Does STO have anything similar to Neverwinter's stupid Enchantment Upgrade system?

jaymadiv

I'm talking about that "you have 1% chance to succesfully upgrade this enchantment , and if you fail(99% chance) you lose the enchantment and everything you used to try and upgrade it. but hey, you can buy (1) single Ward(not a pack of them, just one) for 10 bucks that guarantees that your upgrade will succeed! Now do it for every armor and weapon slot you have!" TRIBBLE.

is there anything that obnoxious in this STO?

I would(and do) spend plenty of money on other things in my games if I am enjoying it, but this I find to be completely over-the-top in terms of trying to FORCE you to spend money. When I get to the point where I need to care about really having top-notch gear, I feel like Cryptic is trying to strongarm me into buying Zen, when they don't need to cause I'm gonna buy Zen for other things anyway.

Hopefully STO isn't quite this bad about it?

tousseau

I'd say no... once you have a MkXIV item, each time you fill the progress bar... the chance for a rarity upgrade increases. So, if I have a VR Mk XIV item at a 20% for an upgrade, it will retain that chance and increase as I refill the upgrade bar for the next round of upgrade chance.

I hope that made sense...

gavinruneblade

Sto has upgrades, but they are not that bad. There is a similar "fill with items then roll with %" mechanic, BUT here the level upgrades automatically, the % is just to improve quality, and in a fail you just reroll and try again with a higher (cumulative) %.

Items don't get lost. But it does cost dilithium, our equivalent of astral diamonds.

Edit, also you totally don't need top notch gear. Some like it to chase the big numbers, but you don't NEED it.

iconians

As previously stated, the upgrade system isn't that bad. It's not that great, either. But there are a few factors to keep in mind.

1: STO is easy. You do not need Epic-quality anything to complete any content in the game.

2: The system has a very "Star Trek" feel to it, in that you do not end up losing upgrade quality progress, meaning that if you really love a particular piece of equipment enough, and you dedicate yourself to getting every bit of performance as you can out of it, it will eventually flip to the color quality you want. Unfortunately, that does mean that it can be very expensive, but this should probably be viewed more as a long term goal, as instant gratification will rack up your dilithium bill.

3: Gear is important in the end-game, but not as important as bridge officer usage. This is the opposite effect as the early levels, when your gear will typically give you better performance and survivability because of a lack of bridge officer station variety.

4: R&D really should be taken literally. It's a very slow progress climb, and it should be a slow progress climb. You research and you develop. Like any science field (in real life or in Star Trek), this should be seen as 'continuing education', even if you hit level 20 in a particular school. This is crafting, this should be seen as a source of income or a source you tap to improve yourself, and the amount of resources you pour into R&D will reflect how successful you are at upgrading your equipment or selling what you make on the exchange for some EC.​​

sunfrancks

iconians wrote: »

As previously stated, the upgrade system isn't that bad. It's not that great, either. But there are a few factors to keep in mind.

1: STO is easy. You do not need Epic-quality anything to complete any content in the game.​​

Pretty much this.

While you do notice a difference between Mk12 & 14 gear (weapons especially) they're not really needed to do anything in STO.

Only one of my characters has Mk14 gear, the others do just fine with Mk12.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

angrytarg

Or, to put it even simpler: From what you tell it seems STO and NWO have the exact same upgrade mechanic with the exception of chances not resetting and items/mods not being lost on STO.

Because in STO you can of course buy Zen items that will improve your chances on upgrading and the like. But you never lose anything if you fail, you just have to fill up the bar again which costs dilithium (the Zen convertable currency).​​

fiberteksyfir

You cant actually directly buy upgrade accelerators with zen (bar r+d packs but they drop random accelerators so you may not get what you want). I just buy them on the exchange, if needs be.

jaguarskx

jmadfour wrote: »

I'm talking about that "you have 1% chance to succesfully upgrade this enchantment , and if you fail(99% chance) you lose the enchantment and everything you used to try and upgrade it. but hey, you can buy (1) single Ward(not a pack of them, just one) for 10 bucks that guarantees that your upgrade will succeed! Now do it for every armor and weapon slot you have!" ****.

is there anything that obnoxious in this STO?

Nope. That does not happen in STO. I do not play NW so I have no idea how the upgrade system works in that game.

Basically the way how the upgrade system working in STO is after you apply the appropriate upgrade kit, and an accelerator (for either more tech points or the chance to increase rarity), a certain amount of Tech Points will be applied to the piece of gear there is a small chance for a quality upgrade that typically adds another modifier to said piece of gear (some gear never gets modifiers like tactical consoles and nearly all science consoles). You keep applying upgrade kits and accelerators until you reach the required number of tech point that actually allows you to upgrade the gear. Your very rare Mk XII weapon will get upgraded to MK XIII, but chances are pretty low that it will be upgraded to an ultra rare item... and it will still have the original modifiers.

Once an item is upgraded, the chance for a rarity increase resets to the lowest default value for the mark level and also rarity of the item. The higher the mark level, the lower the base chance of a rarity increase. Also, the higher the rarity the lower the chances of another rarity increase. Epic is highest rarity any piece of gear can be. For example, a very rare Mk XII weapon might have a 1% base chance of a rarity increase. After applying superior upgrade kits and 1.5x quality accelerators to accumulate enough tech point to being the upgrade process, there is a 2% of a rarity upgrade. If the weapon was ultra rare Mk XII, then the base chance could be 0% and 1% after applying the same number of upgrade kits and accelerators.

When you get to Mk XIV, the upgrade process changes a little bit. If you want to upgrade the rarity of the weapon, then you still need use upgrade kits in order to also apply 1.5x quality accelerators. Since gear cannot be upgraded beyond Mk XIV, they will always remain at Mk XIV, however, the chance to increase rarity begins to accumulate the more quality accelerators you apply to the gear. This is how and where the upgrade process really starts to become very expensive.

Let's say you have an ultra rare Mk XIV weapon. It's a pretty good weapon. The biggest boost to the base damage a weapon can do is when you upgrade it from Mk XIII to Mk XIV. But you want the best DPS you can get from your weapon so you want to push it to EPIC quality, which grants a little bit more damage just from the increase in rarity, but also extra damage from the default [Ac/Dm] modifier (accuracy and damage) that all EPIC weapons will get.

For the sake of this example, the weapon has zero carryover tech points from upgrade kits you applied previously. Also, the base chance to improve the quality to EPIC is 0%. Let's also assume you need to use 10 superior tech kits to accumulate enough tech points to upgrade the weapon and you also apply 10 1.5x quality accelerators; each of which improves your chances of increasing the rarity by 0.5%. After apply all the kits and accelerators, you have a 5% chance to increase the rarity of the weapon.

You click the upgrade button and.... FAIL!!! The ultra rare Mk XIV weapon still has whatever modifiers it had before. If you still want to attempt to upgrade the weapon to EPIC, then you need to apply another 10 superior upgrade kits and 1.5x quality accelerators. Only this time the base chance for a rarity increase start with 5% because of all the other quality accelerators you applied in you first attempt. Now after applying everything that chance has been increased to 10%.

So in this simple example. every time you fail to improve the quality of the weapon you need to apply 10 superior upgrade kits to get enough tech points to start to process again and also 10 more quality accelerators to improve your chances by another 5%. In the very worst scenario (meaning worst possible luck) you need to increase the chance for a quality upgrade to 100% before your weapon actually gets boosted to EPIC quality. In this case you need to apply 200 superior upgrade kits and 200 1.5x quality accelerators.

Assuming each superior upgrade kit costs 150k EC and each 1.5x quality accelerator cost 350k EC on the Exchange, that means in the worst possible scenario it will cost you 100m EC to increase an ultra rare MK XIV weapon to EPIC quality. That will also cost you around 215k refine dilithium as well because I think each application of a superior upgrade kit requires 1,075 Dil.