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varthelm
Member Posts: 265 Arc User
While we certainly have had our ups and downs with the new expansion (the content itself has been very good btw...great job there), I believe Cryptic has taken us backwards in one important aspect I thought they had already received the message on.
This new expansion introduced a great deal of additional grind which we can debate on but it is all grind per character. For those of us with alts we kit out and play like our mains, this becomes a huge issue. Cryptic had issues with this in the past that made new content and systems an unnecessary and unenjoyable experience and took steps to resolve it. For example...
The Rep System - Lets face it, time gated projects to achieve an end that simply involve having to play with a bunch of slide bars over and over again is not fun and will never be. Going though it on one character was one thing....but the same grind on each toon over and over quickly became intolerable as more reps were added.
Not only did cryptic give us double rep rewards on alts after completing a rep on our main but I like the limited traits function as no matter how many they add, you can still pick the 4 most effective. We'll still get tired of constantly getting new reps when we have that kind of limit but it does limit the need to get EVERY rep.
Special events - The races in the winter and the pearls in the summer. Those simply sucked if you had to run them for more than one toon. The anniversary event right after Winter instituting an even more annoying "do this every day for 3 weeks or else lose out" grind for every toon almost put me over the edge. Then the ray of sunshine hit. Do it on one toon fully, all alts only have to run the event once. For the first time, I was able to really enjoy Risa rather than curse it's existence. What a great change.
With these positive changes leading up to this expansion, I was surprised at what we've been hit with in the expansion....
- we now have this huge specialization system that (unless I am wrong) will have to be ground at the same rate per character.
- we now have a massive upgrade grind for our gear per character. For me, that meant 8 fully kitted alts with sizable ship collections (they were all worth money to you Cryptic...just sayin).
- T5U and T6 ships have to be leveled for mastery individually. Completing on one ship for one toon does nothing for another toon flying the same ship.
- All toons must be leveled now to 60. Level cap increases are so unnecessary but I could have lived with this.
As a result, I am down to one toon. It's not even what I'd consider my main. I had only invested in 2 energy types with this one limiting the amount of tac consoles and weapons that would need upgrading and as a Rom, his ship selection is effective but much smaller. I was fully playing and paying Cryptic money for 8 toons total.
This is a step backwards in my opinion and some consideration for having already accomplished a grind on one toon should be considered for specializations and ship mastery at least.
This new expansion introduced a great deal of additional grind which we can debate on but it is all grind per character. For those of us with alts we kit out and play like our mains, this becomes a huge issue. Cryptic had issues with this in the past that made new content and systems an unnecessary and unenjoyable experience and took steps to resolve it. For example...
The Rep System - Lets face it, time gated projects to achieve an end that simply involve having to play with a bunch of slide bars over and over again is not fun and will never be. Going though it on one character was one thing....but the same grind on each toon over and over quickly became intolerable as more reps were added.
Not only did cryptic give us double rep rewards on alts after completing a rep on our main but I like the limited traits function as no matter how many they add, you can still pick the 4 most effective. We'll still get tired of constantly getting new reps when we have that kind of limit but it does limit the need to get EVERY rep.
Special events - The races in the winter and the pearls in the summer. Those simply sucked if you had to run them for more than one toon. The anniversary event right after Winter instituting an even more annoying "do this every day for 3 weeks or else lose out" grind for every toon almost put me over the edge. Then the ray of sunshine hit. Do it on one toon fully, all alts only have to run the event once. For the first time, I was able to really enjoy Risa rather than curse it's existence. What a great change.
With these positive changes leading up to this expansion, I was surprised at what we've been hit with in the expansion....
- we now have this huge specialization system that (unless I am wrong) will have to be ground at the same rate per character.
- we now have a massive upgrade grind for our gear per character. For me, that meant 8 fully kitted alts with sizable ship collections (they were all worth money to you Cryptic...just sayin).
- T5U and T6 ships have to be leveled for mastery individually. Completing on one ship for one toon does nothing for another toon flying the same ship.
- All toons must be leveled now to 60. Level cap increases are so unnecessary but I could have lived with this.
As a result, I am down to one toon. It's not even what I'd consider my main. I had only invested in 2 energy types with this one limiting the amount of tac consoles and weapons that would need upgrading and as a Rom, his ship selection is effective but much smaller. I was fully playing and paying Cryptic money for 8 toons total.
This is a step backwards in my opinion and some consideration for having already accomplished a grind on one toon should be considered for specializations and ship mastery at least.
Post edited by varthelm on
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So I'm told you don't get more skill points with the moved goalpost. Who cares if you can call yourself fleet admiral or dahar master if you still have the same skill points (366,000) that you had when you hit lvl 40.
I'm lvl 56 now and nothings changed.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Er, what? I mean, sure, you have to go to the ship selector on each character and click "upgrade", but it only costs once. It's free on all the other characters.
Or are you talking about upgrading gear? Because that's 1) a different issue than upgrading ships, and 2) has always been the case in every game with an expansion/level cap increase/DLC/etc. New content comes out, and there's new gear to collect. Whether you have one char or 40.
(Now, I'll admit I'm not as bothered by this, even though I have alt-itis. But that's because I don't upgrade all my toons to Super Ultra Maximum. I mostly make alts to play different levelup paths & fly different ships, not for "end game" stuff. So, kind of different case. But still - MMOs put out new content, which means you need new gear. This has been true for 10-15+ years. Having other alts to gear up gives you something to do in the other months in between content releases, after your main is good or if you want a change of pace/gameplay.)
You haven't gained any specialization points & abilities? Sounds like a bug.
To them this isn't and hate to say it, you need to expect things to go more into this direction. The game is alt friendly if:
1) You have the time
1-A) You have the resources(money)
2) You are ok with the fact that your alts may not be all that competitive and cannot get end gear/rep/ships etc.
3) You keep them in reserve incase you want a change in class type and have a new main(not really an alt I guess but good to have a back up plan just incase).
There is no way at this point now Cryptic can reverse or make the game save your alts as you describe it.
Cryptic tires to get short term gain but ignores the repercussions it will have in the long run. The result of all the reps and upgrade stuff that takes you months and months and unbelievable amounts of resources will be, that people will stop playing alts and new players won't get into the game at all.
That also means, that the amount of money people will spend on new stuff for new characters will plummet dramatically.
Just the sheer amount of work you have to do, just to equip a new ship will stop people from buying new ships.
Just imagine you are playing a antiproton beam boat and now you want to change into a plasma or disruptor cannon/torp boat. How much resources does it take to buy all the weapons and consoles AND then upgrade them to at least very rare MK IV (never even mind epic)?
This could mean they may plan on shutting down the game in a year or two in favour of allocating the development team on a new project (if they haven't already started one).
Not unheard of for a company to squeeze as much money out of a business before closing it down in favour of a more profitable idea.
And so far I no longer see signs of dedication towards the future of STO. Their latest additions are nothing but broken and untested content. The entire upgrade system is one big copy/paste project. Long term bugs arent being fixed. Exchange is outdated and half broken. The reputation system is a system that allows a specific set of content to by added in with easy (copy/paste).
They have simple stopped innovating entirely. Everything they now add are systems that are designed to copy content with speed and efficiency.
sig
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It is a peculiar phenomenon that we can imagine events that defy the laws of the universe.
My nine chars are spread across all three factions, and except for 2 of my Feds, none fly the same ship prior to DR.
I'm not even gonna touch the ship mastery and specialization systems since they're nothing more than massive timesinks with no end in sight.
So the 4 spec points don't count in the progression description in-game ? Every rank from 50-55 says '363,000 skill points spent' and once lvl 55 is reached it jumps to 457,000 skill points. Where are they getting that big number of skill points spent from- specialization points ? Again, they didn't count until lvl 55, and again only at lvl 60 (749,000 IIRC)? The don't show ANY increase except at those 2 ranks, tho you get a spec point at every rank increase. What am I missing ? Is it just bad writing of the descriptions, or a broken game mechanic ?
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci
Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac
Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
Still as per the OP I am very much an altaholic and so these changes will just force me to cut back on what I do as I now know for sure I can never max anything for certain as well as having a lot of equipment content totally out of reach. Cryptic has certainly found the cure for my STO addiction.
Still waiting to be able to use forum titles
This is nothing new at all. The vast majority of what they do is copy/paste. That was evident a few years back when I saw the contents of one of the .hogg files and saw all the CO related resources. It's also evident in that Neverwinter launched with several identical bug and exploits that STO suffered early on, and why many of the same bugs keep popping up over and over again. To be honest I'm surprised that a development company can survive this long doing things they way they do.
How is it any different now post DR -- I mean this totally seriously and sincerely because frankly it sounds like a total entitlement whine. Again you invested time to gain resources to set up your alts as you wanted prior. Now you have to do the same post DR. Invest time to level up, to gain resources to get stuff. And you are doing this the same way you did before by playing the game. I don't see anything insidious about that at all. For those that want alts to be as complete and developed as their main, well you have to spend more time doing that. It is really about defining what you want to do in this game and what is important to you. And how quickly you want it.
The amount of time & money (Dilithium) is way different than before ... was pretty easy to lvl & gear up Alts before ... pretty much impossible now ...
i.E. : going through 50 "Levels of Grind" to gain 50 Spec. Points on multiple toons, is pretty much borderline insane imho ...
Actually, if you group up a team at Japori, you can level a ship quickly. Did 3 in one night.
Temporal Sci
Jem'Hadar Dreadnaught
Risian Cruiser
Ship Mastery = yes / Spec. Points = not so much ... probably, because you already have to buy Ship Masteries with T6 Ships ...
--Red Annorax
I meant mastery levels...not the t5 to t5u upgrade....hasty post on my part. Sorry bout that.
Much greater time and/or money investment per toon to reach a solidly effective endgame position....that's the gist.
Besides...the point of leveling is to be done with it.
This is already live in neverwinter. 2,500 zen to complete sharandar and 3000 for dread ring. Icewind, PvP and tyrrany you still can't buy.
Which does surprise me, since I'd figure PvP rep to be the biggest moneymaker of them all. Pve people hate it, PvP people are willing to spend for stat advantages.
Which is great if you have that amount of time. As I have to work, I only get an hour or two for gaming, and that barely covers off Doffing since they broke that.
On top of that, between multiple characters, I also have multiple ships I use. Now while only 3 or 4 are upgraded, since they were free, it's still an annoying amount of time to process all of them (27 to 36 ships).
TLDR: It's by design. They don't want you playing a massive amount of alts on a single account.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
^^^^
If the above were the case, I sincerely doubt PWE would authorize the outlay of funds needed to procure actual former Star Trek (hollywood) actors to reprise their roles and provide voice over. If anything the paradigm shift to more small monetization across all their game mechanics (crafting, item upgrade, etc) shows they are gearing up for the long haul here, as they expect even ultra casuals may throw in a dollar or two here and there (in addition to the 10% of whales who buy everything.) It may not sound like a lot but with over 2 million+ accounts (a lot who come back and play maybe a month or so after each major Season/Expansion content update); if you can get them all to thow in a couple of bucks one way or another, it adds up.
If you want to see a Cryptic/PWE MMO in true 'maintenance mode' look at Champions Online. It gets the equivalent of an STO Season update maybe once a year on average (it's never gotten an Expansion, let alone two on the level of LoR or DR.) And if you look at posts from Trailturtle on the CO forums he constantly claims CO still generates enough profit for Cryptic/PWE that CO is in no danger of shutting down anytime soon.
My point? Nothing done for the DR expansion shows any indication of Cryptic/PWE 'milking the cow' before they 'put it out to pasture' - if anything the amount of extra expenditure for new and coordinated voice over with the majority of the Star Trek: Voyager cast indicates otherwise.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Also, for champions pwe just bought an entire company (now called cryptic north, I have seen but forgotten their old name) to bulk up the development team. Sto makes far more money than champions, so if pwe is willing to buy a company to keep champs going, sto is pretty safe.
I happily aquired the ships and gear, mostly lockbox/lobi or c-store ones needed for them.
12 characters were more than ok geared for all old endgame content and the other 6 were more feeder toons.
Now due to the new way of advancing ships/characters and upgrading gear along with my playing time constraints.
I will only be carrying on one toon to end game Elite level.
With only one toon to worry about advancing now I dont even foresee a need to use much cash if any.
Unless a T6 comes along which will tempt my main out from his (bug / dread/ or temp dest) unlikely so far.
My others 17 toons will only be for messing around and doffing now as I see no reason to bother advancing the these any further.
I know from conversations with friends and fleeties a lot of them are pretty much doing the same.
Now I may not have been a full grown whale ( a part of the small but cash using group of players which F2P mmo's need to function)
Most likely I was just a minke whale but even so without the need or inclination to continue growing my STO tribe any more its extra money that will be missing in future.
I hope they have done there calculations right over this psycho/gamble/timegated fiasco.
Because I still like playing and enjoy the new episode mission content when it comes along.
Exactly this. The only number I remember is here:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/3031153-4-year-anniversary-infographic
Which is 3.2 million captains. I'm more than a dozen captains myself, and less than half the people i know have just one captain. So it's hard to believe there's 2 million accounts.