power Configurations Tool Tip does only displays 0%, it will only show the actual change from the currently selected box.
Could also go with having an "offensive" and "defense" traits tab. If you want an offensive space trait, click on the offense tab and pick from those. Something to further separate the traits out instead of having them all jumbled together on one page. The more reps we add into the game, the longer that list is going to get. And that's when it's going to get nasty.
Mine Trap Supporter
In the best case I might grind for a couple may feel a need for but spending hours, days and weeks grinding out all the reps for only 4/4 reps is an ureal expectation. Once most of us find the reps we want, the option of changing them at anytime doesn't really mean anything. So here I am very let down by STO. Surely there is a better way. If this is the system as it will be on the holodeck, I know myself as well as some fleet members who will likely give up doing any reps in the future. My time in game can be used for better things then grinding for stuff that I can't use.