Okay, so during the most recent sale on "Services," I spent 1600 zen on 4 retrain tokens, 1 for each of my toons, specifically to increase their Attack Pattern abilities, and now not only do I learn that a new skill system is going to be implemented, thus making the use of the retrain tokens (of which I've used 3) quite literally superfluous, but there isn't even going to be an Attack Patterns skill in the new system (a fact of which I actually approve, as I disliked having to spend points in it, as demonstrated by the fact that I felt it necessary to retrain my toons to make up for that!) and therefor "[a]ll abilities that previously benefited from this Skill have been re-balanced to behave as if the player had fully invested in the old Attack Patterns skill." I'm not sure which is greater, my annoyance at the sudden obsolescence of such a recent (and expensive) expenditure or my awe at the delightful irony of it all. Oh, and did I mention that I got the Zen by converting hard-earned dilithium at the mind-bogglingly high rate of ~320 dil/Zen?
And I also took the opportunity to increase Driver Coil to 9 in each of the 3 toons that have already been retrained, making them all super speedy in sector space, but now Driver Coil is an "Unlock."
Seriously, I hit the trifecta in terms of timing here. I know I'd been wanting to make the change for a while, but I was motivated to get it all done at once by the sale on "Services."
Anyway, now that I've gotten that off my chest, I know that my primary complaint about the Skill Points system wasn't the way it was laid out or the ratio of Space points to Ground points (or any of the other points brought up in the announcement), but rather just that there weren't enough of them to really specialize in something without significantly stunting some other ability. I'd always wondered why there were no skill points awarded between levels 51 and 60. I like having at least 3 in every skill, making my toon competent in every field, while placing more points into priority skills, and having the additional points from those 10 levels would go a long way toward maximizing that.
With regard to the new system, I can't say for sure without seeing it in action, but my first concern is whether I can realistically expect to have some competence in skills that don't relate directly to my Career, which is how a Tac can get away with piloting a Sci ship and with using Sci BOff abilities and expect a net positive result, even if the balance is different. Ultimately, the question is whether this revamp seriously changes the balance of the game and whether it limits what you can use in a given Career.
...So, I'd wager people will need a realistic minimum of at least 10 free respec tokens until they get a comparable layout to what they had before.
Infinite free respecs for as many toons as want then on Tribble, anybody? I'll be respeccing multiple toons on Tribble later today to be able to help others in my fleet who either don't bother with tribble or don't have the time.
...So, I'd wager people will need a realistic minimum of at least 10 free respec tokens until they get a comparable layout to what they had before.
Infinite free respecs for as many toons as want then on Tribble, anybody? I'll be respeccing multiple toons on Tribble later today to be able to help others in my fleet who either don't bother with tribble or don't have the time.
just for the record, you won't be able to use any existing characters you already have on tribble until next week; they want you creating and leveling a new testing character from scratch
As posted in the other thread started on this topic:
This is intended behavior, for the first week of testing.
We'd like players to start new characters under the new system, and try out leveling up with it. This is very valuable feedback - just as much as experiencing it with an already-capped-out character.
To make the leveling process easier, there are bundles of XP available on the Tribble Test Vendor @ Drozana Station. Please don't just take the shortcut of grabbing a few hundred of them and shooting straight to 60. The leveling process is important to experience, and may uncover very important facets of the system that could otherwise be overlooked.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Well, I don't like change in general. Even less when I don't think it's needed.
But what worries me most is that virtually every item of gear in STO will have its effects adjusted as all skills are adjusted. That will mean rethinking all builds, reevaluating all chosen sets.
Like I said, "Don't fix it if it ain't broken."
I 100% agree, we are going from a unique skill tree that offers a LOT of flexibility by allowing you to only partially invest in skills so that you may invest more heavily in others, to a stream-lined copy/paste of the old Vanilla WoW skill tree with some minor alterations. Lame.
I guess I am odd then because bar a few odd points here and there, and the ground traits which aren't the same across classes, my current characters are all the same with the current system, and they are generally the same to what I see others already pointed in to on the academy too; so I guess I am missing this wonderful flexibility we have now.
^ Theoretical rather than functional flexibility as it stands, versus a system brought more in line with how people spend/have spent their points. It's either change something, try it, tweak it, and maybe replace it on down the line...or never change and keep it as we have now, warts and all. Heck, the relearning may even be fun and novel...look how the players and the game "relearned" ships and crafting with DR and think about how integral it seems now to be able to get weapons with [Pen] or a new trait with each ship.
Going from a fairly flexible system (0-9 points in any skill set minus some lock-ins as you move columns)
Although you could add 0-9 pumps into any given skill, as a practical matter the number of pumps put into any skill were typically either 0, 3, 6 or 9, with any other values typically being a rarity due to having "leftover" points from expenditures elsewhere in the build. Thus, going to an investment of 0, 1, 2 or 3 skill points in the new system aligns fairly closely with previous options.
0, 3, 6, 9
0, 1, 2, 3
Yes, a good example. Just because a skill system offers greater finetuning options doesn't actually mean the finetuning options are meaningful and relevant.
Is a +10 better than +20 on a system where your total skills can go to up to 400 or something like that? Nope.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I see Bort managed to avoid answering the question as to whether respecs would be free after the skill system changes. Safe to assume they won't be. Especially after the upcoming changes, respec tokens are a nice bit of revenue for Cryptic that I doubt they'd be willing to just give up like that. As someone else mentioned, this is one of the few/only games I know that actually asks that you pay money for something like that....
While I can see your point of view on this, I'm wondering if the reason why the respec question(s) are being avoided may be because they're planning something that they're not willing to tell us about yet. I can see them doing the typical week-long giveaway prior to the season rollout where one of the items is a free respec token, or having that as being one of the options for the "first time" playthrough reward of whatever new episode comes out then.
Either way, I know I'd feel more comfortable if we were allowed just a single free respec token simply because I worry about messing up on my first try when I "retrain" all of my characters under the new system.
For those of us who played before F2P, we all got a free skill respec the last time the skill tree was revamped. I'm sure we'll all get one now.
For all of us who played before F2P respecs were 100% FREE, you could buy tokens, but you could easily grind "Merits/Honor" points within a day to purchase a full respec.
Whereas now, somebody who only has 1 character would have to grind 20 days for a single respec at present exchange rates.
Free??? This was back when you got a handful of Merit each time you completed a mission and it took hours or days to grind enough for a respec. Boff and ship renaming was 1500 or 3000, not sure how much a respec was but it wasn't free.
If certain skills of old are being grouped together such as with control skills, I'm assuming if you pick that option your skill will be divided between those areas making up that new skill. So are we going to loose out here?
I mean I have full points in grav gens on one toon but zero in subspace decompiler, so if my skills are shared between the two now I must be loosing somewhere? Or everyone is going to be getting more powerful as they become trained in skills they used to ignore.
Basically I want to know if my current high investments in skills will translate to equal mastery under the new system or will it be more watered down and spread out "jack of all trades" after the revamp.
Between the skill issues you mention in your post, and the question of how the high Part Gens bonuses of some items will translate to the new system, I have a very nervous feeling that I'm about to get rudely *****ed with the splintery nerf stick.
...you can experiment with other builds, try different things, and still be viable...
...as much as I loved this particular approach back when WoW used it...
Experimentation at 500 zen per character, per roll? How much of that is actually going on, once a character is set, vs just rolling a new character and bringing them up from scratch with a different point allocation?
Also...this system was desireable at some point in the past with another game? Now we get to the heart of some discontent, in that the system isn't necessarily bad but not enough dissimilar...but too much uniqueness for it's own sake would make transition from playing other games in the genre more difficult.
Some of my toons have large numbers of reset points, like 7 or more. If those are going to be taken away, I'm going to feel ripped-off. They should definitely be replaced by the new reset points at a 1-1 ratio.
don't worry, partigens is still there in the new system; it's now called Exotic Particle Generator (adding Imroved and Advanced to ranks 2 and 3 respectively)
and the tooltip for the skill claims that each point of it adds 0.5% damage to exotic damage abilities, and a full 3 ranks will net 100 points, so total damage increase just from that will be +50% - and that's BEFORE factoring in anything else, like traits or consoles
(as an aside, i have no idea how much damage a point of particle generators currently adds, so i have no idea if this is a buff, nerf or remaining the same)
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Our mission: to explore strange new builds,
To seek out new loopholes and new combinations,
To boldly go max-DPS in ways no one has gone max-DPS before...
Frankly 75%+ of posts in this thread -- the overwhelming bowl-liquefying FEAR on display -- is pretty damn shameful coming from Star Trek fans. A little optimism, a little ambition, and a little courage would be welcome right about now. So ($&^ing what if you can't do a 71 second ISA the day after this goes live? There's potential for tinkering and experimentation vastly deeper than what we've got now. And even if you're of the camp that thinks there will ever and always be only one best build to rule them all, at least the runner-ups may not be lost so completely in the antiproton/BFAW dust.
Since your changing the system we should be able to respec for free until we have our preferred build so at least include some respec tokens when this goes live
NO TO ARC
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I see Bort managed to avoid answering the question as to whether respecs would be free after the skill system changes. Safe to assume they won't be. Especially after the upcoming changes, respec tokens are a nice bit of revenue for Cryptic that I doubt they'd be willing to just give up like that. As someone else mentioned, this is one of the few/only games I know that actually asks that you pay money for something like that....
While I can see your point of view on this, I'm wondering if the reason why the respec question(s) are being avoided may be because they're planning something that they're not willing to tell us about yet. I can see them doing the typical week-long giveaway prior to the season rollout where one of the items is a free respec token, or having that as being one of the options for the "first time" playthrough reward of whatever new episode comes out then.
Either way, I know I'd feel more comfortable if we were allowed just a single free respec token simply because I worry about messing up on my first try when I "retrain" all of my characters under the new system.
For those of us who played before F2P, we all got a free skill respec the last time the skill tree was revamped. I'm sure we'll all get one now.
For all of us who played before F2P respecs were 100% FREE, you could buy tokens, but you could easily grind "Merits/Honor" points within a day to purchase a full respec.
Whereas now, somebody who only has 1 character would have to grind 20 days for a single respec at present exchange rates.
Free??? This was back when you got a handful of Merit each time you completed a mission and it took hours or days to grind enough for a respec. Boff and ship renaming was 1500 or 3000, not sure how much a respec was but it wasn't free.
I could easily grind the required amount within a day if I put my mind to it.
And regardless of how long it took, it was a specialized currency that did not affect your ability to do other things in the game. At no point was I forced to choose between getting new equipment or getting a respec instead and every single piece of game content rewarded Merits so ultimately a respec was a reward for playing the game.
I was actually quite furious when STO went F2P as I got shortchanged big time, having saved up enough merits for 15-20 respecs, and instead I didn't even get enough dilithium from it to exchange for even "one" respec.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
Has anyone asked how this affects the Specialization system or is there no need?
Does not affect it
Explain how this will not affect the specialization system when the Pilot tree has attack patterns in it.
The Pilot spec has "Attack Pattern Expertise", which if you remember the text of the perk, gives temp HP when a bridge officer skill is used. Even attack patterns is no longer in the skill tree, points in the skill were not what affected the perk in the pilot specialization.
Sorry that I have to admit it but given past experience with the administration of this product I also have a lack of confidence that this change will be made without major problems. [...]
They can't fix Kemo use - it lagged for months and now seems nerfed to the ground.
They couldn't fix Cannon procs, so they removed their ability to proc altogether.
They introduced dry docking, then attempted fixes to it which removed the workarounds which left some people stuck in shuttles - a fleet member still has no access to their Vesta, now imagine if that was a char bound ship.
They couldn't get Warp Core power reroutes to work on quality upgrades and so had to change all of our warp cores.
The upgrade system was a landmine to use, and for a long time. People lost big on that, and the rest of us who knew not to touch it after the 'live' testers wasted their resources and did the hard work on bug reporting were left with sub-optimal gear (Mk 12 VR) for a long time in a post-DR world of inflated hull NPCs.
They said pets HP (Hit Points) scaled inappropriately with DR ("and the players love it") and then proceeded to all-round nerf all pets and separation sections, then released lockbox traits and C-Store ship traits that boost pets performance, which is removing what you already paid for (full T5 Fleet Starbase to access elite pets with high costs themselves) to monetize the gradual improvements some of which end up more OP than they were claimed to be in the fixing in the first place (inflated hull HP vs all out immunity plus heal on short CD launch pet button). Carrier pet commands are still broken, and only recently have proposals to implement fixes in future patch notes.
C-Store ship skins that were made to work still don't (B'Rotlh), lobi items don't give out the items displayed on the box itself (Leeta Uniform).
Nevermind my "off-topic rant," but I'll need some highly concentrated cool-aid to believe an entire overhaul of the spec system combined with adjustments made on every individual item that is affected by it will be ironed out in Tribble since we all know Live is beta, and the stuff that happens in beta won't always pan out identically when going live.
"We won't lose anything" is incorrect. We have already lost countless respec tokens on testing the current spec system. However many we bought/were given and used in the past to figure out the old system won't get refunded to figure out the new system. The time, career choices, ships unpacked across endless toons is lost as the new system will not allow replicating the old.
"Let's wait and see how it turns out?" Sure, I mean, let's ignore the track record of simple optional things being introduced followed by months of problems and attempted fixes and jump on major overhauls that affects the core mechanics of every single player. I don't know how much more player turnover this MMO from my perspective can take.
Unpopular STFs don't pop on Live ("it's a reporting bug"), yet somehow everyone's excited about the Tribble Testing and the free respec tokens on Drozana. My only experience in tribble was waiting 15 min to get a single ISA if I was lucky, or a brand new STF that was yet unreleased to pop. "Testing" is supposed to be part of the gameplay fun so you acquire things while you discover and tweak your build. Now it is relegated to tribble where you get nothing (Zero) for your play time and no access to your fleet members for help ("Hi All, let's stop playing Live, let's abandon building fleet facilities, and head to tribble because I have important testing to do").
No, this isn't a doom post, earlier in the thread I've already outlined the positives that I hope will make it through, and an open discussion looks at the whole picture not just the rosy shades.
I'm wondering, which game do you program for that you are so good that you can feel so comfortable about the solutions that the devs for this one come up with are so wrong? Is it a game that has millions of lines of code written by dozens of programmers who no longer work for the company, like this one? Because most of the things on your list are fixes - just not the fixes YOU wanted (the fact that you lead with Kemo is pretty telling that you are more bitter than reasonable).
I get the feeling you haven't spent a lot of time on Tribble. People on Tribble don't generally run queues to test things. Queues are HORRIBLE for testing; because of the mix of players your performance stats can vary as much as 200-300% from run to run (except of course when Kemo was broken, in which case the guy(s) with Kemo would do 95% of the damage, which was just as bad for testing). Patrols on elite give you the same mix of ships every time and those ships have a ton of hit points, hence they are a far better way to consistently see what effects a change has on your build. The only time you need to run queues is when you are testing new abilities that affect your entire team or when there's a new queue that needs testing.
Don't think I need to be a programmer to comment here. I spend time and cash in this game, and do care about it.
I agree with the points you make. It indeed shows they no longer have the resources to fix the simple things it the millions of lines of code, especially not in a timely manner, so the proposal is to turn it all upside down before getting a handle on the basics. You can see my concert about this.
I don't have Kemo, but that doesn't mean what happens to the people who've opened the boxes to acquire it doesn't indirectly affect me. Something about 'what goes around, comes around.'
'Fixes' to me means things working as they were made to be or advertised to be, or as they were before being bugged out, not hiding them under the carpet indefinitely, or for such a long time it might as well be indefinite. This new system will have problems, and it won't affect only say kemo users, or carrier captains, but everyone - and we only get 1 respec to figure it all out in Live.
Patrols on elite to me don't sound all that good of an environment. Generally what I've done so far is go through a bunch of STFs on advanced to test my ship build along with the chosen spec points. That to me is a good average sample of what the particular character and equipment is capable of - for DPS, for tanking, space wizardry, different pug teams, pre-made teams, different enemies, etc. I don't have an answer to the Tribble testing ground otherwise, and I'm pointing out the limitations for that versus Live.
Bitter or reasonable is your call. Those are the facts, history, and my opinions on this overhaul based on those, and that's open for correction if it is inaccurate in any way.
Awesome news, can't wait. But I really hope those screenshots are REALLY preliminary, cause right now that interface menu looks pretty underwhelming
ussielicious 2 points 20 hours ago*
/u/Borticus-cryptic, love it. Congratulations is in order for the team and to Star Trek Online for this Skill re-vamp.
My question, and a TRIBBLE-bit at best, will each Skill box thing have their own, unique icon? As at the moment, they're all the same (placeholders?).
E.g. like the icons in the Specialisation Tree.
permalink
[–]Borticus-CrypticKurland here! 2 points 20 hours ago
I honestly don't entirely know. What we currently have is what I requested from our UI artist as a bare minimum, but she mentioned she'd like to take another pass at it. I have no idea what her further intentions are!
I guess we can't avoid the "we need more x, not this new system stuff" comments, but I'll say again what gets said every time there is a new systems change during the season x.5 update:
The people working on this aren't the same people working on STFs, story content, ships, costumes, etc. The systems team is basically all programmers, and the systems updates (this, admiralty, the crafting update, ship loadouts, drydock, etc) work on stuff that doesn't require heavy art or story resources. Working on this does NOT slow down work on whatever thing you list off that you think they should be focusing on instead of this; they do this stuff during the downtime when they are not working on the systems stuff in the background of that thing you want.
As for this not being necessary, I disagree wholeheartedly. I have been playing since beta and I still don't know for sure what everything in the current skill system does. It's opaque and requires going outside the game to unofficial sources to find out what any given skill really does, which is a HUGE turn off for new players. It's one of the few remaining legacy systems from the game's launch left (the first revamp didn't really change the core mechanics, it just re-arranged things), so it doesn't match anything else or prepare a player for what the end game looks like at present. It basically sets up every new casual player to make a bad build that they need to either live with or spend money to fix - a problem that turns players away from the game and frustrates veterans who need to deal with these bad builds in PUGs.
What are you talking about?! Every ability comes with an extensive (tray-) Tooltip, explaning exactly what skills affect the ability. Besides, I find the current skills entirely clear, and have no problem, whatsoever, grasping what they do. The learning curve in EvE Online, now *that* was steep, but the skill system in STO is a breeze. At least until today.
Sorry, but no. The tooltips tell you what ability/stat the skills affect, and what the numeric bonus you will get. Exactly how much improvement does each point in Threat Control apply, when we don't really know how threat control even works? How much actual reduction in confuse and placate times do you get from +99 to Sensors? What's the actual crit chance improvements from weapon specialization (yes, it's on the Wiki, which is the problem)?
I think they are about to do just that! Giving them the same basis. While a cannon user will profit from the new skill option to reduce damage drop over distance (if he goes for it) the beam user basically HAS to invest into it now if he intends to maintain current performance.
One might have been tempted to think, with all the complaints about FaW dominace, that this would be welcomed
There is a lot to read here, so I am going to ask my question and hope someone can point me to the answer if it was already given.
Will this new simplified system lead to 'one true path' style builds that have cropped up in other MMO's?
I ask because the sheer diversity in STO is one of the appeals. The there is no absolute, right way. Even when escorts dominated a cruiser could be used to good effect. Now with every one claiming bfaw is king, cannons still work. As do science powers. And no one seems to be going around telling other players they have to have exact builds to be useful or get out like I have seen elsewhere.
I have to admit that I was a bit uncomfortable with the comment in the revamp description about trying to help "prevent [new] players from making bad choices" because I'm uncertain at what point a decision becomes "bad." There are way too many opinions about what build is the "perfect" build, but I've always felt that the only true build is the one that works for you and you alone. Honestly, none of my characters are "perfect," but I'm okay with that. I think their "flaws" help give them character, and I'm still able to get the job done.
I guess we can't avoid the "we need more x, not this new system stuff" comments, but I'll say again what gets said every time there is a new systems change during the season x.5 update:
The people working on this aren't the same people working on STFs, story content, ships, costumes, etc. The systems team is basically all programmers, and the systems updates (this, admiralty, the crafting update, ship loadouts, drydock, etc) work on stuff that doesn't require heavy art or story resources. Working on this does NOT slow down work on whatever thing you list off that you think they should be focusing on instead of this; they do this stuff during the downtime when they are not working on the systems stuff in the background of that thing you want.
As for this not being necessary, I disagree wholeheartedly. I have been playing since beta and I still don't know for sure what everything in the current skill system does. It's opaque and requires going outside the game to unofficial sources to find out what any given skill really does, which is a HUGE turn off for new players. It's one of the few remaining legacy systems from the game's launch left (the first revamp didn't really change the core mechanics, it just re-arranged things), so it doesn't match anything else or prepare a player for what the end game looks like at present. It basically sets up every new casual player to make a bad build that they need to either live with or spend money to fix - a problem that turns players away from the game and frustrates veterans who need to deal with these bad builds in PUGs.
What are you talking about?! Every ability comes with an extensive (tray-) Tooltip, explaning exactly what skills affect the ability. Besides, I find the current skills entirely clear, and have no problem, whatsoever, grasping what they do. The learning curve in EvE Online, now *that* was steep, but the skill system in STO is a breeze. At least until today.
What provides more damage resistance and how much does each provide: Going from 0-1 in starship threat control, or going from 6-7 in starship armor performance?
Does going from 6 to 9 in starship weapons training add more or less damage than going from 3-4 in starship energy weapon specialization, given that both cost the same (weapon training costs 1k/rank while specialization costs 3k/ rank)?
Just using the tooltip and not the wiki tables, which provides more engine power if you are at 50 currently: going from 4-5 in starship warp core efficiency, or 4-5 in starship warp core potential? And what does this power do?
What percentage of players do you think can figure out these answers based on the tooltips? Because I think it is 0%. The only people i know of who do know the correct answers had to do testing to figure them out.
I think the idea is to avoid having skills that are point traps: things that either aren't as useful as they sound, or whose descriptions are deceptive/oversimplified to the point that the results aren't what new players expect. So things like Threat Control, Batteries, etc., that hardly anyone ever puts points into, or an earlier poster's example of a player mistaking Attack Pattern for a general damage buff. Or maybe skills that are taken for convenience, but whose points might be more productive elsewhere like Driver Coil, which pretty much exists only to get you to fights faster.
I'd say that two aspects of the current skill system absolutely have to go. First is the massive pool of skill points and widely differing skill costs, which make planning out builds more complicated than it needs to be. Second is the requirement to spend X points at each rank, with quotas for ground and space, which is overly restrictive when you don't really like any of the Lt. Commander skills (to take a rank at random) and really want points at Captain. Clearer and more informative descriptions of the skills and their effects on abilities are a welcome plus on top of that.
I have a feeling this will be ok for new players but seasoned players will have to start from scratch as if they were new, any skill setups you have will be lost with zero “Experience Points” awarded in compensation.
basically very similar to when they introduced lv60 and specializations, seasoned players had to start at lv50 with no specialization points where they would have earned enough points after actually reaching lv50 to not only bump them up to lv60 but also to have probably completely filled the spec trees if the system had been in place at that time in many cases.
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.
IMO all Subscribers should get their Level-Up Respec tokens refunded, and free players get a handful of complimetary tokens.
It's only fair as this is a fundamental rework that invalidates everything we have learned and done for the past 6 years and essentially sending us all back to square one.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
I have a feeling this will be ok for new players but seasoned players will have to start from scratch as if they were new, any skill setups you have will be lost with zero “Experience Points” awarded in compensation.
basically very similar to when they introduced lv60 and specializations, seasoned players had to start at lv50 with no specialization points where they would have earned enough points after actually reaching lv50 to not only bump them up to lv60 but also to have probably completely filled the spec trees if the system had been in place at that time in many cases.
As experience points for the tree are tied to your level you cant have lost any
There is a lot to read here, so I am going to ask my question and hope someone can point me to the answer if it was already given.
Will this new simplified system lead to 'one true path' style builds that have cropped up in other MMO's?
I ask because the sheer diversity in STO is one of the appeals. The there is no absolute, right way. Even when escorts dominated a cruiser could be used to good effect. Now with every one claiming bfaw is king, cannons still work. As do science powers. And no one seems to be going around telling other players they have to have exact builds to be useful or get out like I have seen elsewhere.
I have to admit that I was a bit uncomfortable with the comment in the revamp description about trying to help "prevent [new] players from making bad choices" because I'm uncertain at what point a decision becomes "bad."
I think this has to do with how certain skills are niche esoteric things that many players use, but not all builds can benefit from, such as Subspace Decompiler. If a player dumps points into it and they aren't using those powers that benefit from it then it's wasted skills points and a bad choice.
Which I think is the point of the simplification. Less skills are niche skills now. How? well, by combining them with other niche skills.
player reads the title.. makes up in head what it means..
player reads a few comments.. makes up in head what they mean..
players reads a response or 2 from borticus.. makes up in head what that means..
player panics about what the made up stuff means.. makes their concerns known to the thread..
another player reads the title.. makes up in head what the 1st player means..
glad to see at least a few people are bucking that trend and actually thinking about what they are reading, they will likely be the same people who then proceed to test out things on tribble, returning to the forums, and posting their findings for other players, many of whom will read the post.. panic.. make up in their head what it means.. and create another thread all about.. stuffthings
the current system may work, but it is flawed, and lacks any real transparency. im pretty sure the majority of players end up having to visit external sites to 'copy paste' builds, or worse, just end up playing something they threw together that in no way compliments their build?
if a player doesn't understand the skill tree, how can they be expected to understand how best to gear up? how many players have spent a fortune on [critd]x3 weapons, only to totally ignore their crit % ? everything is an extension of that skill tree.
if this change results in the majority of players being able to make informed choices about their build (as opposed to its current minority) then regardless of any minor losses or hiccups we may encounter, it will be a success. besides.. no matter what happens, there will undoubtedly still be things we can tweak and improve, to squeeze the most out of what we have.. hopefully this will draw the playing field a little closer, so there are more players to play with or compete against.
Sounds very interesting. A revamp of the skill system is very much welcome. But with yet another set of new abilities coming in, would you please consider expanding the UI so we have enough room to slot them all? A fourth or even fifth row of possible abilities would be very much appreciated.
I'm not sure if anyone has already answered this for you or not....you weren't aware that there ARE more rows already available? Go into Option, rearrange HUD, and there in your Tray Window is a marker, labeled (I believe) "New Tray". Click on that, and it opens another vertical tray in the lower right, which offers you up to 3 rows, the same as the Main power tray.
@nikeix My concern isn't a drop in DPS, its the release of a system that (judging by other past releases) likely wont get enough testing, and will be released bugged, and require "emergency patches" for the next month after its release because it wasnt properly put through its paces. Lets face it, they really havent pretested much to the level it should for quite some time, thats why the change launches usually end up borking the game up with "suprises", including playability and stability.
I would like, for once, to see a change put into the game that works as inteneded wothout having to be tood its "working as intended".
I would also not want to see the amount of choices/variability for people to make for a build and be able to have different capabilities to satisfy a multitude of game play styles.
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STOWiki admin.
And I also took the opportunity to increase Driver Coil to 9 in each of the 3 toons that have already been retrained, making them all super speedy in sector space, but now Driver Coil is an "Unlock."
Seriously, I hit the trifecta in terms of timing here. I know I'd been wanting to make the change for a while, but I was motivated to get it all done at once by the sale on "Services."
Anyway, now that I've gotten that off my chest, I know that my primary complaint about the Skill Points system wasn't the way it was laid out or the ratio of Space points to Ground points (or any of the other points brought up in the announcement), but rather just that there weren't enough of them to really specialize in something without significantly stunting some other ability. I'd always wondered why there were no skill points awarded between levels 51 and 60. I like having at least 3 in every skill, making my toon competent in every field, while placing more points into priority skills, and having the additional points from those 10 levels would go a long way toward maximizing that.
With regard to the new system, I can't say for sure without seeing it in action, but my first concern is whether I can realistically expect to have some competence in skills that don't relate directly to my Career, which is how a Tac can get away with piloting a Sci ship and with using Sci BOff abilities and expect a net positive result, even if the balance is different. Ultimately, the question is whether this revamp seriously changes the balance of the game and whether it limits what you can use in a given Career.
Infinite free respecs for as many toons as want then on Tribble, anybody? I'll be respeccing multiple toons on Tribble later today to be able to help others in my fleet who either don't bother with tribble or don't have the time.
just for the record, you won't be able to use any existing characters you already have on tribble until next week; they want you creating and leveling a new testing character from scratch
here's the relevant post from borticus about it:
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
^ Theoretical rather than functional flexibility as it stands, versus a system brought more in line with how people spend/have spent their points. It's either change something, try it, tweak it, and maybe replace it on down the line...or never change and keep it as we have now, warts and all. Heck, the relearning may even be fun and novel...look how the players and the game "relearned" ships and crafting with DR and think about how integral it seems now to be able to get weapons with [Pen] or a new trait with each ship.
Is a +10 better than +20 on a system where your total skills can go to up to 400 or something like that? Nope.
My character Tsin'xing
This, and the item changes, are my big concern. I have spent months and unholy amounts of resources on a killer Part Gens build, including the items with the big bonuses to Part Gens. Worryingly, the Part Gens skill is not even mentioned in the blog post called Skill System Revamp ( http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9797693-star-trek-online:-skill-system-revamp ).
Between the skill issues you mention in your post, and the question of how the high Part Gens bonuses of some items will translate to the new system, I have a very nervous feeling that I'm about to get rudely *****ed with the splintery nerf stick.
This is not making me happy at all.
Experimentation at 500 zen per character, per roll? How much of that is actually going on, once a character is set, vs just rolling a new character and bringing them up from scratch with a different point allocation?
Also...this system was desireable at some point in the past with another game? Now we get to the heart of some discontent, in that the system isn't necessarily bad but not enough dissimilar...but too much uniqueness for it's own sake would make transition from playing other games in the genre more difficult.
don't worry, partigens is still there in the new system; it's now called Exotic Particle Generator (adding Imroved and Advanced to ranks 2 and 3 respectively)
and the tooltip for the skill claims that each point of it adds 0.5% damage to exotic damage abilities, and a full 3 ranks will net 100 points, so total damage increase just from that will be +50% - and that's BEFORE factoring in anything else, like traits or consoles
(as an aside, i have no idea how much damage a point of particle generators currently adds, so i have no idea if this is a buff, nerf or remaining the same)
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
To seek out new loopholes and new combinations,
To boldly go max-DPS in ways no one has gone max-DPS before...
Frankly 75%+ of posts in this thread -- the overwhelming bowl-liquefying FEAR on display -- is pretty damn shameful coming from Star Trek fans. A little optimism, a little ambition, and a little courage would be welcome right about now. So ($&^ing what if you can't do a 71 second ISA the day after this goes live? There's potential for tinkering and experimentation vastly deeper than what we've got now. And even if you're of the camp that thinks there will ever and always be only one best build to rule them all, at least the runner-ups may not be lost so completely in the antiproton/BFAW dust.
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I could easily grind the required amount within a day if I put my mind to it.
And regardless of how long it took, it was a specialized currency that did not affect your ability to do other things in the game. At no point was I forced to choose between getting new equipment or getting a respec instead and every single piece of game content rewarded Merits so ultimately a respec was a reward for playing the game.
I was actually quite furious when STO went F2P as I got shortchanged big time, having saved up enough merits for 15-20 respecs, and instead I didn't even get enough dilithium from it to exchange for even "one" respec.
The Pilot spec has "Attack Pattern Expertise", which if you remember the text of the perk, gives temp HP when a bridge officer skill is used. Even attack patterns is no longer in the skill tree, points in the skill were not what affected the perk in the pilot specialization.
Don't think I need to be a programmer to comment here. I spend time and cash in this game, and do care about it.
I agree with the points you make. It indeed shows they no longer have the resources to fix the simple things it the millions of lines of code, especially not in a timely manner, so the proposal is to turn it all upside down before getting a handle on the basics. You can see my concert about this.
I don't have Kemo, but that doesn't mean what happens to the people who've opened the boxes to acquire it doesn't indirectly affect me. Something about 'what goes around, comes around.'
'Fixes' to me means things working as they were made to be or advertised to be, or as they were before being bugged out, not hiding them under the carpet indefinitely, or for such a long time it might as well be indefinite. This new system will have problems, and it won't affect only say kemo users, or carrier captains, but everyone - and we only get 1 respec to figure it all out in Live.
Patrols on elite to me don't sound all that good of an environment. Generally what I've done so far is go through a bunch of STFs on advanced to test my ship build along with the chosen spec points. That to me is a good average sample of what the particular character and equipment is capable of - for DPS, for tanking, space wizardry, different pug teams, pre-made teams, different enemies, etc. I don't have an answer to the Tribble testing ground otherwise, and I'm pointing out the limitations for that versus Live.
Bitter or reasonable is your call. Those are the facts, history, and my opinions on this overhaul based on those, and that's open for correction if it is inaccurate in any way.
/u/Borticus-cryptic, love it. Congratulations is in order for the team and to Star Trek Online for this Skill re-vamp.
My question, and a TRIBBLE-bit at best, will each Skill box thing have their own, unique icon? As at the moment, they're all the same (placeholders?).
E.g. like the icons in the Specialisation Tree.
permalink
[–]Borticus-CrypticKurland here! 2 points 20 hours ago
I honestly don't entirely know. What we currently have is what I requested from our UI artist as a bare minimum, but she mentioned she'd like to take another pass at it. I have no idea what her further intentions are!
Sorry, but no. The tooltips tell you what ability/stat the skills affect, and what the numeric bonus you will get. Exactly how much improvement does each point in Threat Control apply, when we don't really know how threat control even works? How much actual reduction in confuse and placate times do you get from +99 to Sensors? What's the actual crit chance improvements from weapon specialization (yes, it's on the Wiki, which is the problem)?
One might have been tempted to think, with all the complaints about FaW dominace, that this would be welcomed
I have to admit that I was a bit uncomfortable with the comment in the revamp description about trying to help "prevent [new] players from making bad choices" because I'm uncertain at what point a decision becomes "bad." There are way too many opinions about what build is the "perfect" build, but I've always felt that the only true build is the one that works for you and you alone. Honestly, none of my characters are "perfect," but I'm okay with that. I think their "flaws" help give them character, and I'm still able to get the job done.
Does going from 6 to 9 in starship weapons training add more or less damage than going from 3-4 in starship energy weapon specialization, given that both cost the same (weapon training costs 1k/rank while specialization costs 3k/ rank)?
Just using the tooltip and not the wiki tables, which provides more engine power if you are at 50 currently: going from 4-5 in starship warp core efficiency, or 4-5 in starship warp core potential? And what does this power do?
What percentage of players do you think can figure out these answers based on the tooltips? Because I think it is 0%. The only people i know of who do know the correct answers had to do testing to figure them out.
I'd say that two aspects of the current skill system absolutely have to go. First is the massive pool of skill points and widely differing skill costs, which make planning out builds more complicated than it needs to be. Second is the requirement to spend X points at each rank, with quotas for ground and space, which is overly restrictive when you don't really like any of the Lt. Commander skills (to take a rank at random) and really want points at Captain. Clearer and more informative descriptions of the skills and their effects on abilities are a welcome plus on top of that.
basically very similar to when they introduced lv60 and specializations, seasoned players had to start at lv50 with no specialization points where they would have earned enough points after actually reaching lv50 to not only bump them up to lv60 but also to have probably completely filled the spec trees if the system had been in place at that time in many cases.
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.
It's only fair as this is a fundamental rework that invalidates everything we have learned and done for the past 6 years and essentially sending us all back to square one.
As experience points for the tree are tied to your level you cant have lost any
Which I think is the point of the simplification. Less skills are niche skills now. How? well, by combining them with other niche skills.
My character Tsin'xing
player reads the title.. makes up in head what it means..
player reads a few comments.. makes up in head what they mean..
players reads a response or 2 from borticus.. makes up in head what that means..
player panics about what the made up stuff means.. makes their concerns known to the thread..
another player reads the title.. makes up in head what the 1st player means..
glad to see at least a few people are bucking that trend and actually thinking about what they are reading, they will likely be the same people who then proceed to test out things on tribble, returning to the forums, and posting their findings for other players, many of whom will read the post.. panic.. make up in their head what it means.. and create another thread all about.. stuffthings
the current system may work, but it is flawed, and lacks any real transparency. im pretty sure the majority of players end up having to visit external sites to 'copy paste' builds, or worse, just end up playing something they threw together that in no way compliments their build?
if a player doesn't understand the skill tree, how can they be expected to understand how best to gear up? how many players have spent a fortune on [critd]x3 weapons, only to totally ignore their crit % ? everything is an extension of that skill tree.
if this change results in the majority of players being able to make informed choices about their build (as opposed to its current minority) then regardless of any minor losses or hiccups we may encounter, it will be a success. besides.. no matter what happens, there will undoubtedly still be things we can tweak and improve, to squeeze the most out of what we have.. hopefully this will draw the playing field a little closer, so there are more players to play with or compete against.
I'm not sure if anyone has already answered this for you or not....you weren't aware that there ARE more rows already available? Go into Option, rearrange HUD, and there in your Tray Window is a marker, labeled (I believe) "New Tray". Click on that, and it opens another vertical tray in the lower right, which offers you up to 3 rows, the same as the Main power tray.
I would like, for once, to see a change put into the game that works as inteneded wothout having to be tood its "working as intended".
I would also not want to see the amount of choices/variability for people to make for a build and be able to have different capabilities to satisfy a multitude of game play styles.