First of let me say, many of the improvements in STO for Season 9 are awesome. Upgrading of ESD, the improved graphics (though still buggy) will iron out to give game awesomeness, in time. I have been with STO since the opening of the website, 1 yr. before the game release. If you doubt this, you can confirm this account is 1 of 5 lifetime subscriptions that won in the first contest STO ever had with the launch of the original STO website. With the launch of STO, I began to reform my original fleet of 10 yrs. from SFC:EAW (Knights Of The Federation) in STO. We have grown into a medium size fleet, mostly quiet to the good & bad choices Cryptic has made over the past 4 yrs., giving the Devs a lot of our patience to allow them to shine w/o our suggestions or complaints involved. Your Devs have been great in being creative and improving STO with leaps & bounds. With all that said, I have to break my silence and discuss with you some issues you've created with the Season 9 Rep Nerf.
I have done some reading regarding the changes to Rep system and why they are being done. From my research, the thought on the Rep Nerf was to balance PvP between new players & Vet players. I can somewhat understand why this is attempted, though I feel it is not completely fair to the Vet players, though I have seen where experienced, Vet players have use the rep traits to overpower themselves in PvE, so I can imagine exactly how they would do this to power creep in PvP. The Problem this Nerf has presented is that PvE players, including even the most experienced PvE players have suffered from this as well. The Rep system prior to Season 9 did allow the flexibility for players of FINALLY being able to build any captain, in any ship, with any skill tree build, to achieve the players desire effects in their build. However, the more advancing of the AI mobs in the game, along with this nerf, is now making limiting players back to the original building of Science captains in Science ships, Eng Captains in cruisers, etc. This also allows even the most experience players to suffer repeatedly dying in the newer PvE missions. This makes these missions even harder when you are PUG-ing these missions with inexperience players, or players that actually are trying to sabotage these missions. After just a few hrs. of play of the new Undine PvE STF missions And the Rep Nerf, I had many members of my fleet frustrated and infuriated beyond believe to the point, of either not playing those missions again w/o a fleet team, or straight out leaving the game they love, been playing for several yrs., and spending mass real money for ships and other C-store items. This is to include me. My only course of action w/o leaving the game I have committed 5 yrs. to & have been planning to play w/o competition from other MMOs, is to address you all via forums. There are also many other issues that the dedicated players need to address, & I am completely willing to discuss in a more private & direct communication, with suggestions that should be best for the game on a player basis, not a personal basis.
My recommendation of change to the current Rep system that I believe would best meet your goals for PvP, stop power creeping in the game, and still allow PvE not to over suffer from the nerfing is this:
For Space and Ground combat, there are 16 Rep Traits each, 8 offensive & 8 defensive. Prior to yesterday Season 9 launch, you were allowing us to choose ANY combination of these, where players trying to tank could be UberT-ankers, or players wanting Max DPS could be Super DPS-ers. Limiting players to 4 of the Rep skills for each type of combat, first is straight out over nerfing, and is also unfair to players who have worked hard to grind & committed huge amounts of resources for these skills, and working them in our character builds (to include Respecs, some I know I myself have spent Zen to acquired).
Return the Rep Trait System back to 16 available Rep Traits per type of combat, however, limiting each type to 8 available offensive where the player can only choose 4 offensive to use at any 1 time, & 8 available defensive that the player can only use 4 defensive at any 1 time. This gives players 4 defensive & 4 offensive Rep Traits per type of combat, balancing PvE power creep and allowing players to be to defend themselves comparatively to the strength of AI mobs. This will also somewhat achieve your goal of balancing PvP w/o experienced players that put the effort to building their toons and doing Rep System & Fleet Project leveling, wasting their time against players coming to the game, being lazy and not wanting to level Rep System & Fleet, but expect to be able to compete with the Vet player that has earn the competitive edge.
Again there are other things that players have severe complaints about that haven't been address, that need to be, and this isn't the thread for those, that dedicated players would like see address, and I'm not just referring to input I have received for my fleet members, but chats w/ players outside my fleet.
That's quite the paradox, how could you nerf nerf when the nerf is nerfed. But how would the nerf be nerfed when the nerf is nerfed? This allows the nerf not to be nerfed since the nerf is nerfed? But if the nerf isn't nerfed, it could still nerf nerfs. But as soon as the nerf is nerfed, the nerf power is lost. So paradoxally it the nerf nerf lost its nerf, while it's still nerfed, which cannot be because the nerf was unable to nerf.
Well, if this is to balance things between Vet players & new players (PvP & PvE), there is also another suggestion that DEFINATELY need to be considered & that is creating a series of difficult missions that test the leadership abilities of players wishing to be an admiral, or "The Man". Since the launch of FTP, there has been a swarm of fleets created of 5 players, then those 4 players leave and have others help create them a fleet, so on and so forth, that have no players that are truly experienced in the game. This has a major adverse effect on the server, on dedicated new players ending up in fleets they end up wishing that they never even consider joining a fleet, and now the effect its having on rep skills of experienced players have earned AND need for the PvE Elite missions. Besides, if I'm not mistaken, the whole point of having normal modes & Elite modes of PvE STF missions is so that new players can start learning the missions & build their ways up to Elite level of play. Currently, we have too many new players coming into Elite STF missions, both w/o the ability to survive the Elite level & no real experience with the basics of playing the STF. Again this is due to fleets made w/o leaders & instructors to teach the game to the new players; this and the over arrogant players.
I cannot remember the MMO I played that had this concept in it, but it is the reason I suggest it, therefore I have seen it in action & it would at least ease the hardship on the servers (data stress-wise) and should aid new players in finding fleets that will lead & help them learn & grow with the game and their builds.
rep skills of experienced players have earned AND need for the PvE Elite missions.
Um, but you do not need any Rep Passives/Traits for the content in the game. That's part of the whole issue that exists with the power creep in the game. There has been no content progression to go with the power progression in the game.
Even without everything that's been added in the past 2+ years, ISE is easier than it was 2+ years ago. The content/NPCs have actually been nerfed along the way.
Well, if this is to balance things between Vet players & new players (PvP & PvE), there is also another suggestion that DEFINATELY need to be considered & that is creating a series of difficult missions that test the leadership abilities of players wishing to be an admiral, or "The Man". Since the launch of FTP, there has been a swarm of fleets created of 5 players, then those 4 players leave and have others help create them a fleet, so on and so forth, that have no players that are truly experienced in the game. This has a major adverse effect on the server, on dedicated new players ending up in fleets they end up wishing that they never even consider joining a fleet, and now the effect its having on rep skills of experienced players have earned AND need for the PvE Elite missions. Besides, if I'm not mistaken, the whole point of having normal modes & Elite modes of PvE STF missions is so that new players can start learning the missions & build their ways up to Elite level of play. Currently, we have too many new players coming into Elite STF missions, both w/o the ability to survive the Elite level & no real experience with the basics of playing the STF. Again this is due to fleets made w/o leaders & instructors to teach the game to the new players; this and the over arrogant players.
Geko pointed out why some players are having troubles in PO158.5 was it? There are players that have no clue what they're doing - they don't even spend their skill points. I was really ticked off with Geko at first over that podcast - where he basically called the majority of STO players complete morons (no - he did not call them that directly, but with all the things he said they do and don't do - what else could he have been saying?). I jumped up on my podium and ripped into him in a bit by bit response to that podcast...
...but then I stopped and took a look around the forums where I normally don't post. Reading through several threads, several more, taking a closer look at what some folks were doing in the game...
...and well, yeah - he would have lost his job if he had come right out and said it; but the evidence is there.
On the other hand, you've got the folks that post to the Academy or Builds - that read through those sections. That ask others on how to do stuff, how to improve, etc, etc, etc...
...they're not part of that crowd that can't do something so they beg Cryptic to provide them with a slew of things that let them do what others might take for granted.
Joe Random: I'm having a problem surviving - what can I do to my build to improve that?
Random Joe: I'm having a problem surviving - Cryptic can you give me more passives that take care of that for me?
People don't need a "leader" to hold their hands...they need to take some personal responsibility and L2P. Why is it that so many folks do that...but those that don't think it's okay they don't?
Currently there are 10 Space/10 Ground Traits. 2 of each per Rep. Each year, at least 4 are going to be added.
BTW virusdancer, PLZ don't be a forum troll. This is a serious thread directed to Crypitc Devs, and you are trying to defuse the topic with false info. If you open the Rep trait tab, click on Space Reps, then count the number of skills for a toon that has the Omega, Rom, Nukura, & Dyson to Tier 4 completed, you will find there are 16 choices for the space reps. Do the same for ground & you will find there are 16 for ground as well.
This is why I ask for a direct communication with Devs on behalf of players, because simply put, forum trolls clog the dedicated players comms to Devs by muddling the converse to where the point gets lost!
BTW virusdancer, PLZ don't be a forum troll. This is a serious thread directed to Crypitc Devs, and you are trying to defuse the topic with false info. If you open the Rep trait tab, click on Space Reps, then count the number of skills for a toon that has the Omega, Rom, Nukura, & Dyson to Tier 4 completed, you will find there are 16 choices for the space reps. Do the same for ground & you will find there are 16 for ground as well.
This is why I ask for a direct communication with Devs on behalf of players, because simply put, forum trolls clog the dedicated players comms to Devs by muddling the converse to where the point gets lost!
I'm guessing you're the troll here then. Because if you had played during the time since Reputations were introduced, you would know that at each Tier you selected one of two Passives. So although two were offered, you only selected one.
T1 offers 2 Ground. You selected 1.
T2 offers 2 Space. You selected 1.
T3 offers 2 Ground. You selected 1.
T4 offers 2 Space. You selected 1.
Thus with each Reputation you picked up 2 Ground and 2 Space Passives.
With 2 Reputations a year, that would be 4 Ground and 4 Space.
But yeah, if you'd played before yesterday - you would have known that...
You're muddling the conversation by trying to mix parts of the new system with parts of the old system. With the new system, a person has access to all 8 "Passive" Traits from each Reputation...4 Ground/4 Space. Previously, they only had access to half - they had to choose.
Thus, if the system had not changed...folks would have added 2 Ground/2 Space Passives per Reputation, with 2 Reps a year...etc, etc, etc.
But again...if you'd played before yesterday...hrmmm.
On the other hand, you've got the folks that post to the Academy or Builds - that read through those sections. That ask others on how to do stuff, how to improve, etc, etc, etc...
...they're not part of that crowd that can't do something so they beg Cryptic to provide them with a slew of things that let them do what others might take for granted.
Joe Random: I'm having a problem surviving - what can I do to my build to improve that?
Random Joe: I'm having a problem surviving - Cryptic can you give me more passives that take care of that for me?
People don't need a "leader" to hold their hands...they need to take some personal responsibility and L2P. Why is it that so many folks do that...but those that don't think it's okay they don't?
Now you have said something I agree with, and yes, fleet leaders shouldn't have to run every storyline mission with new players to level them. That's not being a leader, but a babysitter! I don't babysit our members, and if I did, they would have already let me step down from my position a LONG time ago. However, a good fleet & good team, do have to run multiple runs of the PvE STF missions to develop teamplay and strategy for each mission. You do this in normal STF missions, THEN, and ONLY THEN, challenge yourself to ELITE STF missions. But you are saying that the Elite are a piece of cake, and they are once you have LEARNED the strategies for the missions, earn your Rep Skills, Earn your gear sets, and level your fleet projects for your fleet gear. But players still need the Rep skills & other items I mention to not only beat the missions, but get the optionals as well.
Now you have said something I agree with, and yes, fleet leaders shouldn't have to run every storyline mission with new players to level them. That's not being a leader, but a babysitter! I don't babysit our members, and if I did, they would have already let me step down from my position a LONG time ago. However, a good fleet & good team, do have to run multiple runs of the PvE STF missions to develop teamplay and strategy for each mission. You do this in normal STF missions, THEN, and ONLY THEN, challenge yourself to ELITE STF missions. But you are saying that the Elite are a piece of cake, and they are once you have LEARNED the strategies for the missions, earn your Rep Skills, Earn your gear sets, and level your fleet projects for your fleet gear. But players still need the Rep skills & other items I mention to not only beat the missions, but get the optionals as well.
You're kidding right? ESTFs are easy with no Rep, nothing beyond Common Mk X/XI gear, etc, etc, etc. You don't need any sort of special gearing in the least - you're overgeared to do ESTFs with just mission gear.
All you needed to do was to learn some of the strats, see what the group was going to do, and go with it. With all the TRIBBLE added, you don't even need to do that - just spacebarobliterate everything.
ESTFs existed before all the TRIBBLE we have the game now - so there's no way to say all the TRIBBLE is needed to do them.
You've got to be trollin' something hard here...
edit: I should make note that I'm talking about Space. Can't comment on Ground - never touched a Ground STF - Ground's not my thing in the least (no Defera, no Nukara, only hit the newish GBZ once).
I Just spent over a 100 hours this month grinding all 4 reputations sets to build a romulan pilot and right when I get to the end of it, they take away over 1/2 of my reputation space buff abilities forcing me and everyone else to only be able to choose 4 of them and forcing me to choose ground skills in place of the space ones that I've lost.
This is so completely hard to believe right now that someone within STO's developer community would alienate their player base with a wide sweeping change such as this.
Really, who ever instituted this change needs to be fired!!!!!!!! FIRED!!!!!!!
Now amplify my feelings x's 4 other toons which I have also made that very same grind for......
I will not spend another $$ on this game unless this gross mistake is corrected, and I will rage quit....starting now until a member of my fleet contacts me allerting me as to its correction.
And to whoever allowed for this change to happen, you are so completely out of tourch with what this game is you should not be in the position that you are, you are what we deem in the gaming community as a game killer.......Probably you came over from SWG, after that game went belly up do to changes such as these.......WTG, Clap-Clap!
I Just spent over a 100 hours this month grinding all 4 reputations...
How did you spend that long on it?
CCE got you your Nukara daily.
ISE got you your Omega daily.
A quick lil' Commendation run got you your Dyson daily.
A 15-20 min Tau Dewa run got you your New Romulan daily.
Should have been looking at 30-35 hours of gameplay spread out over the month.
Are you including other things that you did? Did you also grind out Rep pieces separate from the Rep tiers? Are you just looking at the time you were logged in whether you were doing anything or not?
I agree with reputation perks nerf, only bad thing on this is a lesser motivation for doing next reputation bars.
IMO Another good change can be change on 4 space and 4 ground traits for better balancing between space and ground specialist.
For pvp is very good an annulment of that stupid placate perk, i hope next one will be a nerf of 3x possible technician (OP a2b builds) and nerf a shield generator console (even if i have valdore bought). This could be the end for 50k+ dps scimitars, which can be made according to instructions, not so much expensive and are not to much difficulty on play (bind everything on spacebar, than press spacebar to infinite FAW and a2b)
Don't get me wrong, I believe they handled it poorly and even outright lied when all was said and done. It's something they should have made room for on the schedule before implementing the Nukara rep.
As the changes started out, they were halving the number but doubling/near-doubling those available. One could see a certain level of fairness in that, folks would have to choose - wouldn't have the issue down the road...but they still got some kick for their effort. With some of them being closer to what they were (barely any buff), some just being bugfixes to be what they should have been all along, even stuff removed, and the rest...yeah, definitely a poor implementation imho.
They should have done it pre-Nukara. Can't go back in time for that...so they should have stuck with the near-doubling for the halving trade-off. There was no need to go back in time for that - since it was something that was coming. As it stands now, lol...+3% to +4% CrtH? Removal of OWT (maybe it didn't need to be the +5% Energy/+10% Kinetic bonus damage (non-Base) - but at least it could have still been the +15% base Energy/Kinetic rather than the bugged Kinetic Shearing)...etc, etc, etc.
My beef with this particular thread is trying to make the PvP folks out there the scapegoats and the "need" mentality...and some of the "effort" folks magically appear to have put into it that others did not. Other than that..oh, they most definitely screwed it up.
This doesn't matter if talking about the old Rep System or the new, each Rep has 2 Space choices & 2 Ground choices.
Since I highly doubt anyone has Tier 4 of Undine completed, we won't count it in our math.
For Space only, you have 4 PASSIVE Reps Times (X) 2 available choices per rep for 2 tiers.
So 4x2x2=16 TOTAL Choices!
Now, out of the each 2 choices you get, a player can ONLY choose one (this is prior to the new Rep System) which mean you divide 16 by 2 equaling 8 PASSIVE Reps! skills!
Now you do the same for the Ground Reps, and this comes to 8 chosen PASSIVE skills as well!
In the Old system, that means you have a TOTAL of 16 CHOSEN PASSIVE SKILLS!
Now, like I stated earlier, if you open the Rep Trait system, click the title of Space Reps, on your right (IF you have Tier 4 completed in our 4 original Reps as of yesterday) you count the skills available for Space Passive, you will count 16! With that, you look under Space Rep, you see you can now only make 4 choices! Your overall power for Space is 50% of what it was yesterday, doesn't matter offensively or defensively!
Again, do the same steps in previous paragraph, you get same results for GROUND PASSIVE SKILLS! And again, the math tells you that on the ground, you are again, 50% less powerful than you were yesterday, doesn't matter offensively or defensively!
And plz don't bring into the math the ACTIVE REP SKILLS (skills from completing Tier 5 of each Rep) because whether it was yesterday or today, you have 2 Space Active & 2 Ground Active (1 coming from each of the 4 Reps)!
Sorry, but I do know what I am talking about & I do reference my statements with the game in the background! The Troll here is you (and I'm not flaming, but rather defending my statements from your false math statements) whose statements ARE NOT backed up by the game facts, Period!
I was really very happy with this game until they just committed the biggest sin against a player base that a development team can do.
Lets put this conversation into another context, from another time, from a very different grind.
Years ago their was an incredible game called Star Wars Gallaxies. It was the very first Multi-World, MMO of its kind. The game was so amazing, it had millions of users, a committed fan base, the servers kept crashing because they were all so full, with paying customers.
Then, one day, they changed the PVP, PVE skills, they redid the skill tree's, they alienated their entire player base. People like me, who spent weeks grinding out a max level Bounty Hunter to hunt and kill Jedi, found ourselves no longer able to hunt and kill Jedi. They took that ability away from Bounty Hunters instead replacing the concept of hunting a player base with hunting NPC's. Oh boy what fun that was......not. Then, so many people cried about not wanting to do the multi tier/level grind to unlock Jedi, they made that class available to all through a simple singular skill tree grind. Inferiating the Jedi Population that was in place, who had paid their dues. Next, everbody was a Jedi, everybody had the same gear, the same powers etc. Fun again. Not.
Games need individuality. Take that away with wide sweeping changes such as the ones described above and what the developers have done with this patch. It = kaos, meltdown, no respect or loyalty to the community which they serve = MASS EXODUS!!!!!
For those of you who are crying about fairness, power creep, etc. You to could grind the skills you need to become an uber pilot, or ground combatant (for the exception of those that exploit - that is an entirely different conversation)....but for most of us, that want to play fair and not cheet......this was part of the joy of the game, the grind, the effort, to achieve these ranks, skills, reputation, gear, ships, etc.....that in one fail swoop, was wiped away!!!!!!
Add to it the fact that, it was already bad enough with people joining missions for elite players that weren't elite, but rather parked, waiting for those of us that were elite to finish their missions so that they could collect the rewards. Now, without the strength that most of us had as of the day before yesterday 4/21/2014 the day we all lost our powers, we will now have to suffer through so many missions that will be fail! And then unable to repeat those failed missions for an hour do to lockouts on much of the content. Ok, besides all of that........as I understand it, ground PVP is dead, and now space will be too! How many Veteran Pilots will rage quit over this............I'm not even a Veteran Player, but with the Nerf Bat we were all just hit with......................I am already looking for a new game to play.....Any suggestions?
So perhaps you are not trolling and it is a case you simply do not understand the simplicity of what was being said...cause I mean, you just went through all of that - which is a combination of what I said and stuff nobody said.
If the system had continued the way it had...
Omega 2 Space (1x T2/T4)
New Rom 2 Space (1x T2/T4) 4 Space
Nukara 2 Space (1x T2/T4) 6 Space
Dyson 2 Space (1x T2/T4) 8 Space
Counter-Command 2 Space (1x T2/T4) 10 Space
Expansion 2/S10/S11/etc/etc/etc for 5 more years, adding 4 Space (1x T2/T4 for each of the two likely Reps per year)...
...we'd be looking at 30 Space Passives. Not 30 Space Passive choices...30 Space Passives actually in play.
If the system had not changed, currently there would be 10...is there would be 10 in play. Not that there would be 10 choices.
The change was made to prevent there being 30 Space Passives in play 5 years down the road. There will only be 4. 10 years, it won't be 50 Space Passives. It will be 4.
You'll have 100 Space Passives to choose from, but only be able to slot 4. Heh, seems kind of silly doesn't it? But so would having 50 Space Passives...the whole thing is an unnecessary mess.
I'm not sure why you're discussing things as if there was a change in available choices when the change was to slotting...and what that change would prevent. 16 choices 2 days ago...16 choices yesterday. That didn't change. What changed was there will not be 10 Space Passives...there will not be 12, not 14, not 50. That's why the change was implemented...
I didn't read past that, and for that I feel I must offer an apology. However, the SWG NGE was nothing like this Rep change. Heck, this Rep change's not even the change that the Skill revamp that took place prior to F2P.
The SWG NGE was a massive change...this change was a change to fluff that wasn't even needed in the current context of the game. Comparing the two is ludicrous and insult to all the folks affected by the NGE/CU combination.
I didn't read past that, and for that I feel I must offer an apology.
Again, virusdancer, you are giving an opinion, and you now admitted to not reading one of the whole posts, which means you are now possibly making an opinion. I have been on this forum only 1 month longer than you, in which during that time I just made double digit posts vs. 10,000 posts in almost that same amount of time, and I have gotten there due to your forum trolling. This is the second time I am informing you that this thread wasn't address for you to make all your opinions known w/o evidence to back them. This is not to mention you are attempting a flame war with anyone that makes comments to support feelings of dedicated players to the Devs. Again, you are muddling the conversation that serious players want to have their feelings express regarding the New Rep System. You have made it known that you really have no negative feelings towards this new system, so please move on to another thread to troll.
I feel like the reputation revamp wasn't needed. This game's vertical expansion ends fairly quickly even through playing normal content. An average player should be level 50 within 2 weeks of playing 1-2 hours a day.
Since the level cap is met with such little effort by even average players, this game relied on horizontal expansion as its endgame. This was effectively the reputation system. Reputations take 40 days (daily only no hourly) to grind out to t5 the first time without sponsorship. 20 days with sponsorship.
Reputation systems have been released 5 times so far in this game's history, not including the event reputation tab. Since reputation systems take a while for a player to grind out, and that there are now 5 of them, the difference between a fully repped, fully repped geared player vs a fresh 50 white mk x's should be HUGE.
If we look at the time involved to get the 5 reputations to tier 5, it adds another 100-200 days to a players character development. Fresh 50 - 14 days, Repped 50 - 54 days (and thats assuming you jam 5 rep system progression into your daily play instead of doing them 1 by 1).
A fully repped player has at least ~4 times the amount of time invested into their character development than a fresh level 50 player. Wanting to level the playing field while increasing the desired time spent is insulting to players who have bothered to complete everything so far.
Power creep is a necessity in character progression, otherwise whats the point in grind based progression system that you hate after completing it 5 times, much less 20-40 and thats multiplicative based on how many characters you run it on.
The key to balancing power creep is to introduce challenging content and to give a buff pass to npcs after every introduction of the power creep. Never to nerf the player. I've said this before and I'll say it again, introduce a 3rd difficulty tier restricted to private queues that way the average player can continue on being average, while above average players can finally have a challenge worthy of their time and skills.
Reputation Revamp Stats:
Passives Halved
2 Passives Removed and replaced with subpar versions.
Passives advertised as doubled, a lot of them weren't.
We got nerfed plain and simple. Had they not changed anything, and merely capped it at 8 passives, it would be a NONISSUE. The fact that what we can take is limited, and some of the things that we would have taken no longer exist is quite frustrating. It has basically destroyed my trust in anything Cryptic waves around as a proverbial carrot while effectively eliminating my motivation to grind out future reputation systems that doesn't have superior passives/gear to what already exists which if that happened would nullify the proposed reasoning for the reputation revamp in the first place.
It's not an opinion. You can look at the changes that took place with the NGE and compare them to this change. It's not the same by any means...literally nowhere near the same. That's not an opinion.
An opinion would be comparing such vastly different changes as if they were the same...
...which I've suggested not be done as it is insulting to SWG folks.
, and you now admitted to not reading one of the whole posts, which means you are now possibly making an opinion.
My opinion in this thread was squarely pointed out - I believe Cryptic did a TRIBBLE job in how the implementation played out. That's an opinion. It's pretty easy to pick out from the rest.
I have been on this forum only 1 month longer than you, in which during that time I just made double digit posts vs. 10,000 posts in almost that same amount of time, and I have gotten there due to your forum trolling.
The dates below our avatars are not our time on the forum. Again, you say that you've been around since the dawn of time - then you would have known about the Forumpocalypse of 2012 where the forum was changed. All of our posts became Archived Posts.
10000 posts? It's not even 9300. And go back looking through the extreme vast majority of the posts from me out there...trolling? Nope. Providing information to players asking questions? Yep. Providing information to players from testing? Yep. Pointing out bugs? Yep. Questioning the logic of certain choices? Yep, even that.
What have you done in your thread here?
Tried to scapegoat PvPers.
Said that Rep Passives/Traits are needed for Elite content - when they weren't even introduced until S7. Reallllllly?
This is the second time I am informing you that this thread wasn't address for you to make all your opinions known w/o evidence to back them.
It's not your place to inform anybody that a thread was not addressed to them. To be blunt, you posted a thread on the forums - public forums - open to reply from anybody. If you wished to contact the devs directly - you could have done so. Would they have appreciated it? IMHO, probably not - given that your thread was...Hell, I don't even know how many threads have been posted on the same topic at this point - there's so many of them.
As for my opinions being offered without evidence...I offered an opinion with the reasoning behind it - the poor implementation.
Again, you are muddling the conversation that serious players want to have their feelings express regarding the New Rep System.
Players have been expressing their feelings in countless threads. Are you dismissing all those countless threads? You're the only one that can express those feelings...? Ahem...I think some of your fellows will want to have a word with you on that.
Don't get me wrong, I believe they handled it poorly and even outright lied when all was said and done. It's something they should have made room for on the schedule before implementing the Nukara rep.
As the changes started out, they were halving the number but doubling/near-doubling those available. One could see a certain level of fairness in that, folks would have to choose - wouldn't have the issue down the road...but they still got some kick for their effort. With some of them being closer to what they were (barely any buff), some just being bugfixes to be what they should have been all along, even stuff removed, and the rest...yeah, definitely a poor implementation imho.
They should have done it pre-Nukara. Can't go back in time for that...so they should have stuck with the near-doubling for the halving trade-off. There was no need to go back in time for that - since it was something that was coming. As it stands now, lol...+3% to +4% CrtH? Removal of OWT (maybe it didn't need to be the +5% Energy/+10% Kinetic bonus damage (non-Base) - but at least it could have still been the +15% base Energy/Kinetic rather than the bugged Kinetic Shearing)...etc, etc, etc.
My beef with this particular thread is trying to make the PvP folks out there the scapegoats and the "need" mentality...and some of the "effort" folks magically appear to have put into it that others did not. Other than that..oh, they most definitely screwed it up.
Again, pointing out that you're wrong is not trolling...however, what you've been doing is where a mod usually sends me the PM to say that I should stop feeding you.
Power creep is a necessity in character progression, otherwise whats the point in grind based progression system that you hate after completing it 5 times, much less 20-40 and thats multiplicative based on how many characters you run it on.
The key to balancing power creep is to introduce challenging content and to give a buff pass to npcs after every introduction of the power creep. Never to nerf the player. I've said this before and I'll say it again, introduce a 3rd difficulty tier restricted to private queues that way the average player can continue on being average, while above average players can finally have a challenge worthy of their time and skills.
Yep, power progression/power creep usually goes hand in hand with content progression. It allows for a player to feel an extended sense of progression without early onset of tedium from power progression without content progression.
Reputation Revamp Stats:
Passives Halved
2 Passives Removed and replaced with subpar versions.
Passives advertised as doubled, a lot of them weren't.
Yep, the initial selling point Cryptic offered in regard to the changes quickly became something...meh, trying to think of a polite way to say it. But they basically screwed folks over in that regard.
It was one thing to halve and near double...but to halve and do what they did - they should have just been upfront that such a nerf was incoming.
We got nerfed plain and simple. Had they not changed anything, and merely capped it at 8 passives, it would be a NONISSUE. The fact that what we can take is limited, and some of the things that we would have taken no longer exist is quite frustrating. It has basically destroyed my trust in anything Cryptic waves around as a proverbial carrot while effectively eliminating my motivation to grind out future reputation systems that doesn't have superior passives/gear to what already exists which if that happened would nullify the proposed reasoning for the reputation revamp in the first place.
If they'd kept it at 8 without making any changes, they may have ran into the issue of folks not wanting to do Reps (and thus not play) simply because there would be no point in doing them - rather than the overwhelming feeling of being screwed that came about with the changes.
In the end though, the Reps are basically the only content outside of the Foundry and PvP. Other than that, it's what - a new mission every 3-6 months? The majority of the Cryptic generated content is having folks repeat thing over and over between them dumping out something new for folks to repeat over and over.
So say you were already T5 in the current Reps, you were in a T5 Fleet...they come out with S9. You play the new mission. You play the revamped missions. Perhaps you hit up the new SBZ a couple of times. What are you going to do then? Are you going to hit up the Foundry? Are you going to PvP? What else is there to do outside of grinding out the new Rep on one toon to get the sponsorship tokens so you can grind it out on your alts? That's basically what STO is...Foundry, PvP, Rep Grinds.
So they needed to do something to the Passive -> Trait conversion, so that they could create potential Traits down the road. Even if one accepts that necessity and sees where perhaps 8 was too much, it's difficult not to wish that Cryptic had not split the difference with 6 because of what they felt they had to do with the Traits not being near-double/double as was initially laid out. 4x near-double/double was one thing - 4x whatever you want to call what we've got...meh, would have been one thing if that had been the case from the start. But they set certain expectations, they teased those expectations on Tribble, and then did the bait 'n switch before launch...
edit: And seriously, at what point do folks not simply get tired of shooting goldfish in a barrel with more and more power?
When the escalating tension ends. And that ended a long time ago and has little to do with reputation traits. For that matter no content released post Crystalline Entity revamp has even used the escalating tension design.
It is either wait for the mission to end (Spire) or a flat line tension where you merely deal with the speed bumps to victory with none possessing any more threat than the one before.
CSE used to be one of the best for escalating tension thanks to the timer, the triggers, and the Kang. But a combination of imbalanced abilities (APB, APA, EPtS, and a few others), imbalanced items (Leech console, 2pc borg), and Doffs only a few examples of which I listed, combined with player familiarity has made it a joke.
And to imply the reputation trait revamp will fix that in any way, or that the new missions are better designed, well I think you know better than that VD. STO PvE content is no better nor anymore engaging today than it was a month ago.
But as long as the escalating tension is there shooting goldfish in a barrel with the illusion (yes Illusion to serve as tension) of difficulty will never get tiring for me. Because at the end of the day when you create monsters for PvE content they have only one purpose. Defeat.
If they'd kept it at 8 without making any changes, they may have ran into the issue of folks not wanting to do Reps (and thus not play) simply because there would be no point in doing them - rather than the overwhelming feeling of being screwed that came about with the changes.
In the end though, the Reps are basically the only content outside of the Foundry and PvP. Other than that, it's what - a new mission every 3-6 months? The majority of the Cryptic generated content is having folks repeat thing over and over between them dumping out something new for folks to repeat over and over.
So say you were already T5 in the current Reps, you were in a T5 Fleet...they come out with S9. You play the new mission. You play the revamped missions. Perhaps you hit up the new SBZ a couple of times. What are you going to do then? Are you going to hit up the Foundry? Are you going to PvP? What else is there to do outside of grinding out the new Rep on one toon to get the sponsorship tokens so you can grind it out on your alts? That's basically what STO is...Foundry, PvP, Rep Grinds.
So they needed to do something to the Passive -> Trait conversion, so that they could create potential Traits down the road. Even if one accepts that necessity and sees where perhaps 8 was too much, it's difficult not to wish that Cryptic had not split the difference with 6 because of what they felt they had to do with the Traits not being near-double/double as was initially laid out. 4x near-double/double was one thing - 4x whatever you want to call what we've got...meh, would have been one thing if that had been the case from the start. But they set certain expectations, they teased those expectations on Tribble, and then did the bait 'n switch before launch...
Ok, now this more like expressing your feelings in regards to the change, however, you are projecting 5 yrs. down the road, based on no changes to the game, thinking that player-database feelings will be ignored. That has been the downfall of numerous MMOs in the past. This reminds me of a statement told to me all my life, "Don't assume anything. It will only make an ... out of you!".
I will also point out that you did overlook 1 very important element of the game many players enjoy about the game: Most of the players in & out of my fleet clearly enjoy developing multiple builds using different captains, in different ships, with the different skill builds based on what they have learned from actual playtime, attempting to create an enjoyable toon to play to shake the game up for them. I myself only design tanks, trying to improve my tank's offensive abilities to go along with the changes Cryptic makes in the game. I have looked at this issue from both sides of the argument, and am disappointed with the fact my efforts over the past 4 yrs. now in the game. However, that being said, my point here now is that I feel this new Rep Trait Nerf, a) my toons' build has now been thown back at least a yr. in development, b) all the grinding to level Reps, incorporating them with the fleet project work to make awesome builds, and c) what is the point of continuing to do so for current toons or on new toons if they can't survived the role I am suppose to fill in teamplay.
You make yourself sound like a dedicated PvPer, based on attempts to defend the understanding I had that this was done to balance PvP. The fact you believe that PvE has nothing to do with the game at all, seems to support this theory, but I'm not to assume you are. I myself felt PvP in this game was dead, and was hoping at some point in the future it would be revived by them having a territory for factions to build areas by acquiring planets for resources, and build defenses & fleet tactics to protect your factions's territory from other factions.
And to imply the reputation trait revamp will fix that in any way, or that the new missions are better designed, well I think you know better than that VD. STO PvE content is no better nor anymore engaging today than it was a month ago.
It's not about fixing anything imho, really. It's about preventing it from getting worse down the road.
Whether it's the older missions where they're over in a blink of an eye or the newer missions with all the speedbumps where we're trying to keep our eyes open...
...it's just a case of trying to prevent that from getting worse with Passives/Traits. It's not a case of trying to prevent that from getting worse with anything else, cause there's still oodles and oodles of power creep out there that's going on without any content progression.
Cryptic's kind of looking ahead instead of barely looking past their nose.
Say Gear X is best. Ship Y is best. (I don't believe in "bests" - but lots of folks do.) For the most part, that new player can grab that. But that new guy heading into Content A with that...could still be down 20+ Passives at some point. You know, if there was content progression - it wouldn't matter. But there isn't...so it does, meh.
Still, like I said - it was one thing to cut to 4 with the Traits being at a certain power level - but with the power level they launched them at, imho - they should have gone 6...
Ok, now this more like expressing your feelings in regards to the change, however, you are projecting 5 yrs. down the road, based on no changes to the game, thinking that player-database feelings will be ignored. That has been the downfall of numerous MMOs in the past. This reminds me of a statement told to me all my life, "Don't assume anything. It will only make an ... out of you!".
There's going to be another Skill revamp with S10 (or perhaps later, it was to be with Expansion 2 - but got pushed to S10 - who knows if it will get pushed again, eh?).
There are going to be additional changes...however what I said there is based purely on what Cryptic said.
AdjudicatorHawk here with an update on some upcoming changes to the powers granted by the Reputation system! As weve expanded the Reputation system to include more and more content, weve created a number of cool powers for players to pick up. However, each time we have made a new Reputation, weve had to constrain our powers due to the fact that the most dedicated players would have all of them active at any given time.
Ultimately, its been clear that the system as it exists on live is not infinitely scalable if we had 200 Reputation powers, the difference between a fresh max-level character and one whod spent hundreds of hours at endgame would just be too large for them to play together. However, we like the appeal of the Reputation systems escalating power rewards they feel good to earn and good to use. The solution that lets us balance passive power creep and give even better rewards than before for Rep progression is very similar to the solution we used for Traits let players earn power options, then pick and choose which of those powers they want to be using at any given time. Due to this systemic similarity, were renaming Reputation powers to Reputation Traits.
With a system revamp like this, we also get to take a close look at which goals the original system was meeting, and which goals it wasnt. While Reputation Traits have been outstanding rewards for participating in content, theyve also forced players to make semi-permanent build decisions without regard for what type of ship theyre flying or what group role theyre trying to play. We want players to be able to use all of the powers theyve earned, and we want to encourage experimentation and gaining a deeper understanding of how the games mechanics work.
To that end, were changing how powers are selected you can now change your selection of passive Reputation Traits for free, any time youre out of combat. All players will have four slots for passive Ground powers, four slots for passive Space powers, and four slots for Active powers. As you progress through a given Reputation, you unlock two Reputation Trait choices each time you gain a tier in that Rep. For example, if I reach Tier 1 of the Task Force Omega Reputation, I gain access to Omega Weapon Proficiency and Medical Nanites as power choices. I can then slot both of these powers into Ground Passive slots, using up two of my four Ground Passives. If I were to unlock Tier 5 in all current Reputations, I would have 16 options for Space and 16 options for Ground passive powers.
We recognize that this system revamp will cause some players to lose simultaneous access to powers theyve earned, and its important to us that the powers you choose to slot feel impactful and worthy on their own, now that you can only use 4 passives at once in any given region. To that end, weve made substantial improvements to a number of the Reputation passive powers. We hope this will make the selection of your powers a set of interesting choices, and not just a single best spec that people copy from a guide. What follows is a work-in-progress list of our buffs to Rep passives please keep in mind, all of these are subject to change, following testing on Tribble.
They went on to repeat that message...that it's about the scalability of the system for the future. Could things change? Sure, it's always possible. But with what they've told us with this system is that they're trying to future proof it against the way things have been going.
I will also point out that you did overlook 1 very important element of the game many players enjoy about the game: Most of the players in & out of my fleet clearly enjoy developing multiple builds using different captains, in different ships, with the different skill builds based on what they have learned from actual playtime, attempting to create an enjoyable toon to play to shake the game up for them.
I've got eight toons listed there in my signature.
Each of them is different - some may have a similar role, but they approach that role differently.
Willard is a pseudo healer/support in a T'varo.
Rave does power drain.
Mysk does shield drain.
Maal is damage/tanking.
Vegar is healing/tanking.
Nivuh is attempting the classical vape.
Venit is damage/speed tanking.
Kopor is standard damage.
I myself only design tanks, trying to improve my tank's offensive abilities to go along with the changes Cryptic makes in the game. I have looked at this issue from both sides of the argument, and am disappointed with the fact my efforts over the past 4 yrs. now in the game. However, that being said, my point here now is that I feel this new Rep Trait Nerf, a) my toons' build has now been thown back at least a yr. in development, b) all the grinding to level Reps, incorporating them with the fleet project work to make awesome builds, and c) what is the point of continuing to do so for current toons or on new toons if they can't survived the role I am suppose to fill in teamplay.
One of the reasons (this is combination of mechanics and opinion) you may be experiencing an issue with certain roles is that the content is not really designed around those roles. Cryptic does not utilize the MMO Trinity. There are no content requirements for the Tank, DPS, and Heals (or the 4th, Support). The content can be completed by any rag tag group that has a basic idea of what they're doing and haven't completely botched their builds.
With Tanking - almost any ship can tank. You can tank a Tac Cube in a Sci Hegh'ta while still doing damage and supporting the team. The content's just not designed to require the MMO Trinity. Cryptic's been clear on that in the past - they didnt want to create those kind of requirements for groups. They just wanted five folks to be able to in and have a blast...they didn't want folks having to sit around waiting on a Tank or a Healer so they could do something.
Don't get me wrong, though - where folks were complaining about the interruptible interacts with the Mirror Event - I was enjoying it. Here, let me grab the aggro of all those guys and you take care of the click. Wham, bam - playing as a team...heh, something that folks out there tend to hate - they just want to spacebarboom everything in sight.
It was awesome on Vegar in his Marauder - a toon I couldn't imagine taking into an ISE but one that thrived in the Mirror Event and CCE. In Mirror, he could sit on the station and it didn't matter how many Rifts weren't closed - the station wasn't dropping below 90%. Tanking and healing...was awesome. CCE - nobody's going to get close to dying unless they sit there for the pulse.
But that's content that was designed to allow for things like that. It's like KASE...folks used to sit on Kang, but it's gotten to the point you can obliterate everything without needing to sit on him. Folks used to try to follow the 10% rule in ISE, but it doesn't matter - cause everybody's doing so much damage that it just doesn't matter.
While I hate the MMO Trinity with a passion - mainly because I do not like the concept of some NPC Boss that rules a vast empire and is a threat to the world's existence...isn't smart enough to kill the healer keeping the tank alive or the DPS that are actually killing him. But that's not the same as hating the idea of a tank, healer, and other roles. It's literally just that fubar notion that this dire threat is so damn stupid...meh.
But yeah, I wish there were more options for how content could be completed - I wish it did require more teamwork and less spacebar mashing. If the group's got ABC, then they can do it ABC's way - if they've got AXY, they can do it that way. Rather than it just mainly being spacebarboom! Meh...
I'll tank with Willard in ISE, holding aggro while blipping around - a combination of avoidance/dodge tanking, resistance tanking, and heal tanking - while dropping out torps/mines - and letting the other folks do their spacebar thing. But again, I wouldn't try that with Vegar.
You make yourself sound like a dedicated PvPer, based on attempts to defend the understanding I had that this was done to balance PvP.
Er...pointing out where Cryptic themselves had stated the reason for the change...doesn't make me a dedicated PvPer. I've done perhaps one CnH queue in 2014, no Arena queues, and spend perhaps 2-4 hours a week in Ker'rat if that.
seems to support this theory, but I'm not to assume you are. I myself felt PvP in this game was dead, and was hoping at some point in the future it would be revived by them having a territory for factions to build areas by acquiring planets for resources, and build defenses & fleet tactics to protect your factions's territory from other factions.
With faction imbalance...massive faction imbalance...it could never have come to be. Even with them adding Romulans, more folks ended up rolling Fed Roms instead of KDF Roms.
STO's playerbase, all in all, is pretty small. It's a single shard and there's still waits for most of the queues, whether PvE or PvP. Even when there's an event running, one can pop open the Change Instance window to take a look at how many folks are running around in the combined instances.
My discussions on PvP, are pretty much the same as mine on PvE.
Yes, there's the need to grow the base community - but there's also the need for retention. I think Cryptic's done a crappy job on retention in the past couple of years with their focus on getting new players in to the game.
I think that cost them with the KDF. They had the opportunity to bring more in and to keep them...but they just redid the tutorial leaving the KDF with the same crappy ships at endgame compared to the Feds and woefully crappy compared to the new Romulans. They didn't really give anybody an incentive to roll a KDF toon and keep them.
There's been a lot of that in how they've added more and more power progression without content progression (even nerfing the content to make it easier and more accessible to newer players - perhaps folks that had never played a single video game before)...but nothing for the folks that have been playing, nothing for those new players that will reach the point of what now, etc, etc, etc...
STO's basically a Star Trek Farmville type of game. Heck, for a week there all I did was DOFF because I was burnt out on some of the grind - it was kind of funny, looking at my screen as I DOFF'd and looking at the gf's screen as she played Farmerama. Rep/Fleet grinding is along those lines with little mini-games we do to get the bits so we can plant our crops...er...run our projects.
It's why I say there's basically the Foundry, PvP, and the Grind. Okay, some folks just log into STO for a 3D Chatroom loosely set in the Star Trek IP.
The guy that mentioned SWG...I went for 3 months once without being involved once in combat. I just ran a shop. Set up the dialog for my vendors, manufactured, and sold the goods. I played the Market in EVE for a period of time - though that involved quite a bit of combat, lol/meh. Both SWG and EVE, though...sandoxes...not a themepark like STO. Heck, STO's not even a themepark anymore - more like a roadside attraction where they're waiting to milk you for every dollar.
Wow, this went all over the place...brain probably fried from typing out all the Counter-Command stuff in that other thread...
edit: Meh, I remember a part that I overlooked with the changes - relating to what I would and not do with Vegar. With the ability to respec the traits for free, if I'm doing X content - I can run that build and be fine. If I'm doing Y content, I can switch ships/gear & traits to run it to be fine. It reduces the feeling of potentially being excluded from content because of a build. Course, still stuck with the skill build...but oh well...
This is why I ask for a direct communication with Devs on behalf of players
I was about to take issue with that statement until I reread the title and saw "will end STO". There are better, proper ways to get dev attention other than acting as a fortune teller.
As for the statement itself: your join date, or anything you claim really, doesn't give you any right to talk "on behalf of players". You are just one of us, not all of us. Express your opinions, but don't make them everyone's, because they all got their own. If they agree with you, they will support you.
Well with all of this expert opinion stuff being shot around.... I guess that it is time finally for my two cents... (though I am no expert or forum champion...) Please understand that I have played this game for a very long time. I have seen its ups and its downs. I have seen all kinds in this game. I have 6 toons myself and I enjoy playing each and everyone of them. They are all different. So in keeping with the theme of this thread I would like to post my thoughts on season 9.
Lets begin with the new starbase. Very nice. Its defiantly a new shiny. Once I get used to how to navigate it I'm sure that i will look less the tourist and someone who has business to conduct.
The revamped borg missions. Very nice. Well done all in all.
Now the fun part. I am writing this more to the crypic devs more than anyone else. Some of the changes made we outstanding. Some however were not so great. I know that the rep system has probably been whined about, beaten, kicked like a dead hoarse but for me at least it remains a major issue. For me at least it has altered a lot of my builds. They are not as strong as they where. They are not nearly as durable as they where and I'm sure that in time I will adapt to the changes. The part that kills me is the fact of the wasted time for the first four Rep trees. For some who can play everyday I am sure you rocked it on 8 toons plus inside of a month. For those of us who have/had to manage our playtime a bit more this was a process that took months.... For me it feels like a kick in the teeth and I find my motivation to play this game waning.
As mentioned earlier in this forum this game is now more for making money off of people. It seems that is the sol focus for this game is to present new shinnies and having people pay loads of cash for them. Well I'm spent I do not want to give you any more of my money. I see no reason at all to start a new grind if there is no purpose for it. Why should I spend the time/ money for something that does not benefit my toons? Before I had a little bit of everything now I have to trade peter to pay paul. For some this may not seem like such a big deal but for me it meant the difference between build failure and build success. We all don't have them fancy tier 5 SBs and such .( Also not to worry forum experts i have begun the process of adapting my builds )
If you cannot filter out the monetary aspect of the game ie making new shinnies for fleecing your fanbase then this games days are truly numbered. I would encourage you to focus more on improving the in game content and hey maybe even have some of this end game gear you have into rewards that can be earned in game instead of selling it all on the crypic store. By earned i mean by defeating a challenging boss or something not the end mission goodies. You have done a great job with the storyline missions you fixed thus far. I would like to see more focus on the endgame stuff and who knows maybe even extending the level cap from 50 to 60. Also If you would also continue to work on the bug issues that would be great as well.
I conclusion Season 9 is like season 8. We got a great new playground... More stuff to spend money on, and of course a new grind. (Which I respectfully decline to do this time around) annnd the rep revamp... (fail) This game has turned into farmville as my esteemed college mentioned before in his posts. Wouldn't it be great if they turned it back into Star Trek..... In all will this post or any of the other numerous posts I have read in regards to this issue or season 9 will it change anything? I do not think so. We can whine and whine till the cows come home... as long as PW Cryptic are making there money I don't think that they actually pay attention to what is said here. I may be wrong but my gut feeling is that they want to make money more than they want to please there fan base....
Ty for this Post I to agree with you I,m the fleet leader Of a fleet myself , I see this was a out right kick to the face. I stand with you on this one Marcus Blackwell leader of Babylon 5 Defence force fleet.
Interesting to note a few of the arguments being used about why the rep change is bad.
"Players have to die in content"... well, yes. Isn't that part of the point? That there is sufficient challenge that you can get taken down and lose 15s of gameplay? Or are egos really so fragile that losing to NPCs is unacceptable?
In any case, the sheer number of slots gives players more Rep powers in play than they had in the first iteration of the system (Rom/Omega reps only, back in late 2012). No one was complaining about being underpowered at that point.
"I can't customise like I used to"... True, in that there are fewer overall options to pick rep powers than at the (S8) peak; but you can now pick which ones to use for any given mission. This is a MASSIVE boost to character flexibility which has gone almost unremarked. Pre-S9, there was a general choice at each passive between an offensive and a defensive option. Once you'd made that choice you were stuck with it until you spent Zen to respec. Now, you can freely pick depending on your situation. This also makes it much easier for players to experiment - surely a good thing?
"Players should have to grind for the best gear"... ... There's still a lot of point to grinding. Rep gear only unlocks at higher tiers. To fully utilise the active power slots, you need to have completed 4 reps, and at S9 only players who have completed all 5 will even begin to be able to specialise their active powers. And while a lot of people have focussed on the fact that this is aimed at "newbies" it's just as beneficial for veteran players wanting to generate a new alt.
"Cryptic should just introduce harder missions instead of nerfing players"... is a short-term fix. Sure it might work now, but in that scenario what happens in another year once another two reps are added? Add a super-nightmare mode? This is a (rare) bit of obvious forward thinking from Cryptic.
Overall, the last point is (to me) the most promising. Someone is actually thinking about how the game is going to be working in 1-2 years time rather than working out how to milk the playerbase in the next quarter. For long-term players, that has to be a good thing.
And again, those those fed up with the grind... the good news is you don't "need" to do it. I say "need" because grinding was always about self-induced pressure, but thanks to the rep changes the gap between someone who has completed only 30-50% of the available reps, and someone who's finished them all, is much more manageable. It is not a crime for Cryptic / PWE to make money off the playerbase, and it looks like their approach is working.
Comments
Currently there are 10 Space/10 Ground Traits. 2 of each per Rep. Each year, at least 4 are going to be added.
Five years from now when you PUG ISE...you're going to have the guy with over 20 traits and the guy with 0 traits.
Simple as that...
..it's fun looking for a scapegoat and all, but like the overwhelming majority of times - it's just not true.
edit: And seriously, at what point do folks not simply get tired of shooting goldfish in a barrel with more and more power?
I call it, the Stoutes paradox.
I cannot remember the MMO I played that had this concept in it, but it is the reason I suggest it, therefore I have seen it in action & it would at least ease the hardship on the servers (data stress-wise) and should aid new players in finding fleets that will lead & help them learn & grow with the game and their builds.
Knights Of The Federation
Um, but you do not need any Rep Passives/Traits for the content in the game. That's part of the whole issue that exists with the power creep in the game. There has been no content progression to go with the power progression in the game.
Even without everything that's been added in the past 2+ years, ISE is easier than it was 2+ years ago. The content/NPCs have actually been nerfed along the way.
Geko pointed out why some players are having troubles in PO158.5 was it? There are players that have no clue what they're doing - they don't even spend their skill points. I was really ticked off with Geko at first over that podcast - where he basically called the majority of STO players complete morons (no - he did not call them that directly, but with all the things he said they do and don't do - what else could he have been saying?). I jumped up on my podium and ripped into him in a bit by bit response to that podcast...
...but then I stopped and took a look around the forums where I normally don't post. Reading through several threads, several more, taking a closer look at what some folks were doing in the game...
...and well, yeah - he would have lost his job if he had come right out and said it; but the evidence is there.
On the other hand, you've got the folks that post to the Academy or Builds - that read through those sections. That ask others on how to do stuff, how to improve, etc, etc, etc...
...they're not part of that crowd that can't do something so they beg Cryptic to provide them with a slew of things that let them do what others might take for granted.
Joe Random: I'm having a problem surviving - what can I do to my build to improve that?
Random Joe: I'm having a problem surviving - Cryptic can you give me more passives that take care of that for me?
People don't need a "leader" to hold their hands...they need to take some personal responsibility and L2P. Why is it that so many folks do that...but those that don't think it's okay they don't?
BTW virusdancer, PLZ don't be a forum troll. This is a serious thread directed to Crypitc Devs, and you are trying to defuse the topic with false info. If you open the Rep trait tab, click on Space Reps, then count the number of skills for a toon that has the Omega, Rom, Nukura, & Dyson to Tier 4 completed, you will find there are 16 choices for the space reps. Do the same for ground & you will find there are 16 for ground as well.
This is why I ask for a direct communication with Devs on behalf of players, because simply put, forum trolls clog the dedicated players comms to Devs by muddling the converse to where the point gets lost!
Knights Of The Federation
I'm guessing you're the troll here then. Because if you had played during the time since Reputations were introduced, you would know that at each Tier you selected one of two Passives. So although two were offered, you only selected one.
T1 offers 2 Ground. You selected 1.
T2 offers 2 Space. You selected 1.
T3 offers 2 Ground. You selected 1.
T4 offers 2 Space. You selected 1.
Thus with each Reputation you picked up 2 Ground and 2 Space Passives.
With 2 Reputations a year, that would be 4 Ground and 4 Space.
But yeah, if you'd played before yesterday - you would have known that...
You're muddling the conversation by trying to mix parts of the new system with parts of the old system. With the new system, a person has access to all 8 "Passive" Traits from each Reputation...4 Ground/4 Space. Previously, they only had access to half - they had to choose.
Thus, if the system had not changed...folks would have added 2 Ground/2 Space Passives per Reputation, with 2 Reps a year...etc, etc, etc.
But again...if you'd played before yesterday...hrmmm.
Now you have said something I agree with, and yes, fleet leaders shouldn't have to run every storyline mission with new players to level them. That's not being a leader, but a babysitter! I don't babysit our members, and if I did, they would have already let me step down from my position a LONG time ago. However, a good fleet & good team, do have to run multiple runs of the PvE STF missions to develop teamplay and strategy for each mission. You do this in normal STF missions, THEN, and ONLY THEN, challenge yourself to ELITE STF missions. But you are saying that the Elite are a piece of cake, and they are once you have LEARNED the strategies for the missions, earn your Rep Skills, Earn your gear sets, and level your fleet projects for your fleet gear. But players still need the Rep skills & other items I mention to not only beat the missions, but get the optionals as well.
Knights Of The Federation
You're kidding right? ESTFs are easy with no Rep, nothing beyond Common Mk X/XI gear, etc, etc, etc. You don't need any sort of special gearing in the least - you're overgeared to do ESTFs with just mission gear.
All you needed to do was to learn some of the strats, see what the group was going to do, and go with it. With all the TRIBBLE added, you don't even need to do that - just spacebarobliterate everything.
ESTFs existed before all the TRIBBLE we have the game now - so there's no way to say all the TRIBBLE is needed to do them.
You've got to be trollin' something hard here...
edit: I should make note that I'm talking about Space. Can't comment on Ground - never touched a Ground STF - Ground's not my thing in the least (no Defera, no Nukara, only hit the newish GBZ once).
This is so completely hard to believe right now that someone within STO's developer community would alienate their player base with a wide sweeping change such as this.
Really, who ever instituted this change needs to be fired!!!!!!!! FIRED!!!!!!!
Now amplify my feelings x's 4 other toons which I have also made that very same grind for......
I will not spend another $$ on this game unless this gross mistake is corrected, and I will rage quit....starting now until a member of my fleet contacts me allerting me as to its correction.
And to whoever allowed for this change to happen, you are so completely out of tourch with what this game is you should not be in the position that you are, you are what we deem in the gaming community as a game killer.......Probably you came over from SWG, after that game went belly up do to changes such as these.......WTG, Clap-Clap!
How did you spend that long on it?
CCE got you your Nukara daily.
ISE got you your Omega daily.
A quick lil' Commendation run got you your Dyson daily.
A 15-20 min Tau Dewa run got you your New Romulan daily.
Should have been looking at 30-35 hours of gameplay spread out over the month.
Are you including other things that you did? Did you also grind out Rep pieces separate from the Rep tiers? Are you just looking at the time you were logged in whether you were doing anything or not?
IMO Another good change can be change on 4 space and 4 ground traits for better balancing between space and ground specialist.
For pvp is very good an annulment of that stupid placate perk, i hope next one will be a nerf of 3x possible technician (OP a2b builds) and nerf a shield generator console (even if i have valdore bought). This could be the end for 50k+ dps scimitars, which can be made according to instructions, not so much expensive and are not to much difficulty on play (bind everything on spacebar, than press spacebar to infinite FAW and a2b)
As the changes started out, they were halving the number but doubling/near-doubling those available. One could see a certain level of fairness in that, folks would have to choose - wouldn't have the issue down the road...but they still got some kick for their effort. With some of them being closer to what they were (barely any buff), some just being bugfixes to be what they should have been all along, even stuff removed, and the rest...yeah, definitely a poor implementation imho.
They should have done it pre-Nukara. Can't go back in time for that...so they should have stuck with the near-doubling for the halving trade-off. There was no need to go back in time for that - since it was something that was coming. As it stands now, lol...+3% to +4% CrtH? Removal of OWT (maybe it didn't need to be the +5% Energy/+10% Kinetic bonus damage (non-Base) - but at least it could have still been the +15% base Energy/Kinetic rather than the bugged Kinetic Shearing)...etc, etc, etc.
My beef with this particular thread is trying to make the PvP folks out there the scapegoats and the "need" mentality...and some of the "effort" folks magically appear to have put into it that others did not. Other than that..oh, they most definitely screwed it up.
This doesn't matter if talking about the old Rep System or the new, each Rep has 2 Space choices & 2 Ground choices.
Since I highly doubt anyone has Tier 4 of Undine completed, we won't count it in our math.
For Space only, you have 4 PASSIVE Reps Times (X) 2 available choices per rep for 2 tiers.
So 4x2x2=16 TOTAL Choices!
Now, out of the each 2 choices you get, a player can ONLY choose one (this is prior to the new Rep System) which mean you divide 16 by 2 equaling 8 PASSIVE Reps! skills!
Now you do the same for the Ground Reps, and this comes to 8 chosen PASSIVE skills as well!
In the Old system, that means you have a TOTAL of 16 CHOSEN PASSIVE SKILLS!
Now, like I stated earlier, if you open the Rep Trait system, click the title of Space Reps, on your right (IF you have Tier 4 completed in our 4 original Reps as of yesterday) you count the skills available for Space Passive, you will count 16! With that, you look under Space Rep, you see you can now only make 4 choices! Your overall power for Space is 50% of what it was yesterday, doesn't matter offensively or defensively!
Again, do the same steps in previous paragraph, you get same results for GROUND PASSIVE SKILLS! And again, the math tells you that on the ground, you are again, 50% less powerful than you were yesterday, doesn't matter offensively or defensively!
And plz don't bring into the math the ACTIVE REP SKILLS (skills from completing Tier 5 of each Rep) because whether it was yesterday or today, you have 2 Space Active & 2 Ground Active (1 coming from each of the 4 Reps)!
Sorry, but I do know what I am talking about & I do reference my statements with the game in the background! The Troll here is you (and I'm not flaming, but rather defending my statements from your false math statements) whose statements ARE NOT backed up by the game facts, Period!
Knights Of The Federation
Lets put this conversation into another context, from another time, from a very different grind.
Years ago their was an incredible game called Star Wars Gallaxies. It was the very first Multi-World, MMO of its kind. The game was so amazing, it had millions of users, a committed fan base, the servers kept crashing because they were all so full, with paying customers.
Then, one day, they changed the PVP, PVE skills, they redid the skill tree's, they alienated their entire player base. People like me, who spent weeks grinding out a max level Bounty Hunter to hunt and kill Jedi, found ourselves no longer able to hunt and kill Jedi. They took that ability away from Bounty Hunters instead replacing the concept of hunting a player base with hunting NPC's. Oh boy what fun that was......not. Then, so many people cried about not wanting to do the multi tier/level grind to unlock Jedi, they made that class available to all through a simple singular skill tree grind. Inferiating the Jedi Population that was in place, who had paid their dues. Next, everbody was a Jedi, everybody had the same gear, the same powers etc. Fun again. Not.
Games need individuality. Take that away with wide sweeping changes such as the ones described above and what the developers have done with this patch. It = kaos, meltdown, no respect or loyalty to the community which they serve = MASS EXODUS!!!!!
For those of you who are crying about fairness, power creep, etc. You to could grind the skills you need to become an uber pilot, or ground combatant (for the exception of those that exploit - that is an entirely different conversation)....but for most of us, that want to play fair and not cheet......this was part of the joy of the game, the grind, the effort, to achieve these ranks, skills, reputation, gear, ships, etc.....that in one fail swoop, was wiped away!!!!!!
Add to it the fact that, it was already bad enough with people joining missions for elite players that weren't elite, but rather parked, waiting for those of us that were elite to finish their missions so that they could collect the rewards. Now, without the strength that most of us had as of the day before yesterday 4/21/2014 the day we all lost our powers, we will now have to suffer through so many missions that will be fail! And then unable to repeat those failed missions for an hour do to lockouts on much of the content. Ok, besides all of that........as I understand it, ground PVP is dead, and now space will be too! How many Veteran Pilots will rage quit over this............I'm not even a Veteran Player, but with the Nerf Bat we were all just hit with......................I am already looking for a new game to play.....Any suggestions?
So perhaps you are not trolling and it is a case you simply do not understand the simplicity of what was being said...cause I mean, you just went through all of that - which is a combination of what I said and stuff nobody said.
If the system had continued the way it had...
Omega 2 Space (1x T2/T4)
New Rom 2 Space (1x T2/T4) 4 Space
Nukara 2 Space (1x T2/T4) 6 Space
Dyson 2 Space (1x T2/T4) 8 Space
Counter-Command 2 Space (1x T2/T4) 10 Space
Expansion 2/S10/S11/etc/etc/etc for 5 more years, adding 4 Space (1x T2/T4 for each of the two likely Reps per year)...
...we'd be looking at 30 Space Passives. Not 30 Space Passive choices...30 Space Passives actually in play.
If the system had not changed, currently there would be 10...is there would be 10 in play. Not that there would be 10 choices.
The change was made to prevent there being 30 Space Passives in play 5 years down the road. There will only be 4. 10 years, it won't be 50 Space Passives. It will be 4.
You'll have 100 Space Passives to choose from, but only be able to slot 4. Heh, seems kind of silly doesn't it? But so would having 50 Space Passives...the whole thing is an unnecessary mess.
I'm not sure why you're discussing things as if there was a change in available choices when the change was to slotting...and what that change would prevent. 16 choices 2 days ago...16 choices yesterday. That didn't change. What changed was there will not be 10 Space Passives...there will not be 12, not 14, not 50. That's why the change was implemented...
I didn't read past that, and for that I feel I must offer an apology. However, the SWG NGE was nothing like this Rep change. Heck, this Rep change's not even the change that the Skill revamp that took place prior to F2P.
The SWG NGE was a massive change...this change was a change to fluff that wasn't even needed in the current context of the game. Comparing the two is ludicrous and insult to all the folks affected by the NGE/CU combination.
Again, virusdancer, you are giving an opinion, and you now admitted to not reading one of the whole posts, which means you are now possibly making an opinion. I have been on this forum only 1 month longer than you, in which during that time I just made double digit posts vs. 10,000 posts in almost that same amount of time, and I have gotten there due to your forum trolling. This is the second time I am informing you that this thread wasn't address for you to make all your opinions known w/o evidence to back them. This is not to mention you are attempting a flame war with anyone that makes comments to support feelings of dedicated players to the Devs. Again, you are muddling the conversation that serious players want to have their feelings express regarding the New Rep System. You have made it known that you really have no negative feelings towards this new system, so please move on to another thread to troll.
Thank you and good day to you!
Knights Of The Federation
Since the level cap is met with such little effort by even average players, this game relied on horizontal expansion as its endgame. This was effectively the reputation system. Reputations take 40 days (daily only no hourly) to grind out to t5 the first time without sponsorship. 20 days with sponsorship.
Reputation systems have been released 5 times so far in this game's history, not including the event reputation tab. Since reputation systems take a while for a player to grind out, and that there are now 5 of them, the difference between a fully repped, fully repped geared player vs a fresh 50 white mk x's should be HUGE.
If we look at the time involved to get the 5 reputations to tier 5, it adds another 100-200 days to a players character development. Fresh 50 - 14 days, Repped 50 - 54 days (and thats assuming you jam 5 rep system progression into your daily play instead of doing them 1 by 1).
A fully repped player has at least ~4 times the amount of time invested into their character development than a fresh level 50 player. Wanting to level the playing field while increasing the desired time spent is insulting to players who have bothered to complete everything so far.
Power creep is a necessity in character progression, otherwise whats the point in grind based progression system that you hate after completing it 5 times, much less 20-40 and thats multiplicative based on how many characters you run it on.
The key to balancing power creep is to introduce challenging content and to give a buff pass to npcs after every introduction of the power creep. Never to nerf the player. I've said this before and I'll say it again, introduce a 3rd difficulty tier restricted to private queues that way the average player can continue on being average, while above average players can finally have a challenge worthy of their time and skills.
Reputation Revamp Stats:
Passives Halved
2 Passives Removed and replaced with subpar versions.
Passives advertised as doubled, a lot of them weren't.
We got nerfed plain and simple. Had they not changed anything, and merely capped it at 8 passives, it would be a NONISSUE. The fact that what we can take is limited, and some of the things that we would have taken no longer exist is quite frustrating. It has basically destroyed my trust in anything Cryptic waves around as a proverbial carrot while effectively eliminating my motivation to grind out future reputation systems that doesn't have superior passives/gear to what already exists which if that happened would nullify the proposed reasoning for the reputation revamp in the first place.
It's not an opinion. You can look at the changes that took place with the NGE and compare them to this change. It's not the same by any means...literally nowhere near the same. That's not an opinion.
An opinion would be comparing such vastly different changes as if they were the same...
...which I've suggested not be done as it is insulting to SWG folks.
My opinion in this thread was squarely pointed out - I believe Cryptic did a TRIBBLE job in how the implementation played out. That's an opinion. It's pretty easy to pick out from the rest.
The dates below our avatars are not our time on the forum. Again, you say that you've been around since the dawn of time - then you would have known about the Forumpocalypse of 2012 where the forum was changed. All of our posts became Archived Posts.
10000 posts? It's not even 9300. And go back looking through the extreme vast majority of the posts from me out there...trolling? Nope. Providing information to players asking questions? Yep. Providing information to players from testing? Yep. Pointing out bugs? Yep. Questioning the logic of certain choices? Yep, even that.
What have you done in your thread here?
Tried to scapegoat PvPers.
Said that Rep Passives/Traits are needed for Elite content - when they weren't even introduced until S7. Reallllllly?
It's not your place to inform anybody that a thread was not addressed to them. To be blunt, you posted a thread on the forums - public forums - open to reply from anybody. If you wished to contact the devs directly - you could have done so. Would they have appreciated it? IMHO, probably not - given that your thread was...Hell, I don't even know how many threads have been posted on the same topic at this point - there's so many of them.
As for my opinions being offered without evidence...I offered an opinion with the reasoning behind it - the poor implementation.
Pointing out that you're wrong is not attempting to start a flamewar.
Players have been expressing their feelings in countless threads. Are you dismissing all those countless threads? You're the only one that can express those feelings...? Ahem...I think some of your fellows will want to have a word with you on that.
Really? In your own thread...I did not say this?
You know...Post#13 in this very thread?
Again, pointing out that you're wrong is not trolling...however, what you've been doing is where a mod usually sends me the PM to say that I should stop feeding you.
Yep, power progression/power creep usually goes hand in hand with content progression. It allows for a player to feel an extended sense of progression without early onset of tedium from power progression without content progression.
Yep, the initial selling point Cryptic offered in regard to the changes quickly became something...meh, trying to think of a polite way to say it. But they basically screwed folks over in that regard.
It was one thing to halve and near double...but to halve and do what they did - they should have just been upfront that such a nerf was incoming.
If they'd kept it at 8 without making any changes, they may have ran into the issue of folks not wanting to do Reps (and thus not play) simply because there would be no point in doing them - rather than the overwhelming feeling of being screwed that came about with the changes.
In the end though, the Reps are basically the only content outside of the Foundry and PvP. Other than that, it's what - a new mission every 3-6 months? The majority of the Cryptic generated content is having folks repeat thing over and over between them dumping out something new for folks to repeat over and over.
So say you were already T5 in the current Reps, you were in a T5 Fleet...they come out with S9. You play the new mission. You play the revamped missions. Perhaps you hit up the new SBZ a couple of times. What are you going to do then? Are you going to hit up the Foundry? Are you going to PvP? What else is there to do outside of grinding out the new Rep on one toon to get the sponsorship tokens so you can grind it out on your alts? That's basically what STO is...Foundry, PvP, Rep Grinds.
So they needed to do something to the Passive -> Trait conversion, so that they could create potential Traits down the road. Even if one accepts that necessity and sees where perhaps 8 was too much, it's difficult not to wish that Cryptic had not split the difference with 6 because of what they felt they had to do with the Traits not being near-double/double as was initially laid out. 4x near-double/double was one thing - 4x whatever you want to call what we've got...meh, would have been one thing if that had been the case from the start. But they set certain expectations, they teased those expectations on Tribble, and then did the bait 'n switch before launch...
When the escalating tension ends. And that ended a long time ago and has little to do with reputation traits. For that matter no content released post Crystalline Entity revamp has even used the escalating tension design.
It is either wait for the mission to end (Spire) or a flat line tension where you merely deal with the speed bumps to victory with none possessing any more threat than the one before.
CSE used to be one of the best for escalating tension thanks to the timer, the triggers, and the Kang. But a combination of imbalanced abilities (APB, APA, EPtS, and a few others), imbalanced items (Leech console, 2pc borg), and Doffs only a few examples of which I listed, combined with player familiarity has made it a joke.
And to imply the reputation trait revamp will fix that in any way, or that the new missions are better designed, well I think you know better than that VD. STO PvE content is no better nor anymore engaging today than it was a month ago.
But as long as the escalating tension is there shooting goldfish in a barrel with the illusion (yes Illusion to serve as tension) of difficulty will never get tiring for me. Because at the end of the day when you create monsters for PvE content they have only one purpose. Defeat.
Ok, now this more like expressing your feelings in regards to the change, however, you are projecting 5 yrs. down the road, based on no changes to the game, thinking that player-database feelings will be ignored. That has been the downfall of numerous MMOs in the past. This reminds me of a statement told to me all my life, "Don't assume anything. It will only make an ... out of you!".
I will also point out that you did overlook 1 very important element of the game many players enjoy about the game: Most of the players in & out of my fleet clearly enjoy developing multiple builds using different captains, in different ships, with the different skill builds based on what they have learned from actual playtime, attempting to create an enjoyable toon to play to shake the game up for them. I myself only design tanks, trying to improve my tank's offensive abilities to go along with the changes Cryptic makes in the game. I have looked at this issue from both sides of the argument, and am disappointed with the fact my efforts over the past 4 yrs. now in the game. However, that being said, my point here now is that I feel this new Rep Trait Nerf, a) my toons' build has now been thown back at least a yr. in development, b) all the grinding to level Reps, incorporating them with the fleet project work to make awesome builds, and c) what is the point of continuing to do so for current toons or on new toons if they can't survived the role I am suppose to fill in teamplay.
You make yourself sound like a dedicated PvPer, based on attempts to defend the understanding I had that this was done to balance PvP. The fact you believe that PvE has nothing to do with the game at all, seems to support this theory, but I'm not to assume you are. I myself felt PvP in this game was dead, and was hoping at some point in the future it would be revived by them having a territory for factions to build areas by acquiring planets for resources, and build defenses & fleet tactics to protect your factions's territory from other factions.
Knights Of The Federation
It's not about fixing anything imho, really. It's about preventing it from getting worse down the road.
Whether it's the older missions where they're over in a blink of an eye or the newer missions with all the speedbumps where we're trying to keep our eyes open...
...it's just a case of trying to prevent that from getting worse with Passives/Traits. It's not a case of trying to prevent that from getting worse with anything else, cause there's still oodles and oodles of power creep out there that's going on without any content progression.
Cryptic's kind of looking ahead instead of barely looking past their nose.
Say Gear X is best. Ship Y is best. (I don't believe in "bests" - but lots of folks do.) For the most part, that new player can grab that. But that new guy heading into Content A with that...could still be down 20+ Passives at some point. You know, if there was content progression - it wouldn't matter. But there isn't...so it does, meh.
Still, like I said - it was one thing to cut to 4 with the Traits being at a certain power level - but with the power level they launched them at, imho - they should have gone 6...
There's going to be another Skill revamp with S10 (or perhaps later, it was to be with Expansion 2 - but got pushed to S10 - who knows if it will get pushed again, eh?).
There are going to be additional changes...however what I said there is based purely on what Cryptic said.
http://community.arcgames.com/en/news/star-trek-online/detail/3039033-season-9-dev-blog-_5
They went on to repeat that message...that it's about the scalability of the system for the future. Could things change? Sure, it's always possible. But with what they've told us with this system is that they're trying to future proof it against the way things have been going.
I've got eight toons listed there in my signature.
Sci Warbird
Sci Battle Carrier
Sci Support Vessel
Engineer Battle Cruiser
Engineer Flight-Deck Cruiser
Tactical Raider
Tactical Raptor
Tactical Destroyer
Each of them is different - some may have a similar role, but they approach that role differently.
Willard is a pseudo healer/support in a T'varo.
Rave does power drain.
Mysk does shield drain.
Maal is damage/tanking.
Vegar is healing/tanking.
Nivuh is attempting the classical vape.
Venit is damage/speed tanking.
Kopor is standard damage.
One of the reasons (this is combination of mechanics and opinion) you may be experiencing an issue with certain roles is that the content is not really designed around those roles. Cryptic does not utilize the MMO Trinity. There are no content requirements for the Tank, DPS, and Heals (or the 4th, Support). The content can be completed by any rag tag group that has a basic idea of what they're doing and haven't completely botched their builds.
With Tanking - almost any ship can tank. You can tank a Tac Cube in a Sci Hegh'ta while still doing damage and supporting the team. The content's just not designed to require the MMO Trinity. Cryptic's been clear on that in the past - they didnt want to create those kind of requirements for groups. They just wanted five folks to be able to in and have a blast...they didn't want folks having to sit around waiting on a Tank or a Healer so they could do something.
Don't get me wrong, though - where folks were complaining about the interruptible interacts with the Mirror Event - I was enjoying it. Here, let me grab the aggro of all those guys and you take care of the click. Wham, bam - playing as a team...heh, something that folks out there tend to hate - they just want to spacebarboom everything in sight.
It was awesome on Vegar in his Marauder - a toon I couldn't imagine taking into an ISE but one that thrived in the Mirror Event and CCE. In Mirror, he could sit on the station and it didn't matter how many Rifts weren't closed - the station wasn't dropping below 90%. Tanking and healing...was awesome. CCE - nobody's going to get close to dying unless they sit there for the pulse.
But that's content that was designed to allow for things like that. It's like KASE...folks used to sit on Kang, but it's gotten to the point you can obliterate everything without needing to sit on him. Folks used to try to follow the 10% rule in ISE, but it doesn't matter - cause everybody's doing so much damage that it just doesn't matter.
While I hate the MMO Trinity with a passion - mainly because I do not like the concept of some NPC Boss that rules a vast empire and is a threat to the world's existence...isn't smart enough to kill the healer keeping the tank alive or the DPS that are actually killing him. But that's not the same as hating the idea of a tank, healer, and other roles. It's literally just that fubar notion that this dire threat is so damn stupid...meh.
But yeah, I wish there were more options for how content could be completed - I wish it did require more teamwork and less spacebar mashing. If the group's got ABC, then they can do it ABC's way - if they've got AXY, they can do it that way. Rather than it just mainly being spacebarboom! Meh...
I'll tank with Willard in ISE, holding aggro while blipping around - a combination of avoidance/dodge tanking, resistance tanking, and heal tanking - while dropping out torps/mines - and letting the other folks do their spacebar thing. But again, I wouldn't try that with Vegar.
Er...pointing out where Cryptic themselves had stated the reason for the change...doesn't make me a dedicated PvPer. I've done perhaps one CnH queue in 2014, no Arena queues, and spend perhaps 2-4 hours a week in Ker'rat if that.
WTF are you smoking?
With faction imbalance...massive faction imbalance...it could never have come to be. Even with them adding Romulans, more folks ended up rolling Fed Roms instead of KDF Roms.
STO's playerbase, all in all, is pretty small. It's a single shard and there's still waits for most of the queues, whether PvE or PvP. Even when there's an event running, one can pop open the Change Instance window to take a look at how many folks are running around in the combined instances.
My discussions on PvP, are pretty much the same as mine on PvE.
Yes, there's the need to grow the base community - but there's also the need for retention. I think Cryptic's done a crappy job on retention in the past couple of years with their focus on getting new players in to the game.
I think that cost them with the KDF. They had the opportunity to bring more in and to keep them...but they just redid the tutorial leaving the KDF with the same crappy ships at endgame compared to the Feds and woefully crappy compared to the new Romulans. They didn't really give anybody an incentive to roll a KDF toon and keep them.
There's been a lot of that in how they've added more and more power progression without content progression (even nerfing the content to make it easier and more accessible to newer players - perhaps folks that had never played a single video game before)...but nothing for the folks that have been playing, nothing for those new players that will reach the point of what now, etc, etc, etc...
STO's basically a Star Trek Farmville type of game. Heck, for a week there all I did was DOFF because I was burnt out on some of the grind - it was kind of funny, looking at my screen as I DOFF'd and looking at the gf's screen as she played Farmerama. Rep/Fleet grinding is along those lines with little mini-games we do to get the bits so we can plant our crops...er...run our projects.
It's why I say there's basically the Foundry, PvP, and the Grind. Okay, some folks just log into STO for a 3D Chatroom loosely set in the Star Trek IP.
The guy that mentioned SWG...I went for 3 months once without being involved once in combat. I just ran a shop. Set up the dialog for my vendors, manufactured, and sold the goods. I played the Market in EVE for a period of time - though that involved quite a bit of combat, lol/meh. Both SWG and EVE, though...sandoxes...not a themepark like STO. Heck, STO's not even a themepark anymore - more like a roadside attraction where they're waiting to milk you for every dollar.
Wow, this went all over the place...brain probably fried from typing out all the Counter-Command stuff in that other thread...
edit: Meh, I remember a part that I overlooked with the changes - relating to what I would and not do with Vegar. With the ability to respec the traits for free, if I'm doing X content - I can run that build and be fine. If I'm doing Y content, I can switch ships/gear & traits to run it to be fine. It reduces the feeling of potentially being excluded from content because of a build. Course, still stuck with the skill build...but oh well...
This topic makes me feel less guilty for our discussions about diminishing returns. :P
If you think about it, most topics in this forum are directed to the devs.
I was about to take issue with that statement until I reread the title and saw "will end STO". There are better, proper ways to get dev attention other than acting as a fortune teller.
As for the statement itself: your join date, or anything you claim really, doesn't give you any right to talk "on behalf of players". You are just one of us, not all of us. Express your opinions, but don't make them everyone's, because they all got their own. If they agree with you, they will support you.
STO Screenshot Archive
Lets begin with the new starbase. Very nice. Its defiantly a new shiny. Once I get used to how to navigate it I'm sure that i will look less the tourist and someone who has business to conduct.
The revamped borg missions. Very nice. Well done all in all.
Now the fun part. I am writing this more to the crypic devs more than anyone else. Some of the changes made we outstanding. Some however were not so great. I know that the rep system has probably been whined about, beaten, kicked like a dead hoarse but for me at least it remains a major issue. For me at least it has altered a lot of my builds. They are not as strong as they where. They are not nearly as durable as they where and I'm sure that in time I will adapt to the changes. The part that kills me is the fact of the wasted time for the first four Rep trees. For some who can play everyday I am sure you rocked it on 8 toons plus inside of a month. For those of us who have/had to manage our playtime a bit more this was a process that took months.... For me it feels like a kick in the teeth and I find my motivation to play this game waning.
As mentioned earlier in this forum this game is now more for making money off of people. It seems that is the sol focus for this game is to present new shinnies and having people pay loads of cash for them. Well I'm spent I do not want to give you any more of my money. I see no reason at all to start a new grind if there is no purpose for it. Why should I spend the time/ money for something that does not benefit my toons? Before I had a little bit of everything now I have to trade peter to pay paul. For some this may not seem like such a big deal but for me it meant the difference between build failure and build success. We all don't have them fancy tier 5 SBs and such
If you cannot filter out the monetary aspect of the game ie making new shinnies for fleecing your fanbase then this games days are truly numbered. I would encourage you to focus more on improving the in game content and hey maybe even have some of this end game gear you have into rewards that can be earned in game instead of selling it all on the crypic store. By earned i mean by defeating a challenging boss or something not the end mission goodies. You have done a great job with the storyline missions you fixed thus far. I would like to see more focus on the endgame stuff and who knows maybe even extending the level cap from 50 to 60. Also If you would also continue to work on the bug issues that would be great as well.
I conclusion Season 9 is like season 8. We got a great new playground... More stuff to spend money on, and of course a new grind. (Which I respectfully decline to do this time around) annnd the rep revamp... (fail) This game has turned into farmville as my esteemed college mentioned before in his posts. Wouldn't it be great if they turned it back into Star Trek..... In all will this post or any of the other numerous posts I have read in regards to this issue or season 9 will it change anything? I do not think so. We can whine and whine till the cows come home... as long as PW Cryptic are making there money I don't think that they actually pay attention to what is said here. I may be wrong but my gut feeling is that they want to make money more than they want to please there fan base....
Season 10 >>Shudders<<
Happy fleecing all
Raptorzs
>Insert fancy signature here<
"Players have to die in content"... well, yes. Isn't that part of the point? That there is sufficient challenge that you can get taken down and lose 15s of gameplay? Or are egos really so fragile that losing to NPCs is unacceptable?
In any case, the sheer number of slots gives players more Rep powers in play than they had in the first iteration of the system (Rom/Omega reps only, back in late 2012). No one was complaining about being underpowered at that point.
"I can't customise like I used to"... True, in that there are fewer overall options to pick rep powers than at the (S8) peak; but you can now pick which ones to use for any given mission. This is a MASSIVE boost to character flexibility which has gone almost unremarked. Pre-S9, there was a general choice at each passive between an offensive and a defensive option. Once you'd made that choice you were stuck with it until you spent Zen to respec. Now, you can freely pick depending on your situation. This also makes it much easier for players to experiment - surely a good thing?
"Players should have to grind for the best gear"... ... There's still a lot of point to grinding. Rep gear only unlocks at higher tiers. To fully utilise the active power slots, you need to have completed 4 reps, and at S9 only players who have completed all 5 will even begin to be able to specialise their active powers. And while a lot of people have focussed on the fact that this is aimed at "newbies" it's just as beneficial for veteran players wanting to generate a new alt.
"Cryptic should just introduce harder missions instead of nerfing players"... is a short-term fix. Sure it might work now, but in that scenario what happens in another year once another two reps are added? Add a super-nightmare mode? This is a (rare) bit of obvious forward thinking from Cryptic.
Overall, the last point is (to me) the most promising. Someone is actually thinking about how the game is going to be working in 1-2 years time rather than working out how to milk the playerbase in the next quarter. For long-term players, that has to be a good thing.
And again, those those fed up with the grind... the good news is you don't "need" to do it. I say "need" because grinding was always about self-induced pressure, but thanks to the rep changes the gap between someone who has completed only 30-50% of the available reps, and someone who's finished them all, is much more manageable. It is not a crime for Cryptic / PWE to make money off the playerbase, and it looks like their approach is working.
or maybe they could play the game and earn traits like everyone else? you know...working hard to be good at things.