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Power Creep IS a problem, stop pretending it isn't
grevdogg
Member Posts: 17 Arc User
This is to expand on a post I made in the Official Rep Change Feedback thread in response to people constantly defending the current Rep system as "Character Progression" as opposed to "Power Creep".
The problem with Power Creep in STO is that the content isn't progressing even if the players are. It isn't about being "fair" to newly minted VA toons in the sense that we don't want them to cry because you're max rep'ed character vapes them in one shot. It is about being able to add content that is challenging enough for the top tier/completely decked out/completely rep maxed players without leaving recently capped characters completely unable to do it. If you don't see what I'm talking about, here's a walkthrough:
You can do a normal difficulty run of any of the one chevron difficulty PvE events 10 seconds after you hit 50, with no rep gear and little/no fleet gear, and have no problem finishing them. Sure you might miss the optional objective or get a relatively low amount of marks, but you can do them. A couple runs, learn the strategy, get slightly better gear as you acquire marks/EC/dil, and suddenly you're ready for elites. Next you move up to the higher difficulty events, maybe even skip normals or just run a couple to get the strategies. Now you're building steam and you move up to the hardest events. Once you can run all of the content available at the level cap, what do you do? Well you grind out the "best" gear, you max out your Reps to get all the abilities you possibly can. By the end of this you're running ItCE in under 5 minutes.
There is now no more character progression available to you. You can tweak your build, maybe move laterally by trying out new ships or playstyles, but you're now both stuck at the level cap and maxed out on the minutia of grind based progression. Either you get bored because there is nothing new to do, or you're just one of those people that Cryptic is never going to lose.
To keep those bored players from leaving the game, Cryptic has to add content that will keep them interested. THIS is where Power Creep becomes a problem. If the new content isn't harder than any of the old stuff, the "vets" get bored because they can already destroy it as fast as the old stuff. If the content is harder than the old stuff, players that haven't maxed everything out yet can't do it but aren't restricted from trying. So all of your PUGs now have Mr/Ms New VA that can't contribute and cause you to constantly fail.
If Cryptic doesn't want to raise the level cap (understandable given it is problematic story-wise and would require them to add skills and up Mk levels on equipment and add even more powerful ships, etc) then they need to make the Rep system progressive. They need to make it so the current reps unlock at lvl 50, but you have to get maybe 2 or 3 of them to Tier 5 before the next rep or set of reps would become available. Keep the proposed system of limiting the number of Rep powers you can use at once, but make it so that unlocking a new tier of Rep traits also ups the number you can have slotted at once. This way whatever Rep they add in Season 10 (fingers crossed for Tribble Rep!!) can have events/BZs that are harder than the current ones so you'd need to have gotten stuff from the old Reps (or good fleet gear, etc.) to run them, especially on elite.
Yeah, it sucks that those of us that have maxed out all the Reps are now having some of our rewards taken away from us. But this is better than all future content either being stupidly easy, or characters at the cap becoming so unevenly powerful that PUGs are totally useless. I for one don't want to have to wait for 4+ other people that I know to have enough Rep gear and abilities to run new content to be online at the same time before I can play.
tl;dr: Either stop complaining about the new Rep system or admit that all you want is a game with no difficulty at all so you can feel like an unstoppable god.
The problem with Power Creep in STO is that the content isn't progressing even if the players are. It isn't about being "fair" to newly minted VA toons in the sense that we don't want them to cry because you're max rep'ed character vapes them in one shot. It is about being able to add content that is challenging enough for the top tier/completely decked out/completely rep maxed players without leaving recently capped characters completely unable to do it. If you don't see what I'm talking about, here's a walkthrough:
You can do a normal difficulty run of any of the one chevron difficulty PvE events 10 seconds after you hit 50, with no rep gear and little/no fleet gear, and have no problem finishing them. Sure you might miss the optional objective or get a relatively low amount of marks, but you can do them. A couple runs, learn the strategy, get slightly better gear as you acquire marks/EC/dil, and suddenly you're ready for elites. Next you move up to the higher difficulty events, maybe even skip normals or just run a couple to get the strategies. Now you're building steam and you move up to the hardest events. Once you can run all of the content available at the level cap, what do you do? Well you grind out the "best" gear, you max out your Reps to get all the abilities you possibly can. By the end of this you're running ItCE in under 5 minutes.
There is now no more character progression available to you. You can tweak your build, maybe move laterally by trying out new ships or playstyles, but you're now both stuck at the level cap and maxed out on the minutia of grind based progression. Either you get bored because there is nothing new to do, or you're just one of those people that Cryptic is never going to lose.
To keep those bored players from leaving the game, Cryptic has to add content that will keep them interested. THIS is where Power Creep becomes a problem. If the new content isn't harder than any of the old stuff, the "vets" get bored because they can already destroy it as fast as the old stuff. If the content is harder than the old stuff, players that haven't maxed everything out yet can't do it but aren't restricted from trying. So all of your PUGs now have Mr/Ms New VA that can't contribute and cause you to constantly fail.
If Cryptic doesn't want to raise the level cap (understandable given it is problematic story-wise and would require them to add skills and up Mk levels on equipment and add even more powerful ships, etc) then they need to make the Rep system progressive. They need to make it so the current reps unlock at lvl 50, but you have to get maybe 2 or 3 of them to Tier 5 before the next rep or set of reps would become available. Keep the proposed system of limiting the number of Rep powers you can use at once, but make it so that unlocking a new tier of Rep traits also ups the number you can have slotted at once. This way whatever Rep they add in Season 10 (fingers crossed for Tribble Rep!!) can have events/BZs that are harder than the current ones so you'd need to have gotten stuff from the old Reps (or good fleet gear, etc.) to run them, especially on elite.
Yeah, it sucks that those of us that have maxed out all the Reps are now having some of our rewards taken away from us. But this is better than all future content either being stupidly easy, or characters at the cap becoming so unevenly powerful that PUGs are totally useless. I for one don't want to have to wait for 4+ other people that I know to have enough Rep gear and abilities to run new content to be online at the same time before I can play.
tl;dr: Either stop complaining about the new Rep system or admit that all you want is a game with no difficulty at all so you can feel like an unstoppable god.
Post edited by grevdogg on
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That is true of pvp in any mmo or game with a progression system. If you dislike it you shouldn't look to mmos or rpgs for your pvp.
As for the original post reputation power increase s are marginal having very little impact on performance to begin with. Doffs fleet gear and special console s are the primary source of power creep in sto since ftp launch along with rep gear. As for npcs their is a plethora of solutions to that problem that should be explored along with nerfs to the truely op things already In existance that would be a better long term fix Imho. If ypu dont like power creep akq progression why play an mmo?lon
The rep system on its own was never anything more than a side show and nerfing it in the interest of tackling "powercreep" is both too little and too late, not to mention wrongheaded.
While those are problems, the Rep System is (was?) indeed an issue. All those little passives were stacking up big time.
Right now, just in space, from only 4 reps:
+3% CritH
+10% CritD
2.5% of energy weapons ignore shields
(Ignoring the Aux Power Config from Nuk because it varies so wildly from build to build)
+30 Weapons Training
and all of my weapons have an extra proc for Kinetic damage with 100% shield penetration.
not to mention 2 (admittedly crappy for me) click powers
There are only so many things you can do for new Rep traits. Are we all just going to have 5 or 6 different procs on all our energy weapons, +60 to 5 different skills, flat bonuses to Acc and Dmg and CritH and CritD, and need a new tray just for Rep click powers?
But even if I granted the premise that Rep bonuses are "marginal", you seemed to have missed the entire point: Power Creep ISN'T "aka" Progression. Power Creep is what happens when characters keep getting more powerful but the content available to them doesn't get harder to match. I would love to hear some of this "plethora" of solutions you've mentioned, beyond begging for different "OP" things to be nerfed in lieu of this Rep revamp.
That can then be implemented either via separate difficulty options selected by players in the queues (normal/elite/legendary) or by allowing some of the content to vary in difficulty depending upon which one you play (Infected = normal / Cure = legendary) or by 'tiering' the reputations so one group of content is more difficult (Undine being harder to defeat than borg for example).
As for the 'grind' then becoming too time consuming the solution to that is simply to grant reputation progression automatically as players rank up to keep the total amount of time to get to max the same even when more reputations are released, OR to simply increase the amount of 'rep exp' projects grant as that specific reputation gets older and new ones are released so for example they could double the exp rewards of romulan rep projects and increase omega by 50% when S9 releases.
And as for your reputation passives, two romulan boffs with traits created just as much, if not more, power creep than those did. Or lets just look at the extra 3.2% crit chance everyone gains (minimum btw) from the new fleet tactical consoles...
Power creep will still happen even after this. Otherwise why would anyone build the next fleet holding? So they problem you are complaining about, power creep, has not been solved with this change by a long shot. Let alone the next doff pack released, next lockbox released, or ships released all containing their own versions of power creep. Or the secondary deflector roll out, comm array roll out, targeting system roll out whenever they happen. And I'm sure someday they will release new FED/KDF space traits for boffs to match pirate and operative which will be...more power creep.
As I said, the problem has not been solved.
And I will be the first to complain about the variance in performance between various ship builds. It is insane some of my ships can solo one side of ISE without breaking a sweat while others are no where near as effective and I'm not even top tier build/skill. But this does nothing to solve that problem.
Some people will complain about elitism or that they have to take their 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 12th VA through normals and advanced to get to Elites.. but that is when they should be teaching their team mates how to accomplish these maps with all the bonuses.. There would be no problem with "power creep" if this was the case because cryptic could make the Elites.. you know.. elite?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Campaign: The Battle of Neverwinter - NWS-DOQXFA4ZD
Prologue: A not so simple plan - NW-DCJG75B9D
This level would get a buff pass after every season to keep it from becoming dated.
This would appease experienced players who are getting bored with the status quo, and benefit players who don't have a clue and would still continue to play the puggable content.
play different chars, play different ships. a company cant orientate his content pace on the 1% of the best and fast grinding ones. live with it. get over it.
really you sound like thos wow guys. "i finished a raid because i had luck and needed all items now im done GIVE MEH MOR CONTENT"
No. It doesn't. And that's not how the developers are designing the game as it evolves. They're taking a route that does indeed open the game up to the larger more casual demographic. You can see this with their content design over the past couple of years. Everything from the Romulan reputation and New Romulus to the Romulan Legacy expansion. You can see it in the Voth content.
They're making new content, but they are making it to appeal to the largest demographic of players.
This has a lot to do with this game being a free to play game and thus there always being a focus on new players. But yeah, overall, they're not trying to make the kind of tiered progression game people keep insisting that they are.
Yup. That's exactly where this is coming from. And to an extent I can't blame those people for that initial reaction. The game uses a lot of similar trappings to a tiered raid progression MMO like WoW. But that's all just on the surface. It's an illusion. This game isn't mechanically designed that way.
You can see it right now. The moment you hit 50 as a new player or on an alt ... there's no actual path that is specific for your character to progress. You can pick ANY of the reputations and do it. Or ALL of the reputations. You don't have to go from X to Y to Z.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
just for historic accuracy, this game was originally designed to appeal to Trek fans rather than gamers as a whole. Because of that you had middle aged women who had no idea how to play or their only experience with games was Everquest back in 2000. I mean people couldn't even fly the ships from point a to point b. That's why so many of the early tutorials and hints seemed to be written on a kindergarten level and a bit insulting to anyone with 1/2 a brain.
What is "Normal" is actually the original EASY setting. You could literally go AFK and WIN any battle
Advanced is actually the original Normal and was how the game was originally designed to be played. But there were so many idiots in Beta who thought it was too hard.
But to cater to this original set of players the game was dumbed and watered down.
Its easy because it was designed to be easy.
If they went make to making "Advanced" the baseline, I have a feeling this so-called "power creep" would be viewed differently.
And as others have said, it more about gear than skills we are given. Someone's power level is based more on how much $$$ they are willing to spend than how many rep powers they grind out.
The power a player gets from the rep systems is only a small part of the power creep
5 romulan bridge officer SRO's are more powerful than all of the rep systems combined !!!
Aux to batt and plasmonic leach together ae more powerful then the Reps are
The right space duty officers ( 6 ) of them now are very powerful
The rep systems power to characters is really quite small to the overall power of a character
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
2. We can literally give them c# code on how to enhance or fix a problem and they'll not even look at it a second time.
3. Power Creep in this game is so blatant that I think that Cryptic is being forced by their overlords to do it. The reason I say this is because they flat out refuse to even talk about it. As if any employee or moderator whom dares speak about it will be taken to court and terminated.
4. The power creep wouldn't be so bad if the NPC's were also dramatically improved. But since they're not, it's not even fun anymore to play the game.
5. The Scimitar is a ship I love and hate at the same time. I love it's destructive power. Even in my Jem'Hadar Dreadnought Carrier, I can't keep up with the destructive power of a Scimitar. But at the same time, I hate how that ship has single-handedly ruined Ker'Rat for me. I loved going to that place, but now it feels like I've lost a love one. I don't PVP mouch, but when I did,...It's always a Ker'rat.
6. We may call it power creep, but to Cryptic (especially the men in charge), they call it "balance".
7. Besides the fact that I've lost all respect for this company, they have no intention of doing anything unless it brings them instant financial gain (or it increases the DPS of a ship). Bugs, bugs and more bugs means nothing to them. For every bug we may experience, they add 10% more DPS.
8. We know this game is loosing players at an alarming rate. Because people are tired of the power creep and the same old stuff. Just look at how only the STF's and the Crystaline event are being played. The other stuff is a waste of time.
9. Star Trek is about Exploration. This game has no intention of keeping that tradition alive. So many hardcore players would come back if they changed their focus from a "Be all arcade game" to a True Star Trek Simulation. But again...their CBS and PWE overlord's may not like that.
That is all...thank you for your time.
BOFFs and DOFFs aren't like the Rep traits because we aren't getting an extra BOFF station every 6 months. You can get at most 2 more active DOFFs, 1 space and 1 ground, and they aren't cheap. BOFFs, DOFFs, consoles, etc. all require you to pick and choose, balancing what you gain or lose. Do you really want to swap out that Enanched RCS for a Plasmonic Leech console? Or your Assimilated Module? We know you aren't going to be sacrificing a tactical console. And unless you bought a ton of BOFF roster slots, you only fly 1 ship/build, or you just really enjoy visiting the BOFF Trainer, dealing with getting enough BOFFs for all of your ships can be challenging, let alone trying to min/max for both ground and space.
Aux2Batt isn't god mode, even after you've worked to get everything you need to "finish" the build. You have to play A2B in a specific way to get to the kind of OP that has people rage quitting matches; if you don't like playing that way or you don't want to set up a ton of keybinds, well good luck.
You spec your character wondering if it is worth trading a couple notches of Energy Weapon Spec for Weapon Sys Performance. You grind out gear, then swap stuff in and out as you try to make yourself better. You save up for BOFFs and DOFFs so you can finally get that "perfect" Aux2Batt build, but now your torp boat is understaffed. Why do you think that a never ending parade of new passive powers, even if you think they are small individually, is not an entirely different situation/problem?
Huh. I did all the reps at once with an alt just to see how much effort it was. It takes 45 minutes/day for 25 days if you only do the daily to max all current reps. Double that if this is your first time and have no access to sponsorship tokens. After S9 goes live that will go down to 20/40 days since the dailies give 2500xp instead of 2000. Doffing provides all the necessary XP and resources for the rep projects. The marks/commendations come from an ISE pug, a CE pug a dyson command mission and a romulan patrol each day, with plenty of marks to spare for gear.
45 minutes a day, not exactly the exclusive domain of, in your words, "playerbase who has no real life"
lol... well... there is a large contingent of players who waste their time doing TRIBBLE like tagging epohs for 5xp ...lol and think they need teams to do so.
Dyson rep took me all of 10 minutes a day but there were always people wasting time on nickel and dime missions.
I don't really see any "balance" issues with players since everyone has the same opportunity.
Like others keep saying the issues are more to do with gear and skills. Like right now I could spend about $50 in the c-store and fleet stores and increase my DPS by 100 across the board.
If your not running a plasmonic leach your ship is missing 100+ power on it then mine does...100 power or a rcs...that a No Brainer
space duty officers are like traits...They add combat power to your ship
Aux to batt is easy to use and you dont need keybinds either ... I dont use them the purple tech are free with a little bit of work
Torps ? you use Torps ? get a parser and see how much damage torps really do
Torps are vanity items...eye candy not serious weapons
but there is nothing wrong with eyecandy or if torpedos make you more happy seeing them fire and hit stuff...................Torpedos only work well on a devoted torpedo ship
however total energy weapon ship will out dps it...........just ask your friendly neighborhood scimitar
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
I agree about the Leech being a better option, though the -Resist can feel like a high price occasionally.
Space DOFFs are like traits, except you have a total of 6 slots unlike the current Rep system where you have 2xSpace and 2xGround for every Rep. Add new DOFF types, you have to swap them in for your old ones. Add new Reps, you get more and more passives piling up.
I said "Torp boat". You never tried to build an all transphasic projectile boat? It's pretty fun watching someone mashing RSP and wondering why they still blew up. So yeah, just a vanity project/toy, but still something you might have to give up if you run out of BOFF slots trying to get a ton of Rom BOFFs with nothing but beam powers. Plus it can get a little boring doing nothing but spamming FAW.
As for Aux2Batt being easy to use, maybe I'm just particularly dumb. Or at least not wired for it. *shrug*