Not many players are buying respec tokens. It must be because the skill options are too granular.
Just FYI, but players don't buy respec tokens because "maybe I should shave off a bit from hull health and add it to damage resistance" is not a compelling reason to spend five bucks. This revamp won't have a lasting impact on respec token sales because "maybe I should switch hull health to damage resistance" is still not a compelling reason to spend five bucks.
You are expecting players to spend money on a boring mechanic that just shifts some numbers without affecting playstyle.
Not even Rift charges real money for respecs, and a respec in that game can completely change your character's role, stats, and playstyle. A Rift respec costs the equivalent of around 5k EC, and you don't even have to purchase a token and trade it to an NPC. You just open the spec window and hit a button.
Heck, SWTOR with its god-awful F2P model doesn't charge money for respecs (unless you try to do it too often, I think?)! It's ridiculous.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Q: Why is the Skill System receiving a Revamp?
A: Time and again, we have received feedback from our players that the Skill System is unusually difficult to understand, and has done a poor job at helping players master the combat mechanics involved in Star Trek Online.
This new system is still unusually difficult to understand.
It's really not. (Almost) everything is explained nicely in the tooltips. Formulas for things such as stealth detection as well as point-to-actual-bonus conversion ratios are both provided. Under the old system, it's just "we need points in this to make us go."
Q: How will I earn access to new Training Manuals in the revamped system?
A: Training Manuals are no longer directly tied to Skills, but are instead now one of the many types of bonuses that can be earned via progress on the new Unlock Paths.
So, instead of getting the ability to make a Training Manual as a bonus if we spent points in certain abilities, it will now cost us points which we should better spent in other skills? You have to choose if you want to be able to craft OR be half decent at fights?
Wow, that is suuuper stupid, who came up with this? o_O
Also +1 on the 'No one will experiment if it will cost you zen' front, and +1 on the 'Copy my skilltree as good as possible, and forget the new skill system even exist' front...
Good riddance to abandon ship. I always just pull it off my bars anyway. As for Threatening Stance, I do have some concerns though:
1) This should be available for ground as well, so I can better protect the squishy 600 hp tacs that inevitably show up in my ground STFs. ^^
^^Very much this. Ground PvE is the place where tanks can shine and be really useful. With threat control being removed from ground and the DPS-creep (particularly with tacs), either this or a hard taunt ability is very much needed if that playstyle is to function. Please don't forget about ground tanks, Cryptic!
So - if ground peepz can have any power of the other, is the trinity gone? Whats the point of rolling an "Engineer" or "Tac"? Is it simply the inherent captain skills and thats it?
So - if ground peepz can have any power of the other, is the trinity gone? Whats the point of rolling an "Engineer" or "Tac"? Is it simply the inherent captain skills and thats it?
That, and kits. (FYI, that's how it already is, training manuals notwithstanding.)
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Seems alot of people are still getting confused over how the skills have been organized and mixing up Skills with Careers.
Careers are not being touched! Your science captain still gets its class abilities and no a Tac or Eng Captain cannot unlock those abilities with this ravamp and you cannot unlock theirs!
SKILLS being split into three rows under the Engineering, Science and Tactical Categories are just to make things clear as to what area of your ship those skills effect so you Hull skills and drive coil and battery skills that are in the current system will be under engineering, your beam skills and torpedo skills will be under tactical and your shield skills and emitter skills will be under science.
So in short the skills we have on Holodesk right now are split into 3 groups engineering, science and tactical the new system just makes that more clear by separating them in 3 groups and no this does not effect your Career choice so they have not removed the trinity.
Yes some skills have been grouped into a new skill to reduce the amount of choices, and yes you still have to pay 500 zen per respec and no they dont seem to be introducing build slots when they should be...
In short wait for people to work out the best optimal build for the type of ship you want to fly use your free respec and never touch the system again and nothing will have changed.
Seems alot of people are still getting confused over how the skills have been organized and mixing up Skills with Careers.
Careers are not being touched! Your science captain still gets its class abilities and no a Tac or Eng Captain cannot unlock those abilities with this ravamp and you cannot unlock theirs!
SKILLS being split into three rows under the Engineering, Science and Tactical Categories are just to make things clear as to what area of your ship those skills effect so you Hull skills and drive coil and battery skills that are in the current system will be under engineering, your beam skills and torpedo skills will be under tactical and your shield skills and emitter skills will be under science.
So in short the skills we have on Holodesk right now are split into 3 groups engineering, science and tactical the new system just makes that more clear buy separating them in 3 groups and no this does not effect your Career choice so they have not removed the trinity.
They already are split. Take a closer look at the UI on Holodeck.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Seems alot of people are still getting confused over how the skills have been organized and mixing up Skills with Careers.
Careers are not being touched! Your science captain still gets its class abilities and no a Tac or Eng Captain cannot unlock those abilities with this ravamp and you cannot unlock theirs!
SKILLS being split into three rows under the Engineering, Science and Tactical Categories are just to make things clear as to what area of your ship those skills effect so you Hull skills and drive coil and battery skills that are in the current system will be under engineering, your beam skills and torpedo skills will be under tactical and your shield skills and emitter skills will be under science.
So in short the skills we have on Holodesk right now are split into 3 groups engineering, science and tactical the new system just makes that more clear buy separating them in 3 groups and no this does not effect your Career choice so they have not removed the trinity.
They already are split. Take a closer look at the UI on Holodeck.
Read the last 3 lines from my post you quoted I stated that they are split on Holodeck which is the live server FYI.
Seems alot of people are still getting confused over how the skills have been organized and mixing up Skills with Careers.
Careers are not being touched! Your science captain still gets its class abilities and no a Tac or Eng Captain cannot unlock those abilities with this ravamp and you cannot unlock theirs!
SKILLS being split into three rows under the Engineering, Science and Tactical Categories are just to make things clear as to what area of your ship those skills effect so you Hull skills and drive coil and battery skills that are in the current system will be under engineering, your beam skills and torpedo skills will be under tactical and your shield skills and emitter skills will be under science.
So in short the skills we have on Holodesk right now are split into 3 groups engineering, science and tactical the new system just makes that more clear buy separating them in 3 groups and no this does not effect your Career choice so they have not removed the trinity.
They already are split. Take a closer look at the UI on Holodeck.
Read the last 3 lines from my post you quoted I stated that they are split on Holodeck which is the live server FYI.
Ah, my mistake.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Disappointed to see the crew mechanic gone. As with Exploration, in five years of STO nobody ever touched the mechanic (with Exploration at least we have it on record that nobody ever did something with it the second it was live) and suddenly we come to the conclusion it's broken beyond repair and we better get rid of it instead of doing something worthwhile with it.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Maybe like WOW they have too much consumers, they over simplify the game, removing important features, to make flee away who loves the game.
I hoped someday crew would be at last well treated.
I'm really no longer impatient of this skills changes, it rather makes me indifferent about the game (Will I soon quit again a MMO?).
I mostly like the new skill system (Love the transparency, will miss the trekish names), but I would also like to echo what many people pointed out here in regards to respecs.
STO has added a lot of Systems of late to help people quickly swap ships and builds and experiment with new setups (which, lets be honest, is beneficial to the games current reliance on selling new ships). So, keeping Skill respecs locked behind a paywall seems counter productive to that effort, especially with the new system seemingly promoting overspecialization towards certain ship types.
I don't have the numbers, of course, but does selling respec tokens really amount for enough money to risk crippling other aspects? I certainly am stingy when it comes to those and rather play for months with a suboptimal build then pay money every few weeks to adjust a few small numbers.
A suggestion for a compromise would be: Allow players one free Respec a day, charge for every respec beyond that and make free respecs at all time a perk for subscribers.
People will get a new incentive to sub, hopefully making up for the lost revenue, and free players will gain a little more flexibility in their builds, allowing them to experiment more.
-
Join Starfleet,
Boldly go where no man has gone before,
Meet interesting new species, and Kill them!
It's too late at this point since the skill revamp is already in place and waiting to be uploaded to holodeck, but what would really help is to show our actual weapon/system stats at the time we are doing the respec. I think it would solve the problems this new system is supposed to be addressing but doesn't. If I add 5 points to "starship weapon damage" how much does that actually improve the damage my weapons are going to do when I'm in combat? That is not explained with the current or new system from what I can tell. "+10 bonus per level" to weapon damage doesn't tell me what I'm going to see in game, other than it means "more" damage.
That is what is actually needed, specifically showing the player that adding one point of x skill, directly improves a stat for a weapon/console/ability by a value of y. That is not explained currently and not from what I have seen in the new system.
Here is the current rank progression for all skills:
What does +99 mean for a damage skill? Is it 99 more to DPS? To base damage? How does it affect the damage I am going to do with my beam array in combat? How does that same progression bar help a player understand something like Graviton Generators? What does +99 even represent for that skill other than "more" hold? Does the hold last longer with more points? If so, by how long? Is the hold harder to break? If so, by how much? You can view that information when you are in space, but then you can't actually respec in space, so you can't see the practical affect as you add and remove skill points.
You can streamline the skills field, but unless I actually know what exact affect a skill has on my character/ship it's just guess work. I've been playing since launch, so I know what the skills do. But it took a lot of experimenting and reading guides from other players to get to that point. None of which is addressed just by making a simpler system and none of which helps a new player, if that is who this system is meant to help the most.
As others have said though, it does feel that the lack of specifics is done intentionally to get people, once they have run out of the free respecs they get leveling, to spend actual money if they want to make changes. It discourages rather than encourages experimentation, by having people pay just to figure out how to play the game. That to me as a new player would be the greatest barrier to entry. Not having specifics while I'm making the decision and then being punished if I make the "wrong" choice because I didn't know what exact affect my choice had.
It's too late at this point since the skill revamp is already in place and waiting to be uploaded to holodeck, but what would really help is to show our actual weapon/system stats at the time we are doing the respec. I think it would solve the problems this new system is supposed to be addressing but doesn't. If I add 5 points to "starship weapon damage" how much does that actually improve the damage my weapons are going to do when I'm in combat? That is not explained with the current or new system from what I can tell. "+10 bonus per level" to weapon damage doesn't tell me what I'm going to see in game, other than it means "more" damage.
That is what is actually needed, specifically showing the player that adding one point of x skill, directly improves a stat for a weapon/console/ability by a value of y. That is not explained currently and not from what I have seen in the new system.
Here is the current rank progression for all skills:
What does +99 mean for a damage skill? Is it 99 more to DPS? To base damage? How does it affect the damage I am going to do with my beam array in combat? How does that same progression bar help a player understand something like Graviton Generators? What does +99 even represent for that skill other than "more" hold? Does the hold last longer with more points? If so, by how long? Is the hold harder to break? If so, by how much? You can view that information when you are in space, but then you can't actually respec in space, so you can't see the practical affect as you add and remove skill points.
You can streamline the skills field, but unless I actually know what exact affect a skill has on my character/ship it's just guess work. I've been playing since launch, so I know what the skills do. But it took a lot of experimenting and reading guides from other players to get to that point. None of which is addressed just by making a simpler system and none of which helps a new player, if that is who this system is meant to help the most.
As others have said though, it does feel that the lack of specifics is done intentionally to get people, once they have run out of the free respecs they get leveling, to spend actual money if they want to make changes. It discourages rather than encourages experimentation, by having people pay just to figure out how to play the game. That to me as a new player would be the greatest barrier to entry. Not having specifics while I'm making the decision and then being punished if I make the "wrong" choice because I didn't know what exact affect my choice had.
I asked this question to Borticus on Tribble. I, and everyone else was told that 1 point node in the new skill tree is equal to 9 or more points in the current holodeck skill tree depending on the skill you are picking. Example would be weapon amplification. 1 point in that would equal 9 points in space weapon specialization on the current tree.
But again, my point is what is that 1 or 9 points actually worth when I'm firing a beam array or using a tractor beam, or adding power to my shields? That is what is missing. Not what the conversion is, but what does that 1 point actually do. If they included that information, while you were doing your respec, there would be no need to create a new skill system. I would see that adding x points to "starship weapons damage" adds y value to the damage my beam array does. I would know the beam array went from doing 300 damage to 400 damage because I added 5 points for example. I would know that my tractor beam went from a 5 second hold to a 7 second hold etc. And the new system doesn't address that either.
And if I were a new player, how would that help me make my decision about how to spend my points? That is what needs to be addressed. You and I may understand that because we've been playing for a long time, but if you were just starting to play the game, the day this new system was released, would you know exactly what adding a point to a specific skill would do to your weapon/console/ BO ability? You wouldn't and the new system doesn't answer that question either from what I have seen.
rather unimpressed by this, you wait 6 years and NOW you change the entire game pretty much??? why??? and people with multiple characters are not going to enjoy resetting all of there skill points, respec points should be free for a month or 2 this does not bode well for you I forsee
Q: What is this new “Threatening Stance” ability? Where did “Abandon Ship” go?
A: We have abandoned “Abandon Ship” – this ability was never very useful, and primarily only utilized to grief other players. We decided to remove it entirely, and replace it with the new ability: “Threatening Stance”
By toggling on this new ability, the player may choose at any time to begin causing additional Threat to any enemies they are in combat with. Threat is what determines how an NPC foe chooses their target – the more you generate, the more likely they are to attack you.
The reason abandon ship was never useful is that player ships do almost no damage to AI ships when they explode, which is annoying considering I get hit for about 150k+ damage if I'm caught in an AI ship's warp core explosion. Maybe if they balanced it to a flat 50k or something at 0km no matter who is exploding, then abandon ship and ramming speed would be more useful. I'm sure they could toggle it so AI -> player = 50k dmg, player -> AI = 50k dmg, and player -> player = 10k or something if they're worried about it being spammed or used to grief other players.
i have played this game for years and i asked many people how much +1 point of anything actually represents... noone could answer me and honestly that was the major problem for me, that and some of the descriptions and i say SOME of them did not explain everything that a skill did, names of skills did not need changing in my opinion or anythign else like that.
I've understood each of the skill tree incarnations. Bit of common sense, bit of reading and OMG I undertand largely if not all of what's going on! Seriously do people need a Phd or be an overall genius to figure it out? How simple does it have to be? A 60 tiered linear tree with "go faster" and "hit harder"? This is Star Trek!
I hear Cryptic is really listening to feedback. Really? Then why are we revamping it yet again? 3 incarnations in 6 years is it now? In short who's at fault here the community or Cryptic? I recall feedback about PVP, I wonder how's that going? And no I'm not a PVP whiner, actually I was fairly casual that got put off long before it died but I know for a fact there was a vocal group that wanted change but never got it. What about the accoladers that protested about paying for accolades in lockboxes? I've stopped giving feedback now, even when I literally point out issues specifically in every detail years on they're still there yet another revamped skill tree but the same content to play.
People have told me I can go on to tribble, test out the new system and experiment to which I ask why not do that under the old system like I already do? Nothing has changed to devleop the game. Also the skill tree is just one part of character development. Lv1-49 it's relatively straight forward. At lv50 you have loads of reputations, spec trees, R&D, ship traits and masterys...more of that is being dumped on new players but for some reason the skill tree is confusing enough to revamp it? Think about how many skills are on the skill tree and compare that to the rest of character development. Yes to can change traits on the fly now so why not skill tree? Nevertheless it's a huge amount to dump on new players at lv50.
Everyone's free to do what they want and that's what I'm doing which has pretty much become do new content and separate myself from the grind. If the community wants revamped skill trees and lockboxes and Cryptic's making tonnes of cash then that's what they should do. Money talks.
" Q: I am a Science Captain. Can I purchase Tactical and/or Engineering skills?
A: Absolutely! Just as it is true with Skills currently, any character can purchase any of the same skills as any other Captain. This did not used to be true of the Ground Skills, but these have been standardized with the new Skill Revamp so that all characters have access to the same Ground Skills. "
So are you saying you are moving away from a captain having to pick whether they are going to be an Engineer, Tactical, or Science officer when they create their character? And instead let the player decide what they grow up to be based totally on which skills they pick as they level up?
Because that would be really nice! I enjoy my Engineer and his innate tanking abilities, but I many times I have wished I went the DPS route and made him a Tactical officer instead. Too far into the game now to toss everything aside that I have acquired for this engineer toon.
Might as well make every other traditional MMO moot. I think this is a very bad idea. There are three classes for a reason. Just as it is in the Star Trek universe, there are gold, red and blue. Each of those colors represents a career path. I find it disgusting that they would try to merge everything into one class. Takes the uniqueness away. There would be a cookie cutter build that everyone would be using. Just a stupid idea.
You need to read the FAQ, and look at the current system as-is. Even now, in the existing system, I could make a tac captain and put almost all of my points into maxing out science.
Q: How will I earn access to new Training Manuals in the revamped system?
A: Training Manuals are no longer directly tied to Skills, but are instead now one of the many types of bonuses that can be earned via progress on the new Unlock Paths.
So, instead of getting the ability to make a Training Manual as a bonus if we spent points in certain abilities, it will now cost us points which we should better spent in other skills? You have to choose if you want to be able to craft OR be half decent at fights?
Wow, that is suuuper stupid, who came up with this? o_O
Also +1 on the 'No one will experiment if it will cost you zen' front, and +1 on the 'Copy my skilltree as good as possible, and forget the new skill system even exist' front...
That's already the way it was. You had to spend extra points in certain abilities to craft the manuals. This is no different.
Either way, everything's on the Exchange. Even the manuals that the DPSers love aren't that expensive.
Disappointed to see the crew mechanic gone. As with Exploration, in five years of STO nobody ever touched the mechanic (with Exploration at least we have it on record that nobody ever did something with it the second it was live) and suddenly we come to the conclusion it's broken beyond repair and we better get rid of it instead of doing something worthwhile with it.
I'm disappointed to see crew gone entirely as well, but in reality the mechanic was pretty messed up. There are more than enough stats and bonuses to keep track of as-is, I can see why they figured it was worth just dumping a broken mechanic instead of spending time making something new out of it - that may have in fact been even more of a problem.
Aye, Respecs should be free. Hell, I'd even entertain doing a mission to earn it like we did in City of Heroes/Villains. Cuz frankly, I ain't spending money on a respec and nothing will ever give me reason to do so. I've got more than enough dil sitting around to make enough zen and I'm sure there are plenty of others who do as well. Point is, Cryptic isn't going to make squat off respecs, so they may as well make them free. There is no logic is doing otherwise.
Still seems like a joke, the game can be completed without spending 1 skill point in the current system or upgrading any item, buying any rep piece of gear, crafting any item or buying any z-store ship. At least under the new system my 300 crewmates will never die. I'll just wait till a primo build is posted and assign skills then, and never look at the tree again. I'll just add the skill system to the growing list of items that worked but needed to be killed for money list. I fail to see any reason other than a money grab for a complete rework of the current skill system.
Personally, I only thought the skill tree became confusing when Cryptic started using confusing and misleading language in new equipment/traits/whatever. The skill tree was just fine for years, but once they started adding in things like "+Control Resistance" instead of "+Inertial Dampers", of course they're going to confuse players. What did they think was going to happen?
For the longest time, we never even knew that the Dyson Sphere Warp/Singularity Cores didn't affect Weapon Power regeneration -- we just assumed it did because of how we know how skills like Nadeon Inversion work.
This isn't to rag on Cryptic for creating a problem that the players end up paying for again (this time with respec tokens), but it's to highlight what went wrong in the past and why it's important to have clear and concise definitions to game terminology and that if at any point that terminology has a different interpretation or a new meaning -- it needs to be documented by Cryptic at the time of its implementation.
Borticus has been really awesome on the forums with explaining to us what the mechanics actually do. I didn't know what Armor Penetration actually did until he specifically defined it for us on the forums. For that, I'm thankful. But it always got me wondering just what else our "tribal knowledge" has gotten wrong because Cryptic and the players are operating on two different rulebooks.
If this change puts the developers and the players on the same page, I'm all for it. It'll be weird to re-learn the game all over again (like when we had the power icon revamp, completely invalidating my at-a-glance knowledge I'd memorized for years), but it's something I can adapt to. I'd just prefer this to be the last revamp of the skill tree, and that this was done to be as 'future proof' as possible.
As for the crew mechanic, part of me is glad to see it gone. It was always my understanding it was intended to be the death penalty system with the player spending EC to summon crew shuttles in sector space or visiting a starbase to recrew their ship -- but the ship/player injury system that came later kind of eliminated that.
Still, I think I'd like to see the crew mechanic return in some way, perhaps incorporating the duty officer system so it becomes more of a side effect of the doff system instead of another complex system on an already complex game.
TL;DR: Stop confusing the players with misleading text in the new stuff you put in the game, and maybe we won't get confused as much.
I will admit I never really understood the old Skill System and sadly after seeing various youtube videos regarding the new system and reading much about it I cant honestly say I understand the new system any better then the old one, oh well sigh!
It doesn't matter how much of a special "discount" they make the respec tokens. So long as the tokens cost actual money, people are going to find out what's "optimal", and leave it at that. Just like how it is with the current skill system.
well I hope someone posts what's "optimal" to help out the players who haven't got a clue.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
I'm a lifer with several free untouched respecs on each of my characters from levelling and even I see your stated goal and actual implementation of the revised system as being mutually exclusive. If your system goes live as is I will simply recreate my existing character's builds as closely as possible and then never look at their skills ever again. Essentially boiling down to a minor annoyance for myself and wasted time and man power on your end that could have been put to better use working on just about anything else.
it seems to me that we would have been far better off if we could eventually buy all of the skills available similar to specialization and then freely select a certain number of skills from the ones we have purchased at that time similar to the way we can switch our traits in and out without incurring any cost.
now that would have been a major improvement to the skill system and would have given players the ability to tinker away to their hearts content.
as for unused respect tokens the zen price for those could easily be credited to players accounts.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Comments
Heck, SWTOR with its god-awful F2P model doesn't charge money for respecs (unless you try to do it too often, I think?)! It's ridiculous.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Wow, that is suuuper stupid, who came up with this? o_O
Also +1 on the 'No one will experiment if it will cost you zen' front, and +1 on the 'Copy my skilltree as good as possible, and forget the new skill system even exist' front...
^^Very much this. Ground PvE is the place where tanks can shine and be really useful. With threat control being removed from ground and the DPS-creep (particularly with tacs), either this or a hard taunt ability is very much needed if that playstyle is to function. Please don't forget about ground tanks, Cryptic!
That, and kits. (FYI, that's how it already is, training manuals notwithstanding.)
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Careers are not being touched! Your science captain still gets its class abilities and no a Tac or Eng Captain cannot unlock those abilities with this ravamp and you cannot unlock theirs!
SKILLS being split into three rows under the Engineering, Science and Tactical Categories are just to make things clear as to what area of your ship those skills effect so you Hull skills and drive coil and battery skills that are in the current system will be under engineering, your beam skills and torpedo skills will be under tactical and your shield skills and emitter skills will be under science.
So in short the skills we have on Holodesk right now are split into 3 groups engineering, science and tactical the new system just makes that more clear by separating them in 3 groups and no this does not effect your Career choice so they have not removed the trinity.
Yes some skills have been grouped into a new skill to reduce the amount of choices, and yes you still have to pay 500 zen per respec and no they dont seem to be introducing build slots when they should be...
In short wait for people to work out the best optimal build for the type of ship you want to fly use your free respec and never touch the system again and nothing will have changed.
They already are split. Take a closer look at the UI on Holodeck.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Read the last 3 lines from my post you quoted I stated that they are split on Holodeck which is the live server FYI.
Ah, my mistake.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
I hoped someday crew would be at last well treated.
I'm really no longer impatient of this skills changes, it rather makes me indifferent about the game (Will I soon quit again a MMO?).
STO has added a lot of Systems of late to help people quickly swap ships and builds and experiment with new setups (which, lets be honest, is beneficial to the games current reliance on selling new ships). So, keeping Skill respecs locked behind a paywall seems counter productive to that effort, especially with the new system seemingly promoting overspecialization towards certain ship types.
I don't have the numbers, of course, but does selling respec tokens really amount for enough money to risk crippling other aspects? I certainly am stingy when it comes to those and rather play for months with a suboptimal build then pay money every few weeks to adjust a few small numbers.
A suggestion for a compromise would be: Allow players one free Respec a day, charge for every respec beyond that and make free respecs at all time a perk for subscribers.
People will get a new incentive to sub, hopefully making up for the lost revenue, and free players will gain a little more flexibility in their builds, allowing them to experiment more.
Join Starfleet,
Boldly go where no man has gone before,
Meet interesting new species, and Kill them!
The reason abandon ship was never useful is that player ships do almost no damage to AI ships when they explode, which is annoying considering I get hit for about 150k+ damage if I'm caught in an AI ship's warp core explosion. Maybe if they balanced it to a flat 50k or something at 0km no matter who is exploding, then abandon ship and ramming speed would be more useful. I'm sure they could toggle it so AI -> player = 50k dmg, player -> AI = 50k dmg, and player -> player = 10k or something if they're worried about it being spammed or used to grief other players.
I hear Cryptic is really listening to feedback. Really? Then why are we revamping it yet again? 3 incarnations in 6 years is it now? In short who's at fault here the community or Cryptic? I recall feedback about PVP, I wonder how's that going? And no I'm not a PVP whiner, actually I was fairly casual that got put off long before it died but I know for a fact there was a vocal group that wanted change but never got it. What about the accoladers that protested about paying for accolades in lockboxes? I've stopped giving feedback now, even when I literally point out issues specifically in every detail years on they're still there yet another revamped skill tree but the same content to play.
People have told me I can go on to tribble, test out the new system and experiment to which I ask why not do that under the old system like I already do? Nothing has changed to devleop the game. Also the skill tree is just one part of character development. Lv1-49 it's relatively straight forward. At lv50 you have loads of reputations, spec trees, R&D, ship traits and masterys...more of that is being dumped on new players but for some reason the skill tree is confusing enough to revamp it? Think about how many skills are on the skill tree and compare that to the rest of character development. Yes to can change traits on the fly now so why not skill tree? Nevertheless it's a huge amount to dump on new players at lv50.
Everyone's free to do what they want and that's what I'm doing which has pretty much become do new content and separate myself from the grind. If the community wants revamped skill trees and lockboxes and Cryptic's making tonnes of cash then that's what they should do. Money talks.
You need to read the FAQ, and look at the current system as-is. Even now, in the existing system, I could make a tac captain and put almost all of my points into maxing out science.
Cross-class skills aren't new with this update.
That's already the way it was. You had to spend extra points in certain abilities to craft the manuals. This is no different.
Either way, everything's on the Exchange. Even the manuals that the DPSers love aren't that expensive.
I'm disappointed to see crew gone entirely as well, but in reality the mechanic was pretty messed up. There are more than enough stats and bonuses to keep track of as-is, I can see why they figured it was worth just dumping a broken mechanic instead of spending time making something new out of it - that may have in fact been even more of a problem.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
For the longest time, we never even knew that the Dyson Sphere Warp/Singularity Cores didn't affect Weapon Power regeneration -- we just assumed it did because of how we know how skills like Nadeon Inversion work.
This isn't to rag on Cryptic for creating a problem that the players end up paying for again (this time with respec tokens), but it's to highlight what went wrong in the past and why it's important to have clear and concise definitions to game terminology and that if at any point that terminology has a different interpretation or a new meaning -- it needs to be documented by Cryptic at the time of its implementation.
Borticus has been really awesome on the forums with explaining to us what the mechanics actually do. I didn't know what Armor Penetration actually did until he specifically defined it for us on the forums. For that, I'm thankful. But it always got me wondering just what else our "tribal knowledge" has gotten wrong because Cryptic and the players are operating on two different rulebooks.
If this change puts the developers and the players on the same page, I'm all for it. It'll be weird to re-learn the game all over again (like when we had the power icon revamp, completely invalidating my at-a-glance knowledge I'd memorized for years), but it's something I can adapt to. I'd just prefer this to be the last revamp of the skill tree, and that this was done to be as 'future proof' as possible.
As for the crew mechanic, part of me is glad to see it gone. It was always my understanding it was intended to be the death penalty system with the player spending EC to summon crew shuttles in sector space or visiting a starbase to recrew their ship -- but the ship/player injury system that came later kind of eliminated that.
Still, I think I'd like to see the crew mechanic return in some way, perhaps incorporating the duty officer system so it becomes more of a side effect of the doff system instead of another complex system on an already complex game.
TL;DR: Stop confusing the players with misleading text in the new stuff you put in the game, and maybe we won't get confused as much.
well I hope someone posts what's "optimal" to help out the players who haven't got a clue.
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.
This 100% ^^
it seems to me that we would have been far better off if we could eventually buy all of the skills available similar to specialization and then freely select a certain number of skills from the ones we have purchased at that time similar to the way we can switch our traits in and out without incurring any cost.
now that would have been a major improvement to the skill system and would have given players the ability to tinker away to their hearts content.
as for unused respect tokens the zen price for those could easily be credited to players accounts.
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.