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Game is not alt friendly?
vegeta50024
Member Posts: 2,335 Arc User
With all this discussion on Delta Recruitment and people saying that Cryptic is making this game even more alt unfriendly by making an event where players can only gain rewards on new characters, it got me thinking about how this game is alt unfriendly. If you want to skip the text, there's a TL;DR summary below.
Before I go further, I would like to offer my definition on what I consider to be an alt vs. a main character. In my opinion, an alt (alternate character) is a character that you sometimes play the game with. A main would be the character that you use most of the time and have suck spent the time outfitting them with.
Okay, now let's talk about how this is alt unfriendly. From what I've read on the forums, the following things are brought up often: Reputation system, R&D system and now Specializations. The Reputation and the Specializations were developed with the intention of allowing players to further enhance their characters once they've reached endgame status, while the R&D system contains schools which offer a trait unlock once you reach level 15 in that school. The basis I feel for these all being called Alt Unfriendly is because none of these are account unlocks. I'm going to go into each of these in a bit and give my reason why I feel these were never meant to be account wide unlocks.
I'd like to take a moment and reflect back to a time before Reputations, the Specialization system and the revamped R&D system existed in the game. Prior to the Reputation system, the only way one could get anything like the Borg, MACO, Honor Guard or Omega sets were through repeated playthroughs of the Borg STFs. Once you obtained the gear, these were still character bound, which meant that you had to not only do it on 1 character, but for each character you had if you wanted them all to have this gear. In essence, the game was alt unfriendly even before the new systems.
When the Reputation system came out back when the game was capped at level 50, the intent was to allow your character to continue to advance while providing a way to gain new gear as new factions came out. These were designed to replace the old system of grinding STFs which could take months to get the gear you needed down to just one month. The downside was that the gear was still character bound and you still had to do it for each character. The grind though got lessened with the introduction of the sponsorship token, but it's still a pain to get each character up to tier 5.
The R&D system has always been something of an alt unfriendly system. However, the pre-revamped system had the perk that you could just have it done on one character and not have to touch it on the others. However with the new system, if you want the traits for each school, you have to spend time leveling them up, which takes a while once you get past level 2. I can see how this is alt unfriendly from the fact that the traits are character unlocks.
Finally, we come into the Specialization system, the newest way for us to continue to advance our characters once we start advancing up to the new level cap. It seems to me that a lot of the alt unfriendliness of this system is due to the fact that the gain of spec points is dependent on filling out the level bar. While the secondaries and primaries both have starship traits that are unlocked as you fill them in, the primaries unlock the ability to use the new kit modules that came out. This system is probably the number one offender for being alt unfriendly since it takes an enormous amount of time now to fill out that skill point bar.
So the TL;DR version for those who just wanted to skim the post is this: All of these systems are designed with single characters in mind.
The problem I see with with the playerbase's current state of mind is that once a player hasunlocked something on one character, they feel that they shouldn't have to go through again and do it on their Romulan or the Klingon (or starfleet character if they started with either of the other factions). Right now, there really isn't much we can do about the current system.
What I would like to know is if there is anything I missed out on with alt unfriendliness in this game. Feel free to discuss it below, but please, keep this talk in a way I can help the devs gather feedback from the community. If we want things to improve, the first thing we need to do is to come together and identify every area in the game that is right now unfriendly to other characters and work on a way to fix it.
The devs have already gave us a bone when it comes to the anniversary, winter and summer events by lessening the grind to get the special ships. If we show we can be helpful, we hopefully get them to take this approach to other areas of the game and make it fun to play again for all.
Before I go further, I would like to offer my definition on what I consider to be an alt vs. a main character. In my opinion, an alt (alternate character) is a character that you sometimes play the game with. A main would be the character that you use most of the time and have suck spent the time outfitting them with.
Okay, now let's talk about how this is alt unfriendly. From what I've read on the forums, the following things are brought up often: Reputation system, R&D system and now Specializations. The Reputation and the Specializations were developed with the intention of allowing players to further enhance their characters once they've reached endgame status, while the R&D system contains schools which offer a trait unlock once you reach level 15 in that school. The basis I feel for these all being called Alt Unfriendly is because none of these are account unlocks. I'm going to go into each of these in a bit and give my reason why I feel these were never meant to be account wide unlocks.
I'd like to take a moment and reflect back to a time before Reputations, the Specialization system and the revamped R&D system existed in the game. Prior to the Reputation system, the only way one could get anything like the Borg, MACO, Honor Guard or Omega sets were through repeated playthroughs of the Borg STFs. Once you obtained the gear, these were still character bound, which meant that you had to not only do it on 1 character, but for each character you had if you wanted them all to have this gear. In essence, the game was alt unfriendly even before the new systems.
When the Reputation system came out back when the game was capped at level 50, the intent was to allow your character to continue to advance while providing a way to gain new gear as new factions came out. These were designed to replace the old system of grinding STFs which could take months to get the gear you needed down to just one month. The downside was that the gear was still character bound and you still had to do it for each character. The grind though got lessened with the introduction of the sponsorship token, but it's still a pain to get each character up to tier 5.
The R&D system has always been something of an alt unfriendly system. However, the pre-revamped system had the perk that you could just have it done on one character and not have to touch it on the others. However with the new system, if you want the traits for each school, you have to spend time leveling them up, which takes a while once you get past level 2. I can see how this is alt unfriendly from the fact that the traits are character unlocks.
Finally, we come into the Specialization system, the newest way for us to continue to advance our characters once we start advancing up to the new level cap. It seems to me that a lot of the alt unfriendliness of this system is due to the fact that the gain of spec points is dependent on filling out the level bar. While the secondaries and primaries both have starship traits that are unlocked as you fill them in, the primaries unlock the ability to use the new kit modules that came out. This system is probably the number one offender for being alt unfriendly since it takes an enormous amount of time now to fill out that skill point bar.
So the TL;DR version for those who just wanted to skim the post is this: All of these systems are designed with single characters in mind.
The problem I see with with the playerbase's current state of mind is that once a player hasunlocked something on one character, they feel that they shouldn't have to go through again and do it on their Romulan or the Klingon (or starfleet character if they started with either of the other factions). Right now, there really isn't much we can do about the current system.
What I would like to know is if there is anything I missed out on with alt unfriendliness in this game. Feel free to discuss it below, but please, keep this talk in a way I can help the devs gather feedback from the community. If we want things to improve, the first thing we need to do is to come together and identify every area in the game that is right now unfriendly to other characters and work on a way to fix it.
The devs have already gave us a bone when it comes to the anniversary, winter and summer events by lessening the grind to get the special ships. If we show we can be helpful, we hopefully get them to take this approach to other areas of the game and make it fun to play again for all.
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Lobi crystals are character bound, many rewards are character bound. I get a box reward for running an event, its basically just EC there is nothing for me to do with it, can't give it to an alt, can't sell it, don't wanna use it just junk.
If you're someone who opens lockboxes, the Lobi crystals being character bound is a HUGE part of the problem. If I could use that Lobi to buy a ship for my alt, that would be cool, but I can't do that.
Ummm I would never argue that STO was all that alt friendly anymore... However
Lobi have been account bound for a long time now.
Also the ships come in a box which you could put in an account bank... mail to your alt... or heck even just sell for EC on the exchange.
Lobi is account bound?? I thought I remember the tooltip saying character bound, I suppose I'll try mailing some Lobi between characters but I thought this was expressly not allowed.
I'm not talking about ship boxes, I'm talking about Fleet mission reward boxes. Like if I do the borg ALERT I get a box with a dumb anti-borg ground weapon I'll never use.
Lobi cannot be mailed, it must be exchanged thru an account bank only.
V ninja'd lol
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
You won't be able to mail lobi... you can't mail account bound items. You can put it in an account bank though. If you don't have an account bank... I would suggest unlocking that or subbing for one month to unlock it. You can also use the bank to swap weapon sets ect between toons when they are account bound.
Not under normal circumstances. Lobi is normally account bound, and any ship you buy with it is not bound at all (until you commission it). The only way to have character bound lobi is to open boxes with character-bound keys, which means you bought zen through steam and didn't feel like waiting.
The game's only more alt-unfriendly than pre-dr if you feel a need to upgrade gear other than crafted beams (which are thankfully account-bound), are stuck in the 50-60 leveling system, or want specialization points (of which the first and last describe me). Other than that, there were no significant changes to how to deal with alts that I can think of.
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The only reason lobi or lock box contents become account bound is if you buy zen and the purchase gets flagged. Then the system makes anything you buy with that zen characer bound because they believe youpurchased the zen with a fraudulent payment method.
At one time you could level to 50 and then with EC you earned on one toon equip your alt and you where set. It was no big deal having toons of every captain type and both factions.
Rep killed Alts for most people... cause being forced to pve that much really sucked. The first implementation with no limit on skills was extremely bad for alts. For a long time toons that had 3-4 reps done where a lot better then any fresh toon or low play time alt. That is when many people dumped there alts... either neglecting them and in some cases I hear people even just deleted them.
They have semi fixed that now with sponserships and the 4 trait limts.
Also alts got a lot more expensive when the Bridge officer system was added. It was no longer a case of buying a half decent set of weapons and gear and going.
The rep system also introduced a ton of new gear.... which all became required gear in many ways.
Then they added dmg boosts to Purple weapons ect... which meant gear costs for alts also went up. (at one time you could spend 200k EC and gear an alt well enough to be effective in stfs ect)
However as is Cryptics modus operandi with in a very short time of reigning in the rep system, they added a new alt unfriendly system. Now we have to deal with Spec points. Also now we have upgrade systems. Yes as some have pointed out SOME items can be account bound and swapped around... most however can not, and even in the case of weapons no one is going to easily be moving ONE set of weapons around, at some point your going to have to make more or be annoyed to no end trying to play more then one toon.
Bottom line at this point alts are extremely expensive to gear to a point most people find to be a fun level of performance. Alts are simply not all that much fun in this game, as it involves doing the EXACT SAME STUFF 1000x. After the first 10-20 missions even faction differences don't change the content. You could roll 3 toons one of each empire and after the first few hours of play you are doing the EXACT same missions, and once your done with the level grind your doing the EXACT same rep missions and PvE ques.
I know the Cryptic defenders will say you don't have to do any of that stuff... you can play the game just fine as a fresh faced toon.
At this point I agree... cause the PvE in this game is a joke. Any player that isn't a complete window licker can walk though even the advanced and E mode content... as long as they don't public que and have to deal with a team of glass lickers. PvP has been dead as a door nail for over a year now... Cryptics plan of On purpose Bugs and OP junk to make people feel special and always chasing to uncover a new Bug or Power to use, has destroyed any sport there could have ever been in this game.
Also now that we can have multiple Outfit changes on one toon... why do I need 20 toons. I can play space barbie on one toon, where as that used to be harder to do. lmao
I have 5 [soon to be 6 thnx to Cryptic giving us a freebie slot] mains!
Now, I understand not everybody has time for multiple mains but, it should be expected when you take on the burden of more than 1 character in the first place.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Even if spec points were account wide, you still have the problem that you need to level 1 character in order to do that, since you only get 1 spec point per complete fill of the skill point bar (in essence, leveling).
Let's say this was implemented. Any alt that was already level 51 or over could spend these spec points once they unlock the specialization system. Any alt that is not there yet you have to wait until they reach that level in order to spend those points in.
There's also the issue about future alts that you want to run. Assuming you haven't already reached the max number of spec points allowed, would future alts be allowed to start with 90+ spec points?
I have said this many times before, in other threads, that the whole point of the specialization system is that it is supposed to be a means of progression once you can no longer gain numerical levels. Even if you filled out every tree, you're limited to 1 primary & 1 secondary at a time and the only need I see to rush it would be to either get the starship trait, train your boffs as hybrid officers, or unlock the purple kits.
People keep saying that, yet I haven't seen any proof of it.
Even the increase rep gain isn't enough to really remove that.
I feel spec points could be account wide but if an alt uses it... point is gone. it would be nice if the pool of spec points be account wide.
FEs - Easy alt friendly. Unless you get the ones that is not really how you want to RP that character. Other than that issue they are easy to do on alts.
Leveling - Not that bad even to Lv60. I just play the game and don't really keep track of the meter. I have 3 above Lv54. IF I just stayed on a character I would have one at Lv 60. And perhaps a 2nd by now. But I rotate around with my characters.
Reps - Easy to do. I just do a few missions, build up marks. Then turn in during the week when I can't really play. Plus the Reps are all optional so you can skip if you want. So far I only done the Romulan, Dyson, and Delta Reps. STO Reps are lot better over being forced to do the same missions over and over just to gain Tiers. WoW you was forced to do it everyday if you wanted to gain Rep. You didn't have marks to build up. So that got tired quick.
Crafting - Not bad. Just click and go. Let it count down. I got 1 character with it to be my crafter. The rest will work off his crafting. However they are giving him mats from what I found on those as well.
Way I see it with 3 alts working. I'm got only around 4 hours of real game time. I think the game is alt friendly. My main issue for alts is not having enough time to play. I have 3 others that is lower levels. Which I rarely touch. But its due to time.
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Lobi has been bound to the account for a while. You've never been able to trade Lobi to other players.
Lockboxes on the other hand are bound with that fraud prevention system.
If those Sponsorship Tokens were 250 up to 500 Marks BUT INSTANTLY UNLOCKED T5 Reputation, it would really be beneficial, and save a lot of time on alts (players would just have to level them to 50 and grind the marks for the Sponsorship Tokens).
Just think of all the stuff that gets bug reported and not fixed. Could even D- Community Collage computer science kidz be that bad ?
Right now...
Corrosive / Bounty Hunter set is extremely bugged. (has been bugged since it was added) the 3 piece reduces ALL cool downs. (including consoles and rep/set stuff) Was bug reported day one... day two... day three... forum threads as well. STILL IN GAME. (If you want to see LULZ... take a T6 Phantom or Feaht... put the torp and mine in the back and run the BH console which is great anyway... having Global SS3 + Override 3... and 15s BETWEEN your APA is stupid. You can also SURF your hull under 50 for 100% uptime GDF... most busted TRIBBLE in the game, and it has existed for months now, and was bug reported day one.) EDIT One more add just to make it clear how busted this is... I pulled 80k DPS in a Voth Science ship last night using that set... cause Having TBR 3 always on and Global GW / Shockwaves... and 20s or so on the ISO canon, and sensor scan on anything and everything... is pretty broken. Thanks Cryptic I feel Special.
Double shields / Voldemort / DOFFs that = instant shield heals / Plasma Dope / The Bad Particle Manipulator math (That is now working as intended I guess lol) / Intel stuns that can't be cleared... they addressed it after the sell through was where it was supposed to be.
I decided I would only detail ONE current game breaking On purpose bug in this post... Trust me there are more. Get out there and hunt them like Cryptic wants. When it gets shared enough, and the sales hit a point where everyone has spent the $ and the influx is low, they will pull a "oh ahh oh my that isn't intended" and fix it pronto (as in 5-6 months after it was bug reported by the first finder).
For every one thing Cryptic fixes in that way, trust me they have birthed 4-5 new BS "bugs".
Its not incompetence... if things where really going wrong that often... Cryptic would figure out how to read there bug reports.... a good company might even figure out which players are constantly bug reporting that type of stuff right away (or heck even when its on tribble)... at the very least if they can't handle the volume of Bug reports just watching for bug reports from those known reporters would catch ALL of the junk before it even hit live.
Thing is its working as intended.
Perhaps it is RP talk. The hero is the main character and there can only be one hero, hence a main character. However I agree with you. I have about 20 characters distributed over two accounts. I cannot tell you what is the main character. They are all equal for me. We can better speak of single character and multi character play.
A play is friendly for multi character play if the leveling is short and not cumbersome. The leveling phase is often a mandatory play sequence. When you have done it a couple of times, it will get boring. Here STO was multi character friendly. With 10 more levels, the reputations and specializations it is less friendly. The more character progress features are added, the less friendly it will be.
However the reputation system and the specialization are imo still friendly towards having multi characters. You can only have 4 space and 4 ground traits active. You can only have 2 specializations active. So when you have those, you are good to go.
Also important for multi character play is the fact how many slots do you get and how expensive is it buy extra slots.
Another thing is how different is it to play another character. Can you get a real different experience. Is playing a Fed science captain very different from a Fed tactical captain? When we look at the story, it is certainly not. For the factions however it is.
What is the best number of characters? 9, science, tactical and engineering for each faction, but you can argue 3, one in each faction from a different class.
What I do not like are systems where one has to fully level up a character to get benefits for other characters. In such a system I am forced to play with one character. The reason I have more characters, is the fact that I like to change from time to time depending on my mood and I do not want to play with one and the same character.
If you want to experience a "different" type of game experience, you can quite easily change any of the above around on a single character and do anything you'd like to do without bothering with any of the "alt unfriendly" designs present in the game.
In the end, the game isn't just alt unfriendly. It's also extremely "single character friendly", the which is why I find it mind boggling when people claim to have 30+ alts they regularly play. In most any other game, that'd be me.. but in this game? Why? I'll stick with my single main character and her multiple personality disorder.
A good majority of people having 30+ alts, are mainly for grinders and pack mules mainly but, there are those few who seemingly have some odd desire, to have every single feasible player build possible.
Well, if you gotta have so many characters, than complaining about time should not be an issue, as they took it upon themselves to get put with such a burden in the first place.
The game shouldn't revolve solely around people who do this, when they put the burden on themselves knowingly.
Think of it in a single player perspective game, for something like a console would have!
Let's say X-game takes 50-100+mins. of total gameplay, 50 being the fastest ever possible, while 100 being the average and, the + being people who are slower or, do not get far enough for the time given!
Now, toss in a 2nd character having to meet those same requirements=50-100+mins.
A 3rd character=another 50-100+mins.
A 4th, etc. etc. etc.
So, with just 3 characters at the lowest minimum time frame of 150mins, that's a pretty decent chunk of time.
Now add in more content=+30mins more per character=150mins + 30mins[X3 characters]=240mins. overall!
Add more content=+30mins more per character & you get where this is going and, how it is made worse with each and ever new character made, further looking worse when said new characters are fresh and, have to start from the very beginning.
The burden is something that should be expected by ALL people and, is something that can be avoided, as well as brought upon themselves!
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
I am, however, somewhat displeased with the required effort involved in specializations, the amount of XP required to get a single spec point is (in my opinion) borderline absurd, and that's not even taking into consideration the effort it would require for alts... with patrols on a cooldown timer now, a reduction in the XP required for a skill point would be greatly appreciated.:)
Also, I am somewhat concerned about 'limited time' rewards for alts, for instance all my toons have the Kobali Cruiser, most have the Dyson anniversary ship, and all are currently working on the Crystalline Energy Torpedo, but with a new character in April, I will have one alt which will have missed out on all that.:(
I would suggest adding into the Events Reputation or Dilithium store an option to purchase these 'limited time' rewards for alts (assuming at least one character on the account has earned it). This would allow players to have the rewards they worked for and earned on new alts, even if they have to pay to unlock them.:)
Also, if there were an account unlock for the Traits of Lockbox/Lobi ships (not the summer/winter event ships as those can be easily obtained by alts during their respective events) so players can have their alts benefit from these expensive and difficult to obtain ships, or even put the ships themselves in the dilithium store of players who have aquired the ship on one or more characters, though I doubt that would happen, unlocking the trait on these ships would be appreciated.
Of course, that all changed with all the nerfs to this game as the weeks passed since DR came out. XPs, Patrols were the first to get kicked in the teeth on top of the greatly increased XP requirements Post-Lv50. Everything else just went downhill from there and kills alt-play.
The issue was that before all the nerfs to this game, playing all those alts for actual gameplay and not for farming/mule purposes was perfectly possible. Yes, you needed to put the time in to make them decently equipped. But it wasn't overly difficult to do that and it did not require the much higher amount of time, unlike now. Not to mention resources for equipment, upgrades.
This game was very alt-friendly, which isn't the case anymore.
as for the delta recruit create one for the event use it till the event is over get what you can from it but avoid doing anything that is not required if possible such as crafting, rep and such.
when the event is over delete the character or put it in stasis with a view to maybe use it for the next time if ever they run this event or delete it then if you are required to start afresh.
or don't create one and don't take part the choice is yours.
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.
That's a major assumption and a dart thrown randomly in the darkness if you think that's what we wanted for alt-play.
its just the impression I sometimes get, that may not apply to all, I did say "some players".
I can except some things being alt friendly like reputation, summer & winter event ship requirements, but other things like specialization, crafting and ship mastery are part of the individual characters progression the same as playing through the story missions is, if you are going to make them alt friendly you might as well go the whole hog and do as I said in my last comment.
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 memory of the overly steep climb from 50 to 60 & beyond is too fresh in my mind and it puts me off the idea of playing through those levels with my alts. It wouldn't be fun, it would be work.
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I don't mind putting the work in. I've gotten about 13 characters total across all 3 captain classes, all factions, and I've gotten their Reps all at T5 and with decent gear, ships for Pre-DR standards. Nowhere near my mains even for Pre-DR days but decent enough.
The killer though was the increased XP requirements, XP nerfs, increased resource costs since the advent of DR. Compared to how this game was before, all this stuff is the real killer of alt-play.
The game the way it is now, is perfectly suitable for single character play. STO before DR was like that and it still is. But alts? Nope. The Post-DR nerfs have just slowed everything down.
I've known quite a number of people in the game with plenty of enough alts. Typically not at the numbers I had but I've known a few with far more (likely farmers/mules). But Post-DR, knowing how time and resource intensive it is to work on one character, they started ignoring or outright deleting their alts. Believe it or not, people would go through the lengths of trouble in spending Zen and even Lobi to outfit their alts. But with the costs of everything involved now, that's insane to do it now. Jeez, even the T6 Lobi ships are insane compared to the 800 of T5!
If anything, Pre-DR alt-play opened up wallets, IMO. Post-DR, alt-play is horrible and I'd be loathe to spend extra to gear up alts like I did before.
all the game needs is the marks you get in game to be increased significantly then there is no need to make these things alt friendly they will be all characters friendly.
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.
Reduced Dil costs and I would be doing and playing so much more content.
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