One of the things I was looking forward to the most with Season 11.5 was that the skill system revamp would have reduced a reliance on "tribal knowledge" among the playerbase (which can either be extremely accurate or extremely inaccurate depending on your source), and this redesign has largely addressed this problem.
But, it isn't going far enough. I say this now that it's live instead of waiting for Cryptic to "get around" to fixing it later, because if they don't address these problems sooner rather than later, they're going to find themselves back into the position of not explaining things clearly enough.
Example 1:
"Small bonuses to crit chance and crit severity". The exact amount of bonus should be labelled clearly, just as it is labelled elsewhere in the skill tree.
Example 2:
"Most" devices. This is extremely vague and should really be defined further. This might seem nitpicky, but Cryptic has released more and more devices through the crafting system recently, and I'm looking towards the future when we will likely come across newer devices released into the game -- and we won't know whether this skill will effect them.
Example 3:
Exotic Particle Generators aren't explained in nearly enough detail given the complex game mechanics they revolve around. Words like "generally" are fairly vague. Even though I typically know what the tooltip is referring to, I can't expect a newer player to know these sorts of things.
Especially when you're adding in a new game mechanic that presumably utilizes Exotic Particle Generators. I point you to...
Example 4:
This deals Electric damage. An exotic damage type. But this isn't highlighted in the description -- nor in Particle Generators. Should a player automatically assume that Drain Infection is buffed by Particle Generators?
This is the kind of "tribal knowledge" that I'm referring to. Most of us veteran players know what these things mean, but as the game continues to grow and Cryptic adds in new weapons, new equipment, new powers, new game mechanics, skill trees -- new everything... the skill tree in its current state is not giving me much reassurance in terms of how 'future proof' the game mechanics are.
I'm sure there are other examples that I'm missing, so if anybody has any, feel free to pitch in. The only way to combat ignorance is through knowledge.
Comments
Exotic powers always state in their tooltip if EPG affects them so that solves that issue right there. Making lists is complex and they will constantly have to go back and update them which is a hassle. It would be better if they simply listed in each battery/device tooltip if battery expertise affects it.
That's why I'm pointing these things out now. Because they don't have to go back and update them. They can just wait until they've ignored dealing with that hassle for a long enough period of time that they'll just end up finding it easier to just revamp the skill tree. Again.
They seem like small issues now, but the old skill and tooltip descriptions were also probably seen as small issues back then too, and yet here we are.
Unless they tied the batteries to the skill tree when developing them, so that way you know it's giving you accurate information since it's directly linked to the item in-game. It'd have the additional advantage of saving them from having to create a list, since the list would be automatically generated by every item it affects.
Managing data in a database is both practical, and someone's career.
it says generally includes damages which did not require a weapon to start IE the grav photon, or the harpeng radiation
But then the Gravimetric Photon Torpedo is affected by Particle Gens, so you could argue that it does require a weapon activation to create the Gravimetric Shears.