Yes, but that means tactically specced escort captains will no longer be almost as tanky as survivability-oriented cruiser captains. The ship and captain class roles will be a lot more pronounced this way. I believe this will do the game good.
That is true, of course. Except that DPS is the only thing that counts in this game. That has always been the problem with it: Science, Engineering, they *still* serve to do DPS. If you don't do DPS, you're 'little people.' In theory, the Trinity is great; but, at the end of the day, Extending Shields and all, so the DPS-er in your team can do great damage, leaving you with just a lousy 10k on the boards, that is not rewarding. It's a Trinity (in theory great for team work), but, as a bottom line, your personal DPS is what is being counted.
Hm. Keep in mind that our engineer captains will still have the advantage of survivability captain powers. So you could spec all in the tactical skills, and still be more survivable than a tac that does the same.
Tactical Captains have APA and TI to hugely inflate their damage output; so, under the new system, they can far more easily compensate for a lack of Tactical speccing, and still maintain decent survivability, than me, the Engineer, who has to give up half my survivability, to try keep up with the DPS-Jones even a little.
Even with the old system I had to buy stuff I didn't want or put in way too much just to get to the next tier. So even the old system wasn't all that good. Only part I like about the old system, I had more freedom on where I wanted to put them. Other bad part about the old one, was ground. The ground was horrible as you didn't have much choices there.
So to me the new system is very much needed. Plus I wanted ground to be separated from space skill points.
Never said it didn't need fixed up a bit, in fact I agreed it did, but there should have been very little that was bad for you to buy any tier to advance. Every tier had at least 1 skill of shield, hull, weapons, or power increase on top of skill boosters while still allowing you to fully max the end skills of your career if you wanted. All with the added bonus of being able to fully skip many skills. I have some that only have points in 2 of the tac skills, and that's just because it raised their defense and accuracy. What's so bad about this new is that you're forced to skip skills completely as opposed to skipping them because you don't want them or just getting small amounts to maybe set you apart better from the plethora of other pcs from your career.
By the way, you had 66,000 points that were absolutely seperate from space for ground points. Space cap is 300,000. Total exp is 366,000. That's a touch more than a fifth of your points you have to spend on ground (or just waste on nothing), a little less than the new system will be at 45/46 space to 10 ground (22% to 22.22222222%), but you'll be able to buy less of the ground trees out.
Have you been to tribble to test this new system out? If you have been there, like I have for the last 8 hours, then you would know what is coming. When this new system goes live some things are going to drastically change.
Right now the trinity is dead, as things are, I do not want your heals, I do not need your heals. I do not want your tank and I do not need your tank.
However... When this new system goes live I may very well need your heals and I may very well need a tank.
Missions... No problem, I will be able to handle the episodes as I always have. But in STFS I am going to need help. Depending on what toon I am on, I may be the one helping.
One of the big things I noticed is how if you go heavy into damage you suffer big time in the area of survivability. BIG TIME. No joke, if I want to maintain the same damage output I have right now, with the new system in place, I am going to lose about 2k shield capacity, half of my shield hardness, going to lose about 10k hull and half of my hull strength. I am also going to take a hit in the subsystem power department, going to lose a lot of drain resistance, flow capacitors, power transfer rate and attack patterns too.
That is a drastic change.
I am going to lose a lot in this deal and not gain anything at all to make up for it. This is what I have learned from my 8 hours on tribble, 6 of those hours was spent getting my toon situated, unlocking reps, levelling up, getting abilities for my boffs, equipping my ship, etc...
I know why they temporarily disabled previously transferred characters. They did not want the feedback, the backlash, the utter riot that would ensue if they let everyone see just how crippling the new system is really going to be. When you run an ISA with your toon and only do half the damage you are used to, either because you could not manage to go full damage because you wanted to live or because you died so many times because you did go full damage, you are going to be very upset.
Things are going to change, the whole game is about to change, the way we played this game is gone. It is time to learn to accept our new reality or bail out.
On a positive note, the ground game is getting a major buff. With just those measly little 10 points I was able to get 40 extra damage out of my weapon and an additional 13% crit hit rate. That is a MAJOR buff for the ground game. And I do not feel as though I lost anything at all in that deal.
So YAY for ground game and totally booooo for space.
From now on I will hold bort strictly to his statement…
“Players Lose Nothing – As much as possible, everything available in the current system will be made available under the new system, and investments in equipment and ships retain full value.”
… but should probably stop fooling myself considering past experiences with Cryptic.
Sounds like a very spoiled player.
The game has rules, peeps play by it and undertake massive efforts to become good at what they are doing under those rules.
If cryptic changes them in a fashion that years of efforts may be flushed down the toilet I don’t think it’s spoiled if one tests it out and happens to be concerned.
Especially not if promised by the administration that all is good and all would stay the same basically.
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Have you been to tribble to test this new system out? If you have been there, like I have for the last 8 hours, then you would know what is coming. When this new system goes live some things are going to drastically change.
Right now the trinity is dead, as things are, I do not want your heals, I do not need your heals. I do not want your tank and I do not need your tank.
However... When this new system goes live I may very well need your heals and I may very well need a tank.
Missions... No problem, I will be able to handle the episodes as I always have. But in STFS I am going to need help. Depending on what toon I am on, I may be the one helping.
One of the big things I noticed is how if you go heavy into damage you suffer big time in the area of survivability. BIG TIME. No joke, if I want to maintain the same damage output I have right now, with the new system in place, I am going to lose about 2k shield capacity, half of my shield hardness, going to lose about 10k hull and half of my hull strength. I am also going to take a hit in the subsystem power department, going to lose a lot of drain resistance, flow capacitors, power transfer rate and attack patterns too.
That is a drastic change.
I am going to lose a lot in this deal and not gain anything at all to make up for it. This is what I have learned from my 8 hours on tribble, 6 of those hours was spent getting my toon situated, unlocking reps, levelling up, getting abilities for my boffs, equipping my ship, etc...
I know why they temporarily disabled previously transferred characters. They did not want the feedback, the backlash, the utter riot that would ensue if they let everyone see just how crippling the new system is really going to be. When you run an ISA with your toon and only do half the damage you are used to, either because you could not manage to go full damage because you wanted to live or because you died so many times because you did go full damage, you are going to be very upset.
Things are going to change, the whole game is about to change, the way we played this game is gone. It is time to learn to accept our new reality or bail out.
On a positive note, the ground game is getting a major buff. With just those measly little 10 points I was able to get 40 extra damage out of my weapon and an additional 13% crit hit rate. That is a MAJOR buff for the ground game. And I do not feel as though I lost anything at all in that deal.
So YAY for ground game and totally booooo for space.
With a game that is cursed with some of the most spoiled players I think I've ever known, I feel that crippling the system like this is GOOD! The name of the game should be PAPER / ROCK / SCISSORS so that the game cannot be utterly dominated by simply maximizing DPS spam. (I'm sorry, but that ruins the potential of the full spectrum of the game, think about it). With a system like described above, it is more realistic and makes more features of one's ship and skills more necessary and thus, more valuable.
Crippling a gaming system 6 years into development is never a good thing ... call and ask John Smedley from SOE ... ask John about loosing 3/4 of their paid SWG customers by making things easier for the complaining players ...
What I get from the explanation is that they a) massively dumbed it down, a trend in RPGs that I hate anyway and b) they eliminated a lot of the options to make your character unique and removed a lot of the choices and decisions you could make.
Some might think this is a good thing and I personally reserve judgement for when I can actually see this in-game, but I'm wary of this. Definitely.
Have you been to tribble to test this new system out? If you have been there, like I have for the last 8 hours, then you would know what is coming. When this new system goes live some things are going to drastically change.
Right now the trinity is dead, as things are, I do not want your heals, I do not need your heals. I do not want your tank and I do not need your tank.
However... When this new system goes live I may very well need your heals and I may very well need a tank.
Missions... No problem, I will be able to handle the episodes as I always have. But in STFS I am going to need help. Depending on what toon I am on, I may be the one helping.
One of the big things I noticed is how if you go heavy into damage you suffer big time in the area of survivability. BIG TIME. No joke, if I want to maintain the same damage output I have right now, with the new system in place, I am going to lose about 2k shield capacity, half of my shield hardness, going to lose about 10k hull and half of my hull strength. I am also going to take a hit in the subsystem power department, going to lose a lot of drain resistance, flow capacitors, power transfer rate and attack patterns too.
That is a drastic change.
I am going to lose a lot in this deal and not gain anything at all to make up for it. This is what I have learned from my 8 hours on tribble, 6 of those hours was spent getting my toon situated, unlocking reps, levelling up, getting abilities for my boffs, equipping my ship, etc...
I know why they temporarily disabled previously transferred characters. They did not want the feedback, the backlash, the utter riot that would ensue if they let everyone see just how crippling the new system is really going to be. When you run an ISA with your toon and only do half the damage you are used to, either because you could not manage to go full damage because you wanted to live or because you died so many times because you did go full damage, you are going to be very upset.
Things are going to change, the whole game is about to change, the way we played this game is gone. It is time to learn to accept our new reality or bail out.
On a positive note, the ground game is getting a major buff. With just those measly little 10 points I was able to get 40 extra damage out of my weapon and an additional 13% crit hit rate. That is a MAJOR buff for the ground game. And I do not feel as though I lost anything at all in that deal.
So YAY for ground game and totally booooo for space.
With a game that is cursed with some of the most spoiled players I think I've ever known, I feel that crippling the system like this is GOOD! The name of the game should be PAPER / ROCK / SCISSORS so that the game cannot be utterly dominated by simply maximizing DPS spam. (I'm sorry, but that ruins the potential of the full spectrum of the game, think about it). With a system like described above, it is more realistic and makes more features of one's ship and skills more necessary and thus, more valuable.
We currently have two dozen players playing queued maps at the same time, perhaps three. Most of them do it because they can. The rest of the thousands players logged can’t or don’t want to.
If those changes result in even less players playing the only halfway engaging contend in STO please point me at the direction of the “full spectrum of the game”.
Besides queues I haven’t found anything worth of my time in STO.
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[...] Except that DPS is the only thing that counts in this game. That has always been the problem with it: Science, Engineering, they *still* serve to do DPS. If you don't do DPS, you're 'little people.' In theory, the Trinity is great; but, at the end of the day, Extending Shields and all, so the DPS-er in your team can do great damage, leaving you with just a lousy 10k on the boards, that is not rewarding. It's a Trinity (in theory great for team work), but, as a bottom line, your personal DPS is what is being counted.
Yes, but ask yourself: Why is that so? Isn't part of the answer to that the fact that under the current system, it is too easy to be both DPS and tank at the same time? Now they are fixing a small part of that. And you say that's not good?
Basically, what you are saying is that only tacs are important, so we should keep tacs important.
BTW, it is entirely possible that the design error of the tac captain powers will be fixed down the line - after all, they now are looking into the basic game mechanics.
Hm. Keep in mind that our engineer captains will still have the advantage of survivability captain powers. So you could spec all in the tactical skills, and still be more survivable than a tac that does the same.
Tactical Captains have APA and TI to hugely inflate their damage output; so, under the new system, they can far more easily compensate for a lack of Tactical speccing, and still maintain decent survivability, than me, the Engineer, who has to give up half my survivability, to try keep up with the DPS-Jones even a little.
If you try to beat tac captains at their own game (which is DPS), you will always loose because of the design errors made with the tac captain powers. The skill system revamp, however, will make tac captains who want to make top DPS really breakable. And that's good.
Not really.
If you are an engineering captain in PvE one contributing role would be a tank. You need DPS for that yourself in order to receive agro and take it away from the team in order to save it. If you don’t manage it you are not a tank, you are a turtle!
Effective DPS is as vital for engineers as it is for tacs.
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[...] Except that DPS is the only thing that counts in this game. That has always been the problem with it: Science, Engineering, they *still* serve to do DPS. If you don't do DPS, you're 'little people.' In theory, the Trinity is great; but, at the end of the day, Extending Shields and all, so the DPS-er in your team can do great damage, leaving you with just a lousy 10k on the boards, that is not rewarding. It's a Trinity (in theory great for team work), but, as a bottom line, your personal DPS is what is being counted.
Yes, but ask yourself: Why is that so? Isn't part of the answer to that the fact that under the current system, it is too easy to be both DPS and tank at the same time? Now they are fixing a small part of that. And you say that's not good?
Basically, what you are saying is that only tacs are important, so we should keep tacs important.
BTW, it is entirely possible that the design error of the tac captain powers will be fixed down the line - after all, they now are looking into the basic game mechanics.
Hm. Keep in mind that our engineer captains will still have the advantage of survivability captain powers. So you could spec all in the tactical skills, and still be more survivable than a tac that does the same.
Tactical Captains have APA and TI to hugely inflate their damage output; so, under the new system, they can far more easily compensate for a lack of Tactical speccing, and still maintain decent survivability, than me, the Engineer, who has to give up half my survivability, to try keep up with the DPS-Jones even a little.
If you try to beat tac captains at their own game (which is DPS), you will always loose because of the design errors made with the tac captain powers. The skill system revamp, however, will make tac captains who want to make top DPS really breakable. And that's good.
Not really.
If you are an engineering captain in PvE one contributing role would be a tank. You need DPS for that yourself in order to receive agro and take it away from the team in order to save it. If you don’t manage it you are not a tank, you are a turtle!
Effective DPS is as vital for engineers as it is for tacs.
So what about providing Engineers with a super high threat level (similar to a taunt) specifically for tanking reasons ?
What I've always felt was that in order to create the "balance" that is always being strived for, a proper paper/rock/scissors system would have to be implemented, but this takes a particular way of organizing things to make it a truly balanced system. For instance, if it were up to me, anything having to do with promoting DPS would be a separate and global skill tree that all three careers would have consistent access to. Then, apart from that, all three separate careers would have skills that act like perks which uniquely shape everything else about a build - how it dishes its dps and how it is protected from dps. Therefore, DPS is not even a factor; instead, clever creativity of how one shapes their other skills around it is what would matter more than anything. Separating DPS traits from the careers would allow a much more intelligent dynamic between different ship types and hybrids would have a lot more room to be designed.
hmm I'm not so sure an engineer can't maintain what they have now. With 46 points - let's say 18 in eng 20 in tac and 8 in sci it should be enough. You may not even need as many as 8 in sci.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Anyway, seeing as I use all kinds of ships on all kinds of characters, a skill tree that locks me in one more specialised role is definitely against my better judgement.
I can't see this being the case. I mean isn't selling us ships via the C-store or lock box lotto the primary income of this game. If you lock me into a certain ship type or ship than when you release the next shiny ship where's my incentive or motivation to purchase this ship to use on my character because i can tell you now i won't be obtaining a respect token
They might actually expect people to start buying respec tokens much more.
But we'll see. Maybe I' wrong, still need to do much testing.
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
What I've always felt was that in order to create the "balance" that is always being strived for, a proper paper/rock/scissors system would have to be implemented, but this takes a particular way of organizing things to make it a truly balanced system. For instance, if it were up to me, anything having to do with promoting DPS would be a separate and global skill tree that all three careers would have consistent access to. Then, apart from that, all three separate careers would have skills that act like perks which uniquely shape everything else about a build - how it dishes its dps and how it is protected from dps. Therefore, DPS is not even a factor; instead, clever creativity of how one shapes their other skills around it is what would matter more than anything. Separating DPS traits from the careers would allow a much more intelligent dynamic between different ship types and hybrids would have a lot more room to be designed.
Of all the ideas I have read, to me, this seems a most equitable and elegant solution to balancing the deeps, while retaining diversity.
Unfortunately, it would likely never happen as players would rally to maintain their particular advantage. Too bad YOU aren't designing the new system.
hmm I'm not so sure an engineer can't maintain what they have now. With 46 points - let's say 18 in eng 20 in tac and 8 in sci it should be enough. You may not even need as many as 8 in sci.
This is the skill tree I currently have: Skill Tree (see Skills)
As you can see, I got every bit of hull and shield system at max (except for the completely useless Subsystem Repair), as well as EPS and Warp Core skills. And still have points left for Tactical and even a fair amount of gravgens and partgens. There is no way in hell I can maintain this under the new paradigm!
For clarity, I'm not focussed on whether I can still make something work. I'm just establishing that, ceterus paribus ('the rest' being my Engineering and Science skills), I'm looking at a huge nerf here. Pretty much Bort's new revamp will throw back the survivability of my ships as af I were still a lv 20 Captain. Thanks A Lot.
hmm I'm not so sure an engineer can't maintain what they have now. With 46 points - let's say 18 in eng 20 in tac and 8 in sci it should be enough. You may not even need as many as 8 in sci.
This is the skill tree I currently have: Skill Tree (see Skills)
As you can see, I got every bit of hull and shield system at max (except for the completely useless Subsystem Repair), as well as EPS and Warp Core skills. And still have points left for Tactical and even a fair amount of gravgens and partgens. There is no way in hell I can maintain this under the new paradigm!
For clarity, I'm not focussed on whether I can still make something work. I'm just establishing that, ceterus paribus ('the rest' being my Engineering and Science skills), I'm looking at a huge nerf here. Pretty much Bort's new revamp will throw back the survivability of my ships as af I were still a lv 20 Captain. Thanks A Lot.
hmm I'm not so sure an engineer can't maintain what they have now. With 46 points - let's say 18 in eng 20 in tac and 8 in sci it should be enough. You may not even need as many as 8 in sci.
This is the skill tree I currently have: Skill Tree (see Skills)
As you can see, I got every bit of hull and shield system at max (except for the completely useless Subsystem Repair), as well as EPS and Warp Core skills. And still have points left for Tactical and even a fair amount of gravgens and partgens. There is no way in hell I can maintain this under the new paradigm!
For clarity, I'm not focussed on whether I can still make something work. I'm just establishing that, ceterus paribus ('the rest' being my Engineering and Science skills), I'm looking at a huge nerf here. Pretty much Bort's new revamp will throw back the survivability of my ships as af I were still a lv 20 Captain. Thanks A Lot.
Cryptic/PWE aren't my favourite peeps at the mo, i'll say this about the new system. If Cryptic say there will be no changes that impact current builds you can bet your TRIBBLE there will be changes that impact current builds. The new skill tree will be what the pre-DR Elites are to DR advanced "Not what was advertised"
I'll really need to wait until I can port over a few of my Holodeck characters to test it out properly with a range of different builds and gear (I tend to design characters to fit a particular ship or at least subtype), but simply on my impressions without going into hard numbers I'm quite happy with the performance of the two I've tried out with the new system around Ker'rat and the space Battlezones. Tac in a (captain level) Defiant with a tac/eng hybrid build hits hard and can take a punch, Engie in a Luna with a sci heavy skillset does equally well. Tried them both with pure tac and pure sci respectively, far prefer mixed builds even if it means losing the Ultimates. I can still get pretty similar abilities via traits and such anyway.
Basically, I find it's a bit easier to aim for a particular type of build with the new system and I don't think I'm losing much capability, if at all, on hybrid skill picks (after the latest patch, still very much WIP remember). Think they might actually have been a bit better in some ways, like I said I'll really need to compare combat logs of my Holodeck characters with their Tribble dopplegangers to get a more accurate picture. Interested to see how all the Universal and assorted upgraded Fleet/crafted/set etc gear translate over as well.
The problem with your statement is that if the tactical escort retreats every time they gain enough aggro, they would have to retreat after every attack, and couldn't reasonable keep putting damage on the enemy, especially if dhc's come back in fashion.
As far as someone elses point about engie cruisers becomming even more tankier than tac escorts, unless the hulls have a MASSIVE spread of hit-points and defenses between them (like 5:1 or higher) the greater dps seen by a good tac escort vs a good engie cruiser, the tacscort's higher dps is going to chew through the difference.
As far as someone elses point about engie cruisers becomming even more tankier than tac escorts, unless the hulls have a MASSIVE spread of hit-points and defenses between them (like 5:1 or higher) the greater dps seen by a good tac escort vs a good engie cruiser, the tacscort's higher dps is going to chew through the difference.
'Tankier', without the aggro (= DPS + Threat Control, wherever the latter is now) is useless. You don't want someone sole contribution, in misson, to be 'to not have died.' Unless you were talking about PvP, of course.
Coming at it from the 'Nerf!' angle, been looking things over with a friend of mine again (after earlier comments made here by other players), and 2 major questions remain for me:
1) 'Shield Hardness' is currently a function of shield power (iirc). Is the new Shield Hardness on top of what we already had, or does it replace the current shield hardening mechanism? If the former, then that's another 3 skippable skill points.
2) Same for 'Shield Regen' (also currently tied to shield power). Is the new skill extra, or does it replace the old mechanism?
And one minor question:
3) What new skill subsumed Batteries? As an Engineer, I had exactly 5 points in it (for a 17.2 sec duration so as to bridge the gap of the 'falloff' of the EPS Manifold Efficiency Trait).
3) What new skill subsumed Batteries? As an Engineer, I had exactly 5 points in it (for a 17.2 sec duration so as to bridge the gap of the 'falloff' of the EPS Manifold Efficiency Trait).
When you have chosen 10 points in eng, you will be given a choice between either +100 (9 points in old system + a bit more) in batteries or +2 extra aux power. In your case, take the first one.
3) What new skill subsumed Batteries? As an Engineer, I had exactly 5 points in it (for a 17.2 sec duration so as to bridge the gap of the 'falloff' of the EPS Manifold Efficiency Trait).
When you have chosen 10 points in eng, you will be given a choice between either +100 (9 points in old system + a bit more) in batteries or +2 extra aux power. In your case, take the first one.
Thanks.
Odd, filled it all out (several times now, actuall), but wasn't offered any option. Maybe that will just happen when this goes live?
3) What new skill subsumed Batteries? As an Engineer, I had exactly 5 points in it (for a 17.2 sec duration so as to bridge the gap of the 'falloff' of the EPS Manifold Efficiency Trait).
When you have chosen 10 points in eng, you will be given a choice between either +100 (9 points in old system + a bit more) in batteries or +2 extra aux power. In your case, take the first one.
Thanks.
Odd, filled it all out (several times now, actuall), but wasn't offered any option. Maybe that will just happen when this goes live?
It's one of those miniature blue bars down below. Easy to miss, I agree.
Coming at it from the 'Nerf!' angle, been looking things over with a friend of mine again (after earlier comments made here by other players), and 2 major questions remain for me:
1) 'Shield Hardness' is currently a function of shield power (iirc). Is the new Shield Hardness on top of what we already had, or does it replace the current shield hardening mechanism? If the former, then that's another 3 skippable skill points.
2) Same for 'Shield Regen' (also currently tied to shield power). Is the new skill extra, or does it replace the old mechanism?
New skills, on top of what we had before.
Also, I definitely think the UI needs work. And I really dislike that there is no "Commit" Step for a final selection of abilities. This will be very error-prone if they keep it as is.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Coming at it from the 'Nerf!' angle, been looking things over with a friend of mine again (after earlier comments made here by other players), and 2 major questions remain for me:
1) 'Shield Hardness' is currently a function of shield power (iirc). Is the new Shield Hardness on top of what we already had, or does it replace the current shield hardening mechanism? If the former, then that's another 3 skippable skill points.
2) Same for 'Shield Regen' (also currently tied to shield power). Is the new skill extra, or does it replace the old mechanism?
New skills, on top of what we had before.
Brilliant! Thanks. By the goddes, I may actually reach 'equivalency' this way after all (and worse, wind up having to eat crow, after all, LOL; which I'll gladly do, btw, should this turn out to not be a huge nerf; gotta see things first with my real toon and ship, though: can't get any meaningful numbers with my cadet).
Comments
That is true, of course. Except that DPS is the only thing that counts in this game. That has always been the problem with it: Science, Engineering, they *still* serve to do DPS. If you don't do DPS, you're 'little people.' In theory, the Trinity is great; but, at the end of the day, Extending Shields and all, so the DPS-er in your team can do great damage, leaving you with just a lousy 10k on the boards, that is not rewarding. It's a Trinity (in theory great for team work), but, as a bottom line, your personal DPS is what is being counted.
Tactical Captains have APA and TI to hugely inflate their damage output; so, under the new system, they can far more easily compensate for a lack of Tactical speccing, and still maintain decent survivability, than me, the Engineer, who has to give up half my survivability, to try keep up with the DPS-Jones even a little.
Never said it didn't need fixed up a bit, in fact I agreed it did, but there should have been very little that was bad for you to buy any tier to advance. Every tier had at least 1 skill of shield, hull, weapons, or power increase on top of skill boosters while still allowing you to fully max the end skills of your career if you wanted. All with the added bonus of being able to fully skip many skills. I have some that only have points in 2 of the tac skills, and that's just because it raised their defense and accuracy. What's so bad about this new is that you're forced to skip skills completely as opposed to skipping them because you don't want them or just getting small amounts to maybe set you apart better from the plethora of other pcs from your career.
By the way, you had 66,000 points that were absolutely seperate from space for ground points. Space cap is 300,000. Total exp is 366,000. That's a touch more than a fifth of your points you have to spend on ground (or just waste on nothing), a little less than the new system will be at 45/46 space to 10 ground (22% to 22.22222222%), but you'll be able to buy less of the ground trees out.
The game has rules, peeps play by it and undertake massive efforts to become good at what they are doing under those rules.
If cryptic changes them in a fashion that years of efforts may be flushed down the toilet I don’t think it’s spoiled if one tests it out and happens to be concerned.
Especially not if promised by the administration that all is good and all would stay the same basically.
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Crippling a gaming system 6 years into development is never a good thing ... call and ask John Smedley from SOE ... ask John about loosing 3/4 of their paid SWG customers by making things easier for the complaining players ...
Some might think this is a good thing and I personally reserve judgement for when I can actually see this in-game, but I'm wary of this. Definitely.
We currently have two dozen players playing queued maps at the same time, perhaps three. Most of them do it because they can. The rest of the thousands players logged can’t or don’t want to.
If those changes result in even less players playing the only halfway engaging contend in STO please point me at the direction of the “full spectrum of the game”.
Besides queues I haven’t found anything worth of my time in STO.
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Not really.
If you are an engineering captain in PvE one contributing role would be a tank. You need DPS for that yourself in order to receive agro and take it away from the team in order to save it. If you don’t manage it you are not a tank, you are a turtle!
Effective DPS is as vital for engineers as it is for tacs.
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So what about providing Engineers with a super high threat level (similar to a taunt) specifically for tanking reasons ?
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
They might actually expect people to start buying respec tokens much more.
But we'll see. Maybe I' wrong, still need to do much testing.
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
Of all the ideas I have read, to me, this seems a most equitable and elegant solution to balancing the deeps, while retaining diversity.
Unfortunately, it would likely never happen as players would rally to maintain their particular advantage. Too bad YOU aren't designing the new system.
This is the skill tree I currently have: Skill Tree (see Skills)
As you can see, I got every bit of hull and shield system at max (except for the completely useless Subsystem Repair), as well as EPS and Warp Core skills. And still have points left for Tactical and even a fair amount of gravgens and partgens. There is no way in hell I can maintain this under the new paradigm!
For clarity, I'm not focussed on whether I can still make something work. I'm just establishing that, ceterus paribus ('the rest' being my Engineering and Science skills), I'm looking at a huge nerf here. Pretty much Bort's new revamp will throw back the survivability of my ships as af I were still a lv 20 Captain. Thanks A Lot.
I replicated your build using 41 points.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Basically, I find it's a bit easier to aim for a particular type of build with the new system and I don't think I'm losing much capability, if at all, on hybrid skill picks (after the latest patch, still very much WIP remember). Think they might actually have been a bit better in some ways, like I said I'll really need to compare combat logs of my Holodeck characters with their Tribble dopplegangers to get a more accurate picture. Interested to see how all the Universal and assorted upgraded Fleet/crafted/set etc gear translate over as well.
The problem with your statement is that if the tactical escort retreats every time they gain enough aggro, they would have to retreat after every attack, and couldn't reasonable keep putting damage on the enemy, especially if dhc's come back in fashion.
As far as someone elses point about engie cruisers becomming even more tankier than tac escorts, unless the hulls have a MASSIVE spread of hit-points and defenses between them (like 5:1 or higher) the greater dps seen by a good tac escort vs a good engie cruiser, the tacscort's higher dps is going to chew through the difference.
'Tankier', without the aggro (= DPS + Threat Control, wherever the latter is now) is useless. You don't want someone sole contribution, in misson, to be 'to not have died.' Unless you were talking about PvP, of course.
1) 'Shield Hardness' is currently a function of shield power (iirc). Is the new Shield Hardness on top of what we already had, or does it replace the current shield hardening mechanism? If the former, then that's another 3 skippable skill points.
2) Same for 'Shield Regen' (also currently tied to shield power). Is the new skill extra, or does it replace the old mechanism?
And one minor question:
3) What new skill subsumed Batteries? As an Engineer, I had exactly 5 points in it (for a 17.2 sec duration so as to bridge the gap of the 'falloff' of the EPS Manifold Efficiency Trait).
Thanks.
When you have chosen 10 points in eng, you will be given a choice between either +100 (9 points in old system + a bit more) in batteries or +2 extra aux power. In your case, take the first one.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Thanks.
Odd, filled it all out (several times now, actuall), but wasn't offered any option. Maybe that will just happen when this goes live?
It's one of those miniature blue bars down below. Easy to miss, I agree.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Also, I definitely think the UI needs work. And I really dislike that there is no "Commit" Step for a final selection of abilities. This will be very error-prone if they keep it as is.
Brilliant!