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Giving the new crafting system a shot
rnaught
Member Posts: 3 Arc User
I've decided that I really need to give this new crafting system a fair shake. Looking at numbers and reading other players opinions may have jaded me to it and I've complained a number of times about it, perhaps unfairly.
I'm not a min/max type player, but I do try to be as effective as my time allows. Meaning that while I know what the best gear is, sometimes I just don't have the inclination to 'chase' it all down. I play for fun. I'm also an altaholic so for me, getting to 50 doesn't mean running endless ESTF's and other end-game queues to get rep and fleet gear. Hitting 50 means making a new alt.
I have recently decided to get to t5 in the reps on all my alts however, so the possibility of me one day running those endless ESTF's and other end-game queues to get rep and fleet gear may happen. So, I'm hoping that this may be enough of an "average" player experience to get an idea of what a decent percentage of the population, though maybe not a majority, may go through with the new crafting system.
I'm going to keep a crafting/leveling journal and just see how useful crafting is while leveling up. I will attempt to craft items for my current level but I won't hold myself to not buying off the exchange or a vendor since I don't want to make this a living hell.
I decided to try this experiment while playing my new alt, who was at lvl 11 when came up with this idea. Since the crafting system doesn't open up until lvl 15, it should still be a pretty close experience compared to if I started a new character from scratch. This way I can see how someone completely new to the game may fare with the new crafting system as well as being able to look at the end-game stuff and knowing what may be needed or desired. At the very least *I* will have more experience with it. Obviously I won't finish the crafting system before I hit 50, but that's something the Devs should have taken into account, so there will be no tip-toeing and playing nice. If I find something sucks, I'm going to say it. And if something turns out to be better than I hoped, I'll post that as well.
Now, as for details I'll keep track of.
I will only keep track of the equipment I craft and use and its level and rarity.
If I run any queue events, I will list what I get from the R&D boxes, at least the rares and VR's.
I don't feel like keeping track of every little piece of salvage that drops nor the component crafting, the end result should be good enough. Although, since I'll be leveling and common and uncommon salvage are the normal drops, if I happen to get any rare or better drops, I will list those as well as where they came from.
I will keep a general track of how much time I play the character. Probably rounded to the closest quarter hour.
I'm not going for concrete proof with this. I'm not going to say that once this is done, this is what everyone can expect if they do the exact same thing. This is just for me so I can say from experience that the new crafting system is (a. Great, (b. Eh, (c. Horrid.
And the reason for me posting it on the forums instead of keeping it to myself? Call it an attempt to contribute. "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem" as some folks say.
I've already played up to day 3 so far, so I'll post those days results in my next post. After that, I hope to update daily.
I'm not a min/max type player, but I do try to be as effective as my time allows. Meaning that while I know what the best gear is, sometimes I just don't have the inclination to 'chase' it all down. I play for fun. I'm also an altaholic so for me, getting to 50 doesn't mean running endless ESTF's and other end-game queues to get rep and fleet gear. Hitting 50 means making a new alt.
I have recently decided to get to t5 in the reps on all my alts however, so the possibility of me one day running those endless ESTF's and other end-game queues to get rep and fleet gear may happen. So, I'm hoping that this may be enough of an "average" player experience to get an idea of what a decent percentage of the population, though maybe not a majority, may go through with the new crafting system.
I'm going to keep a crafting/leveling journal and just see how useful crafting is while leveling up. I will attempt to craft items for my current level but I won't hold myself to not buying off the exchange or a vendor since I don't want to make this a living hell.
I decided to try this experiment while playing my new alt, who was at lvl 11 when came up with this idea. Since the crafting system doesn't open up until lvl 15, it should still be a pretty close experience compared to if I started a new character from scratch. This way I can see how someone completely new to the game may fare with the new crafting system as well as being able to look at the end-game stuff and knowing what may be needed or desired. At the very least *I* will have more experience with it. Obviously I won't finish the crafting system before I hit 50, but that's something the Devs should have taken into account, so there will be no tip-toeing and playing nice. If I find something sucks, I'm going to say it. And if something turns out to be better than I hoped, I'll post that as well.
Now, as for details I'll keep track of.
I will only keep track of the equipment I craft and use and its level and rarity.
If I run any queue events, I will list what I get from the R&D boxes, at least the rares and VR's.
I don't feel like keeping track of every little piece of salvage that drops nor the component crafting, the end result should be good enough. Although, since I'll be leveling and common and uncommon salvage are the normal drops, if I happen to get any rare or better drops, I will list those as well as where they came from.
I will keep a general track of how much time I play the character. Probably rounded to the closest quarter hour.
I'm not going for concrete proof with this. I'm not going to say that once this is done, this is what everyone can expect if they do the exact same thing. This is just for me so I can say from experience that the new crafting system is (a. Great, (b. Eh, (c. Horrid.
And the reason for me posting it on the forums instead of keeping it to myself? Call it an attempt to contribute. "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem" as some folks say.
I've already played up to day 3 so far, so I'll post those days results in my next post. After that, I hope to update daily.
Make a man a fire and keep him warm for the day.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Post edited by rnaught on
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Not much to say here. Sci Fed character, Level 11, got some DOff's and salvage already so now it's just a matter of getting to 15 and getting the Crafting System opened up. Played for 2 hours and hit 15. Decided to start with the Beams school and started the 20 hour project. Will next go for Ground Weapons then Engineering. If I make it far enough, the 4th school will be Shields.
Day 2
Level 2 in Beams now and opened a second project slot. Started the 20 hour project for both Beams and Ground Weapons. While I could start crafting beams for when I hit lvl 20, I wouldn't mind having better odds at getting at least some green gear. With only basic DOff's at this point, it's a 50% chance of getting commons. Hopefully getting to level 3 tomorrow improves this enough to make it worth it. Got 3 Rubidium and 3 Z-Particles from nodes in the Doomsday Device mission. Character hit level 20 after about 2.5 hours of playing today.
Day 3
Okay, I got to lvl 2 in Ground Weapons and level 3 in Beams, but to craft Commander level items it recommends a skill level of 60. That's lvl 6 in a crafting school. It's going to take 2-3 more days of running the 20 hour project to get Beams to level 4, depending on how much crafting I do. Not sure how long to level 5, let alone level 6.
While I can craft the MK VI items, I still have a 50% chance of crafting commons, at least when you consider this is a new character with mostly common and a handful of uncommon DOffs, so no real bonus happening. But, this is an experiment so I'm going to do it anyway. All I'll be losing is some common and uncommon items and maybe if the RNG is smiling on me, I might get a rare or two.
One other problem I see is the amount of time to craft. Crafting MK IV items takes 15 minutes and now MK VI items take an hour. Why not 30 minutes? Now by the time I finish crafting the beams I want to use, my play session will be over (roughly 2 hours from now) and I'll probably wind up with at least 2-3 more levels, probably more. Which means I'll be about half way to the next tier before even being able to use the current tier items I'm crafting. Things aren't looking so good.
Okay, and one other thing I didn't really pay attention to and it's now biting me in the rear, I don't have anywhere near enough salvage to craft the things I need. Even though I've been hitting every single node in my missions, I'm simply not getting enough mats to be able to craft the components. So I need to buy some off the exchange.
One nice thing I found, you can click on components that are missing from a project and it will load *that* crafting project up to make them. So that's a bit of a time saver and nice feature.
Nearing the end of my time and here's what's happened. The first 2 beams I crafted, decided to go Anti Proton, the first ended up being a common Dual Beam Array and the Second was a Rare Beam Array [Acc]x2. The last 2 Beam Array's were both common. Also got 3 Rubidium from a node in Temporal Ambassador. After 2 hours of playing, hit level 24.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Tier 3 now in Ground Weapons.
Decided to craft an Antiproton Mag Regulator to go along with my Antiproton beams, ended up getting an uncommon out of it.
I'm going to continue leveling as many schools at a time as I can. I'll never get to a high enough level in the schools for it to really matter before I hit level 50, but part of the point of this was to see how well crafting and leveling go together. However, once I get to Captain level (lvl 30), I likely won't be able to craft anything else since the Mk VIII items need rare mats and I'm just not finding a whole lot of those. Not to mention the time to craft anything being bumped up from 1 hour to 2 hours. Since I only play for around 2 hours at a stretch, this means I can craft something or run the 20 hour project. Gee, I wonder what I'm gonna do. :rolleyes:
Got to level 30 in just under 2 hours. Gotta love Nimbus III.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Made level 4 in Beams, still level 3 in Ground Weapons and started up Engineering. With the bonus XP from the R&D weekend event, I'm hoping I'll get some decent progress.
However, now that I'm at level 30, it seems my crafting days are over. At least for now. While I *can* craft items to use, they're most likely going to be commons, which hardly seems worth the effort, especially with the lack of rares I'm finding. Perhaps more rares need to be spawning from nodes or should only be used for MK XI gear and above? Also, shouldn't the crafting curve be somewhat more inline with the leveling curve? However, I will continue to level up the schools using the 20 hour projects.
It seems it's a combination of things that'll keep me from crafting anything for quite a while. For now I guess it's a waiting game to get to level 15 in the schools so I can craft stuff for level 50. Disappointing, to say the least.
Although, it's with this disappointment that I've decided to extend my experiment with the crafting system. I'm now going to keep plugging away at it until I'm t5 in all 5 current reps. Which will take about twice as long to achieve as it will getting to level 50. My main aready has t5 in all the reps and I plan on using the sponsorship tokens to speed things up. So an additional 20 days of rep projects on top of getting to level 50. We'll see if that helps things any. I doubt it will, but...
Only managed to play for an hour but got to level 32.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Only able to play for 30 minutes today, but got to level 33.
Beams and Ground Weapons are at level 4 and Engineering is at level 2 thanks to the bonus R&D XP.
Hoping to get more time in tomorrow so I can hopefully gather more mats. Could really use some rares, but just not having any luck. In my biased opinion, rare mats need to start dropping more often as you level.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
I still haven't forgiven Cryptic for making everyone who put time and effort into leveling characters under the old crafting system start over at the bottom again. That was a blatant money grab and cheap shot.
Romulans: left one homeworld, lost another, third time's the charm?
I'm doing something similar for my merry band of misfits. As I said earlier, I'm an altaholic and currently have 24 characters.
My first 7 are each specializing in a school. When the new system was released and we could run multiple 20 hour projects I figured that would be the "easiest" way to max out crafting. By the time they back-peddled and changed that, I was far enough along that I just decided to keep going that way instead of trying to consolidate it to just 2 or 3 characters.
I did originally want to level all my alts through the system, but after reading the things folks were saying about it when it was on Tribble, I quickly gave up that idea.
To me, any system that is implemented in an MMO should be useful from the moment that character can start using that system to the end of the characters 'life', or the system itself, if there is some sort of cap to it.
I just don't see there being a cap on crafting.
What I am seeing with this new crafting system is while you can continue to use the system, it becomes less useful as you level the character. The characters level so fast compared to the leveling speed of the crafting system that it just leaves a huge gap in the game play and ability to craft.
Although, as an altaholic, I do see myself crafting things for new characters to use as they level. But for players that have only a couple of characters they play and don't plan on making more characters, crafting has a HUGE time sink before anything useful can be done. Which will not give them a reason to bother with it.
Things are always changing in MMO's, sometimes not always for the best. I didn't really bother with the old crafting system so I was really hoping this version of it would be more to my liking. And to an extent, I do like it. Or more specifically, I like some of the generalities of it. But there are specific things about it that are less than stellar.
Anyway, I made myself a promise that I'll continue this crafting trial on this new character until the 'end'. Even if at the end of it it turns out to be a waste of time.
Perhaps a Dev may see this journal and maybe something positive will come of it. I'm not expecting anything like that to happen, but if I didn't have a glimmer of hope, I wouldn't be here.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
One thing I haven't mentioned that I'm doing is that I'm running as many Science and Explore DOff missions as I can to try and get more mats. Really, any DOff mission that rewards mats. Having only a smattering of uncommons and rares though means I'm not getting any crits for the rare mats. While I can see some rare mats being earned this way, I still believe that rares need to drop/spawn more often from mission nodes.
Made level 5 in Beams, Level 3 in Engineering and still level 4 in Ground Weapons. The bonus XP is a huge help, but it's still not good enough (in my opinion) to keep up with character leveling.
After complaining about the lack of rares and not getting crits on DOff missions involving crafting mats, I crit a DOff mission. Perhaps I should complain about more things, hehe. Got a Rubidium and a Tetrazine Gas off the crit.
Got to level 35 in an hour and a half today, real life keeps taking my time away. I got 5 Beta-Tachyon Particles from a node in Divide et Impera. Received a +10 Catalyst from a node in Saturday's Child.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Made it to level 5 in Ground Weapons. Beams and Engineering are still at 5 and 3 respectively.
Got 2 Z-Particles from a DOff crit. Finally getting some crits happening. Also received a +10 Catalyst from a node in Project Nightingale and two more in By Any Means.
Played for just over 2 hours today and got to level 39.
Not much else to say other than I wish I could craft something useful for my next promotion.
As much as I want to like this system, the simple fact that I'm almost completely ignoring it at this point, except to slot the 20 hour projects, seems to show that it isn't worth it. But, I'm going to keep going with it. It's not like it's difficult or anything. It's just really, REALLY boring since I have nothing to show for it.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
The total XP needed per level as astronomically high past ... level 5? With the exception of the 20 hour projects, every other project has extremely low values, even given the short time needed at various levels. 1 xp point for a few seconds wait (iirc) is simply silly to expect anyone to use when the xp needed to advance is in the thousands. Especially at higher levels.
The system is definitely designed to keep the player involved, but not enough to make it actual. SO, players are seeing that the best way to level up is through the 20-hour project. Therefore, it is likened to a "grind".
Ultimately, it IS boring ... but so is crafting in every MMO I've played (not that I have played them all. Crafting is an optional side game for players, and I'm wondering if that is even considered.
Blog, yes, that's the term. I'm showing my age when I can't remember something as simple as that.
STO is only the second MMO I've stuck with for more than a month. City of Heroes was my first MMO and I was there for 8+ years. Crafting there was a kinda late addition to the game, coming 3 years after launch. Crafting was very similar to the old crafting system here in STO, at least from what I saw of it. You wanted to make something, you'd just gather the mats needed and craft it. Granted, here in STO there were things that were somewhat level gated behind your crafting skill, but it was easy enough to level that skill, perhaps too easy.
I figured with the revamp here it'd be good to at least try it out. Right now, with basically 10 levels to go before reaching the (current) level cap, crafting is useless. All I'm doing is saving things up so I can more easily craft things once I'm at the cap and have the crafting schools at level 15.
In 3 months.
Boring about sums it up.
As for crafting being a side game, that's one of the saving graces. I can craft items for alts, which with me being an altaholic is a good thing. I'll make progress doing actual crafting and get at least some return on the time and resources spent.
Unfortunately, my altitis is on hold for the time being until more info is released about the Delta Rising expansion and the road to level 60. So while I actually like being able to at least craft little stuff for alts, even that now is on hold.
Good thing I'm somewhat patient.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Ground Weapons and Beams are still at level 5 and Engineering finally got to level 4. The R&D weekend was ok, but it could have been better. Or even permanent as far as the project XP goes. Back to the near mindless slog to 15.
I guess I'm getting luckier in the DOff crits as well since I got 2 Beta-Tachyon Particles.
Very short day, only 30 minutes of play time, but got to level 41.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Beams is now at level 6. Ground weapons is still at level 5, Engineering is still at level 4.
I REALLY want to craft stuff but it just isn't worth it. I can buy some stuff off the exchange for less than it would cost me to buy one rare mat. Even if I had all the mats needed to craft MK X items at the moment, I wouldn't bother since my crafting skill is so low I'd only get commons. If I'm getting commons, I'm not blowing good mats.
Not to mention that with only 5 levels separating MK X and MK XI, I wouldn't even get anything crafted before I got to lvl 45 and started using MK XI stuff. Well, if I were able to play straight thru from lvl 40-45 that is. I figure based on the amount of time it takes to level, yeah, I could get from 40-45 in 3 hours, which is how long it'd take to craft a beam array. Essentially, start crafting something and before it's finished, I've out-leveled it.
However, since I have had to break things up the last couple of days, I could have started crafting projects before logging off, but that would mean not making as much progress as foregoing crafting and just slotting the 20 hour projects. The system is making less and less sense to me the longer I do this.
Got a Beta-Particle and Tetrazine Gas from a DOff crit.
Got 3 Z-Particles from a node in Ghost Ship.
Another short day with only 30 minutes put in, but did manage level 42.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Romulans: left one homeworld, lost another, third time's the charm?
Beams at lvl 6 still, Ground Weapons got to lvl 6 and Engineering hit lvl 5. Fourth project slot open, I guess since I said I'd do it, I'll start leveling up Shields.
Got 6 Beta-Tachyon particles from nodes in Friend of My Enemy. Received 3 Rubidium from a node in Taris. Perhaps rares do start dropping more as you get higher in level. Or it could be the RNG just being kind for once.
After 2 hours I got to level 45. With what I said yesterday and looking it over, 30 minutes 2 days ago plus 30 minutes yesterday and today with 2 hours... yup, lvl 40-45 in 3 hours.
The progression for the crafting system seriously needs to be looked at. There is only a small window in which a player can craft anything useful for their current level. After that, crafting is just stuck so far behind, it's not even funny.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Just a little note about how I keep track of things and to help explain some seemingly odd timing that may appear in my posts. I keep notes on my play sessions and write them up later that night or early the next morning to post. So the day I'm posting about "today" is always about "yesterday".
Well, today didn't exactly start off on a stellar note. Had some time before maintenance and decided to start getting some new gear. Saw the little 'green button' in my DOff window and decided to look at what I got. I brought up the R&D tab first and I just started clicking on the collect buttons to get the new projects going. Unfortunately, they weren't done and I ended up blowing 10k Dil to finish them early. Total, not each thankfully. Nearly wiped out my Dilitium supply since I'm leveling and not trying to collect a TON of Dil.
There absolutely needs to be an confirmation button for using Dil to finish projects early. Sure, it's my fault for not paying enough attention, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm not the first person to do this.
PLEASE make a confirm button when spending Dilithium. The system is so clunky in it's current state, adding something like this in would at least show some willingness to listen to players desires.
Okay, time to get back on track.
Beams and Ground Weapons are still lvl 6, Engineering is still lvl 5 and Shields made it to lvl 2.
[insert rant about not being able to craft anything useful :rolleyes:]
Now that I'm lvl 45, it's time to get my MK XI gear. In 5 levels I'll start the rep projects, so probably by the weekend I'll have that going. We'll have to see how possible real life makes that.
Got 3 Rubidium from a node in S'harien's Swords. Got 2 Z-Particles and 2 Beta-Tachyon Particles off a pair of DOff crits.
An hour and a half of playing got me to lvl 47. Might just make 50 tomorrow.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Beams and Ground Weapons are still stuck at lvl 6, Engineering still at lvl 5 and Shields got to lvl 3. Yipee! :rolleyes:
Got 1 Z-Particle, 1 Beta-Tachyon and 2 Tetrazine Gas off DOff crits.
Got 3 Rubidium and 3 Z-Particles from nodes in Mine Enemy.
After a little over an hour, I hit 50. Time to get my rep stuff going.
I guess now I'll need to do a write up on this whole not-quite-2-week experiment. It'll be in my next post.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
I'll be generous and say that the entire road from lvl 1-50 would take 25 hours if all you do is DOffing and running missions.
Now granted, if I keep going with the crafting system, I'll eventually be able to craft MK XII items for my now lvl 50. But I won't get to a level where that becomes realistic for another 3 months.
3 MONTHS!
:rolleyes:
In those 3 months, I'm going to be t5 in all the reps and able to get rep gear which will be at least equal to, if not better than, almost anything I could craft. And I will know exactly what I'm going to get with the rep gear, unlike the pure gamble that is the crafting system.
I honestly don't think this crafting system works as it currently is. I know there is talk that we will be able to choose what mods we want on the gear, but that isn't here now and what we have now is what I'm judging.
I suppose I could at least speculate on the possibility of what the future may hold for the crafting system...
If someday the crafting system does indeed get a feature to create items with specific mods, great. As long as the COST doesn't increase. Otherwise, I doubt I'll waste my time or resources.
With the coming expansion and the level cap increase to lvl 60, I'm betting MK XIII gear will need at least a crafting level of 16-17 to be "on level" to craft items. MK XIV gear will likely need lvl 19-20. Which means that if the time table for the expansion holds out and we do indeed get it in October, it's possible people won't even be lvl 15 in the schools when it releases, maybe within 2-3 weeks after though. And then it's another 6-ish months to get to lvl 20?
6-7 months after Delta Rising goes live, we'll likely have Season 10 and maybe even getting ready for Season 10.5. I can't imagine having to wait THAT long to be able to reliably craft gear for a lvl 60 character. A character that will probably be lvl 60 within a month after DR launches. And that's really freaking slow and taking your time soaking in every piece of story.
But you just know there are going to be folks who will hit level 60 before it's been live a week. At least if lvl 50-60 follows a leveling curve anywhere close to levels 1-50.
/end speculation
Now, since I don't have any real info to go on, most of everything I just typed could become the ramblings of a madman. But one thing is fact, that leveling the crafting system, if done only with crafting level appropriate and usable items, you won't get far at all. Unless you don't mind wasting loads of resources on commons.
If you want to level crafting, the only ways to do it are:
1. Craft what you can while you can including items for alts and using loads of mats to craft components. And also using the 20 hour projects to make headway.
2. Use only the 20 hour projects to level.
3. Craft a boatload of vendor trash, maybe get lucky and make a few thousand EC from time to time as well as running the 20 hour projects
4. Craft. No 20 hour projects and just simply craft.
5. Use insane amounts of Dilithium to speed through to lvl 15.
Options 1 and 2 are reasonable, option 3 is feasible but I can't see lots of people doing it. Option 4 just seems really slow and almost bordering on torture and option 5 is insane to me. Especially considering the Dilithium cost of some of the MK XII gear. Use Dil to craft components that will be used in gear that needs even MORE Dil?
No thanks.
I get that the crafting system isn't going to appeal to everybody. Perhaps I fall into that category, but I don't want to. I would really like to use the system. As it is now though, it's just button clicking for 3+ months with nothing to really show for it.
Oh yeah, I mentioned that I would 'grade' the new crafting system as either...
(a. Great
(b. Eh
(c. Horrid
Well, to be honest, it's definitely not Great but it's not Horrid either. I suppose "Eh" sums it up well enough, though it does lean more to the Horrid side than it does the Great side.
If I were to grade it on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being completely worthless and 10 being everyone needs to do this no matter what, I'd give the system a 4.
If I were to say yay or nay, thumbs up or thumbs down, I'd have to go with nay and thumbs down. But I try not to deal in absolutes.
These are my opinions only and based on what little I've gone through so far. Will my opinion change as time goes on? I'm sure it will. And if it does, I'll let you know. I will continue to update this from time to time. Maybe a couple times a week since I will keep leveling crafting at the very least until I hit t5 in all my reps.
I won't bother keeping track of mat drops anymore since I'll be running the queues now. There are plenty of other topics discussing drop rates.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
My character Tsin'xing
Beams and Ground Weapons are at lvl 7, Engineering is at lvl 6 and Shields is lvl 4. I cannot believe that the crafting progression is so slow. I mean, I can read the numbers and they tell it's a slow progression, but good grief, I'm lvl 50 and have been for a few days and I'd like to craft some gear FOR lvl 50. But I can't, not reliably enough anyway. I'm not wasting VR components that cost Dil to make and even more Dil on top of that to craft what will most likely be commons.
Now, If I could craft at least uncommons (with no chance of getting anything above uncommon AND with my choice of mods) without having to use VR mats or components, I would do that. At least it'd be something.
Already tier 2 in all the reps. Funny thing is, I've gotten some okay equipment already from the random project boxes. And I'm actually using some of it. I've already gotten better lvl 50 random gear from leveling up my rep than I have from crafting. And it'll be that way for some time.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Didn't get any time to even log on today, so zero progress was made. Which almost seems to be what it's like even when I do log in.
Day 18
Beams now at lvl 8, Ground Weapons at lvl 7, Engineering hit lvl 7 as well and Shields is still lvl 4. I'm almost to the point now where I just don't care anymore. Crafting could be fun, but it's almost like Cryptic made it as un-fun as possible. I will keep going, but the longer I do this the lower my opinion of the system gets.
Day 19
Ground Weapons hit lvl 8, Shields hit lvl 5.
Counting myself lucky today as I see that the patch yesterday didn't fix the issue some folks are having with their Crafting/DOff missions stuck in the "Finishing" state. With no emergency patch last night or this morning, those folks are pretty much screwed out of the CXP weekend. Unless they do something later today. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, I suppose.
I know that it's not purely a crafting bug, but with the DOff system so closely tied to crafting, it's starting to look like if a bug hits one, it's going to affect the other. Which is why I'm even mentioning it.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Let me lay out what i have done so far. I got three main chars, 2 fed, one 1 romulan. New chars are klignon and fed. Using all three chars to just run the 20 hour cycles i completeing all the schools.
Pros so far.
1. None of the gear made is tied, so you can sell it. So in my bid to help newbs, i craft purple low level beams /tech and sell it for 10 000 ec. For newbs. I dont need ec just do it cause i know newbs love to have that new thing that is purple with the added extras. And believe me all the stuff i have mad so far have sold.
2. I transfered some of the purple dual beams to my new fed and my new klignon ships and makes the game reasonably better to play those low levels with better tech, due to the fact that you cannot transfer rep gear to your lower level account chars.
3. All my chars have all 4 spaces open and only the main char i run only 3 times the 20 hours a day , leaving the other one open to do the some low level purple gear for sale.
4. Mainly i ignore the r/d tab, at low levels its pointless to make x gear or higher as it will not be functionall to have it made.
Cons.
Everything that you covered leveling wise.
Its lacking some of the stuff that the old system had.
Its boring as heck. Really only the doffing of this three tiered gameplay is mildly ammusing.
Im not going to bother crafting high level gear as you have to pay so much dill into thing that i laugh my TRIBBLE off. Ill rather sink it into my fleet , level in my fleet and buy fleet tech. At least there i get to choose what i get. In this crafting system. I gamble with my dil. No thanks.
If i find more cons i will definately post them
And I completely agree that spending Dilithium on anything in the system is nuts. With rep gear needing Dil, fleets needing Dil, and I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that upgrading t5 ships to t6 will cost Dil as well... yeah, my Dilithium isn't going to be used to gamble on crafting.
Now, I do spend 1k Dil a week per alt to run the Request R&D Assistance mission at the academies. Gotten several crafting DOff's as well as loads of VR components and mats. I could run it twice a week, but once a week is enough.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
More XP towards the schools, but no leveling. Made tier 3 in all the reps today though. At least something is making noticeable progress.
Day 21
Got another decent piece of gear from the rep boxes. I keep going like this I may not even need to get any rep gear for a while since the 'free' stuff will get me through for a long while. That's about it for today.
Wait, I should mention my crafting progress. Oh, right, same as yesterday. XP but no leveling in the schools.
Day 22
Beams hit lvl 9, Engineering hit lvl 8, Ground Weapons still at lvl 8 and Shields is still lvl 5.
No good free gear from the rep boxes today.
Meh.
Day 23
Shields hit lvl 6, everything esle was just XP gain, no leveling.
I wound up getting Gumarre from the Request R&D Assistance mission. It almost made my day until I see that the DOff is character bound... WTF!?
This character is an experiment, my 'real' crafters are much further ahead and could actually USE this DOff since I would actually like to create the Aegis set. But with it locked, I'm stuck with it on this guy.
I suppose I could just keep going with leveling crafting on this guy, at least the schools that have the Aegis parts in them. Sadly, I'm not currently trying to level Science which is where the Deflector is. So that means once my experiment is over, I either keep leveling the schools on a character I don't really want to and wait for the Science school to catch up, which is easily more than 3 months away, or just "waste" a good DOff by having it sit on a character that will never fully use it.
And on a side note, are there common/white versions of an Aegis DOff? Also, wasn't the version of Gumarre that the folks who maxed out the old crafting system received supposed to be Very Rare? I kind of remember reading it was supposed to be, but I see by looking around it isn't.
Why not make either the reward version VR and keep a version of the DOff you can get from the Request R&D Assistance mish Rare and tradable? Or keep the reward version Rare and make the mission one Uncommon and tradable. Or just make it tradable, period.
It makes me wonder sometimes, it's like Cryptic had all these good ideas for the crafting system and did the opposite.
Got an okay ground weapon from a Rep box today. Still, getting random stuff from leveling Rep is better than getting nothing from crafting.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
I had a strong hunch that out-levelling crafted items would be an issue, so it's good to see confirmation of that. Hopefully the Devs will take notice and make some kind of adjustment. I'm only running the 20h project on my alts at present, but like the OP I'm in it for the long haul so I guess I'll level up when I level up (Crafting). Not worried about trying to craft anything level 50 useful at the moment.
I can relate to accidentally spending Dilithium on it. I did that myself the other day. My fault, really. Just not paying enough attention. Could certainly be an issue if they ever integrate this into the Gateway and people are swiping through projects on a touchscreen.
On the other hand, I might not want to have to confirm it every single time. Maybe a button to lock/unlock early completion? Tradeoffs. Fast, but subject to human error? Or safe but requiring extra click throughs every single time? Since there's no win-win, I'd expect Cryptic to err on the side of fast unless there's a lot of complaints.
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I wouldn't mind a button that could be turned on/off to confirm spending Dil on crafting. Since my boo-boo with accidentally spending Dil to complete some nearly complete projects, I've been much more careful about just rushing through and clicking anything when it comes to the crafting system.
I can definitely see problems if they do indeed make the system compatible with the Gateway. Touchscreens can be finicky sometimes and accidental double taps or mistaps (is that even a word?) happen all the time, for me anyway.
One thing I need to emphasize, this particular character is an experiment. I actually am leveling crafting on 7 other alts, 1 school per to specialize in. I made enough early progress this way back when we could run multiple 20 hour projects that consolidating it down to 2 or 3 would take too much time (in my mind at the time) to 'catch up'. Now that I've gotten even further along, I have no plans to change that now.
Since I do make alts, crafting low level gear for them is something I have been doing on my main crafters. I don't want it to sound like I'm being completely negative in my appraisal of the system. I do like it, to a point. I'm just not keen on my initial impressions of the overall cost of crafting, the amount of time crafting matches up with character leveling and the length of time it takes to get to a high enough level to make things for lvl 50. Especially considering how fast characters can get to level 50.
I will sit down one of these days and look over the various lvl 50 gear and do a cost comparison between rep gear and crafted gear. I won't bother comparing stats, or arguing which is better, it'll just be a simple "this Rep deflector costs X while this crafted deflector costs Y". Something I haven't done and by not giving it the attention it may deserve, it may have tainted my view of the crafting system.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
IMHO you should go ahead and craft items that are the best your character can use. So what if you get whites? You get hardly *any* tactical consoles at low levels, almost none from missions and almost none from loot (finding 3 matched tier 5 green disruptor consoles before you level up to use tier 6 for example is impossible without exchange or crafting or vendor etc). With crafting you can make weapons of the same type and match with consoles and use them; even if white quality they will do fine.
You can make up to mark X for "free" using only looted/acquired materials. X is sufficient to play STFs on normal at 50 and you can upgrade from there.
Also, you can do fleet alerts every half hour after level 5, which gives material boxes. You can also just buy these boxes if you have any money.
Like any crafting system, it does take some farming to gather materials. And most games make it much harder to craft for yourself on-level. Here, you can make mark X items on day 1, you just have a high % of white quality items.
And like any system, investments reap rewards. a little work buying or farming or whatever for crafting officers is a big deal. I have a purple fab engineer and I routinely get 3x parts; that really helps with the blue rare materials. Nothing like asking for 4 blue parts that each take 3 rubidium and getting 12 as a bonus!
All that said, its pretty tedious to do it without spending anything. My best is rank 12 beams and I have worked it almost daily since released. I have rank 10 in almost everything, but I have an army of characters and was able to cherry pick off my officers from all of those, dump them onto 3 crafting characters, and from there work all the schools in parallel. And the only way to be ahead of me would be to have spent dil on the system or to have had a very large pile of blue materials; I had a decent supply of old mats that converted to a good pile of new mats and I still ran out after 2 weeks and now have to do many STFs daily for boxes to feed the machine.
A bonus, though: every blue or purple you make is account bound so you can re-use them on all alts after the first.
So while you could have made yourself some gear at the appropriate levels, everything else is pretty much spot on: it is not a great system for a new player with only 1 character, not at all. However the player that does this as he levels up and plays will have a major leg up on his alts...
But I did this wanting to see what a player, mostly a new player, may experience. I have a friend who is interested in the game and I decided that since the crafting system would be new for me, as well as for him, I'd see what it may be like coming in 'blind'.
I did pass up on making things all the way to MK X. That wasn't intended, but it's how things worked out. I wanted to get an idea of if it was even possible to just play the game, gather materials and make things to use as I leveled. I quickly found that it wasn't, at least not without buying things off the exchange or farming.
I wanted to craft things all the way to MK X, but I quickly ran out of mats and I had to buy off the exchange to craft what I did. This is not a bad thing overall, but for this experiment, it was a negative. I wanted to keep it as 'pure' as I could and if I'd stuck to my original intentions, I actually wouldn't have crafted anything since I didn't have the mats to do it. Other than the occasional component.
As I've said in prior posts, I have my main crafters and they make things for my alts while leveling. Except for this particular character. I want to see and show what my friend may be facing. Just because I like a game (and I do like STO) doesn't mean others will. So since I have the time and am willing to put forth the effort, it seemed like a decent idea.
I don't want folks to think that with me doing this, that this is what everyone can expect or how everyone needs to do it. I know I'm not being 'optimal', but I would like to think I'm being at least somewhat reasonable. It just seems like there could be some adjustments made to make things sync up a bit more.
Maybe have the number of mats that drop from nodes increased, especially the rares. Or lower the amount of mats needed to craft components, or even lowering the number of components needed to craft items.
I'm not just complaining to complain. I'm putting my experience out there for everyone to see, including the Devs. I'm offering ideas on how things could be improved. Maybe not the best ideas, mind you.
Anyway, I appreciate that so many people are showing an interest in this. I'll continue with updates for about another week or so, depending on when this character gets to t5 in the reps. I'm not in game right now and I can't remember exactly how far along he is, but since he's been sponsored, it'll be fairly soon.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
This entire time I thought that there was a Dilithium cost to craft MK X and above items, on top of having to spend Dil to make the components. I was given some bad information in that regard. I never really bothered to open up the window and actually LOOK at what it cost. Sure, I'd looked at what I could make, but never the cost. Mostly because I'm not high enough to actually be able to reliably craft anything that level, but also because of the misinformation I had.
Unless there's something hidden that I'm not seeing, since I don't have all the components to actaully make anything that level. But even I'm not that big a conspiracy nut.
So with that said, I can see that crafted items are much cheaper than Rep items.
Even comparing just the items you can get from the Rep stores, crafting is cheaper. I still say that the randomness of what mods you get on crafted gear makes the thought of spending ANY Dilithium abhorant to me. If the cost were cut by half or more, it may hold more appeal.
Or if someday we can pick and choose what mods we want, I guess I would be content with the current Dil price for crafting.
Basically, I jumped to conclusions and was wrong. So this is another PLUS for crafting.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Ground Weapons hit lvl 9, the other schools just made XP progress.
Another okay ground weapon from a Rep box. This stuff will be decent on BOff's at least. While I'm getting 5 Rep boxes a day, and recently it's only been 1 of those 5 giving up something decent, I at least am getting something.
Day 25
Only XP progress today for the schools.
A couple of decent drops from the Rep boxes today. 8 more days and I'll be tier 5 in all the reps.
Day 26
XP for the schools.
Good day for Rep boxes as I got a Borg Neural Processor and an Isomorphic Injection along with 2 useful pieces of gear.
Day 27
Beams hit lvl 10, Engineering hit lvl 9, Shields hit lvl 7 and Ground Weapons is stil at lvl 9.
Progress today, but with the ever increasing XP needed to reach the next level, this may be the last leveling I'll see while still running this experiment. Except for Ground Weapons tomorrow and *maybe* one more level for Shields.
A couple more decent drops from the Rep boxes including a Voth Cybernetic Implant, but nothing spectacular.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Got tired of this sisyphustic grind that has arcane descriptions, missing weapons(ground), modifiers of questionable value (E.g. PvP mods), non linear distribution of favorable outcomes and exotic mods gated with specific doffs that I decided to go outside and ride a bike.