When the Mirror Invasion Advanced STF was paying out too much dilithium they shut the whole event down within 10 minutes.
It's ALL about dilithium.
No, not all. But it's certainly also very important, and it is a reason why they close down certain things.
But the skill points were certainly also an issue - if they built their plan for the next months or years on a certain leveling speed but players vastly exceed it, then that won't for them either. The longer they wait, the more players will be too far ahead.
And we shouldn't kid ourselves - I doubt we've seen so many people doing Tau Dewa missions at once, ideally grouped and what not, ever before. Exploit or not - the players wanted to get their levels, and they were getting them not just a lot faster, but also a lot more people were getting them then they could possibly want in that case.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
It would only be the expectation of having dozens of toons that are all maxed...no?
Or maybe I'm completely off there, eh? Like I said, I'm still trying to process the thought process behind the thread. Oh well...[/QUOTE]
content is gated to level 60 now
load outs still don't work right never have...having dedicated alts is a work around a lot of people use/ space/ground toons for example
you cant realistically level doing ground missions so dedicated ground toons are shafted for example
spreading out lockbox ships and fleet ships over different classes of characters and factions I found to be a lot of fun
but not with this insane grind and gated content
Now I feel restricted to playing only a few toons because of the new grind
So all of my other toons...no new equipment no new ships...its no longer worth it for me
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
Because that is not a reasonable demand. You want to have a competitive alt, you have to work at least a bit on it, IMO.
And go on, read the rest of my post, which includes a reasonable solution.
The major difference is that in the past, an alt would be perfectly competitive with easily-obtained level 40 gear. Min-maxing to get bleeding edge equipment gave only a marginal advantage at best. In the present the bar to getting alts to that competitive level has been raised so high it's basically unviable (in fact they are hard time-gated by the rep system, even with the sponsor tokens).
The dozens and dozens of various passives and grind-based benefits are far too powerful to forgo in PvP they provide, among other things, a host of massive damage buffs, maneuverability bonuses, power and even a total immunity active on a low cooldown (!). While I can only speak authoritatively on PvP I would imagine the same difference would be seen in other game modes as well.
No, not all. But it's certainly also very important, and it is a reason why they close down certain things.
But the skill points were certainly also an issue - if they built their plan for the next months or years on a certain leveling speed but players vastly exceed it, then that won't for them either. The longer they wait, the more players will be too far ahead.
And we shouldn't kid ourselves - I doubt we've seen so many people doing Tau Dewa missions at once, ideally grouped and what not, ever before. Exploit or not - the players wanted to get their levels, and they were getting them not just a lot faster, but also a lot more people were getting them then they could possibly want in that case.
That's true, I've never seen such an interesting and fun part of STO before. There were 1000's of players creating emergent gameplay groups and enjoying one another's company.
Yes people were getting levels faster than anticipated, but even a 50% nerf would have been enough to slow that down without making it invalid. However they broke the grouping system, they broke the patrol rewards, they broke the drop rate of items and have consistently broken many other things since the TD debacle.
It was still some of the most fun I've had in STO, because it involved teams of people who worked together properly without interference. If they looked at the metrics and the rewards vs the time spent, they'd see that they were in fact onto something there. They just didn't know it was something good for the game, not bad...
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."
I'm NOT talking about clickie powers.... Perhaps I should have said triggered...
I'm talking about stuff like "Eat my Dust" which gives you a bonus IF you get hit on your rear shield facing. And Attack Pattern expertise which gives a bonus when you use an attack pattern skill.
It's very different from the Paragon thing because Paragon levels are 1: far less interesting(I wasn't being sarcastic when I said one of the options was +5 to the stat that increases your HP), and 2: do far less individually.
Even if EVERY ability cost more than one spec point or was broken up into more tiers, the net result would STILL be that the devs could speed up progression of the XP bar again.
Split every spec passive or ability into 3 tiers (instead of +20% X, it might become 3 +7% X abilities). Divide XP required per spec point by 3. The bar moves again. That would begin to solve the FEELING of stagnation.
But, really, you could probably split some passives into more tiers and leave others as-is, making it so that the cost of different gains from specializations is more variable and more attuned to what the actual reward gained is.
The idea of each one costing 1 spec point is probably weak design to begin with considering the value of the various passives is not equal.
Even if EVERY ability cost more than one spec point or was broken up into more tiers, the net result would STILL be that the devs could speed up progression of the XP bar again.
Split every spec passive or ability into 3 tiers (instead of +20% X, it might become 3 +7% X abilities). Divide XP required per spec point by 3. The bar moves again. That would begin to solve the FEELING of stagnation.
But, really, you could probably split some passives into more tiers and leave others as-is, making it so that the cost of different gains from specializations is more variable and more attuned to what the actual reward gained is.
The idea of each one costing 1 spec point is probably weak design to begin with considering the value of the various passives is not equal.
Many abilities actually already have multiple tiers, they are just organized in a tree-structure. I have no idea if they are "balanced" in cost, but then - what ever is with STO?
But do you really think that is all that would suffice for detractors? Does it really matter if you get 300 points done in a year or 60?
Maybe. I don't know. People are a fickle beast. No one seemed to be worried that their level progress bar stopped moving once they reached 50 before Delta Rising. Back then, you needed an infinite amount of levelling to get a spec point!
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Many abilities actually already have multiple tiers, they are just organized in a tree-structure. I have no idea if they are "balanced" in cost, but then - what ever is with STO?
But do you really think that is all that would suffice for detractors? Does it really matter if you get 300 points done in a year or 60?
Maybe. I don't know. People are a fickle beast. No one seemed to be worried that their level progress bar stopped moving once they reached 50 before Delta Rising. Back then, you needed an infinite amount of levelling to get a spec point!
Would it suffice for detractors? Well, for the most stubborn, no. But the speed of the XP bar's progress grinding to a halt drew people to the forums that don't normally come here and added to the number of detractors. I'm not talking about appeasing detractors. I'm talking about better attuning the feel of gameplay to re-emphasize a feeling of value and progress.
And hopefully having a net buff in there at least for acquiring the less powerful passives. Or maybe a net buff to secondaries by having secondaries cost less to complete than primaries by a more dramatic margin.
For example:
Reduce the amount of XP needed per spec point.
Split ALMOST every (but not every) primary spec passive into 3 1/3rd effect passives that cost 1 spec point each.
Leave secondaries as-is.
Net result: rate of gain on secondaries is tripled. Rate of gain on primary specializations is SLIGHTLY buffed. The XP bar is moving again. User acceptance improves. More people bother completing both secondaries. People accept that a primary is more work but at least they can visually see progress made towards it.
Probably in the course of this, some grind is removed from leveling as well. Which is a good thing because you aren't effective in increasing average playtime per user if people are giving up.
I would like to see this done but not all-account wide.
There's an option here to introduce Faction-specific specialization skills instead of one-size-fits-all for the profession. I could see Klingon captains getting some amazing Pilot skills with their basis in flying small, fast BOPs and some Commando skills based around knowledge of battle tactics. Romulans could see something interesting with cloaks and formations with Pilot and something cool with Commando. Finally Feds could see some cool things with speed tanking in the Pilot tree (this is probably the one that should get stuff like Rock and Roll) and some cool group bonuses in Commando.
Then you could make specialization points account-wide per Faction. That would be an interesting way to solve the problem - you have to do the grind on more than one toon but only once per faction AND you get a few unique ones out of it adding to racial variety.
Delta Rising is the best expansion ever and the players love it! No, seriously! ...Why are you laughing so hard?
Leviathan, I'm afraid you're missing the point entirely. The grind might (and I strongly emphasize the word 'might') be borderline acceptable if you're only dealing with one character.
The problem comes when you have two, three, six (as I do) or heavens forbid, 40+ characters to send climbing up the specialization ladder. Characters which used to be playable with comparably little time and effort invested are suddenly mothballed as the system completely obliterates their chances of getting any playtime, much less an amount of playtime sufficient to get the XP required.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Comments
It's ALL about dilithium.
Free Tibet!
No, not all. But it's certainly also very important, and it is a reason why they close down certain things.
But the skill points were certainly also an issue - if they built their plan for the next months or years on a certain leveling speed but players vastly exceed it, then that won't for them either. The longer they wait, the more players will be too far ahead.
And we shouldn't kid ourselves - I doubt we've seen so many people doing Tau Dewa missions at once, ideally grouped and what not, ever before. Exploit or not - the players wanted to get their levels, and they were getting them not just a lot faster, but also a lot more people were getting them then they could possibly want in that case.
Or maybe I'm completely off there, eh? Like I said, I'm still trying to process the thought process behind the thread. Oh well...[/QUOTE]
content is gated to level 60 now
load outs still don't work right never have...having dedicated alts is a work around a lot of people use/ space/ground toons for example
you cant realistically level doing ground missions so dedicated ground toons are shafted for example
spreading out lockbox ships and fleet ships over different classes of characters and factions I found to be a lot of fun
but not with this insane grind and gated content
Now I feel restricted to playing only a few toons because of the new grind
So all of my other toons...no new equipment no new ships...its no longer worth it for me
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
The major difference is that in the past, an alt would be perfectly competitive with easily-obtained level 40 gear. Min-maxing to get bleeding edge equipment gave only a marginal advantage at best. In the present the bar to getting alts to that competitive level has been raised so high it's basically unviable (in fact they are hard time-gated by the rep system, even with the sponsor tokens).
The dozens and dozens of various passives and grind-based benefits are far too powerful to forgo in PvP they provide, among other things, a host of massive damage buffs, maneuverability bonuses, power and even a total immunity active on a low cooldown (!). While I can only speak authoritatively on PvP I would imagine the same difference would be seen in other game modes as well.
vids and guides and stuff
[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples
Yes people were getting levels faster than anticipated, but even a 50% nerf would have been enough to slow that down without making it invalid. However they broke the grouping system, they broke the patrol rewards, they broke the drop rate of items and have consistently broken many other things since the TD debacle.
It was still some of the most fun I've had in STO, because it involved teams of people who worked together properly without interference. If they looked at the metrics and the rewards vs the time spent, they'd see that they were in fact onto something there. They just didn't know it was something good for the game, not bad...
"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."
Even if EVERY ability cost more than one spec point or was broken up into more tiers, the net result would STILL be that the devs could speed up progression of the XP bar again.
Split every spec passive or ability into 3 tiers (instead of +20% X, it might become 3 +7% X abilities). Divide XP required per spec point by 3. The bar moves again. That would begin to solve the FEELING of stagnation.
But, really, you could probably split some passives into more tiers and leave others as-is, making it so that the cost of different gains from specializations is more variable and more attuned to what the actual reward gained is.
The idea of each one costing 1 spec point is probably weak design to begin with considering the value of the various passives is not equal.
Many abilities actually already have multiple tiers, they are just organized in a tree-structure. I have no idea if they are "balanced" in cost, but then - what ever is with STO?
But do you really think that is all that would suffice for detractors? Does it really matter if you get 300 points done in a year or 60?
Maybe. I don't know. People are a fickle beast. No one seemed to be worried that their level progress bar stopped moving once they reached 50 before Delta Rising. Back then, you needed an infinite amount of levelling to get a spec point!
Would it suffice for detractors? Well, for the most stubborn, no. But the speed of the XP bar's progress grinding to a halt drew people to the forums that don't normally come here and added to the number of detractors. I'm not talking about appeasing detractors. I'm talking about better attuning the feel of gameplay to re-emphasize a feeling of value and progress.
And hopefully having a net buff in there at least for acquiring the less powerful passives. Or maybe a net buff to secondaries by having secondaries cost less to complete than primaries by a more dramatic margin.
For example:
Reduce the amount of XP needed per spec point.
Split ALMOST every (but not every) primary spec passive into 3 1/3rd effect passives that cost 1 spec point each.
Leave secondaries as-is.
Net result: rate of gain on secondaries is tripled. Rate of gain on primary specializations is SLIGHTLY buffed. The XP bar is moving again. User acceptance improves. More people bother completing both secondaries. People accept that a primary is more work but at least they can visually see progress made towards it.
Probably in the course of this, some grind is removed from leveling as well. Which is a good thing because you aren't effective in increasing average playtime per user if people are giving up.
There's an option here to introduce Faction-specific specialization skills instead of one-size-fits-all for the profession. I could see Klingon captains getting some amazing Pilot skills with their basis in flying small, fast BOPs and some Commando skills based around knowledge of battle tactics. Romulans could see something interesting with cloaks and formations with Pilot and something cool with Commando. Finally Feds could see some cool things with speed tanking in the Pilot tree (this is probably the one that should get stuff like Rock and Roll) and some cool group bonuses in Commando.
Then you could make specialization points account-wide per Faction. That would be an interesting way to solve the problem - you have to do the grind on more than one toon but only once per faction AND you get a few unique ones out of it adding to racial variety.
The problem comes when you have two, three, six (as I do) or heavens forbid, 40+ characters to send climbing up the specialization ladder. Characters which used to be playable with comparably little time and effort invested are suddenly mothballed as the system completely obliterates their chances of getting any playtime, much less an amount of playtime sufficient to get the XP required.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.