How much cash money did WoW players pay for that raid gear?
That!
AND Starship is much more than Gear, if someone is just interested in Gear, then she Hull doesnt matter, for most of us the Ship is a bit more.
For that Reason Doc Emmet Brown used a DeLorean as "Hull" for his Time Machine (if you travel, then with style), now imagine the second Part with a Volkswagen or Mitsubishi, because the Mr. Fusion "did not fit".
Beta, LTA, CE, Multiple preorder Versions, all Addon Packs except AoY, nearly all KDF/Rom and ~50% of all Fedships, over 25 LockboxShips, Endurer of Atari's "Year of Hell", but...
I think this is silly. People put a lot of effort into their Heroic raid gear in WoW, yet with each expansion they gleefully leave that work behind and plunge into the next 10 levels of content, quest greens and all.
I think it IS time for a reset! Leave behind all the madness and start fresh with a new, unabashedly more powerful tier.
It's not like people don't fly T3 and T4 ships in T5 content currently anyway for more of a challenge. It's not impossible.
My biggest concern is we are getting T6 ships, but are we getting T6 content? Or T6 versions of current content?
Also, lets do the math, 7 to 10 new ships? That's not nearly enough. That's just about one choice per role per faction. (Sci, Tac, Engi, x3 factions = 9 plus what, a random carrier or BoP?). That's pretty poor.
I would vote for no dev time spent developing some 'upgrade' system for current ships, tack a few months onto release date, and spend time developing two or three options per role, per faction.
Since you chose to go with the WoW analogy, I'll give you this:
With every expansion reset in WoW, did you suddenly get a new class to play? Did Warrior1 become Warrior2 at the launch of TBC, and Warrior3 at the launch of WotLK? No. You still play the same class, yet your overall gear level increased with each expansion. In STO, that could be compared to the Mk XII gear being replaced by Mk XIV gear in Delta Rising.
Being able to keep the same ships at Tier 6, with any and all abilities afforded to Tier 6 ships, is the bare minimum required. You have plenty of max level Fleets who have spent a good year or so building up their holdings, to get access to all of the Fleet ships. You have all the people who have invested in obtaining a Lockbox ship. We don't want these ships to be competitive at level 60. We want them to still be EQUAL to any of the new ships at Level 60.
The reason we got Tier 5 Retrofits of the hero ships (Defiant, Intrepid and Galaxy) when the game bumped up to Level 50 cap, was precisely because they were hero ships. But now, 4 years later, we've spent a good deal more time and effort in obtaining not just these retrofits, but their Fleet upgraded variants. Will Fleet ships be left in the dirt at Tier 5, or somehow sub-standard to the new Tier 6's ? Somehow, I think there will be quite a lot of outrage from the larger Fleets if Fleet ships aren't upgraded to full Tier 6. Likewise, similar outcry from the people who have purchased a Lockbox ship at one time or another (myself included).
What Mr D'Angelo should've said in his blog, is NOT "We have new ships coming..." (we know this, it's part of the announcement). What he should say is, What ships that we have NOW will be upgradable to Tier 6, and what will be required to upgrade them? "Pitchforks sales" may be diminishing after this blog post, but the forum rage will likely continue.
That!
AND Starship is much more than Gear, if someone is just interested in Gear, then she Hull doesnt matter, for most of us the Ship is a bit more.
For that Reason Doc Emmet Brown used a DeLorean as "Hull" for his Time Machine (if you travel, then with style), now imagine the second Part with a Volkswagen or Mitsubishi, because the Mr. Fusion "did not fit".
Uh, no, starships are exactly gear.
____________________________________________________
Pay no attention to the dates and titles under my name at the left! I am a Career Officer, Lifetime Sub since launch, was in the Beta. Having problems with my forum account.
I see this argument a lot. How much cash money did I pay for my ships? I've got quite a few too. The answer is none. I haven't paid money for any zen at all. Yet I've got lots of zen store ships, fleet ships, even a few lockbox ships and lobi items.
People pay cash for convenience, not as the only path to obtaining anything in this game. You don't have to pay a dime.
Honestly, I sometimes feel guilty for getting all that I get without paying Cryptic anything. But if you're willing to invest time, just like in any other MMO out there, you can get what you want in the game.
I've got a lot of C-Store ships, and I've gotten maybe half of them by grinding dil to exchange for Zen, like you. But players who do that for ships (we're talking 350k-400k dilithium or more for a pack) are probably a very small minority.
Does everyone remember that guy who spent $600 trying- and failing- to get a bugship? Well, for everyone like him who spent a ton of $$$ failing to get a lockbox ship, many people succeeded. That's a lot of money for ships. So far we've got confirmation that the JHAS will become T6. What of the others?
Funny how they have to put in the line "Excitement Around Delta Rising" as the title to make it seem like it's going well, before they've released any useful details and vast swaths of the community feeling uneasy at best.
"Vexation Around Delta Rising" would be more appropriate at this stage I reckon.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
1st, What about the faction flagship lines (Oddy's, Bortas, and Scimitars)? I thought they were supposed to be THE top of the line ship (Obviously a good player with the right build can annihilate the; I mean in terms of NPCs); After all, the Enterprise is an Oddy, and the Enterprise is always a top of the line ship for at least a few years. It's been, what, maybe one game year (I am aware it was 2409 and now it's 2410; doesn't mean 12 months have passed)?
2nd, What about my fleet ships? They already are better than Tier 5 ships, and I had to put extra zen out to acquire them.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] Boldly going where no one has gone before!
Not really. As has been said time and time again, while in space, your ship is your "Avatar", akin to WoW's Warrior or Rogue or Priest classes. A new expansion gives us new gear, to use on our Avatars. If we choose to "transmogrify" our Avatar into a Tier 6 looking ship, we still use exactly the same gear as can currently be used by players in a Tier 1 ship.
Blizzard doesn't force players to roll a new class, just so they can use the latest gear. Which is exactly what it is, in STO when you are forced to fly a ship you don't want to. If Tier 6 ships have some new feature which ONLY Tier 6 ships have access to, then no matter what assurances from Mr D'Angelo, Tier 5 will NOT be competitive. A player can fly his Tier 1 Miranda into an Elite STF. Doesn't mean he's competitive. Likewise, I'm certain Tier 5 ships will be capable of running an Elite Level 60 STF. But they sure as hell won't be competitive.
This, exactly. Why else was there a bug that when you beamed down you were still your ship or when you beamed up you were still your ground toon?
That was cute, terrorizing Vega Colony in a Mini-Miranda.
Beta, LTA, CE, Multiple preorder Versions, all Addon Packs except AoY, nearly all KDF/Rom and ~50% of all Fedships, over 25 LockboxShips, Endurer of Atari's "Year of Hell", but...
To be fair, that comparison is a bit disjointed, as the Cylons' plan was to wipe out humanity. Ostensibly the devs' plan is to provide content to the players.
From the changes that have happened since season 9 I would surmise that cryptics plan is to wipe the veteran playerbase.
Do Livetimers and 1000 day veterans get early access like that with LOR?
Early access? I was around for LoR and don't remember anything about early access for those carrying gold subscriptions. I only remember that they locked out testing early on in Season 8.
Uh, no, ships aren't just gear. Not like the equipment on them. I don't care if I have to upgrade to Mk XIV weapons. I may complain about the costs of doing that, but buying new weapons or a new shield is an established part of the game.
Like I said earlier, I'm not playing STO for the MMO aspect, however much I partake in that. I'm playing for the same reason I started playing in 2010- for the little Star Trek ships. In some cases, specific ships.
And that doesn't include Cryptic's idea of an ugly T6 escort or cruiser.
Honestly, I sometimes feel guilty for getting all that I get without paying Cryptic anything. But if you're willing to invest time, just like in any other MMO out there, you can get what you want in the game.
Don't feel guilty, as I said - someone payed for that anyway.
Another game with "star" in its name tried that a long time ago. Wonder how that worked out?
Wait... it was turned by a cloak and dagger operation into a "Crazy Chicken"-Style shooter, then "lived" a undead exisence for several years until they pulled the plug?
(2-3 weeks or so before they changed the Game System someone posted Informations on the forum, we laughed at him, called him a conspiracy theorist, ~ 10 Years later i still feel bad)
Beta, LTA, CE, Multiple preorder Versions, all Addon Packs except AoY, nearly all KDF/Rom and ~50% of all Fedships, over 25 LockboxShips, Endurer of Atari's "Year of Hell", but...
What is it with blogs with-out info ??
We need info, not new ships are comming, we alread know that..
The info is this:
The info you desire does not exist yet. Cryptic is still testing things, and they will be testing things on Tribble, and ask for feedback.
The goal is to have a way to make all Tier 5 ships competitive with Tier 6 ships.
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Maybe the easiest thing to do would be just to add whatever extra consoles or BO slots and hull points and whatever is needed with the patch.
I really do noit want to go through the trouble of unequipping all gear on my ships, dismissing it, and then reacquiring the new ship.
Alternatively, you will need the ability to add whatever is needed on the ship as I already own it, with some item or device. I don't know what is really more likely to work.
Please don't make Tier 5 to TIer 6 upgrades be like Fleet Tier 5 refits of Tier 2 to TIer 4 ships- they should genuinely have no numerical drawbacks in comparision. It's okay if Tier 6 ships have access to some new powers Tier 5 ships don't have, provided the new powers are balanced against existing ones.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Adding my 2 cents... Beware of the mistakes that other MMOs make. Increasing a leveling cap is fine, but the content must be interesting enough for people to want to do run it again and again, since many people have multiple characters. Blizzard has never learned this and people have left WOW in droves. Personally I like a variety of story lines over increased leveling caps.
As far as the tier 6 ships, technology changes and advances but skill should always be more important than equipment, especially when you only talking slight advancements. This is another mistake MMO's like WOW made.
Cryptic, you have a good game that I much enjoy, please put a lot of thought in to changes so you do not ruin it.
Some information is better than no information. What I got from this blog is solid details are coming within the next 3 weeks if nothing happens and this will hit tribble soon.
Meh. I'll be ecstatic if you guys have the Romulan Junior Officer thing fixed for next weekend.
A Trill, a Gorn, a Jem'Hadar, Bejoran and a Voth walk into a bar, and the Bartender asks "What is this a Joke?"
"Nope, just my away team" the trill replies before ordering a round for the bar.
We expect to be ready to share full details on the starships within the coming three weeks.
So you haven't finalized all the upgrade details yet and you need more time? Fair enough. I mean I personally get that there are a lot of Tier 5 ships in the game and that from the developer's standpoint each different version of a ship is considered a different ship. Take the Assault Cruiser line for example. There's the free Tier 5 Assault Cruiser, the Mirror Assault Cruiser (that uses the Star Cruiser skins), the C-Store Assault Cruiser Refit, and the Fleet Assault Cruiser Refit. What's the upgrade path for that? Do all 4 upgrade into the same Near-T6 Retrofit or is the mirror ship an outlier or does it just not upgrade at all? Or take the C-Store three pack ships, each one contains a different ship that leans a little more tac, eng, or sci? Do they upgrade to one ship or three different version? And even the Oddy and Bort have the freebee anniversary version (that's also available from the fleet stores), what do you do with that?
What I'm saying is I get that it's a lot of work to figure out. And personally I'm glad I'm not one of the devs stuck in a room trying to plan out the stats for each of the upgraded stats, trying to keep they relatively balanced. Because everyone is aware that if some popular ships when upgraded end up being subpar there's going to be cries for blood on the forums. :P
So yeah, I'm glad you're letting us know you're working on it. And I'm glad you're taking the time to get it right. So thanks.
And since you've set a timetable I'm personally going to back off on demanding updates on the upgrade system. Of course if you don't get it done and announced in three weeks time I'll be back with the pitchforks and torches. :P
Comments
That!
AND Starship is much more than Gear, if someone is just interested in Gear, then she Hull doesnt matter, for most of us the Ship is a bit more.
For that Reason Doc Emmet Brown used a DeLorean as "Hull" for his Time Machine (if you travel, then with style), now imagine the second Part with a Volkswagen or Mitsubishi, because the Mr. Fusion "did not fit".
Since you chose to go with the WoW analogy, I'll give you this:
With every expansion reset in WoW, did you suddenly get a new class to play? Did Warrior1 become Warrior2 at the launch of TBC, and Warrior3 at the launch of WotLK? No. You still play the same class, yet your overall gear level increased with each expansion. In STO, that could be compared to the Mk XII gear being replaced by Mk XIV gear in Delta Rising.
Being able to keep the same ships at Tier 6, with any and all abilities afforded to Tier 6 ships, is the bare minimum required. You have plenty of max level Fleets who have spent a good year or so building up their holdings, to get access to all of the Fleet ships. You have all the people who have invested in obtaining a Lockbox ship. We don't want these ships to be competitive at level 60. We want them to still be EQUAL to any of the new ships at Level 60.
The reason we got Tier 5 Retrofits of the hero ships (Defiant, Intrepid and Galaxy) when the game bumped up to Level 50 cap, was precisely because they were hero ships. But now, 4 years later, we've spent a good deal more time and effort in obtaining not just these retrofits, but their Fleet upgraded variants. Will Fleet ships be left in the dirt at Tier 5, or somehow sub-standard to the new Tier 6's ? Somehow, I think there will be quite a lot of outrage from the larger Fleets if Fleet ships aren't upgraded to full Tier 6. Likewise, similar outcry from the people who have purchased a Lockbox ship at one time or another (myself included).
What Mr D'Angelo should've said in his blog, is NOT "We have new ships coming..." (we know this, it's part of the announcement). What he should say is, What ships that we have NOW will be upgradable to Tier 6, and what will be required to upgrade them? "Pitchforks sales" may be diminishing after this blog post, but the forum rage will likely continue.
Uh, no, starships are exactly gear.
Pay no attention to the dates and titles under my name at the left! I am a Career Officer, Lifetime Sub since launch, was in the Beta. Having problems with my forum account.
I'm sorry to people who I, in the past, insulted, annoyed, etc.
I've got a lot of C-Store ships, and I've gotten maybe half of them by grinding dil to exchange for Zen, like you. But players who do that for ships (we're talking 350k-400k dilithium or more for a pack) are probably a very small minority.
Does everyone remember that guy who spent $600 trying- and failing- to get a bugship? Well, for everyone like him who spent a ton of $$$ failing to get a lockbox ship, many people succeeded. That's a lot of money for ships. So far we've got confirmation that the JHAS will become T6. What of the others?
"Vexation Around Delta Rising" would be more appropriate at this stage I reckon.
2nd, What about my fleet ships? They already are better than Tier 5 ships, and I had to put extra zen out to acquire them.
Boldly going where no one has gone before!
The details are still being worked on, as explained in the blog.
Actually, in STO, starships are your space character... Not gear...
Gear goes into ship (sounds painful) not the other way around.
This, exactly. Why else was there a bug that when you beamed down you were still your ship or when you beamed up you were still your ground toon?
Not really. As has been said time and time again, while in space, your ship is your "Avatar", akin to WoW's Warrior or Rogue or Priest classes. A new expansion gives us new gear, to use on our Avatars. If we choose to "transmogrify" our Avatar into a Tier 6 looking ship, we still use exactly the same gear as can currently be used by players in a Tier 1 ship.
Blizzard doesn't force players to roll a new class, just so they can use the latest gear. Which is exactly what it is, in STO when you are forced to fly a ship you don't want to. If Tier 6 ships have some new feature which ONLY Tier 6 ships have access to, then no matter what assurances from Mr D'Angelo, Tier 5 will NOT be competitive. A player can fly his Tier 1 Miranda into an Elite STF. Doesn't mean he's competitive. Likewise, I'm certain Tier 5 ships will be capable of running an Elite Level 60 STF. But they sure as hell won't be competitive.
Helpful Tools: Dictionary.com - Logical fallacies - Random generator - Word generator - Color tool - Extra Credits - List of common English language errors - New T6 Big booty tutorial
That was cute, terrorizing Vega Colony in a Mini-Miranda.
From the changes that have happened since season 9 I would surmise that cryptics plan is to wipe the veteran playerbase.
Wasn't it though?
Early access? I was around for LoR and don't remember anything about early access for those carrying gold subscriptions. I only remember that they locked out testing early on in Season 8.
Another game with "star" in its name tried that a long time ago. Wonder how that worked out?
Are we getting a new, free ship like we did for levels 10-40? Or are our free level 40 ships being able to be upgraded to a level 60 equivalent?
Like I said earlier, I'm not playing STO for the MMO aspect, however much I partake in that. I'm playing for the same reason I started playing in 2010- for the little Star Trek ships. In some cases, specific ships.
And that doesn't include Cryptic's idea of an ugly T6 escort or cruiser.
Someone had to buy Zen for $$$ in order to trade it to you for that convenience.
Don't feel guilty, as I said - someone payed for that anyway.
Wait... it was turned by a cloak and dagger operation into a "Crazy Chicken"-Style shooter, then "lived" a undead exisence for several years until they pulled the plug?
(2-3 weeks or so before they changed the Game System someone posted Informations on the forum, we laughed at him, called him a conspiracy theorist, ~ 10 Years later i still feel bad)
The info you desire does not exist yet. Cryptic is still testing things, and they will be testing things on Tribble, and ask for feedback.
The goal is to have a way to make all Tier 5 ships competitive with Tier 6 ships.
---
Maybe the easiest thing to do would be just to add whatever extra consoles or BO slots and hull points and whatever is needed with the patch.
I really do noit want to go through the trouble of unequipping all gear on my ships, dismissing it, and then reacquiring the new ship.
Alternatively, you will need the ability to add whatever is needed on the ship as I already own it, with some item or device. I don't know what is really more likely to work.
Please don't make Tier 5 to TIer 6 upgrades be like Fleet Tier 5 refits of Tier 2 to TIer 4 ships- they should genuinely have no numerical drawbacks in comparision. It's okay if Tier 6 ships have access to some new powers Tier 5 ships don't have, provided the new powers are balanced against existing ones.
At least $65. $50 for the expansion itself, and at least $15 for one month sub fee.
The Photons on the miranda doing 2x the damage than the HP on the drones was rather helpful.
As far as the tier 6 ships, technology changes and advances but skill should always be more important than equipment, especially when you only talking slight advancements. This is another mistake MMO's like WOW made.
Cryptic, you have a good game that I much enjoy, please put a lot of thought in to changes so you do not ruin it.
Word has come from the Ivory Tower, which means the greatgodmetricswhomustbeobeyed has roused him or her self.
While details would be lovely, I'm relatively content that the EP has even noticed the issue.
Given there isn't a vast amount of working days before the announced start date, I'd expect some more meat on these bones sooner rather than later.
And the greatgodmetricswhomustbeobeyed will probably ensure we'll be able to keep our tier 5 ships competitive.
"Nope, just my away team" the trill replies before ordering a round for the bar.
What I'm saying is I get that it's a lot of work to figure out. And personally I'm glad I'm not one of the devs stuck in a room trying to plan out the stats for each of the upgraded stats, trying to keep they relatively balanced. Because everyone is aware that if some popular ships when upgraded end up being subpar there's going to be cries for blood on the forums. :P
So yeah, I'm glad you're letting us know you're working on it. And I'm glad you're taking the time to get it right. So thanks.
And since you've set a timetable I'm personally going to back off on demanding updates on the upgrade system. Of course if you don't get it done and announced in three weeks time I'll be back with the pitchforks and torches. :P
Yep. Nothing we haven't already heard repeatedly: "We'll take care of you." Move along, nothing to see here.