I like some of the things done with Season 9, the new Kit system for example is great, and graphics updates are always a good thing, though to be honest a bigger problem has been some of the voice acting.
That said I am going to say flat out this new Trait system has to go. I understand WHY it was done, but understand that the Rep system was created as a way of advancing characters and growing more powerful in lieu of adding more levels and re-naming the ranks. A big part of this of course being how focused the game was on a set number of levels and skill points, and of course the "Tier" system of ships and people being rightfully concerned about having their expensive C-store ships rendered obsolete if more tiers were added. Not to mention the simple problem of most of the canon ships already being in the game system with a reasonable job having been done of putting them into Tiers. Creating things that are yet more powerful and making them the focus of endgame play would of course kill a lot of the "Trek" Vibe.
The thing is though, that if I'm putting hundreds, or thousands of hours into a character (casual or not) I expect it to become incrementally more powerful. The trait system as it was managed to achieve this without the need of adding more levels and/or ship tiers. Under the current system where I have to swap out my hard earned traits, my character is not really becoming much more powerful. Indeed at the best it's giving me a headache of having to swap traits in and out for each specific thing I want to do in an attempt to optimize myself for the moment. In some MMOs like "Guild Wars" designed with that kind of thing, and to largely have a PVP component, it works, but for something like STO it's less true.
What's more as someone who primarily PVEs and does STFs with pugs, it's the cumulative effect of some of those traits that were letting me get away with running concept characters, as opposed to having to min-max everything out for optimum results... which is kind of why I keep coming back to STO, it's a game I play to get away from that kind of garbage in other games.
Sure, some people who DO Min-Max can wipe out STFs single handedly, but so what? PVP in STO has largely been a sideline, and honestly if there were balance issues there you can always just limit trait selection to PVP arenas, setting up a screen like a FPS loadout when people queue or whatever without interfering with everyone else.
To be honest the changes here with Season 9 remind me a lot of what happened with "Star Wars Galaxies" where Sony pretty much took an axe to a lot of the game engine for a lot of the same reasons (power creep) some people were simply taking combinations of professional skills that when combined with ridiculously high quality gear were allowing them to decimate the game content and totally rock the world of any player who wasn't doing the same (which was admittedly an issue in part because after a while there seemed to be little to do except shoot each other in Cantinas).
Right now I'm sitting here looking at my characters and wondering exactly what the point is, you can add any number of new reps into the game and my character isn't going to become any stronger anymore unless it's through itemization. The most new traits will do is change the optimum configurations. What's more, why bother to advance through ALL the reps (which is being made easier) as opposed to just grinding out the relevant traits to optimize whatever it is your character does?
There are of course other options here, namely the creation of tougher content, rather than nerfing characters. Min-maxers are going to decimate everything anyway, so it's not like anything is ever going to challenge them for long anyway. If nothing else, gate some of it off. Come up with a "gearscore" similar to Neverwinter based around ship equipment and your rep advancement. I mean obviously military organizations are only going to send those with a chance, so on some levels "special missions" (Solo or STF) having your basic "you must be this cool to enter" rule should apply. What's more given how easy it's become to get one's hands on high end fleet gear, the rep system serves to get people to put in time and gradually learn how to play against different types of enemies.
On the off chance anyone of note read this far, I'll also speak "corporate" for a second here. In the terms of game company get togethers like the GDC I am what is de-humanizingly referred to as a "whale". I'm one of those long term players who has also put a pretty decent chunk of cash into your games, and has done so pretty reliably over a period of time. I do this to support development and because I've liked some of the ideas involved and where Cryptic has gone with some of their products. A big part of the appeal has been that I can get on, frag some space ships, and keep my characters growing even if I'm on sporadically. New content and new rep systems to advance through and grow my characters has been fairly regular. If I can't continue to grow my favorite STO characters though, I'm going to see no real point in playing, even sporadically, and if I don't like where your game development is going, why should I continue to pay you guys anything? I mean the shiniest lockbox prize only has meaning if it's in a game I still want to play.
We'll see what happens, maybe the changes will grow on me, but right now I am hating this, to the point where I almost feel it's a slap in the face of all my time spent gaming. I do not seem to be alone in these sentiments either.
What STO needs is some way for characters to advance and noticibly grow stronger as they are played.... and yeah, part of being stronger is being able to blow strong opponents to pieces (otherwise your not really stronger).
Cryptic might also consider embracing the holy MMO trinity a bit more. Half the problem with power creep is because the entire game is designed where DPS solves all problems. I haven't really seen any STFs where you need say a tank and a healer, despite the tools for both of those roles being in the game. At this point you don't even need to get really technical, add GS, require players to apply for a "role" in the group finder (basic stuff in Neverwinter), and honestly just some basic "tank and spank" would be a breath of fresh air for this game (teamwork at it's most basic) and as the community mastered it things could get more complicated. Things need to be gradually eased in though, as has been seen when people have complained about encounters (Legacy Of Romulus) where a glass cannon with overwhelming DPS wasn't an "I win" button.
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