Here are four more comments, concerns, and criticisms:
24 - Recipes are not progressive: why do lower level beam weapons require a targeting interface but later MK ones (e.g. MK VI) do not? Yes it makes sense that weapons should have targeting arrays. The item recipes need to be progressive and logical. Thus give them a pass.
25 - Subcomponents need to come out at different qualities. Each subcomponent needs to be whit,e green, blue and purple. This should give a bonus toward the final item quality to reduce the gambling. Using all purple subcomponents should then give you a purple crafted item unless there is that rare critical failure.
26 - The dilithium prices on the new DOFF packs at SFA need to be at least cut in half. 1000 dilithium for a purely random draw is again even more gambling int he system. Same for the original packs btw. You put in the reputation system to eliminate player concern and remove the randomness for something guaranteed with progression yet a year later we are now back to another system that just has all randomness.
27 - I know you guys keep saying we can craft anything at any level and are touting that as the big thing for the system. However, all subcomponent recipes are not unlocked at the start of the system. For example in beams I cannot construct a firing sequencer until level 5 or an isolinear chip until level 10. I have to rely on someone else doing it and getting it from them. That means someone still has to level first, which logically means you cannot create anything at any level.
I was looking through what doffs are required. it seems deflectors require advisers.
That seems off; they should probably require deflector officers, as that would actually make sense.
28 - In the recycle tab of your inventory, all the new crafting items have priority. Please give them a lower priority than you main inventory. It is tedious to have to scroll down every time to recycle junk items into EC.
29 - The R&D DOFF job at the academy needs to have its timer drastically reduced. 48hrs? Seriously? Why not just keep it like the rest of them, same timer, same cooldown. Be consistent with the existing rules. The more and different rules and exceptions you have, the further you get from your goal of making the game easier to play for newcomers.
Thanks for making it easier to convert old materials into new ones.
It would be nice if I could queue multiple crafts of the base components, as sitting here for extended periods just making other needed materials isn't very fun and doesn't encourage me to continue playing.
Thanks for making it easier to convert old materials into new ones.
It would be nice if I could queue multiple crafts of the base components, as sitting here for extended periods just making other needed materials isn't very fun and doesn't encourage me to continue playing.
Agreed, I would like to be able to queue up about ten of these that just auto-complete after the timer. This piece by piece method is quite tedious and clink-n-scroll heavy given the UI is not laid out in a very flowing manner.
Someone asked for this so here are some quick and dirty hard numbers from my time crafting under the new system.
With 600 being the standard XP received per hour (no matter what you craft ..other than the “special” items.. it comes out to 600xp per hour).
Here is the number of hours or XP to level up to 10th.
0 to 1st = 0.05 or 30xp
1st to 2nd = 0.38 or 260xp
2nd to 3rd = 16.23 or 10,000xp
3rd to 4th = 33.33 or 30,000xp
4th to 5th = 30 or 48,000xp
5th to 6th = 34 or 68,400xp
6th to 7th = 42 or 93,600xp
7th to 8th = 45 or 120,600xp
8th to 9th = 48 or 149,400xp
9th to 10th = 51 or 180,000xp
The above is if you don't use dilithium to "finish now". You also need to add the hours together to get a total time for going from 1st level to 10th in just that one school (in this case 300 hours).
Don't sound too bad ..right? Just under 13 days and you could be level 10!
Lets look at the numbers going from level 11 to 15.
Finally.. you are level 10 and can make all the components, but you want to be able to make the special items from this school, so you need to get to level 15.
10th to 11th =120 or 252,000xp
11th to 12th = 135 or 333,000xp
12th to 13th = 150 or 423,000xp
13th to 14th = 165 or 522,000xp
14th to 15th = 180 or 630,000xp
So 1050 total hours into crafting (if you don't "finish now") you are able to craft the special items. That's nearly 44 days if you keep on top of things and can manage the materials required to keep it moving.
You decide to max out the school but level 16 requires a hefty price, what most games call a "HELL LEVEL" It costs 420 hours just to go from 15 to 16!
15th to 16th = 420 or 882,000xp
16th to 17th = 450 or 1,152,000xp
17th to 18th = 480 or 1,440,000xp
18th to 19th = 510 or 1,746,000xp
19th to 20th = 540 or 2,070,000xp
After 3450 hours (just under 144 days) and a minimum of 103,500 materials (3450 hourly projects consisting of 6 components per item with each component requiring 5 materials) you have mastered your first school.
Congratulations!
Operational Support Team
Squishing Bugs for a better future
Is there any indication of removing the "Confirm" button and just having the page auto-calculate the display as selections are made? In other words, selecing Item Type and Mk then auto-updates Required Duty Officer and Cost boxes. Personally, I'd shift the quality probability bar chart into Task Difficulty and Skill, with Crafting Skill and Difficulty Rating below the chart side-by-side so it can auto-calculate as well when the variables change... but that's just me. Mostly, is there any hint of making the UI less... clicky?
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
After 3450 hours (just under 144 days) and a minimum of 103,500 materials (3450 hourly projects consisting of 6 components per item with each component requiring 5 materials) you have mastered your first school.
Congratulations!
Thank you for putting the numbers out there so people can see. Just one thing, did you include that you could craft more than one 600XP item at a time while doing this? Rank 2 you get 2, Rank 4 you get 3, Three at five you get 4 and one at 15 you get 5. This does make leveling a second school a little faster but not enough to want to even bother with the system. It is the reputation system on grind steroids. If what you have done does not show the devs how badly executed this system is numerically then there is just no hope for it. Again, thanks for putting up the numbers.
Thank you for putting the numbers out there so people can see. Just one thing, did you include that you could craft more than one 600XP item at a time while doing this?
You are correct.
The hours listed are "man-hours" rather than actual hours. So if you put more men on the job you can get it done faster (in this case unlocking more R&D slots).
Of course you could use those slots for some of the other 6 schools that you may be interested in as well.
Operational Support Team
Squishing Bugs for a better future
Someone asked for this so here are some quick and dirty hard numbers from my time crafting under the new system.
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After 3450 hours (just under 144 days) and a minimum of 103,500 materials (3450 hourly projects consisting of 6 components per item with each component requiring 5 materials) you have mastered your first school.
Congratulations!
That seems to be awfully lot of work for completing just a single "school".
Given those numbers, they really have turned Crafting into another unfun grind.
The hours listed are "man-hours" rather than actual hours. So if you put more men on the job you can get it done faster (in this case unlocking more R&D slots).
Of course you could use those slots for some of the other 6 schools that you may be interested in as well.
You have inspired me to come up with that exact calculation. I did the calculation assuming you would add in the additional man-power as you progressed and assumed once you got to lvl 5 in one school, then you would level two other to lvl 5 to get the extra slot. Then knock them down one at a time to 20 beyond that (picking up the 2nd and 3rd school at lvl 5). The estimates are still just as daunting as yours and just continues to illustrate the tedium of the system they created. My calcs are based on making just Mk VI items (the 600 XP/hr/slot rate)
Here are mine:
First School
Number of Hours - 759
Number of 24 hr Days - 31.6
Number of 4 hr Play Sessions - 189.75
Number of Items - 3,453
Common Materials - 51,795
Uncommon Materials - 51,795
Second and Third School (Taken to lvl 5 First for the 4th crafting slot, then picked up when lvl 20 is hit for first school)
Number of Hours - 701
Number of 24 hr Days - 29.2
Number of 4 hr Play Sessions - 175.25
Number of Items - 3,451
Common Materials - 51,765
Uncommon Materials - 51,765
Fourth-Seventh Schools
Number of Hours - 690
Number of 24 hr Days - 28.8
Number of 4 hr Play Sessions - 172.5
Number of Items - 3,450
Common Materials - 51,750
Uncommon Materials - 51,750
Total Investment w/o Dilithium shortcuts or Dilithium Subcomps
First School + 2xSecond&Third + 4xFourth-Seventh
Number of Hours - 4,921
Number of 24 hr Days - 205.04
Number of 4 hr Play Sessions - 1,230.25
Number of Items - 24,155
Common Materials - 362,325
Uncommon Materials - 362,325
The whole system is designed punitively. There is no real benefit from leveling up in more than one because the time to level is only marginally reduced. Clearly there is no benefit to do this on more than one character just because of the tedium built into the system. I should go ahead and calculate the number of mouse clicks this will take just to show how ridiculous the current numbers are on Tribble. Not just the dilithium, but all of them, the XP breaks, the XP earned, the timers, the dilithium. All of it.
Someone asked for this so here are some quick and dirty hard numbers from my time crafting under the new system.
With 600 being the standard XP received per hour (no matter what you craft ..other than the special items.. it comes out to 600xp per hour).
Here is the number of hours or XP to level up to 10th.
0 to 1st = 0.05 or 30xp
1st to 2nd = 0.38 or 260xp
2nd to 3rd = 16.23 or 10,000xp
3rd to 4th = 33.33 or 30,000xp
4th to 5th = 30 or 48,000xp
5th to 6th = 34 or 68,400xp
6th to 7th = 42 or 93,600xp
7th to 8th = 45 or 120,600xp
8th to 9th = 48 or 149,400xp
9th to 10th = 51 or 180,000xp
The above is if you don't use dilithium to "finish now". You also need to add the hours together to get a total time for going from 1st level to 10th in just that one school (in this case 300 hours).
Don't sound too bad ..right? Just under 13 days and you could be level 10!
Lets look at the numbers going from level 11 to 15.
Finally.. you are level 10 and can make all the components, but you want to be able to make the special items from this school, so you need to get to level 15.
10th to 11th =120 or 252,000xp
11th to 12th = 135 or 333,000xp
12th to 13th = 150 or 423,000xp
13th to 14th = 165 or 522,000xp
14th to 15th = 180 or 630,000xp
So 1050 total hours into crafting (if you don't "finish now") you are able to craft the special items. That's nearly 44 days if you keep on top of things and can manage the materials required to keep it moving.
You decide to max out the school but level 16 requires a hefty price, what most games call a "HELL LEVEL" It costs 420 hours just to go from 15 to 16!
15th to 16th = 420 or 882,000xp
16th to 17th = 450 or 1,152,000xp
17th to 18th = 480 or 1,440,000xp
18th to 19th = 510 or 1,746,000xp
19th to 20th = 540 or 2,070,000xp
After 3450 hours (just under 144 days) and a minimum of 103,500 materials (3450 hourly projects consisting of 6 components per item with each component requiring 5 materials) you have mastered your first school.
Congratulations!
Holy damn! 144 days to get ONE school up to max? What are they thinking?!?!?!?!
40 Days would be BAD! 144? That makes reputations fast by comparison. This is...just horrible.
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
How does that compare to other MMOs? I think everyone can agree that currently being able to finish crafting on holodeck in a few minutes is bad, right? So what's wrong with having some long term goals for players?
How does that compare to other MMOs? I think everyone can agree that currently being able to finish crafting on holodeck in a few minutes is bad, right? So what's wrong with having some long term goals for players?
Not as bad as this. Especially not with the random chance bull-mess.
We do not want crafting to be a long term goal, honestly, because the items it gives are not long term.
Basically, the crafting should level at the same rate as your character. So at Captain, you want to craft Mark VII gear. Not mark IV.
So by the time you reach level 50, you should have max crafting. But as it stands now, you'll be able to get to max level and get all your reputations done before you are even halfway done with crafting.
What's the point then?
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
So, One of the bugs I noticed was in the New DOFF assignment interface. When a mission is completed it shows a button to collect rewards and view details. The Collect rewards there isn't working and I have to go into the Details to collect the rewards.
How does that compare to other MMOs? I think everyone can agree that currently being able to finish crafting on holodeck in a few minutes is bad, right? So what's wrong with having some long term goals for players?
1) There should be some kind of bonus for alts so the grind isn't as bad similar to the Summer event and the Reputation System.
2) The bonus from maxing a school is too low.
2) People that have maxed out the current system should be compensated somehow.
3) The amount of time they baked in is purely to keep daily players occupied until the next release. Casual players are royally screwed here.
Not as bad as this. Especially not with the random chance bull-mess.
We do not want crafting to be a long term goal, honestly, because the items it gives are not long term.
Basically, the crafting should level at the same rate as your character. So at Captain, you want to craft Mark VII gear. Not mark IV.
So by the time you reach level 50, you should have max crafting. But as it stands now, you'll be able to get to max level and get all your reputations done before you are even halfway done with crafting.
What's the point then?
Well there are long-term goals, and then there is needless gated grind. If the system is fun, it does not feel like a grind, that should be one of the goals. Currently this system is not fun and takes the grind well beyond the level of the reputations.
Crafting will not level at the same rate as your character because character leveling in this game is too fast. In a four hour play session you can easily be well beyond your crafting level. So if you are crafting to outfit yourself you will run into the same issue that you will outpace the gear you can create. Besides, one can easily level from 1-50 on common white gear for ECs, the random loot drops of better things, or mission rewards.
Well there are long-term goals, and then there is needless gated grind. If the system is fun, it does not feel like a grind, that should be one of the goals. Currently this system is not fun and take the grind well beyond the level of the reputations.
Crafting will not level at the same rate as your character because character leveling in this game is too fast. In a four hour play session you can easily be well beyond your crafting level. So if you are crafting to outfit yourself you will run into the same issue that you will outpace the gear you can create. Besides, one can easily level from 1-50 on common white gear for ECs, the random loot drops of better things, or mission rewards.
You are right. What I said was theory only. Still, this feels a bit too slow, especially since I get the feeling that's intentional to make it an even bigger dil sink.
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
Holy damn! 144 days to get ONE school up to max? What are they thinking?!?!?!?!
40 Days would be BAD! 144? That makes reputations fast by comparison. This is...just horrible.
Consider that some players (myself included) will spend dilithium to reduce some of those times. Currently that amount is 900 per hour. So if you have 900,000 dilithuim to throw at this you can cut 1000 hours off that time.
People who can afford to pay more will be the first ones to market with "Crafting unique items" and they can recover that cost in EC from the sales.
Overall it is not a horrible system, but it does need some tweaking and QoL (Quality of life) improvements.
That is after all why we are here and why they let us have at this system so early. It has a lot of potential as long as they address many of the aspects testers have been posting about so far.
Operational Support Team
Squishing Bugs for a better future
I was hoping for something like 3-4 weeks to 15 and another 3-4 to 20, or something like that, and the skill bonus for maxing out should be much higher. We still have a chance for uncommon at level 20. We really need the chance for uncommons gone by 15 and the chance for even rares much much reduced by 20.
How come the mega grind for the crafting system is longer than achieving the rank of Vice Admiral? This will put off most new players from staying with STO due to seeming like an insurmountable task.
The UI is just too big. Also it would be nice if when you open up the school to be able to see at the top of the window the Components/Materials that you have for that school, so you know you have enough components to craft an item.
Sorry I thought this was supposed to be fun, I don't see how gambling with your hard earned stuff is fun, unless you have a massive gambling problem. Yes there should be a chance to fail at lower levels but it might be a hard concept for you at Cryptic to grasp, but professionals in there field don't make mistakes, ok very very rarely. At higher levels you should be guaranteed purple items.
Basically as the system stands now it just seems a cynical way to grab more money from the players. It's just pay to win or pay to craft. What next docking fees at Earth Spacedock.
1,231,905 times to max out crafting... better order a few more mice.
This is starting to seem like the "Cow Clicker Game". How is this fun and how can you say this UI is efficiently laid out? This not counting all the scrolling we have to do and dealing with pop-up windows.
I don't know if this has been mentioned yet (44 pages is too much for me to go thru at the moment, sorry) but I just wanted to make a few observations about the new doffing system.
The sector space assignments to get crafting materials are the same as those currently on Holodeck - they just reward the new materials. They require the same doffs, with the same traits. Because of this, I can go to STO wiki and look up most of the information that the new UI does not show. But this should not be necessary.
For example: I am assigning duty officers to "Scan For Radiation Samples"
The UI, in its current state (I realize it is a work in progress) does NOT show the specialty required. It lists science, and will let you choose any science officer, but the mission requires specific ones in order to succeed. 1) Astrometrics Scientist or Gravimetrics Scientist 2) Astrometrics Scientist, or Gravimetrics Scientist, or Sensors Officer.
If you do not choose those specialties, your odds of failing the assignment skyrocket. Not only does the UI not show this information, the correct specialty does NOT highlight green in the officer scroll-down select menu.
Additionally, the assignment has a disaster trait: unscrupulous. This is not shown anywhere, nor highlight red in the scroll down menu.
With 2 purple doffs of the correct specialty (and not unscrupulous) you will have a ZERO percent fail/disaster rate. Any additional traits of Logical and Eidetic Memory will raise your crit chance without causing any failure/disaster rate. I have seen several people in channels complaining that their assignments keep failing, and it is undoubtedly because they are assigning unscrupulous botanists to scan for spacial anomalies. If they are unfamiliar with the assignments, this is the UI's fault and not their own. (If the UI shows all the info they need, then my level of sympathy takes a sharp nose dive.)
Unless the intent is to remove these factors for the assignments before publishing it to Holodeck, they NEED to be shown. The current system on Holodeck does. I am assuming this is merely an oversight while the UI is being overhauled, but I wanted to make sure it was mentioned somewhere... just in case.
I took a pic of the assignment with the correct doffs with the lack of green highlighting the specialty and its 0% fail/disaster bars, but it seems I cannot post it.
1) There should be some kind of bonus for alts so the grind isn't as bad similar to the Summer event and the Reputation System.
2) The bonus from maxing a school is too low.
3) People that have maxed out the current system should be compensated somehow.
4) The amount of time they baked in is purely to keep daily players occupied until the next release. Casual players are royally screwed here.
Well, since all items from crafting are Bind on Equip, doesn't that make itself alt friendly?
I'm okay with the traits not being overpowering.
There is a reward for people who maxed out crafting as is... but that's such a pathetically easy thing to do I'm not sure it really deserves much in the way of compensation.
How are casual players screwed? If they don't want to craft the new gear they can just buy it from the Exchange, right?
Players that unlock the crafting system will automatically receive a package of supplies and duty officers designed specifically for crafting.
These crafting duty officers have no traits or active roster abilities and cannot be sent on duty officer assignments.
You now have duty officers that cannot perform the primary function of duty officers. I don't see the point of this restriction, since doffs already have multiple functions: doff assignments and active roster abilities. Moreover, you now have a needlessly complicated crafting system that uses two types of doffs. If you were going to go this route, I don't know why you didn't completely separate the crafting system from the doff system. You can call the new personnel "R&D officers" instead of "duty officers". There is no need for the two systems to be integrated in the first place. It seems to me that you are integrating the two systems just so you can say the crafting system uses doffs. But the way you are doing it appears more like lip service than any significant integration. And I think the doff system is worse off for it, not better. Doffs put on crafting assignments can't be put on doff assignments; crafting doffs take up roster space; and the new doff UI is in many ways less usable than the old UI.
I agree, the doffs that come with the crafting system should be able to be used normally.
The doffs when you unlock it should be the standard fare (My thought is the doff packs we get at regular intervals have a number of guaranteed doffs that can be used to crafting)
As far as R&D Doffs. I'd LOVE it if there were very rare assignments that require an R&D doff that reward catalysts, and possibly have active slot abilities that buff various crafted gear.
Comments
That is what i got for the 1000 dili i spent for it:
8 rare partikel
8 common metalls
1 blue componet
2 purple componets (those u need dili for)
2 white R&D doffs.
I will do a few more runs to get to know what it will drop on average.
As it is now, that overall look fair for me
That's pretty cool IMO.
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I can't doublecheck the exact list since it crashes when I try to check the assignment log.
At they very least spending 1k dil to get a component that costs 15k is quite the bargain
24 - Recipes are not progressive: why do lower level beam weapons require a targeting interface but later MK ones (e.g. MK VI) do not? Yes it makes sense that weapons should have targeting arrays. The item recipes need to be progressive and logical. Thus give them a pass.
25 - Subcomponents need to come out at different qualities. Each subcomponent needs to be whit,e green, blue and purple. This should give a bonus toward the final item quality to reduce the gambling. Using all purple subcomponents should then give you a purple crafted item unless there is that rare critical failure.
26 - The dilithium prices on the new DOFF packs at SFA need to be at least cut in half. 1000 dilithium for a purely random draw is again even more gambling int he system. Same for the original packs btw. You put in the reputation system to eliminate player concern and remove the randomness for something guaranteed with progression yet a year later we are now back to another system that just has all randomness.
27 - I know you guys keep saying we can craft anything at any level and are touting that as the big thing for the system. However, all subcomponent recipes are not unlocked at the start of the system. For example in beams I cannot construct a firing sequencer until level 5 or an isolinear chip until level 10. I have to rely on someone else doing it and getting it from them. That means someone still has to level first, which logically means you cannot create anything at any level.
That seems off; they should probably require deflector officers, as that would actually make sense.
29 - The R&D DOFF job at the academy needs to have its timer drastically reduced. 48hrs? Seriously? Why not just keep it like the rest of them, same timer, same cooldown. Be consistent with the existing rules. The more and different rules and exceptions you have, the further you get from your goal of making the game easier to play for newcomers.
I forgot all about having done this on a guy over on Tribble...let me take a look and see what he got.
[System] [ItemReceived] Items acquired: Magnesite x 4
[System] [ItemReceived] Item acquired: Component - Power Surge Regulator
[System] [ItemReceived] Items acquired: Tritanium x 4
[System] [ItemReceived] Items acquired: Trionium Gas x 8
[System] [ItemReceived] Item acquired: Component - Emitter Array
[System] [ItemReceived] Items acquired: Verteron Particle x 4
[System] [ItemReceived] Items acquired: Hydrazine Gas x 4
16 common mats
8 uncommon mats
1 L5 rare component
1 L10 very rare component (5k Dil)
I'll start it up again and see if I remember to check it again...or I won't. Greyed out. No timer. Oh well.
It would be nice if I could queue multiple crafts of the base components, as sitting here for extended periods just making other needed materials isn't very fun and doesn't encourage me to continue playing.
Agreed, I would like to be able to queue up about ten of these that just auto-complete after the timer. This piece by piece method is quite tedious and clink-n-scroll heavy given the UI is not laid out in a very flowing manner.
With 600 being the standard XP received per hour (no matter what you craft ..other than the “special” items.. it comes out to 600xp per hour).
Here is the number of hours or XP to level up to 10th.
0 to 1st = 0.05 or 30xp
1st to 2nd = 0.38 or 260xp
2nd to 3rd = 16.23 or 10,000xp
3rd to 4th = 33.33 or 30,000xp
4th to 5th = 30 or 48,000xp
5th to 6th = 34 or 68,400xp
6th to 7th = 42 or 93,600xp
7th to 8th = 45 or 120,600xp
8th to 9th = 48 or 149,400xp
9th to 10th = 51 or 180,000xp
The above is if you don't use dilithium to "finish now". You also need to add the hours together to get a total time for going from 1st level to 10th in just that one school (in this case 300 hours).
Don't sound too bad ..right? Just under 13 days and you could be level 10!
Lets look at the numbers going from level 11 to 15.
Finally.. you are level 10 and can make all the components, but you want to be able to make the special items from this school, so you need to get to level 15.
10th to 11th =120 or 252,000xp
11th to 12th = 135 or 333,000xp
12th to 13th = 150 or 423,000xp
13th to 14th = 165 or 522,000xp
14th to 15th = 180 or 630,000xp
So 1050 total hours into crafting (if you don't "finish now") you are able to craft the special items. That's nearly 44 days if you keep on top of things and can manage the materials required to keep it moving.
You decide to max out the school but level 16 requires a hefty price, what most games call a "HELL LEVEL" It costs 420 hours just to go from 15 to 16!
15th to 16th = 420 or 882,000xp
16th to 17th = 450 or 1,152,000xp
17th to 18th = 480 or 1,440,000xp
18th to 19th = 510 or 1,746,000xp
19th to 20th = 540 or 2,070,000xp
After 3450 hours (just under 144 days) and a minimum of 103,500 materials (3450 hourly projects consisting of 6 components per item with each component requiring 5 materials) you have mastered your first school.
Congratulations!
Squishing Bugs for a better future
Thank you for putting the numbers out there so people can see. Just one thing, did you include that you could craft more than one 600XP item at a time while doing this? Rank 2 you get 2, Rank 4 you get 3, Three at five you get 4 and one at 15 you get 5. This does make leveling a second school a little faster but not enough to want to even bother with the system. It is the reputation system on grind steroids. If what you have done does not show the devs how badly executed this system is numerically then there is just no hope for it. Again, thanks for putting up the numbers.
You are correct.
The hours listed are "man-hours" rather than actual hours. So if you put more men on the job you can get it done faster (in this case unlocking more R&D slots).
Of course you could use those slots for some of the other 6 schools that you may be interested in as well.
Squishing Bugs for a better future
That seems to be awfully lot of work for completing just a single "school".
Given those numbers, they really have turned Crafting into another unfun grind.
You have inspired me to come up with that exact calculation. I did the calculation assuming you would add in the additional man-power as you progressed and assumed once you got to lvl 5 in one school, then you would level two other to lvl 5 to get the extra slot. Then knock them down one at a time to 20 beyond that (picking up the 2nd and 3rd school at lvl 5). The estimates are still just as daunting as yours and just continues to illustrate the tedium of the system they created. My calcs are based on making just Mk VI items (the 600 XP/hr/slot rate)
Here are mine:
First School
Number of Hours - 759
Number of 24 hr Days - 31.6
Number of 4 hr Play Sessions - 189.75
Number of Items - 3,453
Common Materials - 51,795
Uncommon Materials - 51,795
Second and Third School (Taken to lvl 5 First for the 4th crafting slot, then picked up when lvl 20 is hit for first school)
Number of Hours - 701
Number of 24 hr Days - 29.2
Number of 4 hr Play Sessions - 175.25
Number of Items - 3,451
Common Materials - 51,765
Uncommon Materials - 51,765
Fourth-Seventh Schools
Number of Hours - 690
Number of 24 hr Days - 28.8
Number of 4 hr Play Sessions - 172.5
Number of Items - 3,450
Common Materials - 51,750
Uncommon Materials - 51,750
Total Investment w/o Dilithium shortcuts or Dilithium Subcomps
First School + 2xSecond&Third + 4xFourth-Seventh
Number of Hours - 4,921
Number of 24 hr Days - 205.04
Number of 4 hr Play Sessions - 1,230.25
Number of Items - 24,155
Common Materials - 362,325
Uncommon Materials - 362,325
The whole system is designed punitively. There is no real benefit from leveling up in more than one because the time to level is only marginally reduced. Clearly there is no benefit to do this on more than one character just because of the tedium built into the system. I should go ahead and calculate the number of mouse clicks this will take just to show how ridiculous the current numbers are on Tribble. Not just the dilithium, but all of them, the XP breaks, the XP earned, the timers, the dilithium. All of it.
Holy damn! 144 days to get ONE school up to max? What are they thinking?!?!?!?!
40 Days would be BAD! 144? That makes reputations fast by comparison. This is...just horrible.
Not as bad as this. Especially not with the random chance bull-mess.
We do not want crafting to be a long term goal, honestly, because the items it gives are not long term.
Basically, the crafting should level at the same rate as your character. So at Captain, you want to craft Mark VII gear. Not mark IV.
So by the time you reach level 50, you should have max crafting. But as it stands now, you'll be able to get to max level and get all your reputations done before you are even halfway done with crafting.
What's the point then?
1) There should be some kind of bonus for alts so the grind isn't as bad similar to the Summer event and the Reputation System.
2) The bonus from maxing a school is too low.
2) People that have maxed out the current system should be compensated somehow.
3) The amount of time they baked in is purely to keep daily players occupied until the next release. Casual players are royally screwed here.
Well there are long-term goals, and then there is needless gated grind. If the system is fun, it does not feel like a grind, that should be one of the goals. Currently this system is not fun and takes the grind well beyond the level of the reputations.
Crafting will not level at the same rate as your character because character leveling in this game is too fast. In a four hour play session you can easily be well beyond your crafting level. So if you are crafting to outfit yourself you will run into the same issue that you will outpace the gear you can create. Besides, one can easily level from 1-50 on common white gear for ECs, the random loot drops of better things, or mission rewards.
You are right. What I said was theory only. Still, this feels a bit too slow, especially since I get the feeling that's intentional to make it an even bigger dil sink.
Consider that some players (myself included) will spend dilithium to reduce some of those times. Currently that amount is 900 per hour. So if you have 900,000 dilithuim to throw at this you can cut 1000 hours off that time.
People who can afford to pay more will be the first ones to market with "Crafting unique items" and they can recover that cost in EC from the sales.
Overall it is not a horrible system, but it does need some tweaking and QoL (Quality of life) improvements.
That is after all why we are here and why they let us have at this system so early. It has a lot of potential as long as they address many of the aspects testers have been posting about so far.
Squishing Bugs for a better future
The UI is just too big. Also it would be nice if when you open up the school to be able to see at the top of the window the Components/Materials that you have for that school, so you know you have enough components to craft an item.
Sorry I thought this was supposed to be fun, I don't see how gambling with your hard earned stuff is fun, unless you have a massive gambling problem. Yes there should be a chance to fail at lower levels but it might be a hard concept for you at Cryptic to grasp, but professionals in there field don't make mistakes, ok very very rarely. At higher levels you should be guaranteed purple items.
Basically as the system stands now it just seems a cynical way to grab more money from the players. It's just pay to win or pay to craft. What next docking fees at Earth Spacedock.
...you will click...
1,231,905 times to max out crafting... better order a few more mice.
This is starting to seem like the "Cow Clicker Game". How is this fun and how can you say this UI is efficiently laid out? This not counting all the scrolling we have to do and dealing with pop-up windows.
The sector space assignments to get crafting materials are the same as those currently on Holodeck - they just reward the new materials. They require the same doffs, with the same traits. Because of this, I can go to STO wiki and look up most of the information that the new UI does not show. But this should not be necessary.
For example: I am assigning duty officers to "Scan For Radiation Samples"
The UI, in its current state (I realize it is a work in progress) does NOT show the specialty required. It lists science, and will let you choose any science officer, but the mission requires specific ones in order to succeed. 1) Astrometrics Scientist or Gravimetrics Scientist 2) Astrometrics Scientist, or Gravimetrics Scientist, or Sensors Officer.
If you do not choose those specialties, your odds of failing the assignment skyrocket. Not only does the UI not show this information, the correct specialty does NOT highlight green in the officer scroll-down select menu.
Additionally, the assignment has a disaster trait: unscrupulous. This is not shown anywhere, nor highlight red in the scroll down menu.
With 2 purple doffs of the correct specialty (and not unscrupulous) you will have a ZERO percent fail/disaster rate. Any additional traits of Logical and Eidetic Memory will raise your crit chance without causing any failure/disaster rate. I have seen several people in channels complaining that their assignments keep failing, and it is undoubtedly because they are assigning unscrupulous botanists to scan for spacial anomalies. If they are unfamiliar with the assignments, this is the UI's fault and not their own. (If the UI shows all the info they need, then my level of sympathy takes a sharp nose dive.)
Unless the intent is to remove these factors for the assignments before publishing it to Holodeck, they NEED to be shown. The current system on Holodeck does. I am assuming this is merely an oversight while the UI is being overhauled, but I wanted to make sure it was mentioned somewhere... just in case.
I took a pic of the assignment with the correct doffs with the lack of green highlighting the specialty and its 0% fail/disaster bars, but it seems I cannot post it.
Carry on testing!
Well, since all items from crafting are Bind on Equip, doesn't that make itself alt friendly?
I'm okay with the traits not being overpowering.
There is a reward for people who maxed out crafting as is... but that's such a pathetically easy thing to do I'm not sure it really deserves much in the way of compensation.
How are casual players screwed? If they don't want to craft the new gear they can just buy it from the Exchange, right?
You now have duty officers that cannot perform the primary function of duty officers. I don't see the point of this restriction, since doffs already have multiple functions: doff assignments and active roster abilities. Moreover, you now have a needlessly complicated crafting system that uses two types of doffs. If you were going to go this route, I don't know why you didn't completely separate the crafting system from the doff system. You can call the new personnel "R&D officers" instead of "duty officers". There is no need for the two systems to be integrated in the first place. It seems to me that you are integrating the two systems just so you can say the crafting system uses doffs. But the way you are doing it appears more like lip service than any significant integration. And I think the doff system is worse off for it, not better. Doffs put on crafting assignments can't be put on doff assignments; crafting doffs take up roster space; and the new doff UI is in many ways less usable than the old UI.
The doffs when you unlock it should be the standard fare (My thought is the doff packs we get at regular intervals have a number of guaranteed doffs that can be used to crafting)
As far as R&D Doffs. I'd LOVE it if there were very rare assignments that require an R&D doff that reward catalysts, and possibly have active slot abilities that buff various crafted gear.