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Tribble Maintenance and Release Notes - July 8, 2014
coldsnapped
Member Posts: 520 Cryptic Developer
We will be bringing down the Tribble server for maintenance to apply a new update: ST.42.20140629a.9
General:
Systems:
Known Issues:
General:
- KDF captains now have access to visit Risa all year long:
- KDF captains must be at least level 10.
- KDF captains must have access to the Sirius Sector Block which can be gained in 1 of 2 ways:
- Unlocking it through Marauding Commendation XP
- Completing the episode Surface Tension.
- The Summer Event missions will not be available once the event is over but players are able to use their floaters, powerboards, and swimwear on this map.
- Dilithium has been added to the rewards in the missions for the following zones:
- New Romulus
- Dyson Sphere Space Adventure Zone
- Defera Invasion
- Nukara Invasion
- The Exchange:
- Kit Modules now have their own search category in the Exchange.
- Added an R&D Materials search category to the Exchange.
- Added an R&D Components search category to the Exchange.
- The Data Samples search category has been removed from the Exchange.
- The Short Sleeve Miner Shirt is now available for male captains.
Systems:
- Research and Development:
- R+D is now set for level 15 captains and above.
- Green items will now be created slightly less often when player Skill Rating is exactly equal to Difficulty Rating.
- Green items will now be completely eliminated from R+D results when player Skill Rating exceeds Difficulty Rating by at least 50 points.
- Once both Green and White items have been eliminated from the possible R+D results, Blue outcomes will begin to be eliminated at a faster rate than before.
- If a player's Skill Rating exceeds the Difficulty Rating of a project by an extremely large amount, it is now possible to completely eliminate Blue items from the possible outcomes.
- Ultrarare chances on high-end crafting recipes now require less total Skill Rating to craft, but the rate at which Ultrarare chance increases is lower than it was before.
- Resolved an issue where shield crafting was not displaying results in the crafting window when started.
- [Rapid] cannons now apply their Rapid Fire buff at the end of their firing cycle, rather than the beginning.
- It lasts for 2 seconds, down from 6, providing opportunity for one full volley of Rapid Fire cannon fire.
- Long names for crafted items now fit in the window they are in.
- Clicking the View Details button on the active R+D slots.
- Projects will now display their correct difficulty level.
- The Status crafting tab is now titles In Progress.
- More updates have been made to icons and UI throughout the R&D system.
- Duty Officers:
- Resolved an issue with the display of School Specialist icons in Dossier.
- It no longer duplicates their Active Roster Power or defaults to "generic".
- Long names for Duty Officers and titles now fit in the window they are in.
- More updates have been made to the icons and UI throughout the Duty Officer system.
- Resolved an issue with the display of School Specialist icons in Dossier.
- Clarified the tooltip of the Inelastic Collisions Trait.
Known Issues:
- The new Crafting system is not in its final state.
- UI for the Crafting system is still a work in progress.
- Duty Officer Rewards are not displaying for Completed or assignments in the Log.
- Not all required components are visible in the UI for each project.
- Kits in your inventory cannot be equipped by double-clicking on them.
- You can drag and drop slot them.
Post edited by coldsnapped on
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Comments
That's pretty nifty.
the dilithium removed due to the "tragic" loss of "exploration" seems to have been made up for. all those ground zones could use more incentive to visit im sure.
That's what people were asking for.
The only problem now I see with crafting is the very long grind it takes to do, but its much better than it was.
Maybe we could have a very expensive, but big XP 20 hour projects like with rep? So that people who got a job can participate too, like grind up a lot of mats during the weekend, than donate it to 20 hour projects?
Now if only we could get the duty officer roster to slot better doff choices!
Just need to not make the leveling of each school take so long.
Is everything in crafting going to be BOE? If so then really you only need one dedicated crafting char..
Will rare particle traces be guaranteed to only give back rare and very rare materials? They should not be giving common and uncommon!
Will Fed captains also gain access to Omega Leonis based on the same restrictions?
We're looking at increasing the amount of time all projects take (and decreasing the amount of Dil it takes to buy out the project such that their absolute cost remains the same). This will let long projects reasonably "make progress for you" while you're offline, similarly to how the 20 hour reputation projects do so.
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
Well worth the wait!
Thank you, that sounds perfectly reasonable.
Though can we hope for more unique items? Maybe more weapons with (ARC) modifiers, or some way to craft more than 1 Arc weapons of an energy type?
I'm asking because it would be something that battlecruisers would just love to get.
Maybe quad cannons of different energy types?
There is a lot of cool stuff that the players would love to get! The dev team's imagination is the limit!
Then forget anyone running this system except for the most diehard players.
The project times are too long as it is. And you want to tack on even more time?
Am I misreading this?
All projects? That's kind of the opposite way to go, here, 'Hawk. The grind time is already quite high. The dev team seriously needs to aks themselves two questions: Would -you- invest your time, EC and Dilithium in this? And would you have any sort of fun with it in the process?
This new system needs to be engaging, not aggrivating.
The XP is constant per time unit - so it would just be decreasing the amount of projects you need to run to hit cap. Sorry, I didn't explicitly say that if we, say, doubled the amount of time any given project takes, we would also be doubling its XP.
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
This is most welcome news
Thanks
Our goal is for a player who's gone through the system to be able to consistently make high-quality Mk XII items - you will be able to push Very Rare's chance very high - and be able to make them at a price that reflects the number of crafts it will take to get the mods that you want onto your gear.
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
Nevermind...answered above.
As a casual player who doesn't have much time to be online, I support this wholeheartedly. Thanks adjudicatorhawk!
That's good news.
Is the amount of XP required to get to each level being looked at or the amount of XP per hour being looked at for possible refinement?
My personal opinion of it is that it's actually too low to start out (I can craft a mk VI item right off the bat and go from 0 to 2 in one craft), but the curve is way too steep (getting to 3 takes 16 more mk VIs), and of course if the time I have seen calculations for seems a bit on the long side considering how many schools there are.
Also I think materials need looked at a bit. I swear EVERYTHING needs magnasite. I always seem to run out of that while I have plenty of other stuff. (also we need to be able to get materials from the crafting console so we can actually test high level crafting. Having to gind stuff interferes with that and queues don't happen on tribble)
So a net wash. That only leaves your XP progression curve to contend with. 350 hours per school is quite high and you've got some huge jumps in there (from rank 2 to rank 3 comes to mind). As it presently stands it will take people years to complete this thing. See my two questions, above.
These are some good points too.
And Hawk's suggestion would make it LESS grindy. You get the same overall XP, and have to do less clicking.
Which means you can spend more time doing something else, like PVE, material gathering, or pvp.
"Is the amount of XP required...going to be looked at"? Maybe. The XP curve is structured the way it is because the system is designed for 4 different types of player - super casual, casual, midcore, and super hardcore. It's less of a curve and more of 4 different curves stuck together - thus the extreme breakpoint around level 3 that many players have noticed.
As you point out, the initial XP values are extremely low. Part of this is due to the tutorial that isn't in-game yet - we give you the components to make a Mark 2 item for free and walk you through the creation process. We wanted that creation to give you enough XP to hit level 1 - so 1 5-minute project had to be enough XP to ding. Another reason it's so low is because you start with only one R+D slot - when you unlock the 2nd and then the 3rd slot, the curves increase in steepness under the assumption you'll do projects in all available slots. (Worth noting that this does NOT occur for the 4th and 5th slots, making all projects you run in those slots "bonus time" from our perspective).
Of course we don't expect players to play 24 hours of the day 7 days a week. We know the patterns of play that most of our players follow, and the system is supposed to be a long-term but achieveable/attainable goal for these players.
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
What of the tuning to reduce the time it actually takes? Or the gross waste of materials in leveling? Plus, if you make it take a lot longer per project and raise XP gains accordingly, you create the additional issue of "I want to make an item but it's going to take a week to craft, during which one of my best DOffs is unavailable." Most people will answer that with "TRIBBLE that, I'll just get something close to that item from the Exchange/Fleet Store/Rep Store." I have a solution to both of those:
Take the XP off of items. Put them instead into Research projects - things with low material costs and high exp gains. And preferably shorter timers. Because this system is "Research and Development." I don't see much in the way of Research so far. This will additionally have the benefit of fixing the problem of "I'm spending tons of resources making vendor trash items and wasting my time."
Though, none of this fixes the big issue: 350 hours to get to Level 15 in a school is entirely unacceptable. People still will elect not to use the system, because the marginal boost in item quality and slightly higher desire will not outweigh the daunting grind that this system is. Reputations USED to get away with it because there were fewer of them - fewer sources of late-game gear. And, it wasn't something you had to actively babysit - this system is. Players are sick of Rep grinding. This is basically another one of those, except it costs more, takes more attention, and has rewards that are only marginally better than what we have now. So, Hawk... want players to use this system (as I assume you do, considering you've put so much effort into it)? Reduce the time required. 150 hours MIGHT be an acceptable compromise.
Sounds acceptable too. But remember, there is always the "quick finish" button for the impatient ones.
As for the Crafting's curve, I would think that it should not take more than Twice the reputation system's curve.
You can get all the reputations to 5 in around 40 days.
Getting your crafting maxed out (If you are doing all schools with unlimited mats) in 90 days sound reasonable, and long term. That's almost 3 months.
350 hours total to level one school to level 15 comes out to about 15 days. That is livable if I only have to slot one project a day, like a rep.
Making projects take longer is not what I would call the optimal solution. For that, I would have liked a queue where I can slot a bunch of projects back to back and then run them all. And if I run out of materials or components, well, that's my lookout.
Making projects longer, while kinder to us on materials (if I understand you correctly) makes it so that a new character leveling crafting might level past the Mk of whatever he is crafting.
Here is another idea. Why not leave the project times as they are now. Then create a new project that just takes in raw materials or components, and takes 20 hours like a rep project, and then only gives you xp in that crafting school. That way, if people want to craft something, they can get a bit of xp and an item. If they just want to level up quick, they can take the 20 hour project. People starting out can get gear, and existing level 50's can just get to the good stuff.
If fact, yes, please offer this as an option. I'll await judgement from the others here, but I think it could be the best of both worlds here.
Nouveau riche LTS member
Whatever the Mark 2 item is, I hope it's something which won't wind up en masse on the Exchange.
Keep up the good work. The jury's still out for me on the crafting revamp. But these updates (and the Dev interactions on the forum) are very appreciated. Thank you.
As a matter of fact, it's 35 days your first go-round (20 with a Sponsorship). And you only need to slot one project a day. To do this with every School (which you can't, that's 7 projects slots with max 5), it would take one day per item to get to Level 15 with the same effort as a Reputation. It takes 50 Mk VI items to get to level four. That's 50 days right there. Getting crafting to the point where you can use it in end-game will take years.
right now they are listed way below the duty officers. can the Kit Modules be moved under the personal equipment tab so they are next to the kits?
also the R&D be moved up as well? possibly put under a super R&D tab.
Original Join Date: January 30th, 2010
If it is going to take 3 months of constant grinding to re-max my crafter. Count me out.
A school should not take any longer than the reputation system (only using one doff mission slot - so I can choose to burn through one school or try and level them all at once).
adjudicatorhawk
You should make the 20 hr "Research" project that only gives xp. I don't need all the vendor trash the current grind throws out.
The other projects should also not get any longer, they are long enough as it is, but a significant increase to the xp/time variable is needed.
Can you post some numbers on what the level 15 (and 20) chances are for crafting VR / UR items. At what level do I need to be guaranteed a VR MKXII space weapon, using a purple doff and no catalyst?
While I hope the application of these changes end up removing the rarity randomness, I assume we will just have to put up with random modifiers? Or, is there going to be a way on launch to tell the system what modifiers I actually want crafted?
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