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Official Feedback Thread for the Skill System Revamp
coldsnapped
Member Posts: 520 Cryptic Developer
Please use this thread to discuss any issues and feedback with the new Skill Revamp System.
Skill System Revamp:
Known Issues:
Skill System Revamp:
- The Skill System has been revamped to simplify the system and help players make better choices when choosing skills for their captains.
- All references to “Skill Points” have been changed to “Experience Points” as these are no longer spent on Skills, but simply gained to increase levels.
- Players will gain “Space Points” and “Ground Points” which will be spent to purchase Skills.
- Players will earn 1 Space Point each level, starting at level 5 and ending at level 50 (total = 46 Space Points).
- Players will earn 1 Ground Point every 5 levels, starting at level 5 and ending at level 50 (total = 10 Ground Points).
- Every Skill Node in the new system costs either 1 Space Point or 1 Ground Point to purchase.
- There are 110 Skill Nodes in total, separated as 90 Space and 20 Ground.
- Space Skills are separated into Tiers, each of which requires a certain number of Space Points spent in any of the previous Tiers.
- Ground Skills do not have Tier requirements, but some Ground Skills have prerequisites.
- Purchasing Skills will also grant players progress on new Unlock Paths.
- Once earned, Unlocks do not cost Space Points or Ground Points to activate.
- Some Unlocks require players to make a choice between two different Unlocks before either will be active.
- Some Skills from the previous system have been moved to these Unlock Paths.
- Unlock Paths are also how players will earn new Bridge Officer Training Manuals.
- Space Skills have 3 separate Unlock Paths, related to purchasing Skills in each of the 3 Profession categories: Engineering, Science or Tactical.
- Ground Skills have only a single Unlock Path.
- Spending 25 or more Space Points in a single Profession will unlock a powerful new “Ultimate Ability” which can be further enhanced through the Unlock Paths.
- Upon logging in for the first time after this update, player’s skills will automatically be reset and it will not cost a token to reapply skills in this new system for the first time only.
- Future skill retrains will cost a standard Retrain Token.
- For Tribble only, the test console on Drozana will allow players to obtain blocks of 10,000 Experience Points, as well as Skill Respec Tokens, to help test the system.
- Also, for the first week this system is available on Tribble, players will need to start a new character and go through the tutorial.
- After this point, players can go to Drozana and use the test console to obtain free Experience Points.
- This it to help test the system for feedback and issues found during the leveling process.
- After a week, we will restore the already transferred characters prior to this update.
- This system is still a work in progress.
- For more details, please visit our Skill System Revamp blog at: http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9797693-star-trek-online:-skill-system-revamp
Known Issues:
- The Skill System Revamp is still a work in progress:
- Shuttles and other Small Craft do not get the correct benefit from Hull Capacity and Shield Capacity skills.
- The benefit players appear to get from Impulse Expertise does not match the Skill’s description.
- Distance calculations, as they pertain to Weapon Damage Drop-off, are inconsistently applied for ships with differing capsule sizes.
- Not all Hangar Pets benefit equally from Coordination skills.
- There may be lingering mentions of “Crew” on reward packs and other items.
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This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Just so you know, transferring has been disabled, and all existing characters on tribble are currently unavailable; the dev team wants us to level up new characters so we can test the skill revamp from the ground floor.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
I really like that the specialization and skill tabs have been consolidated, though. Looking forward to getting to Drozana and playing around with this more!
There's a whole series of tutorial missions that Feds have to do before they're allowed to use the interacts for ESD, Drozana, etc. Have you finished those?
(This would be why I rolled a KDF for this, heh.)
Anyway, more feedback: It needs to be made more obvious when an unlock is available. I almost completely overlooked it until I thought to look at those tiny little bars at the bottom of the window. It's also not immediately obvious that those little circle nodes represent unlocks.
I find it odd that I be made to create a new character anyways. Why not allow us to transfer on of our existing level 60's over and just test out the skill tree? I do not understand.
Because they want us to test the leveling process itself.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
(Alternatively, maybe just offer a different choice alongside Starship Stealth.)
ETA: And yeah, I know that stealth is used for other things besides just cloaking. The fact remains that having a hangar skill isn't much use if you're too low-level to fly hangar ships anyway, and this could throw new players.
The specific specializations are gone, which is good. However I agree the torpedo and energy base abilities could do with combining as well so long as we can find a suitable replacement for the other three points.
ETA: My compliments on the contents of the tooltips, though (both for unlocks and for the skills themselves), as it's now so much clearer what everything does.
I'm open to hearing suggestions.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
What are you talking about? What skills have you "given up", and what are you feeling is not useful with the new tree? It seems like many people are seeing "I will have less dots filled in on my skills sheet, thus I have lost the feeling of having exactly and only the dots filled in that I wanted", but not actually able to articulate a way in which their characters have lost actual measurable in-game ability.
Here's my feedback so far, just from looking at the tree (but not yet having finished the tutorial to play with it):
I really like the updated tool-tips that express not just the effective skill level gained from each box, but also show the total net effect in relatively easy to understand terms (like maxing out shield capacity results in 30% shield hp gain). A few tool tips need to be updated to this standard, however, (looking at you, energy and projectile weapon training). In addition, some explanations still aren't super-clear. In particular, the shield hardness explanation could likely use some tweaking, as right now it's definitely cumbersome to parse out. What I think it's explaining is that your shields ignore .2% of incoming damage per point of shield power (so, 1% per 5 power, or 25% at 125 power), and that a full investment in that skill will improve that negation by 100% (so, 50% negation at 125 power), but MAN that took a few reads to get (and I'm not sure I'm right, frankly). I dunno of an easier way to explain it, but maybe workshop a few other phrasings. Also, I noted that hull DR gets an explicit shout-out about max possible dr and diminishing returns - does such a thing exist for shield hardness?
In terms of the breakdown of powers, I think Tac could use another looking over, as the first two levels of tac unlocks offer virtually nothing (in the case of the first level LITERALLY nothing) to most ships. If I don't run a ship with a cloak (or run Mask Energy Signature), and don't have hanger pets, the first unlock gives me no buffs at all, and that's pretty lame. If we have the option of delaying a choice until later, such that a player like me (tac focused, but with no stealth or hanger pets) could invest my unlocks exclusively in the later unlocks that WOULD help me, that would be sort of okay, but even then it basically means that Tac is an all or nothing affair for many people, in terms of the unlocks. Heck, even the third level of unlocks (projectile crit bonuses) may not be useful to many people who run exclusively energy weapons (which, btw, will continue since there is still an additional cost for speccing into torps since there are still separate energy/torp dmg skills).
Now, to play devil's advocate for a bit, I can see where the idea here might be going - these unlocks are, after all, "free" buffs for filling tree slots that ostensibly you wanted to fill anyway, so if you can't really use them, that's no great loss. I even think I would agree with the subtle logic of tac powers being generally the more desirable powers for many players, and so making the unlocks for tac less desirable can be a way to encourage build diversity (either by pushing people to the more desirable unlocks, or pushing people to slot powers like MES that they otherwise never would).
That said, I don't think the tac tree as is will be at all successful at shifting the conversation about what builds are viable in the STO meta-game. Instead, I think it will just be seen as a "tax" on the successful builds out there, and be read as either punitive or patronizing (depending on whether the player focuses more on the "paying for useless unlocks" or "being forced to run specific things to benefit from the unlocks). Instead, I think it may be necessary to undergo some rather radical re-thinks of what the tac tree does. My first suggestion would be to make it so that there was always at least one generically useful power for every unlock level, for every tree. What I mean by generically useful is that the benefit is not tied to any specific ability or equipment, such that any player could get at least a minor advantage for slotting it. Of course the rub there is I'm really not sure what those generic options could be at this point for Tac - the design space for tac beyond the niche pets/stealth seems to be pretty limited to "more damage". Maybe something like weapon offline resists? Or OH! maybe something manipulating weapon proc chance? Dunno, just spit-balling there.
I would also say that the division between energy/projectile skills probably needs to go. As it is, I think too many players are going to look at it and still with their energy only builds, and then look at the projectile crits unlock and be annoyed again that functionally the first three levels of unlocks for tac give them only threat control as a possible benefit. It occurs to me that maybe mining the weapon cycle haste and proc chance design space a bit here could help with both issues - so, for example, for lt. level skills you have 3 skills which improve the base damage of all weapons, and 3 skills that improve the rate at which weapons cycle (which could even be balanced to benefit torps relatively more than energy weapons, and thus address another perceived disparity in those weapon types). Alternately, maybe the lt skill is the proc chance modifier (since some players may choose to run weapons which don't have a proc (*cough*AP*cough*), which would allow them to opt out of that skill on the tree, and then the more generally useful weapon cycle haste could go to an unlock.
Okay, that's probably enough feedback for now - I'm going to continue playing and seeing how it goes.
OH, wait, though! I agree that the "Purchase skills" button needs to be adjusted so that it only shows up when I can actually, you know, purchase skills.
EDIT: Just thought of another possible place to look for "tac" skills - energy weapon power drain could be another thing to adjust either via skills or unlocks in the tac tree.
I agree, as well! It would make having different ships with different builds much easier, especially with ships builds that use torpedoes versus builds that don't.
Combine them in this triangle shaped skill combination that start at Lieutenant, it will give a lot versatility to builds.
Agreed, follow suit with the trait revamp and make respecs "free" or at the very least reduce their cost and make them free for subcribers, you know like virtually every single other successful MMO out there.
Free Respecs + Loadout slots for sale = Win-Win for everyone.
Yes we need that aswell but thoses Skills should be combined if we get a loadout system or not.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
I hope that there are changes made before this goes live. I think the overall look is fantastic, and the bonuses are good. The ultimate passives at the end of any given tree are ok, but are going to be unobtainable by a large portion of the community, unless some of the important systems are left out of their choices. Trying to replicate my current build on holodeck, I am 3 or 4 points shy of obtaining the first rank of ultimate, so I will most likely never see it, and without knowing exactly the value per rank of the ultimate passives, it is hard to make a determination. Bottom line, I believe that 45 points in space is just not enough to compare with holodeck.
The new system has a skill that allows players to increase Accuracy. How about adding other skills like increasing Crit Chance, and Crit Severity? Could do with using some of the "Reputation passives" as ideas for new skills in the revamped system. I'd love to see the new Skill system expanded greatly, to allow players to pick-and-choose from a wider variety. Might increase the # of unique builds, rather than everyone going to a cookie-cutter must-have build. I'd also like to see skills available already at Level 2 (not 5), and ending at the new max level 60 (not 50).
I also agree with a previous poster, that the "Hangar skill" and "Stealth skill" should be made available later on, or as part of a multiple-choice tier. Players who neither use Hangars or Cloak, have virtually no use for these skills, yet feel forced to specialize into them, to progress to a later tier.
I agree, the cookie cutter builds are going to be forced with this current build. Needs to be more versatility or more points allotted. 45 points for space is just not enough to compare with current tree set up.
For instance here's how the current Tac Tree looks:
Starship Stealth => Threat Control => Projectile Crit Chance => Energy Crit Chance
OR
Hangar Weaponry => Pet Health => Projectile Crit Damage => Energy Crit Dmg
The first two ranks of this have upgrade centered around Hangars. One problem. No one below Lv 40 will have a hangar. And even then, only Klingons & Romulans. While I'm all for giving those guys love, this doesn't help ~90% of players w/out hangars unless they're going for a Stealthy ship (ala Bird of Prey) or a Threat Control Tank.
Here's how I would redesign it.
Energy Crit Chance -> Projectile Crit Chance => Threat Control => Pet Health
OR
Energy Crit Dmg => Projectile Crit Damage => Starship Stealth => Hangar Weaponry
Everyone can use Crit increases, but not everyone will use threat control, ship stealth, or pet based buffs. This makes the tree more effective for all players. I will continue to analyze the others will additional feedback.
TRIBBLE Hydra! Hail Janeway!
I've love to hear a concise side-by-side analysis, for the build(s) you're attempting to replicate. We still have time to consider moving node clusters, for example, if doing so is deemed necessary.
It's honestly not reasonable to presume that we can meet the needs of 100% of our players in this regard, but we're going to do our best to get as close as possible.
Two things:
1) I don't expect most players to push for Ultimates, at the cost of a build they prefer.
2) The Ultimates are there to tempt you into trying something that IS NOT your current build. Branch out, experiment.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Very good point.