Idea for expansion of Sponsership token system

rgzarcher

This is a little idea I have been working on for the last few days and was hoping to hear some feedback from you guys to see what you think.

Everyone remembers back not so long ago when the major complaint most people had was having to grind for the Reputation system on all of their alt toons. The Traits are useful, the gear and weapons are pretty good, and you get some nice toys for your trouble. The problem was working on the same few missions to get Marks each day on all of your toons quickly became very tedious.

So, Cryptic added something that is perhaps one of the better if not best received ideas, the Sponsership tokens. You still have to max out the Reputation in question, but only for one character. After that all of your other characters take half as much time, energy, and work to max out.

Now, the game has added a few new additions since back then in the R&D crafting and the Intelligence Specialization systems. When you look at these on paper, they really aren't that different from the Reputation system.

What if they were to implement a similar way of making the game more friendly for those of us who have more than just one character?

For Crafting, you would need to reach level 15 in any given R&D branch, but then it would add something else to the list of craftable items, an account bound 'Sponsership token' for that particular R&D branch that you could transfer to any of your other characters to double the points they get from crafting projects.

Same with the Intelligence Specialization system, once you have unlocked all of the Specialization points, you would be able to make a Token that could be transferred to other toons on the same account to double the speed they gain 'level ups' past level 50.

Both of these would still require players to work and grind the hard way for one character, but then it would cut the work load in half for their alt characters. It's still a lot of work but it would be a way for those of us that put that extra work into the game to be rewarded and still be able to enjoy playing with multiple characters.

Thoughts?

mightybobcnc

I think the majority of players would find this to be a most welcome addition.

lordsteve1

I think these suggestions are far more appealing than the demand for everything to have instant account wide unlocks.
They still require some degree of work for people with multiple alts but still help to reduce the grind required so the crafting and spec trees are not too prohibitive to alt development.

I support these suggestions.

rgzarcher

lordsteve1 wrote: »

I think these suggestions are far more appealing than the demand for everything to have instant account wide unlocks.
They still require some degree of work for people with multiple alts but still help to reduce the grind required so the crafting and spec trees are not too prohibitive to alt development.

I support these suggestions.

That's what I was aiming for. Making everything an instant account wide unlock is unreasonable (though very very appealing) since Cryptic does need to have something that keeps people playing.

Players by and large want as much as possible with as little work as possible. Cryptic needs people to work as much as possible for as long as possible. There has to be a balance between the two groups polarized interests for both sides to benifet in the long run.

rsoblivion

Thing is that thinking is a misnomer, the length of time people are ingame is not an accurate correlation to numbers of players who then purchase from the C-Store with cash. It's a bit odd that they think that way, but to me it's a bit odd. If I were to look at it, I would be putting content in that has value in a different way, there would be more balance to all the ships so while you could get ships as good as C-Store ships for free, the ships the players like for emotional reasons would mostly be from the cash store with a way to get it via ingame currency. That's already done to an extent, but the method is fixed. There's little to no personalisation and little to no customisation of each ship.

Enter more options to set ships up. Give the players a chassis with 3 default layouts, one for Tac, one for Eng and one for Sci (see Vesta/Oddy/Scimi/Bort/etc...), however instead of buying all three separately (making them elitist ships) they are modular. Each modular ship can be set up whichever way desired, then equipped as needed. If it is primarily a hull designed for combat it's Sci may not be as effective as a fully prepped Sci Hull, but it'll get to 90-95% of the way. This would apply unilaterally to all modular hulls.

This would not only give more choice it would give more depth. Additionally during this setup a redesign of the combat to balance it would be needed. AI would be given teeth in the harder modes instead of flab, optimal builds will be designed with the help of the DPS pro's to find the strength's and weaknesses in each. Builds for Eng, Sci and Tac would be equalised from a usefulness perspective removing a lot of the need for the DPS race. TTK for a single 1v1 ship encounter would be slightly increased but rewards would be more beneficial.

Boss encounters would be altered to suit group composition with abilities like Go Down Fighting adjusted so almost destroying ones own ship is not needed for optimal DPS. Instead of HP/SP Boss ships can have better weapons (most MMO's allow bosses to be levels higher than players to prevent power creep) and special abilities or skills that allow them to be a real fight instead of a cakewalk that takes 10s or a mega-sponge that takes 10 mins for no reason.

I just wish I could assist the evolution of STO into a player and payer centric MMO rather than the current situation.

rgzarcher

While its true there connection between how much time someone spends playing and how much money they spend isn't always direct, there is an influence at work, and there is a direct link between how much money someone spends and how much they see it as being worth spending.

Most people who have multiple characters at this time are only bothering with crafting on one of them, then sending their goods to their alts. So, if you have three toons but only work on crafting with one of them, you are only going to spend a limited amount of money on Dilithium, as much as you need to craft for that character and the absolute most basic needs for your alts.

If you can get twice as much work done for half the time, there is a change in perception as spending dilithium to further speed up your crafting becomes that much more appealing.

1 toon at normal speed = average pay out.

1 person with 3 toons, 1 at normal speed and 2 at double speed = double pay out since they will spends as much to max out crafting for the two toons they weren't going to bother with as it would normally cost to max out 1 at normal speed.

Its a proven fact that people spend more money on a sale than they would at normal mark up, just look at how much money Black Friday brings in every year.

tekehd

I'd be okay with specialization sponsorship idea... makes sense... it is very much like the reputation system... R&D, however, no... it is not. The stuff we can churn our from R&D has exchangeable value. R&D is not like reputation. The traits you can get are a secondary thing... the primary purpose of the R&D system is crafting of useable and trade-able components and equipment, severe devaluation of a market to make it easier to get a few traits is not a good idea.