Good to see that being a "billionaire" in a virtual world clearly doesn't require any brains. Only a complete idiot would waste the time/effort/money on this IMO (not directed a john98837 personally).
Or maybe someone is just jealous that hes broke and others arent?
While I like the upgrade system in general some items seam to require an obcene amount of techpoints for upgrading especially when going ur or epic. Basically all rep items are much to expensive. Rest is fine I suppose.
I pretty much stopped upgrading when I realized that I would need about 50 million EC plus the mats plus too much dilithium. I'm just not going to do it, it's too much.
No, what's killing the game is that the there are big chunks of the player base who don't know enough about the game OR have enough sense to listen to the devs when they said epic was a monumental waste of money and effort and only there for the truely stupid to waste money and effort on. You seem to think that you NEED epic stuff to play the game. and the upgrade to mk XIV is qute reasonable with you being able to upgrade 3 item from II to XIV in about 3-4 days.
I don't need epics, but I certainly am not going to grind up multiple gear sets for mulitple energy types, and I am one of the richer players in this game having over 1 billion EC, over 4 million dilithium. I will quit and come back if Cryptic comes to their senses in the next expansion. Hopefully the game will survive that long.
The most disgusting double down craptic pulled was when they increased the damage of XIII and XIV. Under the existing power scaling where there was only a tiny bit of difference between an XI and XII you could just keep your XII and not be at that big a disadvantage. They went way out of their way to force players to upgrade their XII gear.
It is not supposed to be fair for us common folk to get Epic gear. Epic gear is for the rich and/or stupid. Just get the gear to Mk XIV and consider it luck if the rarity increases.
Or, you know, do as I do and not even waste your time on that.
Noticed player base seems to be shrinking, I believe the upgrade system is to blame.
Upgrading is horrendously expensive.....
Everyone else agree?
It's that and the recent nerfs to rewards. Apparently Cryptic doesn't have a psychologist on staff because they would have explained that the reason people play games, any games, in general is due to the sense of reward which is where almost all of the mechanics in classic mmos stem from. Leveling, to getting drops, to getting upgrades to getting gear, to getting fun additions like toys or pets or mounts, all stem from this basic principle. when you remove that aspect of your game you basically are breaking the reason why people login. It is no longer a rewarding experience so you have fewer people logging in.
It's not limited to the new costs for upgrades but that is part of the bigger picture yes.
It's that and the recent nerfs to rewards. Apparently Cryptic doesn't have a psychologist on staff because they would have explained that the reason people play games, any games, in general is due to the sense of reward which is where almost all of the mechanics in classic mmos stem from. Leveling, to getting drops, to getting upgrades to getting gear, to getting fun additions like toys or pets or mounts, all stem from this basic principle. when you remove that aspect of your game you basically are breaking the reason why people login. It is no longer a rewarding experience so you have fewer people logging in.
It's not limited to the new costs for upgrades but that is part of the bigger picture yes.
I think they had some psychological idea behind the upgrade system. The idea was - people would log in, play a bit, earn dilithium, and then, if they had enough, apply an upgrade kit. The tech point bar would move forward, the player would know he'd achieved something, and he could log off it it was time for it.
They didn't think that players don't care about moving the progress bar -they want it at the end, at all times, immediately, every time.
Maybe they had the wrong idea here. I dunno. I know I don't use their progress bars like that - For example, I usually start event projects only if I actually have all the resources I need for them. I will probably only use upgrade kits if I had enough to complete a Mark tier.
But I still like the upgrade system. But I don't have any ambition of trying to make UR or Epic gear.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I think they had some psychological idea behind the upgrade system. The idea was - people would log in, play a bit, earn dilithium, and then, if they had enough, apply an upgrade kit. The tech point bar would move forward, the player would know he'd achieved something, and he could log off it it was time for it.
They didn't think that players don't care about moving the progress bar -they want it at the end, at all times, immediately, every time.
Maybe they had the wrong idea here. I dunno. I know I don't use their progress bars like that - For example, I usually start event projects only if I actually have all the resources I need for them. I will probably only use upgrade kits if I had enough to complete a Mark tier.
But I still like the upgrade system. But I don't have any ambition of trying to make UR or Epic gear.
You are one of those blame the **** victim. Its not the players fault they don't play anymore.
You are one of those blame the **** victim. Its not the players fault they don't play anymore.
I think comparing a person that stopped playing a game to a "victim" is misleading. Heck, you might be better calling players that open lock boxes with master keys or use the dilithium shortcut for the Crafting or Upgrade system victims.
If you don't play because Cryptic didn't make the progress bar move fast enough for your taste, they failed to satisfy your tastes - but that doesn't mean they don't still satisfy other people's taste. And they have to worry about more than one group of players. They have to worry about more than everyone playing the game - they also have to ensure that some of them pay for the game. And if that means pissing off some players (whether they pay or not is not relevant) to get other players spend money - so be it.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I think comparing a person that stopped playing a game to a "victim" is misleading. Heck, you might be better calling players that open lock boxes with master keys or use the dilithium shortcut for the Crafting or Upgrade system victims.
If you don't play because Cryptic didn't make the progress bar move fast enough for your taste, they failed to satisfy your tastes - but that doesn't mean they don't still satisfy other people's taste. And they have to worry about more than one group of players. They have to worry about more than everyone playing the game - they also have to ensure that some of them pay for the game. And if that means pissing off some players (whether they pay or not is not relevant) to get other players spend money - so be it.
I would say the empty queues have proven they have failed to satisfy most players tastes. I would bet Dollars to donuts you are a shill account...
Stick to Mk 12 Rare Tetryon weapons. TRIBBLE paying for R&D just so you can get 1:1,000,000 chance to upgrade to Epic. There IS such a thing as "good enough" weapons. You just have to figure out how to pick the right gear.
I would say the empty queues have proven they have failed to satisfy most players tastes.
Just because the queues are empty doesn't mean the people aren't playing the game. They may be doing different things because the queues are no longer deemed rewarding.
Think about how it was before Delta Rising - INfected Elite took much less than a minute usually to pop. It could not fail, and the optional was practically never missed, even in PUGs - power creep and experience had made it easy, so easy that some people may have even forgoten there was once a 10 % tactic and all that. And there were no time gates like mandatory tutorials or enemies spawning only after a certain amount of time. It was the fastest mission to play. It was extremely rewarding - Marks, Dilithium and Neural Processors. No wonder it was popular.
Other queues didn't have it quite that good. I think Crystalline Entity became similar popular, while it didn't reward any special reputation marks like implants or neural processors, it granted a mark choice, very valuable, too. And it got progressively worse the tougher a event actually was.
But now - Infected pays out a bit less Dilithium (I honestly think that is mostly irrelevant). More importantly - Infected Advanced is harder than the old Infected Elite. And what used to be the optional isn't optional anymore. If you only do Normal, you don't get Neural Processors and you get less marks.
So, it's no longer as awesome as it used to be. And other queues are even worse off, I think, especially the new ones.
Players may not be in the queues not because the players are not in the game, but because queues are not as rewarding as they used to be. Even if no one needed to level, and no one was doing Winter Wonderland stuff, I think the queues are a lot less attractive to players than they used to.
I think Cryptic will need to look at that and find a solution. I bet it will take longer than players like (an easy bet, because it already happened), but I strongly suspect something will happen.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I'll admit, I've upgraded all of my consoles to epic, MANAGED to get some of my equipment to Ultra Rare...but others I'm not even attempting to change from Rare. The stats don't change and even if they do...is it really worth it? I'm sick of grinding, so I'm back to logging-in for a bit of a place, with my current build and to TRY and actually enjoy this game again...although it hasn't exactly been made easy to do that.
The Dil cost is waaaaaaaaayyyyy too much to upgrade, and reducing ways to get a lot of dil without any VIP dil claims is super tedious and a reason to leave the game...
Like a bad marriage I already gave a lot of money, and I still spend on certain things, however I refuse to use ANY ZEN to turn into Dilithium. That cost it way too high... I'll spend some zen on keys, packs, ships and so on, but I REFUSE to waste real money on Dil... :mad:
Also upgrading ships and stuff... Like the ship upgrade to T5u.. Thank you for making me pay real money AGAIN for a ship I already paid real money for...
As for upgrading with Dil... I would like to see ANY upgrade you do per tech upgrade token to be LESS than 1000 dil.. like the superior being 1000+ makes me rage so much and I've loved this game for the past 3.5 years
Star Wars is for moody rich kids, (you remember that kid that had every star wars figure/toy and he was a douche).
And Star Trek is for real long time fans of an imaginative, technological, scientifically robust but FUN waste of time :cool:
it got progressively worse the tougher a event actually was.
That's an incorrect assumption. Cryptic don't use a balance which include Time vs Rewards. You got the reason for the old ISE right, but it's primarily it was rewarding which made it repeatable ad infinitum. Currently not a whole lot is rewarding, Crystalline is now probably the most rewarding of the lot for space STF's. Bug Hunt Elite for ground.
The problem stems from the fact that there is no content to challenge your gear and still give a rewarding experience. People want the best gear, but they have to grind out the end game stuff to get it. Then when they do there's nothing to use it on but the stuff they've already played to get it. Very disheartening. The Elite scenario's don't offer much reward at all for the time needed and the cost of setup (in space at least).
At it's core a full rebalance is needed, by a professional, not a card gamer.
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."
Noticed player base seems to be shrinking, I believe the upgrade system is to blame.
Upgrading is horrendously expensive.....
Everyone else agree?
First comment ever.. I've been a lurker for years.
First, congrats on hitting 80k DPS in a breen Chell Grett there Zod(Fury). Especially with no gold weapons. Quite impressive. I mean STORyan was impressed. Quite the feat.
Second, yes. While I realize the entire endeavor was designed to get FTP players to PTP, the crafting system seems to be way too much of a dil & EC sink to be enjoyable. For a second there it was so much of a resource sink that I thought perhaps this was an administrative way to reset control of the in-game economy back to whatever balance the admin was striving for. The after considering the way market fluctuations simply gave MORE control to those who had the vast amounts of wealth in game (including out of game poachers) I realized that this was not an intended side effect as it actually allowed money to be made outside of the PW environment to which PW had no stake in.
So basically, it was a way to take OP items and cause a large in game demand for them, increasing the real world purchases made to PW, consequences be damned.
Not how I would have handled it, but then again I'm no business man. Not my forte.
You don't even need Mk XIVs...or XIII. Hell techincally, you don't even need XIIs. This game is mind boggling easy. Even after the increase in difficulty. You wanna hoard your fake money...go for it...but don't ***** that something costs too much because you wanna hoard fake money. And besides which, other the angry everything STO does in wrong crowd, it's pretty much accepted that upgrade costs for mk XIV isn't even remotely bad. I have 4 sets upgraded to that on my main character (many of them rep items which cost more then normal items) and will probably do two more sets for my breen ships once I have time to dedicate to playing the game again (real life got kinda busy).
Take you lower then XII gear into an elite que then say how mind boggling easy it is....lol
I totally agree with OP, upgrade system is wicked expensive, mostly in dilitium. I have 4 toons just to harvest material and dilitium to upgrade 1 toon and I'm far from done too, and only 1 ship, 1 set of weapons and equipement. Can't afford to upgrade the others and I don't have money to buy zen to get more dilitium. I think its the worst sinkhole in the game so far. 4 more days and I'll get everything on 1 ship at mk XIV. never mind getting everything to epic. The way its going I'll be done next spring for that ship.......
Delta rising has some nice new content but upgrade system is clearly made to make craptic money and little else.
To finish, I agree with op that it seems like there is less ppl online and most public q are quite empty and PvP is a joke with those intel ships and powers and pvp q are quite empty too.
Seems to me like they're trying to milk the cow dry, and they're about to succeed, only a small tribble of milk left in it. Hope the rumor of buyout are thrue and we get someone less intend on profit and more on fun to play factor.
Jamal : Tactical space specialist. USS Bug Warrior and many others
E'Mc2 : Science Reman torp T'Varo, deadly annoyance :P
Kunmal: Tactical fed Klingon, ground specialist, USS Kanewaga
Ka -tet Tier 5 fleet fully completed Starbase and fleet property
Truth be be told, I consider Mk XIV equipment to be unnecessary period, regardless of rarity.
It's one of those things that is nice to have, but not an absolute necessity.
All of my characters are running rare and very rare Mk XII stuff, with the odd Mk XIII here and there.
As for the upgrade system, it's been both a help and something that isn't used often. I only make use of it to upgrade certain Mk XI items to Mk XII, like the Jem'Hadar ground and space sets (to name a couple of examples). Previously, that would have cost me lobi.
On the other hand, it's not a cost effective system to update everything across all characters. For that, I just throw EC at the Exchange, or run a quick rep project for an item.
Umm...you do know people have done elites with WHITE mk X items...right? And I'm not talking just the wizards of STO crowd. Course you'd have to be a A2B beam boat...but it can be done. But hell, I'm not even going THAT extreme...using just the mk XII stuff you had before DR, you can easily make a boat that can plough through any content this game has. If you can't...then it's not the upgrade system that is the problem.
Now that is funny, maybe you can get through VCE with a good team to carry you...
But whole team with Mk X common gear not happening!
And I guess im not that good seeing that I hit 75K+ DPS in a Chel Grett
Well aside from the people who can throw away hundreds of dollars in this game, us normal people are suffering....I have one epic weapon only because it turned epic getting it from MK II to XIV, I can not afford anymore, and don't think it is fair to us normal people that the resources to upgrade is set so high.
Just wish it could be changed.......
I can see a problem there in your post how many more are like this, no wonder it is costing people a fortune to upgrade their gear, why are you wasting dil upgrading mk2 gear to mk14, surely the item you are upgrading is not that great that it deserves upgrading.
personally I am only upgrading mk12 rare or better gear and if I wanted to stretch it a bit I have tons of mk11&mk10 rare or better gear I could upgrade but anything I might have that is less then mk10 rare (and that is very little) is just a space filler and will eventually end up in the recycle bin.
I have kitted out 2 of my best ships on each character with mk12 rare and better and I am gradually upgrading it all to mk14 that includes fore & rear weapons, warp core shields ect and all consoles.
I am well on the way to completing my goal and although its quite expensive to do its not all that bad.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
I can see a problem there in your post how many more are like this, no wonder it is costing people a fortune to upgrade their gear, why are you wasting dil upgrading mk2 gear to mk14, surely the item you are upgrading is not that great that it deserves upgrading.
The whole point of upgrading Mk 2 gear to Mk 14 gear is that there is 12 chances to upgrade the rarity compared to 2 chances to upgrade the rarity when going from Mk 12 to Mk 14. So it is actually cheaper if you are successful to get epic gear. Just need to craft purple Mk 2 gear with the stats you want and go from there.
The whole point of upgrading Mk 2 gear to Mk 14 gear is that there is 12 chances to upgrade the rarity compared to 2 chances to upgrade the rarity when going from Mk 12 to Mk 14. So it is actually cheaper if you are successful to get epic gear. Just need to craft purple Mk 2 gear with the stats you want and go from there.
Really ? Did we have to explain this again? (sigh) I thought that the public schools still taught math.
In actual practice, all of my epic weapon came from select items crafted from Mk 2 seeds. Why not pick the mods and procs that are most meaningful to your gameplay?
IRT the original post for the thread, I actually like the Upgrade system. If I was still in the PVP bus as a TAC DPS escort/BOP, I would loathe it. Religeously. Maybe that's why I dont mind it.
The whole point of upgrading Mk 2 gear to Mk 14 gear is that there is 12 chances to upgrade the rarity compared to 2 chances to upgrade the rarity when going from Mk 12 to Mk 14. So it is actually cheaper if you are successful to get epic gear. Just need to craft purple Mk 2 gear with the stats you want and go from there.
and yet how often does this gamble pay off and how much are you paying over the top to upgrade all these times.
I have had a upgrade in rarity a few times up to ultra rare just upgrading from mk12 to mk14 but I am keeping my upgrade costs to a minimum rather then spending extra on a rarity upgrade gamble that might or might not pay off.
when you have finished upgrading all the gear you want to how much better will your gear be compared to mine and how much extra dil & EC will you have spent chasing the dream.
I am quite happy just to take a mk12 rare item and end up with a mk14 rare item if I should get a rarity boost it is just a nice bonus but not something I am counting on or even hoping for.
then again just think how much you are spending extra and how much more stuff you could upgrade if you limited your starting point as I am.
that's not even counting the crafting costs of the time it takes getting the crafting mats you need to begin with.
sure it would be great if they cut the cost of upgrading by half I could maybe upgrade 4 ships per character to mk14 instead of just 2 but somehow I think things will stay much as they are.
in the mean time you do it your way and I will do it mine and you will end up spending a lot more dilithium and get much more frustrated with the costs then I will.
and in a few months I will be finished with my upgrade quest but you will still have a long way to go.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Comments
Or maybe someone is just jealous that hes broke and others arent?
While I like the upgrade system in general some items seam to require an obcene amount of techpoints for upgrading especially when going ur or epic. Basically all rep items are much to expensive. Rest is fine I suppose.
I don't need epics, but I certainly am not going to grind up multiple gear sets for mulitple energy types, and I am one of the richer players in this game having over 1 billion EC, over 4 million dilithium. I will quit and come back if Cryptic comes to their senses in the next expansion. Hopefully the game will survive that long.
The most disgusting double down craptic pulled was when they increased the damage of XIII and XIV. Under the existing power scaling where there was only a tiny bit of difference between an XI and XII you could just keep your XII and not be at that big a disadvantage. They went way out of their way to force players to upgrade their XII gear.
Or, you know, do as I do and not even waste your time on that.
It's that and the recent nerfs to rewards. Apparently Cryptic doesn't have a psychologist on staff because they would have explained that the reason people play games, any games, in general is due to the sense of reward which is where almost all of the mechanics in classic mmos stem from. Leveling, to getting drops, to getting upgrades to getting gear, to getting fun additions like toys or pets or mounts, all stem from this basic principle. when you remove that aspect of your game you basically are breaking the reason why people login. It is no longer a rewarding experience so you have fewer people logging in.
It's not limited to the new costs for upgrades but that is part of the bigger picture yes.
I think they had some psychological idea behind the upgrade system. The idea was - people would log in, play a bit, earn dilithium, and then, if they had enough, apply an upgrade kit. The tech point bar would move forward, the player would know he'd achieved something, and he could log off it it was time for it.
They didn't think that players don't care about moving the progress bar -they want it at the end, at all times, immediately, every time.
Maybe they had the wrong idea here. I dunno. I know I don't use their progress bars like that - For example, I usually start event projects only if I actually have all the resources I need for them. I will probably only use upgrade kits if I had enough to complete a Mark tier.
But I still like the upgrade system. But I don't have any ambition of trying to make UR or Epic gear.
You are one of those blame the **** victim. Its not the players fault they don't play anymore.
If you don't play because Cryptic didn't make the progress bar move fast enough for your taste, they failed to satisfy your tastes - but that doesn't mean they don't still satisfy other people's taste. And they have to worry about more than one group of players. They have to worry about more than everyone playing the game - they also have to ensure that some of them pay for the game. And if that means pissing off some players (whether they pay or not is not relevant) to get other players spend money - so be it.
I would say the empty queues have proven they have failed to satisfy most players tastes. I would bet Dollars to donuts you are a shill account...
Think about how it was before Delta Rising - INfected Elite took much less than a minute usually to pop. It could not fail, and the optional was practically never missed, even in PUGs - power creep and experience had made it easy, so easy that some people may have even forgoten there was once a 10 % tactic and all that. And there were no time gates like mandatory tutorials or enemies spawning only after a certain amount of time. It was the fastest mission to play. It was extremely rewarding - Marks, Dilithium and Neural Processors. No wonder it was popular.
Other queues didn't have it quite that good. I think Crystalline Entity became similar popular, while it didn't reward any special reputation marks like implants or neural processors, it granted a mark choice, very valuable, too. And it got progressively worse the tougher a event actually was.
But now - Infected pays out a bit less Dilithium (I honestly think that is mostly irrelevant). More importantly - Infected Advanced is harder than the old Infected Elite. And what used to be the optional isn't optional anymore. If you only do Normal, you don't get Neural Processors and you get less marks.
So, it's no longer as awesome as it used to be. And other queues are even worse off, I think, especially the new ones.
Players may not be in the queues not because the players are not in the game, but because queues are not as rewarding as they used to be. Even if no one needed to level, and no one was doing Winter Wonderland stuff, I think the queues are a lot less attractive to players than they used to.
I think Cryptic will need to look at that and find a solution. I bet it will take longer than players like (an easy bet, because it already happened), but I strongly suspect something will happen.
The Dil cost is waaaaaaaaayyyyy too much to upgrade, and reducing ways to get a lot of dil without any VIP dil claims is super tedious and a reason to leave the game...
Like a bad marriage I already gave a lot of money, and I still spend on certain things, however I refuse to use ANY ZEN to turn into Dilithium. That cost it way too high... I'll spend some zen on keys, packs, ships and so on, but I REFUSE to waste real money on Dil... :mad:
Also upgrading ships and stuff... Like the ship upgrade to T5u.. Thank you for making me pay real money AGAIN for a ship I already paid real money for...
As for upgrading with Dil... I would like to see ANY upgrade you do per tech upgrade token to be LESS than 1000 dil.. like the superior being 1000+ makes me rage so much and I've loved this game for the past 3.5 years
Star Wars is for moody rich kids, (you remember that kid that had every star wars figure/toy and he was a douche).
And Star Trek is for real long time fans of an imaginative, technological, scientifically robust but FUN waste of time :cool:
That's an incorrect assumption. Cryptic don't use a balance which include Time vs Rewards. You got the reason for the old ISE right, but it's primarily it was rewarding which made it repeatable ad infinitum. Currently not a whole lot is rewarding, Crystalline is now probably the most rewarding of the lot for space STF's. Bug Hunt Elite for ground.
The problem stems from the fact that there is no content to challenge your gear and still give a rewarding experience. People want the best gear, but they have to grind out the end game stuff to get it. Then when they do there's nothing to use it on but the stuff they've already played to get it. Very disheartening. The Elite scenario's don't offer much reward at all for the time needed and the cost of setup (in space at least).
At it's core a full rebalance is needed, by a professional, not a card gamer.
"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."
First comment ever.. I've been a lurker for years.
First, congrats on hitting 80k DPS in a breen Chell Grett there Zod(Fury). Especially with no gold weapons. Quite impressive. I mean STORyan was impressed. Quite the feat.
Second, yes. While I realize the entire endeavor was designed to get FTP players to PTP, the crafting system seems to be way too much of a dil & EC sink to be enjoyable. For a second there it was so much of a resource sink that I thought perhaps this was an administrative way to reset control of the in-game economy back to whatever balance the admin was striving for. The after considering the way market fluctuations simply gave MORE control to those who had the vast amounts of wealth in game (including out of game poachers) I realized that this was not an intended side effect as it actually allowed money to be made outside of the PW environment to which PW had no stake in.
So basically, it was a way to take OP items and cause a large in game demand for them, increasing the real world purchases made to PW, consequences be damned.
Not how I would have handled it, but then again I'm no business man.
Still, I'm grateful that I can PFF.
Take you lower then XII gear into an elite que then say how mind boggling easy it is....lol
Delta rising has some nice new content but upgrade system is clearly made to make craptic money and little else.
To finish, I agree with op that it seems like there is less ppl online and most public q are quite empty and PvP is a joke with those intel ships and powers and pvp q are quite empty too.
Seems to me like they're trying to milk the cow dry, and they're about to succeed, only a small tribble of milk left in it. Hope the rumor of buyout are thrue and we get someone less intend on profit and more on fun to play factor.
E'Mc2 : Science Reman torp T'Varo, deadly annoyance :P
Kunmal: Tactical fed Klingon, ground specialist, USS Kanewaga
Ka -tet Tier 5 fleet fully completed Starbase and fleet property
It's one of those things that is nice to have, but not an absolute necessity.
All of my characters are running rare and very rare Mk XII stuff, with the odd Mk XIII here and there.
As for the upgrade system, it's been both a help and something that isn't used often. I only make use of it to upgrade certain Mk XI items to Mk XII, like the Jem'Hadar ground and space sets (to name a couple of examples). Previously, that would have cost me lobi.
On the other hand, it's not a cost effective system to update everything across all characters. For that, I just throw EC at the Exchange, or run a quick rep project for an item.
Now that is funny, maybe you can get through VCE with a good team to carry you...
But whole team with Mk X common gear not happening!
And I guess im not that good seeing that I hit 75K+ DPS in a Chel Grett
Since I like to play I think its the latter.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I can see a problem there in your post how many more are like this, no wonder it is costing people a fortune to upgrade their gear, why are you wasting dil upgrading mk2 gear to mk14, surely the item you are upgrading is not that great that it deserves upgrading.
personally I am only upgrading mk12 rare or better gear and if I wanted to stretch it a bit I have tons of mk11&mk10 rare or better gear I could upgrade but anything I might have that is less then mk10 rare (and that is very little) is just a space filler and will eventually end up in the recycle bin.
I have kitted out 2 of my best ships on each character with mk12 rare and better and I am gradually upgrading it all to mk14 that includes fore & rear weapons, warp core shields ect and all consoles.
I am well on the way to completing my goal and although its quite expensive to do its not all that bad.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
The whole point of upgrading Mk 2 gear to Mk 14 gear is that there is 12 chances to upgrade the rarity compared to 2 chances to upgrade the rarity when going from Mk 12 to Mk 14. So it is actually cheaper if you are successful to get epic gear. Just need to craft purple Mk 2 gear with the stats you want and go from there.
Really ? Did we have to explain this again? (sigh) I thought that the public schools still taught math.
In actual practice, all of my epic weapon came from select items crafted from Mk 2 seeds. Why not pick the mods and procs that are most meaningful to your gameplay?
IRT the original post for the thread, I actually like the Upgrade system. If I was still in the PVP bus as a TAC DPS escort/BOP, I would loathe it. Religeously. Maybe that's why I dont mind it.
and yet how often does this gamble pay off and how much are you paying over the top to upgrade all these times.
I have had a upgrade in rarity a few times up to ultra rare just upgrading from mk12 to mk14 but I am keeping my upgrade costs to a minimum rather then spending extra on a rarity upgrade gamble that might or might not pay off.
when you have finished upgrading all the gear you want to how much better will your gear be compared to mine and how much extra dil & EC will you have spent chasing the dream.
I am quite happy just to take a mk12 rare item and end up with a mk14 rare item if I should get a rarity boost it is just a nice bonus but not something I am counting on or even hoping for.
then again just think how much you are spending extra and how much more stuff you could upgrade if you limited your starting point as I am.
that's not even counting the crafting costs of the time it takes getting the crafting mats you need to begin with.
sure it would be great if they cut the cost of upgrading by half I could maybe upgrade 4 ships per character to mk14 instead of just 2 but somehow I think things will stay much as they are.
in the mean time you do it your way and I will do it mine and you will end up spending a lot more dilithium and get much more frustrated with the costs then I will.
and in a few months I will be finished with my upgrade quest but you will still have a long way to go.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Maybe, wishfull thinking i know, a dev will see this and do something about it.
E'Mc2 : Science Reman torp T'Varo, deadly annoyance :P
Kunmal: Tactical fed Klingon, ground specialist, USS Kanewaga
Ka -tet Tier 5 fleet fully completed Starbase and fleet property