I'm finding myself in the position of wanting to branch out with new ships and playstyles but the steep cost to respecing skill points seems like the highest in any mmo I've ever played. It's great that even as a tactical captain I can take a Science ship out. But when I need to reinvest heavily into extremely niche abilities like gravition this and flow capacitors that to make those different ships work in a different build, all the high cost respec price succeeds in doing is acting as a deterrent to run or experiment with anything but a cookie cutter build for your chosen profession. I'm not asking for a profession respec, but merely a more accessible way to swap between ship types without blowing 500 zen front and back for the relevant skills.
Diablo 3 has a great system of free respecing whenever you're out of combat that highly encourages innovation and new play styles. But even a 1 million energy credit cost would be fairer than Cryptic's current price. (while also taking out a small chunk of energy credits created every single day now inflating our economy)
With the trait changes coming in S9, I really hope they consider doing something similar for skill points. There's simply no room for experimentation with the 500 Zen cost that exists right now.
Diablo 3 is not a F2P game. You do have to purchase it before you can play the game, hence the available respec system.
STO, on the other hand, has had those respec tokens around since its initial release for Captains who burned through their freebie ones gained upon Rank Advancement (this was when the game was P2P). And the only thing that has changed has been the name of the currency used to get the token.
And it saw far more use back then because you really couldn't go with an even build like you can now. You had to decide which energy, projectile, ship type you wanted to fly. Putting a few points in to everything did more harm than good before the F2P skill change. I think Tactical skills saw the largest changes with the new system we have today.
Besides, 500 Zen is a decent price when compared to similar MMO's for respec'ing your character.
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Well, Cryptic have an interest financially in preferring us to create new toons to do the exploration of style you speak of.
Thus, the zen cost offsets the potential loss to them from no need for toon slots etc.
However, given how cryptic seem to have gone out of their way recently to be as alt unfriendly as possible, 500 zen is too high.
200 would be nearer the mark.
Except for silver players an alt only gets one chance to pick their skill point build before getting charged 500 zen for it too. So not really a whole lot of room for "experimentation". You'd have to be either rich or crazy to slot anything other than a proven and reliable cookie cutter build when trying out a playstyle. Never the less, even if I did make an alt solely for one ship type, Cryptic would hardly be making money on the deal. With the alt running a different build, the respec token no longer needs buying. And all of my zen ships and costumes could be reclaimed for free.
Hell at this point I'd pay 2000 zen just for a dual spec for my main that could be swapped in and out when I swapped ships like when my doffs/boffs and gear get swapped already.
DC Universe Online has a respec cost of 1,000 dollars (in game money of course) for both traits and powers (which is a lot, as the most a F2P person can have access to at one time is 1,500 dollars). You can acquire money beyond 1,500 dollars, but it goes into escrow and requires a store purchase (with real world money) to get out. As a poor college student, I like this approach. Of course, DCUO sells DLC expansion packs, so maybe that's why they can afford free respecs. I'm in agreement that five bucks is a bit much to try out a new build, especially if that one doesn't work and you then have to respec again. Maybe Cryptic could come up with something like a holodeck that allows you to respec and try out your new build a bit. If I had that option, I wouldn't mind paying five dollars to respec, knowing that it was a good build for me. As it is now, it's a five dollar TRIBBLE shoot.
As a long-time LTSer I've really come to appreciate the free respecs I get, but I've actually reached the point where I've run a couple of characters out of respecs. And that 500 Zen price is lookin' a bit high to me. 200-300 might be more reasonable, or even a bulk discount option (5 for the price of 4?).
You can experiment all you want with respecs and it will cost nothing, even for silver players. Just transfer your toon to the Tribble test server before you use your free respec. Go to tribble, respec, see if you like it. If not, delete the toon on tribble, transfer again, respec again, etc.
And as has been said, a little time investment is all it takes to get anything in this game for free. 8 days of max dilithium refining is just about 500 zen, and it doesn't take all that long to get 8K dilithium per day.
Diablo 3 is not a F2P game. You do have to purchase it before you can play the game, hence the available respec system.
STO, on the other hand, has had those respec tokens around since its initial release for Captains who burned through their freebie ones gained upon Rank Advancement (this was when the game was P2P). And the only thing that has changed has been the name of the currency used to get the token.
And it saw far more use back then because you really couldn't go with an even build like you can now. You had to decide which energy, projectile, ship type you wanted to fly. Putting a few points in to everything did more harm than good before the F2P skill change. I think Tactical skills saw the largest changes with the new system we have today.
Besides, 500 Zen is a decent price when compared to similar MMO's for respec'ing your character.
Just that STO charged for respecs long before it went f2p.
And yeah I'd consider that price a bad joke.
I remember stating that back when the prices were changed to the current stat:
They seem to have no idea how to sell stuff. A respec that cost them NOTHING can cost whatever they want.
500 zen? Nobody buys it.
200 zen? 100 zen? something like 80 zen (avoiding the three-digit-price)?
Peiple will be like "well lets try that" and buy them again and again and again... and ultimately pay much more on that.
Thats basic economy.
It's not about being lazy, but thanks for the insult. You're cool. :rolleyes:
I already respeced once. I'm not going to bother again. That 500 Zen is a quarter of a new t5 ship. I'm simply saying the price is too high to allow any sort of experimentation. You're entirely reliant on others' experiences and guides when you respec, you can't play around and see how putting two more points into "X" skill affects "Y" ability or anything like that. That's a flawed system that stifles creativity, IMO. Tribble's a workaround, but not a solution.
IMO skill respecs hurt the game more than it funds it.
It kind of railroads people into finding a build that works and sticking with it, and in effect discourages people from buying new ships.
Now if you could freely respec without extra cost, as you could actually do before STO went Free 2 Play, then people would be much more willing to experiment and invest in a variety of different ships they normally wouldn't even consider in the first place.
Just that STO charged for respecs long before it went f2p.
Yes STO did charge for respecs.
But you could also still respec completely for free by earning Merit points, which you were given for virtually every mission.
Kind of sad how a lot of peopl got screwed over big time with the dilithium conversion when STO went free to play.
People who had enough merits for like 10 respecs didn't even get enough dilithium to buy C-Points for even one respec.
Every single silver player can convert Dil to Zen and get a respec (as well as everything else in the store) without ever spending a dime out of their own pockets.
Which takes over a week a respec if you grind dil to the cap every single day for no other purpose than for dumping it into another one. I guess I didn't think about this from the point of view of players that have maybe only one ship at end game or perhaps one very specific niche of playstyle they're willing to play that sees a respec being necessary only in extremely rare and unusual circumstances. In that regard 500 zen a pop is fair.
But for players such as myself with tons of different ships and ship types, I'm often feeling the itch to fly a different one every other day. The diversity in play styles and ships helps to keep the game feeling fresh without becoming repetitive. I just wish there was something like a "frequent flyer" program for people such as myself that is more economical over the long haul than 500 zen a pop. Because if it were 100 zen a pop, or 150 zen a pop, I would buy them like crazy as I could raise the funds every couple of days. But when they're 500 and I'm looking at over a week each, I buy zero. Instead making do with what I've got. Cryptic would ironically make more off of me with a lower price than with a higher one.
1. So the real problem is that you have issues with instant gratification. I'm sorry but that comes with a price. And if it's true that you want to use different builds every other day you'd still be complaining about the price even if it was lowered because buying respecs that often adds up fast, and even tho you'll deny it, you'd figure if Cryptic caved once they'd do it again if you complained more.
Not really. That was just a hilarious moment of blatant presumptuousness on your part.
Apparently Cryptic feels the pittance they'd make off of us if they lowered the price of respecs isn't worth the effort because this isn't the first time someone has come to complain that prices are too high and they can't be bothered to get what they want for free by grinding Dil.
The concept of charging a little less for such a simple service people could use regularly instead of a much higher price people only use once in a blue moon seems to have gone completely over your head, so I will not attempt to argue that point with you further. But you're wrong about something else, and that is this thinking that Cryptic is so head strong and unreasonable that they would never reevaluate the pricing of any service ever. Do you remember the 2 boff slots you could buy in the C Store forever? Most players weren't willing to pay the steep price Cryptic was asking for at the time and simply made do with the boff slots they were given. Then after enough pleas Cryptic lowered the price to 250 zen. The cost became more in line in what the service was worth and I for one have used the service 3 times since. 250 zen for two more boffs slots is completely fair and all of this "you'd just say they caved and push more" nonsense you've rambled on about has apparently not come to pass.
Even on the subject of respecs though, Cryptic has outright removed the cost of changing traits in the new patch so clearly they are more open to player feedback than you seem to think they are. If you think the cost of a skill point respec is perfect at 500 zen, that is fine in the scope of this discussion. But don't be telling me Cryptic is unwilling to consider and evaluate player feed back on these matters, or any matters within the game. The upcoming removal of several respec tokens in other parts of the game proves otherwise.
I can understand that some have no problem paying 500 Zen for a respec, and may argue that that high of price is where they think it should be. However, if the price were to be lowered, does that mean that those that liked the higher price would stop buying respecs? Most likely not. It would benefit everyone, even Cryptic.
Personally, I would love to see the price lowered. I am disabled, and therefore have no income. That means that I need to grind Dilithium for everything in the C-Store. I have no problem with this. However, to get a three ship bundle, I need to grind almost 660,000 to over 700,000 Dilithium. For that reason, I could benefit from it. (I am in no way saying I am entitled though, just that it could help).
There are others who are in the same boat, or worse off. Many of them are not disabled, just don't have a lot of resources, or time to play. Between the rep grinds, and any special grinds, like summer, winter, anniversary, and the mirror, it can be very hard for a them to grind a whole weeks worth of Dilithium to get a single respec for one character.
I have 5 characters, and managed to get enough Dilithium saved up to get a respec recently when they did the sale. However, it only saved 15%. That will be the only respec I will be able to do. All of my other characters will need to make do with what they have.
I know that I can test my build on Tribble, but a lot of times I have been in Tribble and had a mission queued for about 45 mins asking for someone to join so I could test a build. (In fact, I have been queued for almost 10 mins on Holodeck waiting to get into an STF after the removal of the hourlies).
So, Tribble is good, but it can also cost precious time just waiting to test out a new build. However, if I could get the respec for around 125 Zen each, then I could afford to respec my other 4 characters. That would be 500 Zen that I would otherwise not buy. Plus, if I change my ship, and need another build, I could afford another one.
Just a few thoughts.
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If the difference between 6 investments and 9 investments in a captain skill made any sort of noticeable difference then I would want some sort of skill spec swapping implemented. But hold on guys. Wait a sec. This realy isn't necisery.
You know that you get diminishing returns as you invest in skills I am sure. For the first three investments in a skill you get 18 skill points per investment. For the next three investments you get 10 points per investment, and for the last three investments you get just 5 points per investment.
So taking a skill to 9 investments over 6 gets you a whopping 15 extra points. That's a big deal right?
Actually it isn't. Skill points in STO really don't do very much in small numbers. Hear are some examples:
15 points in graviton generators adds 0.22km to the radius of a Gravity Well 3
15 points in particle generators adds 10.9 points of damage to each tick of Gravity Well 3
15 points in attack paterns adds 1% to the damage bonus of Omega 3
15 points in sensors adds 0.4% to the stealth sight buff from sensor scan
15 points in energy weapons specialization adds 0.3% to your critical hit chance
15 points in subspace decompiler adds 0.7 seconds to the duration of viral matrix 3
Now you might be looking at those numbers and thinking; 'Golly I am never going to be able to tell the difference between a player who has maxed a captain skill and one who has only taken it to 6.' But you would be wrong. You could tell the difference if you spent a lot of time testing with a parser.
So the question you have to ask yourself is, are you going to spend a lot of time testing with a parser? If the answer to that question is probably not, you don't need to respec for different ships and loadouts.
Just give your captain a generalist build taking no captain skills past 6 investments and you will never be able to tell the difference... unless you really really like spending time parsing.
Nothing is free, time is money however you cut it.
However, with respecs, while Tribble is a decent workaround, really they ought to have something like they had in Champions, where you can go to a testing hall and while you're in the hall you can respec as much as you like and there are dummies and various testing apparatus, and even a basic encounter simulator.
They could do something like that in this game with the holodeck concept.
But personally, I've never understood the idea that respecs should cost anything. They should always be free, or cost very, very little. The two arguments against this, the RPG argument ("choices have consequences") and the cookie-cutter argument ("everyone would respec to the FOTM whenever it changed") just seem quaint to me nowadays.
People have such little time or patience these days, and MMOs have such little sense of being virtual worlds, that you might as well just let rip and let people have what they want. Older game design concepts like balance, choices-have-consequences, etc., just seem antiquated, they come from an older world, from the past, long gone. Sad but true.
also, the consoles add definitely more power than skill points.
there is no need to fill more than 6 ranks in every skill, apart from weapons perhaps..
you also lvl a toon with a PLAN (normally)
and - it is possible to play the game on lvl 50 without a single skill point or only with everything at 3 ranks.
on the other hand, i can imagine how 500 zen could be much for some folks and cryptic could think about lowering the skill respec to
skill respec - 250 Zen, 50 LOBI or 20.000.000 EC
skill, traits respec - 500 Zen, 100 LOBI or 40.000.000 EC
It would have been really nice if each toon could have a separate skill tree/ship. For example, if I switch to escort then I select skill tree which suits tactical build, or if I select cruiser then select skill tree which suits cruiser. Kinda like loadout.
This per ship skill tree could have been unlocked using zen.
Downside is that it will involve some work in cryptic side, and this means it may lead to some nasty bugs with any update. It is likely possible some ferengi clown in their financial department sitting in a decision making chair may not see it very profitable.
Grinding for MkIV epic gear?
Ain't Nobody Got Time for That
There's no presumptions going on. You can get all the respecs you want for free. You just choose not to take advantage of the options that provide them for free. There will always be players that choose instant gratification over putting in the time to get what they want for free.
I do use the options available to me in converting dil to zen. That doesn't mean it's free. As a poster before you mentioned, time is money no matter how you spin it. The question isn't whether there is an option to buy a respec without using actual cash, the question is if the current price of 500 zen is doing players and even Cryptic the most good. I don't think it is. If you think it's perfect you're free to argue that point, hence the purpose of this discussion. But let's not spin it into an angry old man liberal whipper snapper sense of entitlement tangent.
And the concept that maybe Cryptic doesn't want people to regularly respec their characters every other day so they deliberately set the dil grind to take several days, and the price just low enough to be affordable to people that really need it but yet still high enough to keep people like you from buying it frequently seems to have gone completely over your head.
Not everything Cryptic does is about making a buck as fast as possible.
Maybe Cryptic wanted us to pay 500 zen for two boff slots at one point too, but that wasn't working out for the players or Cryptic alike. I could charge $200 for my cheap microsoft mouse on ebay, that doesn't mean it is worth that much nor does it mean I'm doing myself any favors by doing so. As for the last point, you and I will just have to disagree over that one. The Scimitar for instance is a very overpowered ship that is one of Cryptics best sellers, even though that core selling point has more or less taken a dump on balance and value of every other ship in the game in comparison. Not exactly good for the state of the game, but great for fast bucks none the less.
Apparently Cryptic feels the pittance they'd make off of us if they lowered the price of respecs isn't worth the effort because this isn't the first time someone has come to complain that prices are too high and they can't be bothered to get what they want for free by grinding Dil.
You make it sound like Cryptics is so utterly inflexible and unwilling to change or reevaluate pricing or the practicality of the c store or services that attempting to stir up any kind of discussion or provide any feedback is basically a waste of time when I plain as day told you that isn't necessarily true. They've reevaluated pricing on things like boff slots when they weren't working out. They've reevaluated the practicality of respec tokens on things like traits and reputation racials and have moved in a direction that made the token system obsolete.
I suppose if I had made a thread a month ago asking Cryptic to not make us choose between all space traits or ground traits because it leaves us gimped in the other aspect of the game that you would insist that apparently Cryptic thinks players should actually gimp themselves in ground, unless they are willing to fork over the dil for a trait respec every time they swap between space and ground portions. Clearly if they converted their dil to zen they could pay for a couple, though certainly not enough to be relevant. Yet here we are. That archaic system is on it's way out. Cryptic listened to us and we will be the better for it.
The truth is Cryptic constantly listens to players feedback and they also constantly choose not to implement what the players suggest for reasons they frequently refuse to explain. :rolleyes:
They have a thousand of voices giving their opinions and ideas on what to do with the game. Obviously they could not implement them all. But some do. Which brings us to the purpose of this message board in the first place; discussion.
Yes STO did charge for respecs.
But you could also still respec completely for free by earning Merit points, which you were given for virtually every mission.
Kind of sad how a lot of peopl got screwed over big time with the dilithium conversion when STO went free to play.
People who had enough merits for like 10 respecs didn't even get enough dilithium to buy C-Points for even one respec.
Indeed :mad:
The thing with the respec is... even with tribbel testing you need a long time to get it right.
With the old skill tree I did invest A LOT of work to getting it to work as close to perfect as possible including fine tuning.
That wasted up all my free respecs from leveling on my fed eng, obviously, because while I DID test on tribble for hours before doing any change.
With the new tree... well I didn't get my now "wasted" free specs back and only had one chance.
So I skilled whatever I felt was right and am rolling with that since then. Needless to say that this spec isn't very good.
And its not that I would starve if I'd spent that zen, but I refuse to put that amount of money into something that has clearly no relation in value.
Also I don't have the time for that amount of testing any more. So to get it right I would certainly need far more then 1 respec. So I'll keep that bad build- it could be worst after all.
You're just bitter that you can't think of a single rebuttal that refutes the simple fact that respecs can be done for free, and you just choose not to take advantage of them.
In all fairness, you can't buy respec tokens on Tribble. You must have already own them on holodeck, and then transfer your toon to Tribble to experiment with respecs. Not a biggie if you know it; but if you have 0 respec tokens, and someone tells you "Hey, just go to Tribble and test out for free!", then said person might find himself having to buy respec tokens on holodeck first, after all.
The 500 zen is not enough, it should 1000 zen or more. You can't have all this constant respeccing, it adds to the power creep.
Another solution is to cut the skill points in half and then remove the respeccing fee to reduce the power creep.
I love the power creep! :P So, how's about we do it the EvE Online way, and let ppl max out ALL their skills?! No one in the EvE Online community ever b*tched about the alleged power creep this would give rise to: ppl have simply accepted, and found it to be natural, that someone who's been in the game for several years is a lot further ahead than someone who just started out.
What you call 'power creep', I call the whining of this generation of selfies, who want everything *right now*, on equal footing with the veteran player, with nary an effort or time put into the whole deal. Self-entitlement at its glorified height!
You are correct, and what the devs should do on tribble is set the tribble cstore (lobi, etc) prices to zero for testing and delete all characters on the first of each month, or maybe every 3 months.
That's not what Tribble is for though, that's just what people use it to do. :P
I know, I am a bit late here... but has anybody noticed that the 20k dil respec tokens were patched out of the dil store during the last 6 months? I cannot remember that it was included in any patch notes.
So paying 500 zen to reskill is the only option, at the exchange rate today this is almost 4 times the amount of dil I payed half a year ago.
I know, I am a bit late here... but has anybody noticed that the 20k dil respec tokens were patched out of the dil store during the last 6 months? I cannot remember that it was included in any patch notes.
So paying 500 zen to reskill is the only option, at the exchange rate today this is almost 4 times the amount of dil I payed half a year ago.
Not sure since I never bought it but... I thought the 20 k respec was for traits and/or rep traits... Which can be changed at will now... Thought that didn't effect the skilltree???
Yeah that's it, except for the fact that silver's (and everyone else) can grind dil for a week or so and get a respec to fix their builds for free. :rolleyes:
Time is a cost, it is not free. Stop saying it is free when it is not.
Not sure since I never bought it but... I thought the 20 k respec was for traits and/or rep traits... Which can be changed at will now... Thought that didn't effect the skilltree???
Ah thanks, just had a look at the wiki, you are right. It was just for the reputation and the species. So I must have confused that, sry.
Which of course does not make the fact better that I have to pay 80k dil (may become less after the ship sell) or 5 for a bit of experimenting... I am willing to pay for fluff and ships, but those reskill tokens are way too expensive...
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Thus, the zen cost offsets the potential loss to them from no need for toon slots etc.
However, given how cryptic seem to have gone out of their way recently to be as alt unfriendly as possible, 500 zen is too high.
200 would be nearer the mark.
STO, on the other hand, has had those respec tokens around since its initial release for Captains who burned through their freebie ones gained upon Rank Advancement (this was when the game was P2P). And the only thing that has changed has been the name of the currency used to get the token.
And it saw far more use back then because you really couldn't go with an even build like you can now. You had to decide which energy, projectile, ship type you wanted to fly. Putting a few points in to everything did more harm than good before the F2P skill change. I think Tactical skills saw the largest changes with the new system we have today.
Besides, 500 Zen is a decent price when compared to similar MMO's for respec'ing your character.
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Except for silver players an alt only gets one chance to pick their skill point build before getting charged 500 zen for it too. So not really a whole lot of room for "experimentation". You'd have to be either rich or crazy to slot anything other than a proven and reliable cookie cutter build when trying out a playstyle. Never the less, even if I did make an alt solely for one ship type, Cryptic would hardly be making money on the deal. With the alt running a different build, the respec token no longer needs buying. And all of my zen ships and costumes could be reclaimed for free.
Hell at this point I'd pay 2000 zen just for a dual spec for my main that could be swapped in and out when I swapped ships like when my doffs/boffs and gear get swapped already.
And as has been said, a little time investment is all it takes to get anything in this game for free. 8 days of max dilithium refining is just about 500 zen, and it doesn't take all that long to get 8K dilithium per day.
Just that STO charged for respecs long before it went f2p.
And yeah I'd consider that price a bad joke.
I remember stating that back when the prices were changed to the current stat:
They seem to have no idea how to sell stuff. A respec that cost them NOTHING can cost whatever they want.
500 zen? Nobody buys it.
200 zen? 100 zen? something like 80 zen (avoiding the three-digit-price)?
Peiple will be like "well lets try that" and buy them again and again and again... and ultimately pay much more on that.
Thats basic economy.
I already respeced once. I'm not going to bother again. That 500 Zen is a quarter of a new t5 ship. I'm simply saying the price is too high to allow any sort of experimentation. You're entirely reliant on others' experiences and guides when you respec, you can't play around and see how putting two more points into "X" skill affects "Y" ability or anything like that. That's a flawed system that stifles creativity, IMO. Tribble's a workaround, but not a solution.
It kind of railroads people into finding a build that works and sticking with it, and in effect discourages people from buying new ships.
Now if you could freely respec without extra cost, as you could actually do before STO went Free 2 Play, then people would be much more willing to experiment and invest in a variety of different ships they normally wouldn't even consider in the first place.
If need be make it a gold members perk.
Yes STO did charge for respecs.
But you could also still respec completely for free by earning Merit points, which you were given for virtually every mission.
Kind of sad how a lot of peopl got screwed over big time with the dilithium conversion when STO went free to play.
People who had enough merits for like 10 respecs didn't even get enough dilithium to buy C-Points for even one respec.
Which takes over a week a respec if you grind dil to the cap every single day for no other purpose than for dumping it into another one. I guess I didn't think about this from the point of view of players that have maybe only one ship at end game or perhaps one very specific niche of playstyle they're willing to play that sees a respec being necessary only in extremely rare and unusual circumstances. In that regard 500 zen a pop is fair.
But for players such as myself with tons of different ships and ship types, I'm often feeling the itch to fly a different one every other day. The diversity in play styles and ships helps to keep the game feeling fresh without becoming repetitive. I just wish there was something like a "frequent flyer" program for people such as myself that is more economical over the long haul than 500 zen a pop. Because if it were 100 zen a pop, or 150 zen a pop, I would buy them like crazy as I could raise the funds every couple of days. But when they're 500 and I'm looking at over a week each, I buy zero. Instead making do with what I've got. Cryptic would ironically make more off of me with a lower price than with a higher one.
Not really. That was just a hilarious moment of blatant presumptuousness on your part.
I guess between that and Tribble there isn't much point in respec tokens at all then. Cryptic will hardly ever sell one with this strategy.
The concept of charging a little less for such a simple service people could use regularly instead of a much higher price people only use once in a blue moon seems to have gone completely over your head, so I will not attempt to argue that point with you further. But you're wrong about something else, and that is this thinking that Cryptic is so head strong and unreasonable that they would never reevaluate the pricing of any service ever. Do you remember the 2 boff slots you could buy in the C Store forever? Most players weren't willing to pay the steep price Cryptic was asking for at the time and simply made do with the boff slots they were given. Then after enough pleas Cryptic lowered the price to 250 zen. The cost became more in line in what the service was worth and I for one have used the service 3 times since. 250 zen for two more boffs slots is completely fair and all of this "you'd just say they caved and push more" nonsense you've rambled on about has apparently not come to pass.
Even on the subject of respecs though, Cryptic has outright removed the cost of changing traits in the new patch so clearly they are more open to player feedback than you seem to think they are. If you think the cost of a skill point respec is perfect at 500 zen, that is fine in the scope of this discussion.
Personally, I would love to see the price lowered. I am disabled, and therefore have no income. That means that I need to grind Dilithium for everything in the C-Store. I have no problem with this. However, to get a three ship bundle, I need to grind almost 660,000 to over 700,000 Dilithium. For that reason, I could benefit from it. (I am in no way saying I am entitled though, just that it could help).
There are others who are in the same boat, or worse off. Many of them are not disabled, just don't have a lot of resources, or time to play. Between the rep grinds, and any special grinds, like summer, winter, anniversary, and the mirror, it can be very hard for a them to grind a whole weeks worth of Dilithium to get a single respec for one character.
I have 5 characters, and managed to get enough Dilithium saved up to get a respec recently when they did the sale. However, it only saved 15%. That will be the only respec I will be able to do. All of my other characters will need to make do with what they have.
I know that I can test my build on Tribble, but a lot of times I have been in Tribble and had a mission queued for about 45 mins asking for someone to join so I could test a build. (In fact, I have been queued for almost 10 mins on Holodeck waiting to get into an STF after the removal of the hourlies).
So, Tribble is good, but it can also cost precious time just waiting to test out a new build. However, if I could get the respec for around 125 Zen each, then I could afford to respec my other 4 characters. That would be 500 Zen that I would otherwise not buy. Plus, if I change my ship, and need another build, I could afford another one.
Just a few thoughts.
You know that you get diminishing returns as you invest in skills I am sure. For the first three investments in a skill you get 18 skill points per investment. For the next three investments you get 10 points per investment, and for the last three investments you get just 5 points per investment.
So taking a skill to 9 investments over 6 gets you a whopping 15 extra points. That's a big deal right?
Actually it isn't. Skill points in STO really don't do very much in small numbers. Hear are some examples:
15 points in graviton generators adds 0.22km to the radius of a Gravity Well 3
15 points in particle generators adds 10.9 points of damage to each tick of Gravity Well 3
15 points in attack paterns adds 1% to the damage bonus of Omega 3
15 points in sensors adds 0.4% to the stealth sight buff from sensor scan
15 points in energy weapons specialization adds 0.3% to your critical hit chance
15 points in subspace decompiler adds 0.7 seconds to the duration of viral matrix 3
Now you might be looking at those numbers and thinking; 'Golly I am never going to be able to tell the difference between a player who has maxed a captain skill and one who has only taken it to 6.' But you would be wrong. You could tell the difference if you spent a lot of time testing with a parser.
So the question you have to ask yourself is, are you going to spend a lot of time testing with a parser? If the answer to that question is probably not, you don't need to respec for different ships and loadouts.
Just give your captain a generalist build taking no captain skills past 6 investments and you will never be able to tell the difference... unless you really really like spending time parsing.
However, with respecs, while Tribble is a decent workaround, really they ought to have something like they had in Champions, where you can go to a testing hall and while you're in the hall you can respec as much as you like and there are dummies and various testing apparatus, and even a basic encounter simulator.
They could do something like that in this game with the holodeck concept.
But personally, I've never understood the idea that respecs should cost anything. They should always be free, or cost very, very little. The two arguments against this, the RPG argument ("choices have consequences") and the cookie-cutter argument ("everyone would respec to the FOTM whenever it changed") just seem quaint to me nowadays.
People have such little time or patience these days, and MMOs have such little sense of being virtual worlds, that you might as well just let rip and let people have what they want. Older game design concepts like balance, choices-have-consequences, etc., just seem antiquated, they come from an older world, from the past, long gone. Sad but true.
here, the TABLE
also, the consoles add definitely more power than skill points.
there is no need to fill more than 6 ranks in every skill, apart from weapons perhaps..
you also lvl a toon with a PLAN (normally)
and - it is possible to play the game on lvl 50 without a single skill point or only with everything at 3 ranks.
on the other hand, i can imagine how 500 zen could be much for some folks and cryptic could think about lowering the skill respec to
skill respec - 250 Zen, 50 LOBI or 20.000.000 EC
skill, traits respec - 500 Zen, 100 LOBI or 40.000.000 EC
This per ship skill tree could have been unlocked using zen.
Downside is that it will involve some work in cryptic side, and this means it may lead to some nasty bugs with any update. It is likely possible some ferengi clown in their financial department sitting in a decision making chair may not see it very profitable.
Ain't Nobody Got Time for That
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
You make it sound like Cryptics is so utterly inflexible and unwilling to change or reevaluate pricing or the practicality of the c store or services that attempting to stir up any kind of discussion or provide any feedback is basically a waste of time when I plain as day told you that isn't necessarily true. They've reevaluated pricing on things like boff slots when they weren't working out. They've reevaluated the practicality of respec tokens on things like traits and reputation racials and have moved in a direction that made the token system obsolete.
I suppose if I had made a thread a month ago asking Cryptic to not make us choose between all space traits or ground traits because it leaves us gimped in the other aspect of the game that you would insist that apparently Cryptic thinks players should actually gimp themselves in ground, unless they are willing to fork over the dil for a trait respec every time they swap between space and ground portions. Clearly if they converted their dil to zen they could pay for a couple, though certainly not enough to be relevant. Yet here we are. That archaic system is on it's way out. Cryptic listened to us and we will be the better for it.
They have a thousand of voices giving their opinions and ideas on what to do with the game. Obviously they could not implement them all. But some do. Which brings us to the purpose of this message board in the first place; discussion.
it would also be nice if we could have more than one build(science in particular would benefit greatly from this).
Indeed :mad:
The thing with the respec is... even with tribbel testing you need a long time to get it right.
With the old skill tree I did invest A LOT of work to getting it to work as close to perfect as possible including fine tuning.
That wasted up all my free respecs from leveling on my fed eng, obviously, because while I DID test on tribble for hours before doing any change.
With the new tree... well I didn't get my now "wasted" free specs back and only had one chance.
So I skilled whatever I felt was right and am rolling with that since then. Needless to say that this spec isn't very good.
And its not that I would starve if I'd spent that zen, but I refuse to put that amount of money into something that has clearly no relation in value.
Also I don't have the time for that amount of testing any more. So to get it right I would certainly need far more then 1 respec. So I'll keep that bad build- it could be worst after all.
Another solution is to cut the skill points in half and then remove the respeccing fee to reduce the power creep.
Officially Nerfed In Early 2410
In all fairness, you can't buy respec tokens on Tribble. You must have already own them on holodeck, and then transfer your toon to Tribble to experiment with respecs. Not a biggie if you know it; but if you have 0 respec tokens, and someone tells you "Hey, just go to Tribble and test out for free!", then said person might find himself having to buy respec tokens on holodeck first, after all.
Just sayin'.
I love the power creep! :P So, how's about we do it the EvE Online way, and let ppl max out ALL their skills?! No one in the EvE Online community ever b*tched about the alleged power creep this would give rise to: ppl have simply accepted, and found it to be natural, that someone who's been in the game for several years is a lot further ahead than someone who just started out.
What you call 'power creep', I call the whining of this generation of selfies, who want everything *right now*, on equal footing with the veteran player, with nary an effort or time put into the whole deal. Self-entitlement at its glorified height!
That's not what Tribble is for though, that's just what people use it to do. :P
So paying 500 zen to reskill is the only option, at the exchange rate today this is almost 4 times the amount of dil I payed half a year ago.
Not sure since I never bought it but... I thought the 20 k respec was for traits and/or rep traits... Which can be changed at will now... Thought that didn't effect the skilltree???
Time is a cost, it is not free. Stop saying it is free when it is not.
Ah thanks, just had a look at the wiki, you are right. It was just for the reputation and the species. So I must have confused that, sry.
Which of course does not make the fact better that I have to pay 80k dil (may become less after the ship sell) or 5 for a bit of experimenting... I am willing to pay for fluff and ships, but those reskill tokens are way too expensive...