To be blunt here, if you're doing queues for Dil you're doing it wrong. It takes 4-8 minutes a day to hit the Dil cap per toon.
4-8 minutes? What are you doing to get 8k dilithium in 4 - 8 minutes? I can get my daily cap rather easily by playing the Voth Ground Battlezone and with the dilithium increase there you can almost get your daily cap in one run. What you are doing to get it in such a short time i want to know.
4-8 minutes? What are you doing to get 8k dilithium in 4 - 8 minutes? I can get my daily cap rather easily by playing the Voth Ground Battlezone and with the dilithium increase there you can almost get your daily cap in one run. What you are doing to get it in such a short time i want to know.
Spending the bulk of the time waiting on Finishing...
Yeah VD, whatcha doin? Meeting your quota in under 10 minutes seems almost, dare i say it, exploitative!?
Keep talking (:
eh, I don't know. all klingons turning in contraband 4 times a day or funneling it to the fed characters. Still have to grab the contraband. I suppose you could buy it but that's kind of cutting into the profits. To fly out and get it twice a day will take 10-15 min. Then have to log in 4 times 4 hours apart. Plus maybe you have a lot of marks saved up and you can do some slidin. Well, fine but don't you have to bill yourself for the time took to acquire those marks?
so, part true and a slight exaggeration. Let's call it 30 min.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Yeah VD, whatcha doin? Meeting your quota in under 10 minutes seems almost, dare i say it, exploitative!?
Keep talking (:
Lol, it's not in a single shot, tbh. Two play sessions, hours apart for around half the time each.
I believe that folks with oodles of toons are the reason that the Finishing appeared, cause it more than doubled the time it took...and that was Cryptic's attempt to curb the folks that might have been "exploiting" the system in that regard. Which in turn punished/frustrated those that weren't doing it...
eh, I don't know. all klingons turning in contraband 4 times a day or funneling it to the fed characters. Still have to grab the contraband. I suppose you could buy it but that's kind of cutting into the profits. To fly out and get it twice a day will take 10-15 min. Then have to log in 4 times 4 hours apart. Plus maybe you have a lot of marks saved up and you can do some slidin. Well, fine but don't you have to bill yourself for the time took to acquire those marks?
so, part true and a slight exaggeration. Let's call it 30 min.
It doesn't take anywhere near that long to get the Contraband and it's not just Contraband. ~3-4 minutes (because of waiting on the Finishing) twice a day and you're looking at the Dil Cap. That's including travel times with 3 sectors involved and filling 20 assignments.
Hell, before the vendortrash nerf it was also a decent way to make some easy EC from ship gear.
I made 4 klink and 3 rom/kdf's just to farm this...most of the time I don't have the motivation to do it however
takes me about 15 minutes per character 2x a day but I do the lore mission as well
so about 1/2 hour max per toon for me .....But im old and slow :P
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
I made 4 klink and 3 rom/kdf's just to farm this...most of the time I don't have the motivation to do it however
takes me about 15 minutes per character 2x a day but I do the lore mission as well
so about 1/2 hour max per toon for me .....But im old and slow :P
Yes I must be older and slower. It would take me about the same time without the lore mission and I'd be logging in 4 times. But I just work hard during dilithium weekends and then don't grind dilithium at all inbetween.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
It never ceases to amuse me at how people completely miss the point of something, and then complain about it.
The point of this upgrading system isn't to get everyone into Epic Mk XIVs. You can't afford it? That's because you're not supposed to be able to. If you're having this problem, you're probably not going to be able to do Elite queues either, and you're not supposed to be able to.
There are already people flying around with all Epics, which means the system is performing the same task the Fleet Holdings system was supposed to - drain the filthy rich veterans of their excessive stockpiles of resources, to try and reduce the disparity in the population. For the rest of us, these things (like getting 60 specialization points) are long term progression mechanics so we don't max out and have nothing left to do for months.
It'd be like the average Joe complaining that luxurious $1,000,000 smartphones are too expensive, and it'd take them forever to save up and buy. No ****, Joe, they're not meant for you!
I have to agree with the others here. I do a Dino run and a KDF Contraband run and make 16k+ in under an hour of actual play-time. Just playing 3-4 hours per week gives me a week's worth of Diltihium. Then I can spend the rest of my time doing whatever I want.
As far as the OP's comments about it taking 6 months to get a full set of Mk XIV gear, good! That is the whole point. It is supposed to take months for casual players. You can easily spend 6 months doing Raids in WoW to get a full-set of end-game gear. Taking months is not a new concept to MMOs.
I would also add that there is no huge rush to get to Mk XIV. DR has been out for a month now. My T5U Sovereign has 3 pieces of Mk XIII gear: 2 I Crafted and 1 was a drop. I have done over two-dozen Advanced queues at this point. Knowing how to build and use a ship is every bit as important as the gear you put on it. If you have a 3,000 DPS build switching to Mk XIV gear will only take you to a 4,000 DPS build - you are still going to suck at Advanced queues. My Sovereign does 15,000 DPS using the same Mk XII gear anyone can get - and there are people doing over 20k who built their Sovereign better then I did.
Rushing to Mk XIV is not going to change your life, so stop rushing.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
The difference being in wow there is an actual challenge and reward mechanic at play. Here it's just a repeat stupidly boring clickfest to get to end (R&D) but you'll also need to get Dil which is pretty boring to try to get too.
It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact the new gear is just the old gear with new numbers. If it was genuinely new gear (like in WoW where it has unique looks and abilities) then cool, but the gear we get is literally gear we already had, but now with a different colour rim, and some new numbers which outside of weapons aren't that fantastic.
Personally I like Space Games, I also have a passing liking of Star Trek. Personally I got interested when the Romulans were added as they have some of my favourite ship designs (Mogai!!!), but the consistent dragging out of the game without reason by adding time gates instead of involvement gates, meaning you get stuff by actively NOT playing the game you did or didn't pay for (F2P obviously), it gets a little frustrating.
Looking at multiple different MMO's and you'll see one common factor, the good gear maybe hard to get, but to get it you must get involved in the content. WoW, Guild Wars 2, Rift, etc...
In STO you don't get involved in much content because it's just poorly setup. To play with people is hard now with the queue's being empty. Hell there's only around 100-150 people in the MI missions, compared to the CCE event leading up to DR which had around 650 on avg with around 800 during the first two weeks at any given time, that's gotta be setting Metric alarm bells off.
Back to the point of the gear though, if the game was difficult through skill not HP sponges and not a farking obvious rip off to upgrade gear/craft gear, then the push to Mk XIV gear would have more meaning and be more desirable. Instead only those with the cash can do it, those who they want to attract to the game will see a pay wall that is almost insurmountable. In the end it's a killer for new and casual players who want to be able to get into the Advanced STF's.
I can run Advanced STF's with my main, but I don't put out good DPS, I do know the missions though so I'm not dragging down the group. The scary part is my main out-DPS's most players I play with even prior to DR when I still had sub-standard gear compared to the Wizards.
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
There are already people flying around with all Epics, which means the system is performing the same task the Fleet Holdings system was supposed to - drain the filthy rich veterans of their excessive stockpiles of resources, to try and reduce the disparity in the population.
In which case , it failed miserably on more then one level .
See , we've had "scary" cost charts of the Starbase grind as well , but that didn't have the effect the DR + Crafting + ship & gear upgrade combo had .
Starbases literally produced communities .
DR literally destroyed communities .
Starbases were a community effort .
DR just increased the divide between the have's and have not's ... , and if that was not enough it put the very survival of the game in question .
And no , I'm not talking about the immediate survival ... , but rather about a combination of decreased "whales" along with decreased "workers" (those Freepers who grind out the Dil that you see on the exchange , or materials for crafting and so on ...) .
See , some of us who see the decreased numbers in the queues also take a look at the number of private queues that are running , and base our judgement of the player population decline on the combination of both .
And yet Cryptic continues to gamble ... , with not quite restoring neither the difficulty nor the award to the Advanced queues (which were previouly the Elite) , plus they add more ways to fail group play as they wait to see if we'll lap it all up .
... so with both costing enormous resources , you're welcome to tell me your thoughts on why Starbases were a success , and crafting & upgrading such a fail ...
I think it more appropriate to say these systems are in place to drain the wallets of the players.
Eh, only the wallets of those too stupid and impatient. Going from Mk XII to Mk XIV (only 1 rarity upgrade) only gave my ships a ~15% boost in overall damage. That's not really worth spending actual money on.
Totally agree it's not worth it to upgrade. There was a time when I'd have agreed spending money was due to impatience. Post DR, I wouldn't attribute spending money to be from impatience anymore. The length of time needed to farm all the required assets is beyond what most are willing to invest to grind it all for free IMO.
There is a difference between impatience and impractical.
That quote is actually close to the truth.
Think about this 1 zen is equal to a US penny which can be converted to 155 dilithium in game at the going rate. The current US minimum wage is $7.25 an hour which is equal to 725 zen convert that into dilithium and you have just over 112,000 dilithium. Which means unless you are earning 112k dilithium per hour you are working for less then minimum wage. In the case of grinding 16k dilithium in a hour you are making about $1 per hour.
Take the refine cap of 8k in effect and it takes you 14 toons which need to grind out 8k dilithium in just over 4 minutes each.
Sure its a game and you can argue that you are having fun but most of the activities that get you the dilithium quickly aka doffing and killing dinos get old fast for most people.
I have to agree with the others here. I do a Dino run and a KDF Contraband run and make 16k+ in under an hour of actual play-time. Just playing 3-4 hours per week gives me a week's worth of Diltihium. Then I can spend the rest of my time doing whatever I want.
As far as the OP's comments about it taking 6 months to get a full set of Mk XIV gear, good! That is the whole point. It is supposed to take months for casual players. You can easily spend 6 months doing Raids in WoW to get a full-set of end-game gear. Taking months is not a new concept to MMOs.
I would also add that there is no huge rush to get to Mk XIV. DR has been out for a month now. My T5U Sovereign has 3 pieces of Mk XIII gear: 2 I Crafted and 1 was a drop. I have done over two-dozen Advanced queues at this point. Knowing how to build and use a ship is every bit as important as the gear you put on it. If you have a 3,000 DPS build switching to Mk XIV gear will only take you to a 4,000 DPS build - you are still going to suck at Advanced queues. My Sovereign does 15,000 DPS using the same Mk XII gear anyone can get - and there are people doing over 20k who built their Sovereign better then I did.
Rushing to Mk XIV is not going to change your life, so stop rushing.
Ok I am going to correct you real quick here. NOT upgrade a full set, it is (after corrections) 3 months to up grade ONE PEICE. typical casual game play would take TEN YEARS to upgrade a full set.
It never ceases to amuse me at how people completely miss the point of something, and then complain about it.
The point of this upgrading system isn't to get everyone into Epic Mk XIVs. You can't afford it? That's because you're not supposed to be able to. If you're having this problem, you're probably not going to be able to do Elite queues either, and you're not supposed to be able to.
There are already people flying around with all Epics, which means the system is performing the same task the Fleet Holdings system was supposed to - drain the filthy rich veterans of their excessive stockpiles of resources, to try and reduce the disparity in the population. For the rest of us, these things (like getting 60 specialization points) are long term progression mechanics so we don't max out and have nothing left to do for months.
It'd be like the average Joe complaining that luxurious $1,000,000 smartphones are too expensive, and it'd take them forever to save up and buy. No ****, Joe, they're not meant for you!
Ok, what game anywhere have you seen where ANY content was not intended to actually be completed? I only have problems with elite ques when i try to pug it. But you basically have to have had some upgrades or be a top 1% player skill wise to be able to do them, but then you need to do them in order to get the stuff you need for the upgrades.
That's like going "Here is a room where you can get the key you need in order max out your gear. The key to get into the room is in the room." You can bypass this though if you have a top tier build. So yeah only the most hard core can play or ever play that content. (unless you shell out cash).
For a game that is billed as directly aimed at casual that is anything but a casual style system.
Think about this 1 zen is equal to a US penny which can be converted to 155 dilithium in game at the going rate. The current US minimum wage is $7.25 an hour which is equal to 725 zen convert that into dilithium and you have just over 112,000 dilithium. Which means unless you are earning 112k dilithium per hour you are working for less then minimum wage. In the case of grinding 16k dilithium in a hour you are making about $1 per hour.
Take the refine cap of 8k in effect and it takes you 14 toons which need to grind out 8k dilithium in just over 4 minutes each.
Sure its a game and you can argue that you are having fun but most of the activities that get you the dilithium quickly aka doffing and killing dinos get old fast for most people.
Funny thing is - when I play a standard table top RPG, for example - I don't earn just less than minimum wage. I earn nothing.
But it's fun, so I do it anyway.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
but then you need to do them in order to get the stuff you need for the upgrades.
People are still spouting this disingenuous drivel? It's blatantly false. The majority of the reputation sets do not require BNPs or APCs, the only two things that require Advanced queues.
Reputation gear, much like Epic gear, are not even needed. People are quick to blame gear for their poor performance, but it is not the tools we use which make us good, but rather how we employ them.
Ok I am going to correct you real quick here. NOT upgrade a full set, it is (after corrections) 3 months to up grade ONE PEICE. typical casual game play would take TEN YEARS to upgrade a full set.
What is your definition of casual?
Cryptic's definition, as given by Heretic when they were designing the Fleetbase system, was someone playing 2-3 days per week for about 3 hours - so roughly 6-9 hours per week.
In an hour I can do a Dino Hunt and Contraband runs and make 16,000 Dilithium. So if I play 3 days per week in 3 hours I have 48,000 Dilithium - enough to keep me busy Refining for most of the week. 48k Dilithium is enough to Upgrade at least 1 piece of Equipment per week. And that would still leave me 6 hours a week to do whatever else I wanted to do.
I have no idea what pace you are playing at that you can only Upgrade 1 piece every 3 months.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
That seems rather high. Are you calculating the cost of immediate completion? Because that's optional, not required, and does not count towards the actual cost of upgrading all 22 items (give or take one or 2 depending on the ship) on a ship. Also, this depend on whether you use basic, advanced, or superior upgrades, which cost more the higher up you go.
So, it takes 2 superior tech upgrades to go from Mk xii to XIII. Each upgrade costs 1075 dilithium. 1075x2= 2150. No accelerators, and no complete now cost. I believe the cost goes up when upgrading from Mk XIII to xiv, but I haven't done it yet. Let's assume it does, and say it doubles. Soz upgrading an item from XIII to xiv would cost 4300 dilithium. So, first, the maximum number of upgradeable items, on my ship at least, is 22. If each item costs 2150 from xii to xiiiz that means 2150x22=47300. Then, I have the cost of going from XIII to xiv. We doubled the previous cost just to account for higher prices for item going from XIII to xiv (greatly exaggerated, I'm sure). So, the cost for one item was 4300. 4300x22=94600. 47300 for 22 items mk xii to XIII, and 94600 for items from XIII to xiv. 94600+47300=141900. 141,900 dilithium to upgrade 22 items from Mk xii to Mk xiv.
Someone correct me if I made a mistake here, but I'm pretty sure the cost of upgrading is not quite as high as you think. Actually, it's quite reasonable. Now, if my math above it correct, then we can find the number of days it actually takes to fully upgrade a T5-U ship. 141,900 dilithium for a complete upgrade. 8,000 refinable dilithium each day. 141900
IIRC, it's a bit more than 2 superior tech upgrades IIRC, it's more like 2 superior and 1 basic- so addon another 960 dili per level, per item to the math. I havent upgraded anything yet but I'm sitting on 15 2X accellerators and even with those and superior tech upgrades there's still a small amount of tech points that have to be added to every item per round @ 960 dili.
TOO freeking rich for my blood.
Basic Kits require 700 Dilithium per, Advanced Kits require 950, and Superior Kits require 1,075 Dilithium.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Believe it or not, as a casual player, dilithium isn't holding me back. EC is. Frigging EC is harder to grind in useful quantities than dil. 500k chunks of EC is harder to come by (superior kits on average, or more) than 1100 or so dil per click.
One upgrade pass might take 4-5 clicks...that's 2-2.5m EC, only 5500-6600 dil.
As someone who is levelling up a brand new character right now , I can say DR has definitely killed the casual player. The rewards for playing DR episodes are garbage. From levels 1 to 50 we got really good rewards, and from 51 to 60 we get garbage.
I think they have been focusing too much on the assumption that all players have been stuck at level 50 for all these years and think level 50 endgame gear (reputation etc) are the absolute minimum to play DR content.
They do not realize that those who are starting brand new characters or players who just joined the game will have an extremely hard time getting through DR content with just the gear from non DR episodes.
On my main character I have already reached level 60, I don't even have high end gear. I bought a lot of gear off the exchange. I bought low, sold high, anticipating market demands so I can maximize the amount of EC I got.
Casual players are not like me, they will have a hard time getting through the DR content. I don't even have a T5-U ship. I don't know how I will level up my second character. EC is already hard to come by and I am stockpiling dilithium to get a ship.
Basic Kits require 700 Dilithium per, Advanced Kits require 950, and Superior Kits require 1,075 Dilithium.
yer prolly right- I tried to upgrade once with a kit I crafted (a green one), and the system wanted 2X superiors + 1 low level one. I tossed a superior, 1 2X multiplier in for 1075, and next round my green one on the fire and it wanted 950 more dili.
I aborted and never looked back. 3100 dili + mats per piece, per level is too much.
Comments
To be blunt here, if you're doing queues for Dil you're doing it wrong. It takes 4-8 minutes a day to hit the Dil cap per toon.
4-8 minutes? What are you doing to get 8k dilithium in 4 - 8 minutes? I can get my daily cap rather easily by playing the Voth Ground Battlezone and with the dilithium increase there you can almost get your daily cap in one run. What you are doing to get it in such a short time i want to know.
Spending the bulk of the time waiting on Finishing...
Yeah VD, whatcha doin? Meeting your quota in under 10 minutes seems almost, dare i say it, exploitative!?
Keep talking (:
eh, I don't know. all klingons turning in contraband 4 times a day or funneling it to the fed characters. Still have to grab the contraband. I suppose you could buy it but that's kind of cutting into the profits. To fly out and get it twice a day will take 10-15 min. Then have to log in 4 times 4 hours apart. Plus maybe you have a lot of marks saved up and you can do some slidin. Well, fine but don't you have to bill yourself for the time took to acquire those marks?
so, part true and a slight exaggeration. Let's call it 30 min.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Lol, it's not in a single shot, tbh. Two play sessions, hours apart for around half the time each.
I believe that folks with oodles of toons are the reason that the Finishing appeared, cause it more than doubled the time it took...and that was Cryptic's attempt to curb the folks that might have been "exploiting" the system in that regard. Which in turn punished/frustrated those that weren't doing it...
It doesn't take anywhere near that long to get the Contraband and it's not just Contraband. ~3-4 minutes (because of waiting on the Finishing) twice a day and you're looking at the Dil Cap. That's including travel times with 3 sectors involved and filling 20 assignments.
Hell, before the vendortrash nerf it was also a decent way to make some easy EC from ship gear.
takes me about 15 minutes per character 2x a day but I do the lore mission as well
so about 1/2 hour max per toon for me .....But im old and slow :P
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Yes I must be older and slower. It would take me about the same time without the lore mission and I'd be logging in 4 times. But I just work hard during dilithium weekends and then don't grind dilithium at all inbetween.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
The point of this upgrading system isn't to get everyone into Epic Mk XIVs. You can't afford it? That's because you're not supposed to be able to. If you're having this problem, you're probably not going to be able to do Elite queues either, and you're not supposed to be able to.
There are already people flying around with all Epics, which means the system is performing the same task the Fleet Holdings system was supposed to - drain the filthy rich veterans of their excessive stockpiles of resources, to try and reduce the disparity in the population. For the rest of us, these things (like getting 60 specialization points) are long term progression mechanics so we don't max out and have nothing left to do for months.
It'd be like the average Joe complaining that luxurious $1,000,000 smartphones are too expensive, and it'd take them forever to save up and buy. No ****, Joe, they're not meant for you!
As far as the OP's comments about it taking 6 months to get a full set of Mk XIV gear, good! That is the whole point. It is supposed to take months for casual players. You can easily spend 6 months doing Raids in WoW to get a full-set of end-game gear. Taking months is not a new concept to MMOs.
I would also add that there is no huge rush to get to Mk XIV. DR has been out for a month now. My T5U Sovereign has 3 pieces of Mk XIII gear: 2 I Crafted and 1 was a drop. I have done over two-dozen Advanced queues at this point. Knowing how to build and use a ship is every bit as important as the gear you put on it. If you have a 3,000 DPS build switching to Mk XIV gear will only take you to a 4,000 DPS build - you are still going to suck at Advanced queues. My Sovereign does 15,000 DPS using the same Mk XII gear anyone can get - and there are people doing over 20k who built their Sovereign better then I did.
Rushing to Mk XIV is not going to change your life, so stop rushing.
It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact the new gear is just the old gear with new numbers. If it was genuinely new gear (like in WoW where it has unique looks and abilities) then cool, but the gear we get is literally gear we already had, but now with a different colour rim, and some new numbers which outside of weapons aren't that fantastic.
Personally I like Space Games, I also have a passing liking of Star Trek. Personally I got interested when the Romulans were added as they have some of my favourite ship designs (Mogai!!!), but the consistent dragging out of the game without reason by adding time gates instead of involvement gates, meaning you get stuff by actively NOT playing the game you did or didn't pay for (F2P obviously), it gets a little frustrating.
Looking at multiple different MMO's and you'll see one common factor, the good gear maybe hard to get, but to get it you must get involved in the content. WoW, Guild Wars 2, Rift, etc...
In STO you don't get involved in much content because it's just poorly setup. To play with people is hard now with the queue's being empty. Hell there's only around 100-150 people in the MI missions, compared to the CCE event leading up to DR which had around 650 on avg with around 800 during the first two weeks at any given time, that's gotta be setting Metric alarm bells off.
Back to the point of the gear though, if the game was difficult through skill not HP sponges and not a farking obvious rip off to upgrade gear/craft gear, then the push to Mk XIV gear would have more meaning and be more desirable. Instead only those with the cash can do it, those who they want to attract to the game will see a pay wall that is almost insurmountable. In the end it's a killer for new and casual players who want to be able to get into the Advanced STF's.
I can run Advanced STF's with my main, but I don't put out good DPS, I do know the missions though so I'm not dragging down the group. The scary part is my main out-DPS's most players I play with even prior to DR when I still had sub-standard gear compared to the Wizards.
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
In which case , it failed miserably on more then one level .
See , we've had "scary" cost charts of the Starbase grind as well , but that didn't have the effect the DR + Crafting + ship & gear upgrade combo had .
Starbases literally produced communities .
DR literally destroyed communities .
Starbases were a community effort .
DR just increased the divide between the have's and have not's ... , and if that was not enough it put the very survival of the game in question .
And no , I'm not talking about the immediate survival ... , but rather about a combination of decreased "whales" along with decreased "workers" (those Freepers who grind out the Dil that you see on the exchange , or materials for crafting and so on ...) .
See , some of us who see the decreased numbers in the queues also take a look at the number of private queues that are running , and base our judgement of the player population decline on the combination of both .
And yet Cryptic continues to gamble ... , with not quite restoring neither the difficulty nor the award to the Advanced queues (which were previouly the Elite) , plus they add more ways to fail group play as they wait to see if we'll lap it all up .
... so with both costing enormous resources , you're welcome to tell me your thoughts on why Starbases were a success , and crafting & upgrading such a fail ...
Eh, only the wallets of those too stupid and impatient. Going from Mk XII to Mk XIV (only 1 rarity upgrade) only gave my ships a ~15% boost in overall damage. That's not really worth spending actual money on.
The performance difference isn't really that significant.
That quote is actually close to the truth.
Think about this 1 zen is equal to a US penny which can be converted to 155 dilithium in game at the going rate. The current US minimum wage is $7.25 an hour which is equal to 725 zen convert that into dilithium and you have just over 112,000 dilithium. Which means unless you are earning 112k dilithium per hour you are working for less then minimum wage. In the case of grinding 16k dilithium in a hour you are making about $1 per hour.
Take the refine cap of 8k in effect and it takes you 14 toons which need to grind out 8k dilithium in just over 4 minutes each.
Sure its a game and you can argue that you are having fun but most of the activities that get you the dilithium quickly aka doffing and killing dinos get old fast for most people.
Ok, what game anywhere have you seen where ANY content was not intended to actually be completed? I only have problems with elite ques when i try to pug it. But you basically have to have had some upgrades or be a top 1% player skill wise to be able to do them, but then you need to do them in order to get the stuff you need for the upgrades.
That's like going "Here is a room where you can get the key you need in order max out your gear. The key to get into the room is in the room." You can bypass this though if you have a top tier build. So yeah only the most hard core can play or ever play that content. (unless you shell out cash).
For a game that is billed as directly aimed at casual that is anything but a casual style system.
Funny thing is - when I play a standard table top RPG, for example - I don't earn just less than minimum wage. I earn nothing.
But it's fun, so I do it anyway.
Sorry, let me elaborate/clarify. The content isn't intended for your skill level and resources.
There are plenty of games where there is content that isn't intended for the underskilled and undergeared. WoW 40 man raids, for example.
People are still spouting this disingenuous drivel? It's blatantly false. The majority of the reputation sets do not require BNPs or APCs, the only two things that require Advanced queues.
Reputation gear, much like Epic gear, are not even needed. People are quick to blame gear for their poor performance, but it is not the tools we use which make us good, but rather how we employ them.
Cryptic's definition, as given by Heretic when they were designing the Fleetbase system, was someone playing 2-3 days per week for about 3 hours - so roughly 6-9 hours per week.
In an hour I can do a Dino Hunt and Contraband runs and make 16,000 Dilithium. So if I play 3 days per week in 3 hours I have 48,000 Dilithium - enough to keep me busy Refining for most of the week. 48k Dilithium is enough to Upgrade at least 1 piece of Equipment per week. And that would still leave me 6 hours a week to do whatever else I wanted to do.
I have no idea what pace you are playing at that you can only Upgrade 1 piece every 3 months.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
One upgrade pass might take 4-5 clicks...that's 2-2.5m EC, only 5500-6600 dil.
I think they have been focusing too much on the assumption that all players have been stuck at level 50 for all these years and think level 50 endgame gear (reputation etc) are the absolute minimum to play DR content.
They do not realize that those who are starting brand new characters or players who just joined the game will have an extremely hard time getting through DR content with just the gear from non DR episodes.
On my main character I have already reached level 60, I don't even have high end gear. I bought a lot of gear off the exchange. I bought low, sold high, anticipating market demands so I can maximize the amount of EC I got.
Casual players are not like me, they will have a hard time getting through the DR content. I don't even have a T5-U ship. I don't know how I will level up my second character. EC is already hard to come by and I am stockpiling dilithium to get a ship.
yer prolly right- I tried to upgrade once with a kit I crafted (a green one), and the system wanted 2X superiors + 1 low level one. I tossed a superior, 1 2X multiplier in for 1075, and next round my green one on the fire and it wanted 950 more dili.
I aborted and never looked back. 3100 dili + mats per piece, per level is too much.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG