I get the complaints but I don't get the references to grinds.
T5 rep cost like 10 min / day per rep, and then it went on a long cooldown until the next day. There was no grind -- a few marks and a bunch of expensive items, yes, but grind, no. Do one STF for marks, dump all the required stuff into your project, and its done.
Earning the gear from the stores is a grind ... at 2-3 day worth of max dil each, hundreds of marks per item, that is huge. One run's worth of marks and some EC, not huge.
What I dislike about the new system is not the "choose 4" concept of limits and choices. I dislike that some powers are simply significantly better than others. Crit and crit damage are superior to things like "regain 1 zap's worth of hull every 10 years". The powers need to be roughly equal so picking 4 is a true choice, not a "well duh, these 4 are the most effective" setup.
But ... you can ... just not all at the same time. What you earned is still there.
You so missed the point. I understand the traits are still there, just unusable (unusable = worthless) unless slotted.
Going through an entire rep system to maybe use one trait is truly a waste of effort. As more reps are added the likelihood of any particular trait being slotted (reaping the benefit of finishing a Tier ) drops. Same amount of effort, less reward.
The fleet will benefit though as I will use gametime to further the advance of our Starbase rather than waste it on an increasingly futile rep system.
Oh I get the point because I'm in the same boat. But I also see what people are saying in many ways: "I want to use all the traits I have at the same time." Alternatively, what's not being said is this: "I don't want to slot specific traits to match the situation." Or maybe it goes like this, "I liked having to pick a trait and forget about it."
Min/maxing - if that's what's happening, suggests maximizing output for minimal input (or some variation). So, re-S9, per Tier per Rep, if I pick the trait I want more than the other, I "work" for that goal and I'm done.
All the traits you had on Monday are still there today, they just can't be used at the same time.
And ultimately, is it some illusion that Cryptic has given anyone something tangible? They have not.
Look at it another way: someone has spent time and effort to "make" the ... Oberth Science ship. Hardly anyone uses it. So, for the person (or people) who "made" it in STO, are they complaining about wasted effort? Maybe, but I doubt it. The difference is that example was a part of their job. For players, we are taking real time away from anything else in order to play a game.
Am I not hitting my keyboard with my face hard enough? I managed to quell the "it's s nerf" cries in my fleet but this just feels... like people have no memory, OP you've been here as long as I have if your forum handle is to be believed, don't you remember before there were rep passives? did you forget how to use your ship without them? It's not the new people I see these topics made most by it's the people who've been here long enough to remember before the power creep happened in the first place making the most noise, forgetting that they're still significantly more powerful than they once were
I recently tried Crystalline Entity Elite after the trait changes. Normally, I get blown to bits maybe once or twice every other run, but this recent run saw my ship destroyed at least six or seven times. So in a way, this new way of countering power creep does what it is designed to do, which is essentially make missions more difficult to complete, thus creating more of a challenge.
However, I have worked very diligently to achieve Tier Five reputations in order to make missions easier to complete. I still get blown up from time to time, but now that I can expect to explode on a regular basis, I don't find it very satisfying that I worked hard to complete a goal and the benefits have suddenly evaporated. So, what do I do? I like playing the game, but why would I continue to do the same thing knowing that my effort will essentially come to naught?
My solution is simple. I will modify how I approach playing by avoiding content that 1) takes longer to complete on a regular basis than it did previously, based on the new mechanics that are in place, 2) provides less than what I consider to be substantial rewards for completing the content, and 3) allows me to receive the rewards from alternative content. This might be a good thing, since I feel it will also help me to limit my time playing the game, allowing me to investigate other avenues of entertainment. I feel this is a much better way to deal with disappointment than being frustrated with content that is less gratifying than it was previously.
In a F2P world, it is important to recognize that economics dominate the changes that developers and producers make in games. In my opinion, when a player base is comfortable with the work they have done, those players tend to remain static in their spending habits, which lowers the profit margin of the company. If you want to encourage purchases, you analyze what you can change to spur profit growth. As a consumer, it is up to you to determine the benefit of making a purchase which compensates for the loss of a previously earned reward. Ask yourself if the time you put into earning a goal through game play can be substituted by a purchase. Ask yourself who ultimately benefits from your purchase. Is it you? And if you answer the former question in the negative, then what do you do?
I prefer that others make their own decisions about how to spend their time and their money. When you encourage others with an opinion, you always take the risk that your speech upon a soapbox becomes an offense to one point of view or another. In my case, I will follow through on my plans in the short term and see if they satisfy me. If they don't, I will have to come up with a better solution. In the end, the important thing is that I am happy with how I am entertained, and that there are always alternatives.
Having said that, Crystalline Entity Elite is now on my short list of Things Not To Do.
Really, only been playing STO since September of 2012. I only have two toons, both level 50. I don't see this as a huge deal, but I've played other games before, and I'll play others still. ATM, D3/RoS has my attention, and STO is NOT getting the play time quite as much. I'll admit the playing field is level since everyone is affected by this, so that's one good take away, I suppose. I can say that 2 things might make everyone feel a bit more at ease with the changes - make more slots available as you add reps to do, and let players pick how many each of space or ground they'd like to have. This could even become a choice through the racial traits thus making the option have an associated cost. I used to use fewer of ground since I did less of that. If I wanted to play Call of Duty, then I'd play that. I don't see Cryptic changing things yet again, however, especially since they want to control power & curb power creep.
I like the idea as it gives you more flexible options for the game. Depending on what mission your doing.
I don't see this as bad, I see it being more a challenge. As you have to pick your choices wisely. And it kinda helps other players as well. Where they don't have all the reps unlocked.
The only thing that is a bit eh for me (besides the massive reduction to the number you already could have had) is that it makes sense to load up on ALL Ground for ground missions and ALL Space for space missions. Yet many "missions" require you to do both and you need to be in a social zone to switch them. So you cannot optimize that way very well but for normal grinding you can except that now you have to go through the crud of flipping it ANY time you want to do something ground based.
They should either get easy to flip builds (not that I use the current loadout thing whatever it is called) or they should just really separate ALL the Space and Ground traits like they did with the Rep things. Though please do not lock it at like 4 and 4. Increase it to like 6 and 6 or at least 6 and 5.
Here are the up-sides that thye probably partially itnroduced because it seemed fair to give you:
- You can now retrait (not just the reputation stuff) at any time, so you are not locked into a particular trait for ever anymore, and can play around with stuff.
- Before, you could have only one of the two passives in each tier of your reputation. Now you can pick both, if you like them both.
- A passives where buffed.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I recently tried Crystalline Entity Elite after the trait changes. Normally, I get blown to bits maybe once or twice every other run, but this recent run saw my ship destroyed at least six or seven times. So in a way, this new way of countering power creep does what it is designed to do, which is essentially make missions more difficult to complete, thus creating more of a challenge.
Dying in CEE is a player problem not a trait problem. You might die one time if you got aggro from the entity and your build was not stout enough. Fine that is one death. The rest had to be not getting out of the blast range twice and not switching to fragments that are going to hit your ship, or at the very least move away from them! Really that is about the only way to die.
Longer answer: Less resistance against damage dealt by Tholian mobs, Crystalline fragments, et al.
I wasn't in the blast radius of the Entity either time during the run I described. Chalking up the dramatic change in damage dealt and received being due to poor playing through a run I have done hundreds of times is at best inaccurate.
But allowed you to have 12 or 16 passives giving the players more choices at a weaker rate
that would have been a better route to go imo
and there was no reason at all to change the traits
Giving more at a weaker power would have been a lot more palatble i believe to most players
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
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
How about allowing 8...4 defensive, 4 offensive per battle mode (space, ground). Considering the number of rep traits available, it would be a little closer to acceptable by most.
Longer answer: Less resistance against damage dealt by Tholian mobs, Crystalline fragments, et al.
I wasn't in the blast radius of the Entity either time during the run I described. Chalking up the dramatic change in damage dealt and received being due to poor playing through a run I have done hundreds of times is at best inaccurate.
I just did CEE with ALL space passive rep traits disabled and just for fun ALL 8 species traits disabled. No deaths, to be more exact at no point did my hull ever go below 75%. According to combat log parser there was only one death. This was a pug, I don't think anybody does premades for CEE to be honest. I am not saying I have never died in CEE but when I have it was because I was not paying attention. If you are dying in CEE 7 times you are not avoiding something you should. Gear can be part of the difference but that is why CE has 2 difficulty levels.
Rep trait change or no rep trait change, my ise time is still going to be sub 90 seconds.
I'm still going to be doing 50k ises with my eyes shut.
Dps is still all that matters in every single piece of pve content, that and patience for all the gated TRIBBLE that they release.
There are things we lost in this transition no matter what anyone says, it was advertised as 'half your rep traits, double all existing rep traits"
What we got was "half your rep traits, remove two of the best ones entirely, double the rest for a time, nerf later as a part of bait and switch".
There are going to be passives worth taking, and passives not worth taking. No matter what they do there are going to be 4 that are the best.
Game balance is fine and dandy, nerfing a progression based and time gated system that was pushed upon players to be grinded out 5x on all of their characters isn't fine. If they had capped it at 8 with no changes what so ever it would be a non issue and players could understand.
The solution to game balance is this:
3rd difficulty level that is only accessible through private premade queues (ensures the average pug player would never encounter this and therefore would not be able to complain about its difficulty). This 3rd difficulty would receive a balance pass every half season/season depending what is released.
This would accomplish two things, it would eliminate nerfs of long standing systems therefore ensuring player retention and satisfaction, and give serious players the challenge that they have desired since nws became ezmode.
There are things we lost in this transition no matter what anyone says, it was advertised as 'half your rep traits, double all existing rep traits"
What we got was "half your rep traits, remove two of the best ones entirely, double the rest for a time, nerf later as a part of bait and switch".
There are going to be passives worth taking, and passives not worth taking. No matter what they do there are going to be 4 that are the best.
Game balance is fine and dandy, nerfing a progression based and time gated system that was pushed upon players to be grinded out 5x on all of their characters isn't fine. If they had capped it at 8 with no changes what so ever it would be a non issue and players could understand.
I am pretty sure STO is like an ex girlfriend to me.
I logged in yesterday, or was it the day before, for about an hour and felt absolutely no compulsion or desire to play. I checked out the space battlezone, slotted a 20 hour project I still havent logged in to claim.
I sort of dont care anymore. The rep trait revamp was the last straw for me as far as constantly spending fortunes to retool builds every season or so. Max rep on 10 toons and then losing 3/4 of the passives earned absolutely pissed me off. Address powercreep elsewhere, you dont take away what has been ground out already.
Yup. This. Plus there is that s9 trait issue that supposedly has been patched. Not so for me, of 4 bugged characters 3 are still messed up with missing species trait or nonremovable traits.
As for traits revamp, I wouldn't say anything if they left pre-s9 rep passives as they were, in the number they were. And then make you unslot some in order to use new ones from Undine rep. But no, first Cryptic said it will become "4 dimes instead of 8 nickles", half the number, twice the power. Then it turned out than its not quite that, and even later they reduced it even more. For example, Precision was giving +3% crth; Cryptic "doubled" it to 5%, and then finally made it 4%. I somehow cannot see how 4 = 3 x 2. This really ticked me off. And I don't mean Precision only, they made it to all of those passives. So you can see how good they keep their promises. Saying that they will fix and limit power creep while taking away results of long grind is just a lie, no matter how nice words you will use.
As for "fixing" gear progression, removing of mk X and mk XI sets was just a dirty tactic to force players into grinding more. Example: I use all 3 varieties of Borg set. I don't see any performane difference between them, so I just bought mk X on newer characters and moved on. Now its impossible, so I would have to grind to t5 to get semi-decent gear. Well, its not that tedious with Omega, but imagine wanting a Nukara or Reman set...
Don't take me wrong, I understand what "game balance" means, I'm not of the scim 50k dps guys - my Galor did 10-12k at best and I was fine with that cause it still felt like playing the game instead of instaraping it. But don't tell me that "rep grind was no grind" cause I was there, in countless Azure runs, enduring afkers and leechers.
I just looked at the new Undine rep, compared it's passives to older ones, and asked myself "is there any chance I will slot new ones at the cost of older ones?". Answer was "no", so I moved over to looking at new rep gear. Did it look like stuff thats worth grinding for? No. The result was me saying "meh" to all the "new shiny content in s9".
I'll end with a question: if Cryptic is so concerned about game balance, why did they nerf passive abilities instead of making 5-tac console ships with tac commander way more fragile, as it always has been the case with escorts?
Why did they nerf those passives in a "we'll take much of it away" instead of "this stops here"?
How come their attempts at "balancing things" nerf only f2p parts of the game (the ones that actually require playing the game at that)?
After all, the epitome in power creep in this game is a bfawing 50k dps scim. Now it will be a bfawing 50k nicor. The more it changes, the more it stays the same.
Lets face it, power creep in STO is caused by new shiny toys from lockboxes and Cstore, not by hard earned reputation passives. Otherwise there would be no need for "updating older ships" with stuff like Raider Flanking and secondary deflectors.
May 2013, automatic permanent ban for mentioning gold-seller sites pwebranflakes: this system is currently in place and working the way it should. moradum: I got banned for saying "I started my day with cutting off 3 MM off of the bottom of my cabinet"
I much prefer this new system. I like to be able to switch out traits for all ground or all space, or all defence or all attack, and in different flavours.
I still have everything I worked for, in fact I have more, as I also have the "opposites" of the traits I chose before. I just have to choose when to use what I use, and that's a good thing in my book.
Tbqh, I actually feel more powerful now, because I can focus better, with more powerful traits, to suit my playstyle more precisely.
I much prefer this new system. I like to be able to switch out traits for all ground or all space, or all defence or all attack, and in different flavours.
I still have everything I worked for, in fact I have more, as I also have the "opposites" of the traits I chose before. I just have to choose when to use what I use, and that's a good thing in my book.
Tbqh, I actually feel more powerful now, because I can focus better, with more powerful traits, to suit my playstyle more precisely.
Alright, allow me to address some issues here.
I'm glad that you are liking the new system.
Previously there was no conflicting between ground and space traits as you took both on different tiers, now there will be potential conflicts down the road with slotting ground/space active abilities.
You do not have everything you worked for. Case and point, t2 omega and t4 romulan offensive passives were removed from the game altogether.
Choosing is great, when they came out with reputation respecs, they monetized the system instead of allowing players to pick and choose at will. The fact that you can rep respec your character pretty much whenever you want to, is the only upside that I personally get from the reputation revamp.
You say that you feel more powerful now, if that is indeed the case, then Cryptic has failed miserably in their efforts to address reputation based power creep.
Now let me posit this to you,
Imagine a reputation system that had unlimited free respecs, the ability to choose the offensive and defensive passives of a tier, and had 8 ground and 8 space passives to pick from, the passives themselves were reverted to pre-S9 standards.
Doesn't this imaginary reputation seem nice? It takes what players seem to really like from it (respecs and off+def of a tier) and combine it with what the players seemed to really like from the previous reputation system (8 passives and t2 omega/t4 romulan).
Imagine a reputation system that had unlimited free respecs, the ability to choose the offensive and defensive passives of a tier, and had 8 ground and 8 space passives to pick from, the passives themselves were reverted to pre-S9 standards.
Doesn't this imaginary reputation seem nice? It takes what players seem to really like from it (respecs and off+def of a tier) and combine it with what the players seemed to really like from the previous reputation system (8 passives and t2 omega/t4 romulan).
While you are at it maybe you should have a system with all passives, not just the 8+8 but all 16+16. You might as well demand all passives from future reps while you are at it.
Its this simple. You play MMO's to better you character. You start out with nothing and you start doing everything you can to get something. You start out week and you play through the grind to get strong. When theres something new, you grind it to get even stronger. The journey in a mmo should never stop you should always have new content get stronger, new content get stronger. Thats the way a mmo should be.
Power creep. easily fixed. You go up levels, you play harder levels. Heres the problem cryptics to damn lazy to give us any new content. New harder content fixes power creep. When theres no more content to grind and get stronger. You get week (mega nerf) and die. No more content the game dies. Its that simple.
When you start nerfing the character that did the grind to get stronger. You kill them even quicker. Thats what cryptic did. they nerfed what so many people did to make their characters stronger. Now their week and bored. Nerf, Nerf ,Nerf and nothing new.
You keep taking 2 quarters for every 1 you put in and one day you will be 25 cents in dept.
I get the complaints but I don't get the references to grinds.
T5 rep cost like 10 min / day per rep, and then it went on a long cooldown until the next day. There was no grind -- a few marks and a bunch of expensive items, yes, but grind, no. Do one STF for marks, dump all the required stuff into your project, and its done.
Earning the gear from the stores is a grind ... at 2-3 day worth of max dil each, hundreds of marks per item, that is huge. One run's worth of marks and some EC, not huge.
What I dislike about the new system is not the "choose 4" concept of limits and choices. I dislike that some powers are simply significantly better than others. Crit and crit damage are superior to things like "regain 1 zap's worth of hull every 10 years". The powers need to be roughly equal so picking 4 is a true choice, not a "well duh, these 4 are the most effective" setup.
I agree that this is still a problem - now that you have to choose, the powers must also all be competitive with each other. Before the chance, we can be glad that some powers were mostly meaningless, otherwise things would have been worse in regards to power creep.
Let's hope Cryptic will keep working on balancing rep powers.
ts this simple. You play MMO's to better you character. You start out with nothing and you start doing everything you can to get something. You start out week and you play through the grind to get strong. When theres something new, you grind it to get even stronger. The journey in a mmo should never stop you should always have new content get stronger, new content get stronger. Thats the way a mmo should be.
Power creep. easily fixed. You go up levels, you play harder levels. Heres the problem cryptics to damn lazy to give us any new content. New harder content fixes power creep. When theres no more content to grind and get stronger. You get week (mega nerf) and die. No more content the game dies. Its that simple.
When you start nerfing the character that did the grind to get stronger. You kill them even quicker. Thats what cryptic did. they nerfed what so many people did to make their characters stronger. Now their week and bored. Nerf, Nerf ,Nerf and nothing new.
You keep taking 2 quarters for every 1 you put in and one day you will be 25 cents in dept.
No content creates new problems. New players cannot use the new content, because they aren't power-creeped up for it yet.
Levelling is still neat - you can probably get multiple levels each day if you wanted,and every time you advance, you get new content to enjoy. But no gaming company can keep up with such a pace, and so at some point, the leveling stops and you get into replayable content - that you have to replay to advance further.
And not everyone will want that. But if new content always is leveled up for the people that did jump through all the grinding hoops - then there is never a reason to go back to the game once you decided you can't keep up with the grind. Because you can't really join in the new content.
What might be worse than no new content is new content behind a wall you can't climb.
How MMOs should really be, in my opinion, is that the endgame is all about experimentation and trying out different options. New content should not simply add a few numbers, they should require new strategies and new builds, and ideally also allow different strategies to success.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
But no gaming company can keep up with such a pace, and so at some point, the leveling stops and you get into replayable content - that you have to replay to advance further.
A game company can compete with creating more complicated game content requiring stronger skills. The problem is the attitude of the company itself.
To take it to that level, the game has to be built to be dynamic such as procedurally created sector space, star systems, persistent ground and space maps. Once procedurally created it has to be dynamic. The main servers should not be acting like a game server/client which should be unloaded on a villian/bad faction server.
I have been reading some gamer magazines. A lot of games are going into that direction as mentioned. So you can have content to match ubber players. I can even post links if you want to see.
Cryptic is just be lazy. So I think their mind thinking is. Oh the software/server can't do that so lets make lockboxes so people can spend money and Nerf everyone while we do that. As to IP, forget about IP, I think it's. Let's see how much we can get away from IP to make a TRIBBLE load of money.
1. If Cryptic is so worried about power creep, make the effin' content HARDER.
2. New people need to grind in order to get to Veteran status of all the rep passives.
3. If the players are becoming to OP, then just add just SLIGHT nerfs to the passives, NOT LIMITS ON HOW MANY YOU CAN HAVE ACTIVE AT ONCE.
4. Restore all past rep abilities. Just make them as equal to current rep passives.
5. Gate the new content so new players can learn and earn on their way to the top.
6. Gating the new content makes sure you have the right type of gear for the new content. DCUO does this perfectly.
7. Make all passives locked out when going into PvP areas, so players will have to rely on skills.
I have been reading some gamer magazines. A lot of games are going into that direction as mentioned. So you can have content to match ubber players. I can even post links if you want to see.
Cryptic is just be lazy. So I think their mind thinking is. Oh the software/server can't do that so lets make lockboxes so people can spend money and Nerf everyone while we do that. As to IP, forget about IP, I think it's. Let's see how much we can get away from IP to make a TRIBBLE load of money.
It is costly to develop new technology like procedurally developed worlds. To develop procedurally developed worlds would require hiring a bunch of devs or have some of the current devs to work on this system. This would like take months if not years to create and for the same cost and time they can create a ton of new content. If they had the current devs create this system, then it would mean less content being created for us and the players will be screaming for new content.
The smart thing for Cryptic to do would be to purchase the rights to use the system that is created by another company assuming it is compatible. It is a lot cheaper to have one gaming company sell the rights to use the procedurally developed worlds software than have a bunch of companies making it themselves. Also, it just seems like a huge waste to have a ton of different companies creating the same type of thing.
Cryptic already went down this route with the Genesis System and it was a disaster. Finding relics from the Third Age of the Borg and plants that look like columns are just a few of the problems with that system. There is also the problem that procedurally developed worlds would be far more complicated for STO than it is for other games. Other games would create new worlds where each one is different and players might be able to find resources or fight some common enemy on the planet that is available on other planets while that is simply not enough for Star Trek. The main focus of Star Trek has been about meeting other lifeforms. So as well as creating new environments, STO would have to create new races, new ships, new dialog, and new equipment which I doubt is currently possible with procedurally created worlds. All we can expect in the near future is a better version of the Genesis System where the repeatability is less obvious.
Justify what? Not putting a descriptive title on your thread?
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Comments
But ... you can ... just not all at the same time. What you earned is still there.
T5 rep cost like 10 min / day per rep, and then it went on a long cooldown until the next day. There was no grind -- a few marks and a bunch of expensive items, yes, but grind, no. Do one STF for marks, dump all the required stuff into your project, and its done.
Earning the gear from the stores is a grind ... at 2-3 day worth of max dil each, hundreds of marks per item, that is huge. One run's worth of marks and some EC, not huge.
What I dislike about the new system is not the "choose 4" concept of limits and choices. I dislike that some powers are simply significantly better than others. Crit and crit damage are superior to things like "regain 1 zap's worth of hull every 10 years". The powers need to be roughly equal so picking 4 is a true choice, not a "well duh, these 4 are the most effective" setup.
You so missed the point. I understand the traits are still there, just unusable (unusable = worthless) unless slotted.
Going through an entire rep system to maybe use one trait is truly a waste of effort. As more reps are added the likelihood of any particular trait being slotted (reaping the benefit of finishing a Tier ) drops. Same amount of effort, less reward.
The fleet will benefit though as I will use gametime to further the advance of our Starbase rather than waste it on an increasingly futile rep system.
Min/maxing - if that's what's happening, suggests maximizing output for minimal input (or some variation). So, re-S9, per Tier per Rep, if I pick the trait I want more than the other, I "work" for that goal and I'm done.
All the traits you had on Monday are still there today, they just can't be used at the same time.
And ultimately, is it some illusion that Cryptic has given anyone something tangible? They have not.
Look at it another way: someone has spent time and effort to "make" the ... Oberth Science ship. Hardly anyone uses it. So, for the person (or people) who "made" it in STO, are they complaining about wasted effort? Maybe, but I doubt it. The difference is that example was a part of their job. For players, we are taking real time away from anything else in order to play a game.
Frankly, "waste of effort" is subjective.
However, I have worked very diligently to achieve Tier Five reputations in order to make missions easier to complete. I still get blown up from time to time, but now that I can expect to explode on a regular basis, I don't find it very satisfying that I worked hard to complete a goal and the benefits have suddenly evaporated. So, what do I do? I like playing the game, but why would I continue to do the same thing knowing that my effort will essentially come to naught?
My solution is simple. I will modify how I approach playing by avoiding content that 1) takes longer to complete on a regular basis than it did previously, based on the new mechanics that are in place, 2) provides less than what I consider to be substantial rewards for completing the content, and 3) allows me to receive the rewards from alternative content. This might be a good thing, since I feel it will also help me to limit my time playing the game, allowing me to investigate other avenues of entertainment. I feel this is a much better way to deal with disappointment than being frustrated with content that is less gratifying than it was previously.
In a F2P world, it is important to recognize that economics dominate the changes that developers and producers make in games. In my opinion, when a player base is comfortable with the work they have done, those players tend to remain static in their spending habits, which lowers the profit margin of the company. If you want to encourage purchases, you analyze what you can change to spur profit growth. As a consumer, it is up to you to determine the benefit of making a purchase which compensates for the loss of a previously earned reward. Ask yourself if the time you put into earning a goal through game play can be substituted by a purchase. Ask yourself who ultimately benefits from your purchase. Is it you? And if you answer the former question in the negative, then what do you do?
I prefer that others make their own decisions about how to spend their time and their money. When you encourage others with an opinion, you always take the risk that your speech upon a soapbox becomes an offense to one point of view or another. In my case, I will follow through on my plans in the short term and see if they satisfy me. If they don't, I will have to come up with a better solution. In the end, the important thing is that I am happy with how I am entertained, and that there are always alternatives.
Having said that, Crystalline Entity Elite is now on my short list of Things Not To Do.
The only thing that is a bit eh for me (besides the massive reduction to the number you already could have had) is that it makes sense to load up on ALL Ground for ground missions and ALL Space for space missions. Yet many "missions" require you to do both and you need to be in a social zone to switch them. So you cannot optimize that way very well but for normal grinding you can except that now you have to go through the crud of flipping it ANY time you want to do something ground based.
They should either get easy to flip builds (not that I use the current loadout thing whatever it is called) or they should just really separate ALL the Space and Ground traits like they did with the Rep things. Though please do not lock it at like 4 and 4. Increase it to like 6 and 6 or at least 6 and 5.
- You can now retrait (not just the reputation stuff) at any time, so you are not locked into a particular trait for ever anymore, and can play around with stuff.
- Before, you could have only one of the two passives in each tier of your reputation. Now you can pick both, if you like them both.
- A passives where buffed.
How can you justify not wanting game balance?
Dying in CEE is a player problem not a trait problem. You might die one time if you got aggro from the entity and your build was not stout enough. Fine that is one death. The rest had to be not getting out of the blast range twice and not switching to fragments that are going to hit your ship, or at the very least move away from them! Really that is about the only way to die.
Short answer: No, it's not the only way to die.
Longer answer: Less resistance against damage dealt by Tholian mobs, Crystalline fragments, et al.
I wasn't in the blast radius of the Entity either time during the run I described. Chalking up the dramatic change in damage dealt and received being due to poor playing through a run I have done hundreds of times is at best inaccurate.
But allowed you to have 12 or 16 passives giving the players more choices at a weaker rate
that would have been a better route to go imo
and there was no reason at all to change the traits
Giving more at a weaker power would have been a lot more palatble i believe to most players
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 just did CEE with ALL space passive rep traits disabled and just for fun ALL 8 species traits disabled. No deaths, to be more exact at no point did my hull ever go below 75%. According to combat log parser there was only one death. This was a pug, I don't think anybody does premades for CEE to be honest. I am not saying I have never died in CEE but when I have it was because I was not paying attention. If you are dying in CEE 7 times you are not avoiding something you should. Gear can be part of the difference but that is why CE has 2 difficulty levels.
I'm still going to be doing 50k ises with my eyes shut.
Dps is still all that matters in every single piece of pve content, that and patience for all the gated TRIBBLE that they release.
There are things we lost in this transition no matter what anyone says, it was advertised as 'half your rep traits, double all existing rep traits"
What we got was "half your rep traits, remove two of the best ones entirely, double the rest for a time, nerf later as a part of bait and switch".
There are going to be passives worth taking, and passives not worth taking. No matter what they do there are going to be 4 that are the best.
Game balance is fine and dandy, nerfing a progression based and time gated system that was pushed upon players to be grinded out 5x on all of their characters isn't fine. If they had capped it at 8 with no changes what so ever it would be a non issue and players could understand.
The solution to game balance is this:
3rd difficulty level that is only accessible through private premade queues (ensures the average pug player would never encounter this and therefore would not be able to complain about its difficulty). This 3rd difficulty would receive a balance pass every half season/season depending what is released.
This would accomplish two things, it would eliminate nerfs of long standing systems therefore ensuring player retention and satisfaction, and give serious players the challenge that they have desired since nws became ezmode.
Yup. This. Plus there is that s9 trait issue that supposedly has been patched. Not so for me, of 4 bugged characters 3 are still messed up with missing species trait or nonremovable traits.
As for traits revamp, I wouldn't say anything if they left pre-s9 rep passives as they were, in the number they were. And then make you unslot some in order to use new ones from Undine rep. But no, first Cryptic said it will become "4 dimes instead of 8 nickles", half the number, twice the power. Then it turned out than its not quite that, and even later they reduced it even more. For example, Precision was giving +3% crth; Cryptic "doubled" it to 5%, and then finally made it 4%. I somehow cannot see how 4 = 3 x 2. This really ticked me off. And I don't mean Precision only, they made it to all of those passives. So you can see how good they keep their promises. Saying that they will fix and limit power creep while taking away results of long grind is just a lie, no matter how nice words you will use.
As for "fixing" gear progression, removing of mk X and mk XI sets was just a dirty tactic to force players into grinding more. Example: I use all 3 varieties of Borg set. I don't see any performane difference between them, so I just bought mk X on newer characters and moved on. Now its impossible, so I would have to grind to t5 to get semi-decent gear. Well, its not that tedious with Omega, but imagine wanting a Nukara or Reman set...
Don't take me wrong, I understand what "game balance" means, I'm not of the scim 50k dps guys - my Galor did 10-12k at best and I was fine with that cause it still felt like playing the game instead of instaraping it. But don't tell me that "rep grind was no grind" cause I was there, in countless Azure runs, enduring afkers and leechers.
I just looked at the new Undine rep, compared it's passives to older ones, and asked myself "is there any chance I will slot new ones at the cost of older ones?". Answer was "no", so I moved over to looking at new rep gear. Did it look like stuff thats worth grinding for? No. The result was me saying "meh" to all the "new shiny content in s9".
I'll end with a question: if Cryptic is so concerned about game balance, why did they nerf passive abilities instead of making 5-tac console ships with tac commander way more fragile, as it always has been the case with escorts?
Why did they nerf those passives in a "we'll take much of it away" instead of "this stops here"?
How come their attempts at "balancing things" nerf only f2p parts of the game (the ones that actually require playing the game at that)?
After all, the epitome in power creep in this game is a bfawing 50k dps scim. Now it will be a bfawing 50k nicor. The more it changes, the more it stays the same.
Lets face it, power creep in STO is caused by new shiny toys from lockboxes and Cstore, not by hard earned reputation passives. Otherwise there would be no need for "updating older ships" with stuff like Raider Flanking and secondary deflectors.
pwebranflakes: this system is currently in place and working the way it should.
moradum: I got banned for saying "I started my day with cutting off 3 MM off of the bottom of my cabinet"
I still have everything I worked for, in fact I have more, as I also have the "opposites" of the traits I chose before. I just have to choose when to use what I use, and that's a good thing in my book.
Tbqh, I actually feel more powerful now, because I can focus better, with more powerful traits, to suit my playstyle more precisely.
Alright, allow me to address some issues here.
I'm glad that you are liking the new system.
Previously there was no conflicting between ground and space traits as you took both on different tiers, now there will be potential conflicts down the road with slotting ground/space active abilities.
You do not have everything you worked for. Case and point, t2 omega and t4 romulan offensive passives were removed from the game altogether.
Choosing is great, when they came out with reputation respecs, they monetized the system instead of allowing players to pick and choose at will. The fact that you can rep respec your character pretty much whenever you want to, is the only upside that I personally get from the reputation revamp.
You say that you feel more powerful now, if that is indeed the case, then Cryptic has failed miserably in their efforts to address reputation based power creep.
Now let me posit this to you,
Imagine a reputation system that had unlimited free respecs, the ability to choose the offensive and defensive passives of a tier, and had 8 ground and 8 space passives to pick from, the passives themselves were reverted to pre-S9 standards.
Doesn't this imaginary reputation seem nice? It takes what players seem to really like from it (respecs and off+def of a tier) and combine it with what the players seemed to really like from the previous reputation system (8 passives and t2 omega/t4 romulan).
While you are at it maybe you should have a system with all passives, not just the 8+8 but all 16+16. You might as well demand all passives from future reps while you are at it.
That's what I'm doing. It's a easy forget about the reputation system after. Way less grinding with the super extreme Cap.
Power creep. easily fixed. You go up levels, you play harder levels. Heres the problem cryptics to damn lazy to give us any new content. New harder content fixes power creep. When theres no more content to grind and get stronger. You get week (mega nerf) and die. No more content the game dies. Its that simple.
When you start nerfing the character that did the grind to get stronger. You kill them even quicker. Thats what cryptic did. they nerfed what so many people did to make their characters stronger. Now their week and bored. Nerf, Nerf ,Nerf and nothing new.
You keep taking 2 quarters for every 1 you put in and one day you will be 25 cents in dept.
Let's hope Cryptic will keep working on balancing rep powers.
No content creates new problems. New players cannot use the new content, because they aren't power-creeped up for it yet.
Levelling is still neat - you can probably get multiple levels each day if you wanted,and every time you advance, you get new content to enjoy. But no gaming company can keep up with such a pace, and so at some point, the leveling stops and you get into replayable content - that you have to replay to advance further.
And not everyone will want that. But if new content always is leveled up for the people that did jump through all the grinding hoops - then there is never a reason to go back to the game once you decided you can't keep up with the grind. Because you can't really join in the new content.
What might be worse than no new content is new content behind a wall you can't climb.
How MMOs should really be, in my opinion, is that the endgame is all about experimentation and trying out different options. New content should not simply add a few numbers, they should require new strategies and new builds, and ideally also allow different strategies to success.
A game company can compete with creating more complicated game content requiring stronger skills. The problem is the attitude of the company itself.
To take it to that level, the game has to be built to be dynamic such as procedurally created sector space, star systems, persistent ground and space maps. Once procedurally created it has to be dynamic. The main servers should not be acting like a game server/client which should be unloaded on a villian/bad faction server.
I have been reading some gamer magazines. A lot of games are going into that direction as mentioned. So you can have content to match ubber players. I can even post links if you want to see.
Cryptic is just be lazy. So I think their mind thinking is. Oh the software/server can't do that so lets make lockboxes so people can spend money and Nerf everyone while we do that. As to IP, forget about IP, I think it's. Let's see how much we can get away from IP to make a TRIBBLE load of money.
1. If Cryptic is so worried about power creep, make the effin' content HARDER.
2. New people need to grind in order to get to Veteran status of all the rep passives.
3. If the players are becoming to OP, then just add just SLIGHT nerfs to the passives, NOT LIMITS ON HOW MANY YOU CAN HAVE ACTIVE AT ONCE.
4. Restore all past rep abilities. Just make them as equal to current rep passives.
5. Gate the new content so new players can learn and earn on their way to the top.
6. Gating the new content makes sure you have the right type of gear for the new content. DCUO does this perfectly.
7. Make all passives locked out when going into PvP areas, so players will have to rely on skills.
It is costly to develop new technology like procedurally developed worlds. To develop procedurally developed worlds would require hiring a bunch of devs or have some of the current devs to work on this system. This would like take months if not years to create and for the same cost and time they can create a ton of new content. If they had the current devs create this system, then it would mean less content being created for us and the players will be screaming for new content.
The smart thing for Cryptic to do would be to purchase the rights to use the system that is created by another company assuming it is compatible. It is a lot cheaper to have one gaming company sell the rights to use the procedurally developed worlds software than have a bunch of companies making it themselves. Also, it just seems like a huge waste to have a ton of different companies creating the same type of thing.
Cryptic already went down this route with the Genesis System and it was a disaster. Finding relics from the Third Age of the Borg and plants that look like columns are just a few of the problems with that system. There is also the problem that procedurally developed worlds would be far more complicated for STO than it is for other games. Other games would create new worlds where each one is different and players might be able to find resources or fight some common enemy on the planet that is available on other planets while that is simply not enough for Star Trek. The main focus of Star Trek has been about meeting other lifeforms. So as well as creating new environments, STO would have to create new races, new ships, new dialog, and new equipment which I doubt is currently possible with procedurally created worlds. All we can expect in the near future is a better version of the Genesis System where the repeatability is less obvious.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
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