I actually prefer to get new stuff regularly. It would be boring otherwise. Do you really want to do nothing but the same thing for a year? You're probably not someone that complains about the "grind", right?
New stuff and broken new stuff are different things. I would sooner wait and get a working version than the mess we have now.
I'm glad they're going to be looking at dilithium opportunity costs. I do not view my dilithium stockpiles as a per-character resource. All of my alts are in the same fleet, which means all of my dilithium is a giant pool that has a chance to be earmarked for fleet holding upgrades, and that is a lot of dilithium. It is impossible for me to help fund my fleet (small fleet, fewer contributors) and upgrade gear on my multiple ship builds, much less on every alt! You could upgrade entire starbase tiers for the amount of resources it would cost to upgrade 2 ships on 4 characters (and I have way more than 2 ships on 4 characters). Fleet dilithium costs are a huge black hole along with reps, R&D, zen conversion, and all of the other dilithium sinks.
I'll reiterate that I think costs in the Upgrade system should come down by ~20% across the board. The upcoming adjustment of how many materials are needed to craft upgrades should definitely help, especially for EC costs, so that leaves dilithium to be addressed next.
I'm glad that the whole picture is being looked at. Jesse seems like a realist. It's a very intelligent approach and I think problems can be solved by 'death by a thousand paper cuts' where a small adjustment here and a small adjustment there can have a positive outcome without needing to make a single huge adjustment in a single area. There are direct costs that come straight from crafting and applying upgrades, and for acquiring the gear in the first place. And there are indirect costs from the time and difficulty of farming certain materials yourself (mostly the Very Rares), which may lead back to direct costs where the player resorts to the exchange for material acquisition. I like how Jesse brought up bottlenecks repeatedly. Right now a lot of the upgrade and R&D costs are tied up in bottlenecks that cause supply issues.
Tutorializing the systems and improving messaging not just for the Doff and Upgrade and R&D systems but also for basic STF strategy would be very helpful if you can spare some cycles for it.
RE: Speculative cost reductions for alt accounts: Discounts for alts are definitely needed, whatever form they may come in.
This could be via some sort of account unlock as was mentioned like 'Oh you've gotten a Mk XIV Shield, here's an unlock'
or it could possibly stay as a character unlock such as 'on this character you have applied X TP over time to all your upgrades, now you get a discount on crafting upgrades on that character, which you can then mail to your alts.'
Or it could be via a crafted item transferred through the account bank ala Reputation Sponsorships, because grinding R&D schools to 15 on alts takes a while (for me at least) because alts get less play time; my main has 4 schools to 15 but the highest any of my alts have gotten is 13.
A potentially controversial method would be to make Rep/Fleet gear Account bound.
Or leveling a crafting school could provide a discount when applying tech upgrades from that school, as right now crafting confers no bonus to upgrading.
There are many possible methods to do this and I'm glad that they're considering them all.
RE: Other speculative stuff: Re-rolling/selecting mods on existing items, deconstructing gear for TP or to scavenge [mods] or even [procs] off of them, and all of those other ideas would all be amazing additions that I would like to see scheduled for some real programmer time even if it takes another 7 months.
However, I don't think players think incrementally the way Jesse sort of, suggests(?) i.e. make a small amount of progress every day by applying 1 tech upgrade per day (or however many resources a player acquires from a day's play session) to one item. I don't think about incremental costs when I look at a phone contract or an apartment lease; I look at all of it. At the very least they're going to be measuring resources for 1 full mark upgrade for an individual item, or resources to get one item up to XIV, and more realistically players will be looking at total costs to increase their full set of weapons to Mk N, if not costs for the entire ship. The only reason the Reputation system can be said to work this way is because it is time gated in such a way that the easiest way to use it is once per day (it's easy to fill that one project) whereas with Upgrades, once you get into the higher Mk level increases, one Superior kit is not going to be enough to kick anything into cooldown. It will require several of them just to get the item's upgrade timer going. Maybe that can be improved with better messaging, maybe not.
RE: Community Question: Club 47 is neato. The lighting and the floor patterns remind me of programming my Arduino light strips and anything with neon saturated Tron colors is cool in my book. I am glad that they kept the old club 47 music tracks in the music rotation in addition to the new tracks.
As I already said, there was no mention in the Podcast of the skill/xp grind or the leveling gap. It's a game-breaking problem. The fact that it wasn't even mentioned undermines the "community" aspect of the community podcast.
Are you guys ever going to cover it, or are you just there so the devs can issue self-congratulatory prepared statements while you nod along?
Keep in mind that they record on Thursdays, which was the same day as the patch. There wasn't enough time for the skill nerf to sink in then which is why it was only briefly touched upon.
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
I'd rather not ever have DR come out at all - in fact I'd like us to cancel and re-roll everything dating back to season before season 7.
LoR is fine but everything else that has been stolen, deleted and ruined I'd like it all back.
I could care less about the level cap - those passives are the weakest and most pointless in the game to date.
Animations and models? There are none.
But yeah again I'd like to personally thank every whale out there who was dumb enough to pour money into the upgrading and then got to work on re-playing 600 story missions per character.
I think the best way to apply new mods is the catalyst section, we already can speed R&D, or increase rarity in upgrades, why not use it for mods too??, or a chance of mods, at least...
Sometimes to get the mods i want, i have to build the same
Honestly, I *did* like their renewed willingness to listen to the community. Could be it's all fake, but it felt genuine.
I honestly don't think they are. I don't think they KNOW what the community or the playerbase is. They've distanced themselves from it and insulated themselves so as to never have to be in contact with said playerbase. They see us as scum, hackers, exploiters, and open wallets. Nothing more.
I think this entire response is dictated by yet another part of the massive problem: They're so disconnected they just read their internally cherry-picked metrics. They see the queues are empty but nto because they care or empathize. It's just a number on a spreadsheet.
They completely ignored all our feedback and continue to exhibit blinders in all areas of the fiasco known as STO. Even the oft-linked Extra Credits video outlining some basic F2P issues has been ignored. You drive off the playerbase, and the whales have nobody to play with. Then the whales leave. The whale system is bad business and repugnant.
Cryptic: Your playerbase IS A GAME FEATURE. You drive it off and no amount of monkeying will replace the social aspect of playing with/for/against other players.
I think the best way to apply new mods is the catalyst section, we already can speed R&D, or increase rarity in upgrades, why not use it for mods too??, or a chance of mods, at least...
Sometimes to get the mods i want, i have to build the same
We REALLY need to be able to influence the mods added to weapons somehow. The system is very flawed. Also, because of skill levels when you get to lvl15+, you can NOT craft basic white gear anymore. White, green, blue, all out the window. You get very rare with ultra rare on crits. We should be able to select what our GOAL is, and if the RNG smiles upon is, it gives us THAT goal.
To the point of picking a mod, I think there's a VERY easy way to do it. Crafted materials. You need X materials to make any given item. Simply make it take X+1, where that 1 is a new item. Call it an "upgrade module" -- and it comes in all the various types of mods that weapons have. You can have an ACC upgrade module, a CrtD upgrade module, and so on and so forth. You slot a module that you WANT, and the upgrade logic says "give it 33% chance to assign THIS module when upgrading quality." 33% because it should still be a bit of a gamble.
These would take green and blue mats in moderate amounts (not very costly) because they are not 100% going to work. They just say "this is what I want" to the system. But wait, there's more.
You lump each type under that class of research. So weapons mods are listed under beams and cannons (some will cross over, such at CrtD and ACC, etc.). Thrust under engines, Adapt under shields, you get the idea. So, say you're not CRAFTING something, but upgrading an existing? Make these modules slotable under the upgrade screen! Like x2 research points or x2 tech point boosters, make them slotable under those windows. Then, if you upgrade and it gives you the quality upgrade, it will apply THAT mod at the time it upgrades. Maybe no % on this one, just a straight up upgrade. Especially when dealing with set gear, very rare upgrades, and mkXII+ items, the extortional cost of upgrading items prohibits random chance from being allowed. The problem is you're still gambling that you'll crit and get that quality upgrade. OR, you've paid your dilithium dues and have got it to the 100% mark and it's already at XIV, and it should upgrade your quality chance. If you slot the upgrade module at THAT point, it should give it to you (from what I recall reading of how that system works and how I see it in my head working with this module setup).
There's one caveat...
If you don't want to spend blues/greens on a specific mod, what then? Make a "random module" that just costs a couple white materials. It will simply fill the necessary slot in all items (remember, X+1 now?) but just act randomly as it does now. Dirt cheap because it does nothing new.
I'd love to see this. It builds on the existing system rather than re-writes the whole thing. It isn't a sure thing (since cryptic is all about the RNG gambling), but satisfies players' NEED to pick a mod. Because.. sometimes? RNG blows. No, all the time. I had a CrtDx3 that crit me a PvPDmg. Yeah... that's recycle fodder right there. Couldn't even SELL that thing if I wanted. Instead, I'd have had a fighting and REAL chance to get the mod I wanted.
And then maybe cut dil costs in HALF for all crafting and upgrades. But, that's another topic. What do you all think about the "upgrade module" idea?
I'd rather not ever have DR come out at all - in fact I'd like us to cancel and re-roll everything dating back to season before season 7.
LoR is fine but everything else that has been stolen, deleted and ruined I'd like it all back.
I could care less about the level cap - those passives are the weakest and most pointless in the game to date.
Animations and models? There are none.
But yeah again I'd like to personally thank every whale out there who was dumb enough to pour money into the upgrading and then got to work on re-playing 600 story missions per character.
Thanks for ruining STO ya schmucks
Yeah, it was so great back then!
I remember the good old days of only having 6 stfs!
Playing CSE over 100 times never getting a mk XII drop!
The Disgusting UI!
Hardly any KDF content!
No real point to playing the endgame!
No alternative to joining a fleet if you wanted good gea!
Sure, there are some stupid TRIBBLE decisions Cryptic have made but not everything is terrible.
At least now there are guaranteed ways to get items, Freedom of choice in faction and vastly superior PvE content and content in general.
I actually prefer to get new stuff regularly. It would be boring otherwise. Do you really want to do nothing but the same thing for a year? You're probably not someone that complains about the "grind", right?
So you make me choose between doing same content over and over (it's exactly what we did, do and will be doing) with additional unfinished mechanics or doing same content over and over and wait for new finished and working properly mechanics? Hmm... hard choice... definitely second option.
I am sorry, but I never had a problem getting EC. It's getting the Dil that is required. With all the DIL sinks, Fleet projects, reps, fleet gear, and many others, the upgrade system can do WITHOUT the dil requirements.
Also, for those that don't craft or upgrade, they are screwed out of the Mk XIII and MK XIV gear.
The new "Advanced" and "Elite" Queue STFs are stupid. The difficulty of the queues should never have changed. Elite from the past could easily TRIBBLE over a team if they didn't know what to do.
And T5-U ship upgrades should never have been released, since there is no T4.5 or T3.5...So why now make T5.5?
I am sorry, but I never had a problem getting EC. It's getting the Dil that is required. With all the DIL sinks, Fleet projects, reps, fleet gear, and many others, the upgrade system can do WITHOUT the dil requirements.
Also, for those that don't craft or upgrade, they are screwed out of the Mk XIII and MK XIV gear.
The new "Advanced" and "Elite" Queue STFs are stupid. The difficulty of the queues should never have changed. Elite from the past could easily TRIBBLE over a team if they didn't know what to do.
And T5-U ship upgrades should never have been released, since there is no T4.5 or T3.5...So why now make T5.5?
T5.5 exist before T5-U. You get normal T5 for free at lv 40, all other ships from C-store, Fleet, etc. are T5.5
Tarastheslayer and Mosul33 very nicely said. And rightly so, Materials and EC isn't the issue, the extortionate dilithium costs involved are and these are further amplified when you start looking at rarity upgrades. As both these individuals will attest to I'm not short on any of the requirements for the upgrade system, but I flatly refuse to utilize it beyond a hand of pieces of ground gear just to bring them up to MK XIV status because of what I consider to be the blatant rip off prices that the Dev's thought a good idea to slap on them.
Delta RIsing gives you 10 extra levels, specializations, new gear, and a new reputation.
If Delta Rising never had came out, you would not have that.
So how about you ignore it? JUst play your non-upgraded Tier 5 ship with Mark XII gear. Do Normal or Advanced PvE queues, ignore Upgrades and just craft the Mark XII stuff, or if you also hate crafting, don't craft either.
It seems to me that people hate that they can't get the new stuff fast enough (and I am not saying the current levelling/specialization acquisition pace is okay), not that they don't want it all. If they didn't want it all, they could completely ignore it all this.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
We've talked a lot internally about ways to deal with getting mods that you want, re-rolling mods, item deconstruction, and so on. Implementing it will take a lot of additional programming time, so we would like to do a new feature (when we settle on what exactly we are going to do), but it will have to be scheduled and will be a fairly major addition. Since our choice was to get R&D into play immediately and add that later, or not add R&D without it and potentially delay the R&D system by months or even a year, we wanted to get R&D live -- especially so that you can make Tech Upgrades! -- and work out the best solution for customizing or changing mods as an additional feature.
Honestly, to me this is an attitude coming from a "professional" that is pretty shocking. I understand you want to get things to people because you are excited, but if its not done, complete and tested then it isn't ready to be released. I never give something to a customer that isn't complete and correct, and if they demand it now there is a big astrisks near it saying it is work in progress and not complete.
Actions always speak louder than words, and if customer satisfaction is the primary goal (as it should be) then the actions of cryptic tell us this isn't true. The actions tell us they'll release a system, take peoples money, and either scrap it (because things are almost never really fixed, just replaced) in an attempt to take more money for something done wrong in the first place.
Something as basic as the selection of mods in a craft system should never be additional. Who is laying out the foundation for this? Doing things three times is not cost efficient.
Honestly, I *did* like their renewed willingness to listen to the community. Could be it's all fake, but it felt genuine.
That's the "trick" isn't it ?!
We all know that there are some nice ppl at Cryptic , but the other side of the coin is "actions speak louder then words" .
... just look at the list of nerfs , changes & mismanagement since DR , and bite back the FU that it makes you want to fling toward anyone with a Cryptic employee card ...
We've talked a lot internally about ways to deal with getting mods that you want, re-rolling mods, item deconstruction, and so on. Implementing it will take a lot of additional programming time, so we would like to do a new feature (when we settle on what exactly we are going to do), but it will have to be scheduled and will be a fairly major addition. Since our choice was to get R&D into play immediately and add that later, or not add R&D without it and potentially delay the R&D system by months or even a year, we wanted to get R&D live -- especially so that you can make Tech Upgrades! -- and work out the best solution for customizing or changing mods as an additional feature.
With all due respect , this sounds fishy to me .
I don't see how you managed to put up two "choice tabs" (say item type : plasma beam , level type : Mk VI) , and failed to put in a third tab that dealt with "available Mods" .
I'm sorry , if you could create a system with two options , a third one should not be the usual "we need more tech / a lot of additional programming" .
It's just one more feature that is exactly like the previous two that pulls data from a pre-determined list of options .
So two list of pre-determined options were made available , but the third one is a big hu-ha ??
I honestly don't think they are. I don't think they KNOW what the community or the playerbase is. They've distanced themselves from it and insulated themselves so as to never have to be in contact with said playerbase. They see us as scum, hackers, exploiters, and open wallets. Nothing more.
I think this entire response is dictated by yet another part of the massive problem: They're so disconnected they just read their internally cherry-picked metrics. They see the queues are empty but nto because they care or empathize. It's just a number on a spreadsheet.
They completely ignored all our feedback and continue to exhibit blinders in all areas of the fiasco known as STO. Even the oft-linked Extra Credits video outlining some basic F2P issues has been ignored. You drive off the playerbase, and the whales have nobody to play with. Then the whales leave. The whale system is bad business and repugnant.
Cryptic: Your playerbase IS A GAME FEATURE. You drive it off and no amount of monkeying will replace the social aspect of playing with/for/against other players.
They do know who we are...they just don't care,to them we are nothing more than wallets and thieves.They want our money,so they alter the game in such a way that without spending at least some money,it's just too painful to play.
At the same time they call us exploiters and cheaters for finding and using the little things,they didn't think of,that make our gaming life more tolerable.
Patching those little holes in their game is pure win-win for Cryptic....we can't use an 'exploit' and at the same time they nerf something that will make the game even more painful to play,which in turn puts even more pressure on our wallets.
PWE/Cryptic are motivated by one thing: greed!
The PWE/Cryptic sweatshop...not where the game is made,but where the game is played!
Take back your home,end the grind!
Volunteer moderators policing the forums is like a mall cop trying to solve a murder.
You know what? I would rather wait other year to get finished working product, than some alpha test going live. "Dear Sir, we have new car for you, bur for doors and wheels you have to wait other 6-12 months. It works so pay full cost of have it, but to make it as functional as it should be you must wait."
Upgrade is just like crafting lottery "We give you unfinished product, maybe one day we will finished it but still don't know how or when. In meantime fell free to pay real money to use it." It will and just end like other unfinished elements in game: 1) People pay enough real money in it to make profit, so it works just fine no need to finish it. 2) Insufficient profit from purchases, so it's not worth finishing.
Can we get another executive producer for STO, even one from Neverwinter or Chempions.
Let me add that another side of this is why I like Kickstarter and pre-order systems that take money upfront but ONLY if they have enough to accomplish the goal.
Right now, what's happening with a lot of things in the game is that you take the money upfront for content and features that may or may not ever happen or get finished, based on half-finished baubles.
Whereas if you said, back in 2013, "Okay. We need 40 missions for DR but we only have resources for 20. We need additional programmers and 5 additional temporary systems designers."
And you'd said, "We're taking pre-orders on the DR pack and a DR mini-pack. We have a target % meter. If we hit this goal, we can make it huge with features X/Y/Z and we'll toss stretch rewards to everyone who pre-ordered and make the expansion bigger. If we don't you're still getting an expansion but it will be half-sized and will rely on repetition of patrols and won't fully support alts and gearing costs very well at launch."
Now, yes, hindsight is 20/20. And what I'm saying is probably revolutionary FOR YOUR FIELD. (Although PWE is technically on the books as a toy company and Hasbro and Mattel have both used variations of this approach with pre-order contingent products or product upgrades.) But think about it next time.
Figure up the cost of doing a good release versus and okay release and then see if you can raise money to cover the difference before you end up there. You guys have had meetings on Expansion 3 as I understand it. So go in thinking about what it would take, resource wise, to make Expansion 3 better than what your current budget allows for it to be.
Honestly, to me this is an attitude coming from a "professional" that is pretty shocking. I understand you want to get things to people because you are excited, but if its not done, complete and tested then it isn't ready to be released. I never give something to a customer that isn't complete and correct, and if they demand it now there is a big astrisks near it saying it is work in progress and not complete.
Actions always speak louder than words, and if customer satisfaction is the primary goal (as it should be) then the actions of cryptic tell us this isn't true. The actions tell us they'll release a system, take peoples money, and either scrap it (because things are almost never really fixed, just replaced) in an attempt to take more money for something done wrong in the first place.
Something as basic as the selection of mods in a craft system should never be additional. Who is laying out the foundation for this? Doing things three times is not cost efficient.
Actually, it's a very sound and commonly accepted development method to be able to deliver regular updates and new releases that add new features. It is "Agile" Development.
The goal is to be able to release something in regular intervals, each time adding a feature or improving an existing one. Your goal is to have something that can be used by customers early, and to not be busy too long with a feature before figuring out that it is actually not working with the customer.
The Crafting system may be considered one feature, but it actually has several "sub"-features - the ability to craft stuff is already there and works just fine. But there could be more to craft, and the could be other ways to determine what you wish to have. And disassembling stuff to gain base materials or even new "recipes" could be yet another feature.
The challenge in Agile Development is often identifying how to break down a big feature into many small ones that can be individually build and tested.
The motivation of Agile Development is that previous methods often worked very monolithic and ineffective. Requirements were determined many weeks, months or even years ahead, when there was no program to actually use. When the software was finally deemed "finished", customers would finally be able to see it, and realize that it isn't what the wanted. Agile development tries to make the feedback loop shorter, so you don't build system on system only to find out that the foundation was wrong and that you did not understand your customer's requirements.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
That's why games have test servers where they could show parts and check them. But STO team don't use it. Sorry but putting patch at monday and then making it live two days later isn't testing, it's even not enough time to find, identify and fix bugs.
a great episode , missed cookie , those jokes at the end Why Elijah WHY .
Jesse your overly defensive over your work in this interview almost to the point of being hostile,
i feel that i dont see the same results he does on his "playing" the game. how much time to you spend in the game to get any advancement? do you grind the game for half a day a few hrs a day a whole day . for a week a month? how much interaction with the social aspect of the game? how many ALTS ? . in my normal nightly game play im still working on the R&D , i interact with my fleetmates but i feel the headway to gear one toon let alone a alt is not there . you cant really pug any queued content outside of normal . with a couple of exceptions . the Optionals arent optional WTH ?
while you talk of tweaking this and that , while we wait , my progression is far from optimal . it my be fine with players that have 8hr or more a day to spend playing , im lucky i get a couple of hours a night during the week to play , i have a fresh 50 that i see at the current state of the game will never be able to progress in half of the rep system to get gear out of . so why bother with alts .
thats what the game is coming too "why bother" . if you dont feel like your making any progression . you have to be insanely game rich to gain any footing in the upgrading game.
We've talked a lot internally about ways to deal with getting mods that you want, re-rolling mods, item deconstruction, and so on. Implementing it will take a lot of additional programming time, so we would like to do a new feature (when we settle on what exactly we are going to do), but it will have to be scheduled and will be a fairly major addition. Since our choice was to get R&D into play immediately and add that later, or not add R&D without it and potentially delay the R&D system by months or even a year, we wanted to get R&D live -- especially so that you can make Tech Upgrades! -- and work out the best solution for customizing or changing mods as an additional feature.
I'm really hoping for a deconstruction system, myself. Not as a way of rerolling mods, I hope you implement something better for that, but because I have a bunch of old fleet gear I just don't equip anymore. I hold onto it because of the resource investment, but it mostly just sits on my old ships doing nothing. If I could break it down into a good amount of components, I definitely would. Right now all I could do is vendor it for a tiny amount of EC -- so tiny I'd rather just hold onto it.
And I just want to say, aside from the story content, the upgrade system is my favorite part of this expansion. It was such a smart way to go. I could totally have seen mk XIII and XIV gear coming out in the same way XI and XII did -- you have a full set of XII? Too bad, buy new ones, for twice the cost of the old ones. The upgrade system is cheap by comparison and lets us make something of all that unique story gear. I love it.
I don't see how you managed to put up two "choice tabs" (say item type : plasma beam , level type : Mk VI) , and failed to put in a third tab that dealt with "available Mods" .
I'm sorry , if you could create a system with two options , a third one should not be the usual "we need more tech / a lot of additional programming" .
It's just one more feature that is exactly like the previous two that pulls data from a pre-determined list of options .
So two list of pre-determined options were made available , but the third one is a big hu-ha ??
.... feeling mighty skeptical here , sorry ...
I interpreted his statement to mean that they haven't decided on the exact mechanic for custom modifiers, not that it is hard to add a couple of drop-down lists. Of course, that would be an easy solution. But they probably don't want to do it that way, because they can't charge extra for it. They will probably create a token for customizing modifiers that will cost dilithium to craft, cost dilithium to apply, come from lockboxes, or come from R&D packs.
Whereas if you said, back in 2013, "Okay. We need 40 missions for DR but we only have resources for 20. We need additional programmers and 5 additional temporary systems designers."
More like:
"We need 40 missions . Now we can make 40 missions OR ... we can make about 12 , throw in a few patrols , get voice actors to make us look like SWTOR and , AND , make a TRIBBLE load of systems that will make our systems-happy EP , happy .
... we can do All That ... but we can't add another database pull for crafting MOD prefixes ... "
And this someone is Stephen DAngelo who apparently is not suitable as project manager. Sthal wasn't ideal too, but at least he didn't sign under half finished product.
The source of the problems is across the pacific, PWE and their idiotic corporate attitude. They're probably pointing a pistol at the telephone to Cryptic like they do with their prison gold farmers yelling MAKE MONEY NAO OR SUFFER!
So in return we get a half assed product that backfired and now they are making way less money than before. I guess they don't understand that it is easier to make money being alt friendly than greedy.
Comments
New stuff and broken new stuff are different things. I would sooner wait and get a working version than the mess we have now.
I'll reiterate that I think costs in the Upgrade system should come down by ~20% across the board. The upcoming adjustment of how many materials are needed to craft upgrades should definitely help, especially for EC costs, so that leaves dilithium to be addressed next.
I'm glad that the whole picture is being looked at. Jesse seems like a realist. It's a very intelligent approach and I think problems can be solved by 'death by a thousand paper cuts' where a small adjustment here and a small adjustment there can have a positive outcome without needing to make a single huge adjustment in a single area. There are direct costs that come straight from crafting and applying upgrades, and for acquiring the gear in the first place. And there are indirect costs from the time and difficulty of farming certain materials yourself (mostly the Very Rares), which may lead back to direct costs where the player resorts to the exchange for material acquisition. I like how Jesse brought up bottlenecks repeatedly. Right now a lot of the upgrade and R&D costs are tied up in bottlenecks that cause supply issues.
Tutorializing the systems and improving messaging not just for the Doff and Upgrade and R&D systems but also for basic STF strategy would be very helpful if you can spare some cycles for it.
RE: Speculative cost reductions for alt accounts: Discounts for alts are definitely needed, whatever form they may come in.
- This could be via some sort of account unlock as was mentioned like 'Oh you've gotten a Mk XIV Shield, here's an unlock'
- or it could possibly stay as a character unlock such as 'on this character you have applied X TP over time to all your upgrades, now you get a discount on crafting upgrades on that character, which you can then mail to your alts.'
- Or it could be via a crafted item transferred through the account bank ala Reputation Sponsorships, because grinding R&D schools to 15 on alts takes a while (for me at least) because alts get less play time; my main has 4 schools to 15 but the highest any of my alts have gotten is 13.
- A potentially controversial method would be to make Rep/Fleet gear Account bound.
- Or leveling a crafting school could provide a discount when applying tech upgrades from that school, as right now crafting confers no bonus to upgrading.
There are many possible methods to do this and I'm glad that they're considering them all.RE: Other speculative stuff: Re-rolling/selecting mods on existing items, deconstructing gear for TP or to scavenge [mods] or even [procs] off of them, and all of those other ideas would all be amazing additions that I would like to see scheduled for some real programmer time even if it takes another 7 months.
However, I don't think players think incrementally the way Jesse sort of, suggests(?) i.e. make a small amount of progress every day by applying 1 tech upgrade per day (or however many resources a player acquires from a day's play session) to one item. I don't think about incremental costs when I look at a phone contract or an apartment lease; I look at all of it. At the very least they're going to be measuring resources for 1 full mark upgrade for an individual item, or resources to get one item up to XIV, and more realistically players will be looking at total costs to increase their full set of weapons to Mk N, if not costs for the entire ship. The only reason the Reputation system can be said to work this way is because it is time gated in such a way that the easiest way to use it is once per day (it's easy to fill that one project) whereas with Upgrades, once you get into the higher Mk level increases, one Superior kit is not going to be enough to kick anything into cooldown. It will require several of them just to get the item's upgrade timer going. Maybe that can be improved with better messaging, maybe not.
RE: Community Question: Club 47 is neato. The lighting and the floor patterns remind me of programming my Arduino light strips and anything with neon saturated Tron colors is cool in my book. I am glad that they kept the old club 47 music tracks in the music rotation in addition to the new tracks.
Keep in mind that they record on Thursdays, which was the same day as the patch. There wasn't enough time for the skill nerf to sink in then which is why it was only briefly touched upon.
YES. CHRONITON EVERYTHING. GIMME NAO.
Joined January 2009
Rather than having to deal with DR, yep totally.
I'd rather not ever have DR come out at all - in fact I'd like us to cancel and re-roll everything dating back to season before season 7.
LoR is fine but everything else that has been stolen, deleted and ruined I'd like it all back.
I could care less about the level cap - those passives are the weakest and most pointless in the game to date.
Animations and models? There are none.
But yeah again I'd like to personally thank every whale out there who was dumb enough to pour money into the upgrading and then got to work on re-playing 600 story missions per character.
Thanks for ruining STO ya schmucks
Sometimes to get the mods i want, i have to build the same
I honestly don't think they are. I don't think they KNOW what the community or the playerbase is. They've distanced themselves from it and insulated themselves so as to never have to be in contact with said playerbase. They see us as scum, hackers, exploiters, and open wallets. Nothing more.
I think this entire response is dictated by yet another part of the massive problem: They're so disconnected they just read their internally cherry-picked metrics. They see the queues are empty but nto because they care or empathize. It's just a number on a spreadsheet.
They completely ignored all our feedback and continue to exhibit blinders in all areas of the fiasco known as STO. Even the oft-linked Extra Credits video outlining some basic F2P issues has been ignored. You drive off the playerbase, and the whales have nobody to play with. Then the whales leave. The whale system is bad business and repugnant.
Cryptic: Your playerbase IS A GAME FEATURE. You drive it off and no amount of monkeying will replace the social aspect of playing with/for/against other players.
EDIT: posted for the millionth time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwI0u9L4R8U
Allow me to present my suggested "fix" (one of many) to this problem:
Yeah, it was so great back then!
I remember the good old days of only having 6 stfs!
Playing CSE over 100 times never getting a mk XII drop!
The Disgusting UI!
Hardly any KDF content!
No real point to playing the endgame!
No alternative to joining a fleet if you wanted good gea!
Sure, there are some stupid TRIBBLE decisions Cryptic have made but not everything is terrible.
At least now there are guaranteed ways to get items, Freedom of choice in faction and vastly superior PvE content and content in general.
So you make me choose between doing same content over and over (it's exactly what we did, do and will be doing) with additional unfinished mechanics or doing same content over and over and wait for new finished and working properly mechanics? Hmm... hard choice... definitely second option.
Also, for those that don't craft or upgrade, they are screwed out of the Mk XIII and MK XIV gear.
The new "Advanced" and "Elite" Queue STFs are stupid. The difficulty of the queues should never have changed. Elite from the past could easily TRIBBLE over a team if they didn't know what to do.
And T5-U ship upgrades should never have been released, since there is no T4.5 or T3.5...So why now make T5.5?
T5.5 exist before T5-U. You get normal T5 for free at lv 40, all other ships from C-store, Fleet, etc. are T5.5
At lvl 40, your getting T4 ships, since Mirror Universe ships are classified as T4, Normal T5 ships were c-store ships.
Delta RIsing gives you 10 extra levels, specializations, new gear, and a new reputation.
If Delta Rising never had came out, you would not have that.
So how about you ignore it? JUst play your non-upgraded Tier 5 ship with Mark XII gear. Do Normal or Advanced PvE queues, ignore Upgrades and just craft the Mark XII stuff, or if you also hate crafting, don't craft either.
It seems to me that people hate that they can't get the new stuff fast enough (and I am not saying the current levelling/specialization acquisition pace is okay), not that they don't want it all. If they didn't want it all, they could completely ignore it all this.
So I see they re-tier ships. at beginning all refits in C-Store were T5 (now T4) and retrofits were T5.5
Honestly, to me this is an attitude coming from a "professional" that is pretty shocking. I understand you want to get things to people because you are excited, but if its not done, complete and tested then it isn't ready to be released. I never give something to a customer that isn't complete and correct, and if they demand it now there is a big astrisks near it saying it is work in progress and not complete.
Actions always speak louder than words, and if customer satisfaction is the primary goal (as it should be) then the actions of cryptic tell us this isn't true. The actions tell us they'll release a system, take peoples money, and either scrap it (because things are almost never really fixed, just replaced) in an attempt to take more money for something done wrong in the first place.
Something as basic as the selection of mods in a craft system should never be additional. Who is laying out the foundation for this? Doing things three times is not cost efficient.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
http://dtfleet.com/
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That's the "trick" isn't it ?!
We all know that there are some nice ppl at Cryptic , but the other side of the coin is "actions speak louder then words" .
... just look at the list of nerfs , changes & mismanagement since DR , and bite back the FU that it makes you want to fling toward anyone with a Cryptic employee card ...
With all due respect , this sounds fishy to me .
I don't see how you managed to put up two "choice tabs" (say item type : plasma beam , level type : Mk VI) , and failed to put in a third tab that dealt with "available Mods" .
I'm sorry , if you could create a system with two options , a third one should not be the usual "we need more tech / a lot of additional programming" .
It's just one more feature that is exactly like the previous two that pulls data from a pre-determined list of options .
So two list of pre-determined options were made available , but the third one is a big hu-ha ??
.... feeling mighty skeptical here , sorry ...
They do know who we are...they just don't care,to them we are nothing more than wallets and thieves.They want our money,so they alter the game in such a way that without spending at least some money,it's just too painful to play.
At the same time they call us exploiters and cheaters for finding and using the little things,they didn't think of,that make our gaming life more tolerable.
Patching those little holes in their game is pure win-win for Cryptic....we can't use an 'exploit' and at the same time they nerf something that will make the game even more painful to play,which in turn puts even more pressure on our wallets.
PWE/Cryptic are motivated by one thing: greed!
Take back your home,end the grind!
Volunteer moderators policing the forums is like a mall cop trying to solve a murder.
Let me add that another side of this is why I like Kickstarter and pre-order systems that take money upfront but ONLY if they have enough to accomplish the goal.
Right now, what's happening with a lot of things in the game is that you take the money upfront for content and features that may or may not ever happen or get finished, based on half-finished baubles.
Whereas if you said, back in 2013, "Okay. We need 40 missions for DR but we only have resources for 20. We need additional programmers and 5 additional temporary systems designers."
And you'd said, "We're taking pre-orders on the DR pack and a DR mini-pack. We have a target % meter. If we hit this goal, we can make it huge with features X/Y/Z and we'll toss stretch rewards to everyone who pre-ordered and make the expansion bigger. If we don't you're still getting an expansion but it will be half-sized and will rely on repetition of patrols and won't fully support alts and gearing costs very well at launch."
Now, yes, hindsight is 20/20. And what I'm saying is probably revolutionary FOR YOUR FIELD. (Although PWE is technically on the books as a toy company and Hasbro and Mattel have both used variations of this approach with pre-order contingent products or product upgrades.) But think about it next time.
Figure up the cost of doing a good release versus and okay release and then see if you can raise money to cover the difference before you end up there. You guys have had meetings on Expansion 3 as I understand it. So go in thinking about what it would take, resource wise, to make Expansion 3 better than what your current budget allows for it to be.
Actually, it's a very sound and commonly accepted development method to be able to deliver regular updates and new releases that add new features. It is "Agile" Development.
The goal is to be able to release something in regular intervals, each time adding a feature or improving an existing one. Your goal is to have something that can be used by customers early, and to not be busy too long with a feature before figuring out that it is actually not working with the customer.
The Crafting system may be considered one feature, but it actually has several "sub"-features - the ability to craft stuff is already there and works just fine. But there could be more to craft, and the could be other ways to determine what you wish to have. And disassembling stuff to gain base materials or even new "recipes" could be yet another feature.
The challenge in Agile Development is often identifying how to break down a big feature into many small ones that can be individually build and tested.
The motivation of Agile Development is that previous methods often worked very monolithic and ineffective. Requirements were determined many weeks, months or even years ahead, when there was no program to actually use. When the software was finally deemed "finished", customers would finally be able to see it, and realize that it isn't what the wanted. Agile development tries to make the feedback loop shorter, so you don't build system on system only to find out that the foundation was wrong and that you did not understand your customer's requirements.
Jesse your overly defensive over your work in this interview almost to the point of being hostile,
i feel that i dont see the same results he does on his "playing" the game. how much time to you spend in the game to get any advancement? do you grind the game for half a day a few hrs a day a whole day . for a week a month? how much interaction with the social aspect of the game? how many ALTS ? . in my normal nightly game play im still working on the R&D , i interact with my fleetmates but i feel the headway to gear one toon let alone a alt is not there . you cant really pug any queued content outside of normal . with a couple of exceptions . the Optionals arent optional WTH ?
while you talk of tweaking this and that , while we wait , my progression is far from optimal . it my be fine with players that have 8hr or more a day to spend playing , im lucky i get a couple of hours a night during the week to play , i have a fresh 50 that i see at the current state of the game will never be able to progress in half of the rep system to get gear out of . so why bother with alts .
thats what the game is coming too "why bother" . if you dont feel like your making any progression . you have to be insanely game rich to gain any footing in the upgrading game.
I'm really hoping for a deconstruction system, myself. Not as a way of rerolling mods, I hope you implement something better for that, but because I have a bunch of old fleet gear I just don't equip anymore. I hold onto it because of the resource investment, but it mostly just sits on my old ships doing nothing. If I could break it down into a good amount of components, I definitely would. Right now all I could do is vendor it for a tiny amount of EC -- so tiny I'd rather just hold onto it.
And I just want to say, aside from the story content, the upgrade system is my favorite part of this expansion. It was such a smart way to go. I could totally have seen mk XIII and XIV gear coming out in the same way XI and XII did -- you have a full set of XII? Too bad, buy new ones, for twice the cost of the old ones. The upgrade system is cheap by comparison and lets us make something of all that unique story gear. I love it.
Perhaps they're classified by you as Tier 4, but the developers call them Tier 5. Scroll to the bottom and see which Tier 5 ships don't get an upgrade.
I interpreted his statement to mean that they haven't decided on the exact mechanic for custom modifiers, not that it is hard to add a couple of drop-down lists. Of course, that would be an easy solution. But they probably don't want to do it that way, because they can't charge extra for it. They will probably create a token for customizing modifiers that will cost dilithium to craft, cost dilithium to apply, come from lockboxes, or come from R&D packs.
More like:
"We need 40 missions . Now we can make 40 missions OR ... we can make about 12 , throw in a few patrols , get voice actors to make us look like SWTOR and , AND , make a TRIBBLE load of systems that will make our systems-happy EP , happy .
... we can do All That ... but we can't add another database pull for crafting MOD prefixes ... "
And then someone came in and signed off on that .
And this someone is Stephen DAngelo who apparently is not suitable as project manager. Sthal wasn't ideal too, but at least he didn't sign under half finished product.
So in return we get a half assed product that backfired and now they are making way less money than before. I guess they don't understand that it is easier to make money being alt friendly than greedy.