I have to say I am shocked that this many people seem to love the trait grind. It's such a bad system, but apparently everyone loves Argala loops.
This. Really surprises me as well how people complain about excessive grind all the time, yet now suddenly they seem to love it, because you can disagree with someone else in forums?
I think you guys are missing the point here. Nobody loves the grind. Not really. But GIVEN THAT THE MASTERY GRIND EXISTS, I think ppl are opposed to the idea of putting the cart before the horse; aka, you unlock the reward after the grind, not vice versa. Also, as BMR pointed out, the effect of 'rewarding first, then have you do the labor' would simply be that ppl will just forego on doing the labor altogether.
I think the point is that the trait shouldn't be part of the 'reward' at all. It's a feature of a ship you bought, why is it really necessary to then earn a reward? Especially when that reward is an advertised feature of the ship.
I have no problem with Starship Mastery, if they want people to get better with a ship the more they use it.. cool. I just think it's silly to have the trait wrapped up in that system. Personally, I don't like to have to grind for something I feel I already bought. Plus, as I said above, it discourages me from experimentation on other characters knowing each trait I want to try is yet another 20-30 min pointless slog that I would rather not be required to endure.
Ship mastery is fine, but the Trait should be unbundled from that process in my opinion. I thought that opinion was popular, but apparently.. it isn't.
Again, I don't actually expect it to change, I just think it should.
I have to say I am shocked that this many people seem to love the trait grind. It's such a bad system, but apparently everyone loves Argala loops.
This. Really surprises me as well how people complain about excessive grind all the time, yet now suddenly they seem to love it, because you can disagree with someone else in forums?
I think you guys are missing the point here. Nobody loves the grind. Not really. But GIVEN THAT THE MASTERY GRIND EXISTS, I think ppl are opposed to the idea of putting the cart before the horse; aka, you unlock the reward after the grind, not vice versa. Also, as BMR pointed out, the effect of 'rewarding first, then have you do the labor' would simply be that ppl will just forego on doing the labor altogether.
Personally, I don't see the problem with giving people the trait right after you've bought the ship. Or maybe as the first mastery node. And you've already done the labor anyway by either grinding dil for zen, or going to work (or in some cases, begging your parents) to get the money.
Starship 'Mastery' is a stupid waste of time. How the hell is anyone 'mastering' anything? I claim a ship then have to spend 30 min in Argala warping out after 4 waves just to get the one thing I really need for that character. It's a stupid system and a total waste of time.
And yet, the 'waste of time' is precisely why it's there: to keep you in the game. That you can effectively only do Argala, well, that's courtesy of Gecko, feverishly spending time behind his desk, after each expansion, looking for ways to frustrate player progress (he even nerfed Argala again this time around too: his metrics probably told him ppl were going 17x faster than elsewhere). If he hadn't been so obsessed with nerfing XP, wherever he can, ppl could do others things besides Argala, and Mastery would have been a more-or-less enjoyable experience -- or painless, at least.
Personally, I don't like to have to grind for something I feel I already bought. Plus, as I said above, it discourages me from experimentation on other characters knowing each trait I want to try is yet another 20-30 min pointless slog that I would rather not be required to endure.
Ship mastery is fine, but the Trait should be unbundled from that process in my opinion. I thought that opinion was popular, but apparently.. it isn't.
The thing just is, that this knife cuts both ways: if you detach the Trait from the Mastery, then ppl will be upset because now they're doing extra grinding for extra stats on a ship they already paid for. So, the Trait at the end of the rainbow, I think, is there to make the grind more palatable, giving you some cool doohickey to look forward to.
For the record, I do agree with you that Mastery, on a whole, is kinda lame. I would prefer they just gave the ship maxed out 'as is', and have it come with the Trait out of box. But the topic of this thread was not 'The pros and cons of the Mastery system,' but 'Starship trait relocation,' aka, putting the pot of gold not at the end of the rainbow, but at the start: which makes Mastery, in its current incarnation, rather pointless.
When he repeated claims that the counter arguement to what he wants is that people did not understand what he wrote while showing off that he did not actually understand the counter argument shows that he could in fact be a troll. Or he REALLY does not have reading comprehension down. I personally think ship traits should come unlocked when you claim the ship too and having it behind a grind is stupid. However, moving it to be the first node is also pretty stupid as well. You would spend more time moving items over and setting up your tray than using that ship to get the trait. That to me would be and even more giant waste of time than using said ship, once set up for 30 min to an hour to get trait. Account unlock for account ship is fine as well. But really, the OP's suggestion falls very short of that idea...and much less likely to be done as it is more work and much...MUCH more likely to cause bugs. So basically not as much benefit for those who don't like to grind out mastery for traits. More work for the devs. More likely to cause bugs (I can see fleet ships losing a mastery level...or giving the ship trait in a bug as they do this for example). All that makes this a TERRIBLE idea.
The thing just is, that this knife cuts both ways: if you detach the Trait from the Mastery, then ppl will be upset because now they're doing extra grinding for extra stats on a ship they already paid for. So, the Trait at the end of the rainbow, I think, is there to make the grind more palatable, giving you some cool doohickey to look forward to.
For the record, I do agree with you that Mastery, on a whole, is kinda lame. I would prefer they just gave the ship maxed out 'as is', and have it come with the Trait out of box. But the topic of this thread was not 'The pros and cons of the Mastery system,' but 'Starship trait relocation,' aka, putting the pot of gold not at the end of the rainbow, but at the start: which makes Mastery, in its current incarnation, rather pointless.
All fair points, thank you for the clarifications.
Inflamatory post. Idea is bad for both parts, players and content creators. Defeats the whole point / selling point of the jem'hadar ships. Multi-faction is the new selling point and account unlock of trait post purchase and unlock is good, but another pay for another pay is simply too much.
I just wish they'd make Starship Masteries part of a ship's loadout. I dislike Starship mastery choices being 'universal' selection that applies to any ship I use.
To emphasise, if I swap from, say, my Jupiter Class to my Rhode Island, the traits that benefit carriers/hangar pets become redundant because the FT5-U Nova has no hanger.
By the same token, if I swap from my drain-build Nebula class to my EPG-build Verne class, the starship traits that benefit 'drain' are no longer helpful.
As I said, I'd prefer it if starship traits were specific to the ship and loadout you are using. Therefore if, as I stated, I swap from my Nebula to my Verne, I wouldn't have to fiddle around swapping Starship traits over - the Verne would already have the EPG-build benefitting traits ready as part of the pre-set loadout.
This I can get behind. Well said.
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Greetings and salutations fellow STO players and developers.
So lets talk T6 ships and their startship trait feature for a moment. More then 3 years ago when it was introduced the intent behind it was "Ships level with their Captain". I get the idea, I do. And its pretty cool one when you have a ship that you love to fly and play with it. You get a bit of extra just by playing. Butt... cuz there is allways a butt, isnt it :P, what happens when a player doesnt like a particular ship but likes the trait. Then the "play", quotas becouse play implays that you have fun and you enjoy yourself, turns in a soul crushing grind done mindlessly for hours in patrols or for more hours in the pve queues (On a side note, I dont understand why in the pve queues, after destroying ships with millions upon millions of hp we are rewarded with such little ship exp ) that adds nothing to the game, its obnoxious and makes you waste your time.
So here is an idea: Move to the left the Starship trait, at the begining of the starship mastery. This way the "Ships level with their captains" idea remains, but the grind for the starship trait is gone. So lets say when you buy a ship, you commision it to the ship yard... the trait its unlock automaticly and ready to use (just like the ships console or a special weapon like quad cannons for example, wich as a ship feature, a starship trait shouldnt be any different imho) becouse the mastery would start with it and then continue on to tier 1,2 and so on till 4. Its a simple and yet elegant solution that retains the ship mastery mechanic while stoping the useless grind you have to do for a starship trait.
This change also makes the game and Cryptic look less like EA. For those that dont know, a few months ago, the company EA sold a StarWars game, that after the normal price, you had to pay, with your time (hour of gameplay) or with money, for various features and unlocks. The gamers community reacted, was an outrage and everything, becouse these kind of practices are just wrong. Unfortunelly, and sadly too, something similar to that is happening for more then 3 years in STO. After purchasing your T6 ships, you have to purchase, with your precious time here in the form of hours of grind, an important feature/unlock. Its like having to run around with your purchased TV on your back for a few hours just to unlock its remote...
Also lets talk about the new elephant in the room, the new tier T6 mastery. Why not put this unlock in some other form, like an extra perk for buying the whole vanguard big pack maybe or something else? Becouse right now, its another mindless grind, that in fact adds nothing, gameplay wise, to the ship in question. At least even the tier 5 grind adds the trait that improves your ships, but how on earth the tier 6 grind ship mastery improves your ship??? Why it is tied to the ship mastery makes no sense at all.
So what yall think?
Absolutely NOT! Levelling ships is TOO easy for a start! Traits are HIGHLY valued, so should be at the end!! And yes, I did read what you wrote. Why should it take an hour or so, if that to full master a ship, when it took Geordi et all YEARS to master their's....and they were still learning!? What Cryptic have done is NOTHING like what EA did AT ALL!
As for the Level 6 Mastery.....dissappointed with it after all that grind because it's pointless, but I can see Cryptic's point here and I think I know what they may be intending.
"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
As I said, I'd prefer it if starship traits were specific to the ship and loadout you are using.
This would require several of ship traits either moved or reworked, cause they just do hardly nothing to the particular ship they come with. Let's take for example Yorktown (T6 Sci Odyssey), its trait "Checkmate" serves sci-torp platform the best, while the ship itself makes a very bad sci-torp build. Dauntless doesn't make a smashing healer, nevertheless it comes with "Radiant Nanite Cloud". And then there are number of ship traits that are just totally (well, almost) useless.
Given that we're not likely to see any changes to the system, but:
I could see being able to use the Trait on the ship out-of-the-box, but ON THAT SHIP that the Trait comes with. Ship Mastery would then allow you to unlock it for use on other ships.
I'd love to see the Traits account unlocked, too, once they've been unlocked on at least one toon.
I'd also like to see Traits that are bound to Faction specific ships claimable for toons of other Factions once unlocked on the account (I believe this is possible with some Traits already, but could be expanded upon).
I don't agree with putting Traits in a box, Traits that are also bound to a Faction specific ship (talking about Lockbox ships), making the Trait cheaper to get for non-Faction toons, but much more expensive for toons that are required to acquire the actual ship. In this case especially, I'd much prefer the account unlock of the Trait and cross-Faction reclaim of said Trait.
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Hell no on putting the trait first, for all the already mentioned obvious reasons. OTOH, I wouldn't be averse to letting impatient people sub dilithium for XP in advancing the mastery levels and/or letting people pick off the trait without leveling for 500 Zen or something.
Personally, I don't like to have to grind for something I feel I already bought. Plus, as I said above, it discourages me from experimentation on other characters knowing each trait I want to try is yet another 20-30 min pointless slog that I would rather not be required to endure.
Ship mastery is fine, but the Trait should be unbundled from that process in my opinion. I thought that opinion was popular, but apparently.. it isn't.
The thing just is, that this knife cuts both ways: if you detach the Trait from the Mastery, then ppl will be upset because now they're doing extra grinding for extra stats on a ship they already paid for. So, the Trait at the end of the rainbow, I think, is there to make the grind more palatable, giving you some cool doohickey to look forward to.
For the record, I do agree with you that Mastery, on a whole, is kinda lame. I would prefer they just gave the ship maxed out 'as is', and have it come with the Trait out of box. But the topic of this thread was not 'The pros and cons of the Mastery system,' but 'Starship trait relocation,' aka, putting the pot of gold not at the end of the rainbow, but at the start: which makes Mastery, in its current incarnation, rather pointless.
I think ship mastery is kinda lame, too, but for the exact opposite reason. It's too short and easy, a fact that then has to be arbitrarily counterbalanced by making almost nothing contribute to it (all these new missions full of endless swarms of enemies and nothing gives XP). It should have a 50-level (minimum) tree with choice nodes, and locks you have to open with special tasks or items.
It's too short and easy, a fact that then has to be arbitrarily counterbalanced by making almost nothing contribute to it (all these new missions full of endless swarms of enemies and nothing gives XP).
As Nr. 2 told Dr. Evil: "This, too, already has happened." You can run endless Swarm Advanced queues, and still get virtually no XP. As outlined above, that's a bad system, as it, de facto, forces ppl to do countless Argala runs, ere their ship is truly space worthy. A certain someone at Cryptic should be less uptight about, OMG, ppl doing something as horrible as earning XP!
As for 'too short and easy', why am I not surprised you're suggesting that!? But nah: you want to effectively punish people some more for having had the audacity of having bought a ship! Let's don't, and say we did. In fact, let's not even say we did.
After peeps have demonstrated for three and a half years that they are fully willing to buy ships only for the traits and by doing so support this product we all enjoy I think that the idea of the OP is great!
It’s not only great for the player base who has to endure to fly a ship they dislike (or at least don’t want to fly) in dull content (because it pays out best), it’s also great for cryptic as they would get same out of it as they do now. Oh man, considering how many complaints I got from players over the years on topic I could even see an increase in sales over it.
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It's too short and easy, a fact that then has to be arbitrarily counterbalanced by making almost nothing contribute to it (all these new missions full of endless swarms of enemies and nothing gives XP).
As Nr. 2 told Dr. Evil: "This, too, already has happened." You can run endless Swarm Advanced queues, and still get virtually no XP. As outlined above, that's a bad system, as it, de facto, forces ppl to do countless Argala runs, ere their ship is truly space worthy. A certain someone at Cryptic should be less uptight about, OMG, ppl doing something as horrible as earning XP!
Right. Not giving XP just highlights the pointlessness of fighting in auto-win segments, whether in the episodes or queues. They don't count for anything, not even XP, so ignore them and wait the timer. Boring.
The sad part is, the time-gated waiting queues like Swarm, Dranuur Gauntlet, etc could actually be popular if all those hordes of ships would give ship XP, instead of being just a meaningless distraction from the reality of waiting out a timer to auto-win. And maybe people wouldn't idle so much in the Mirror event, either.
As for 'too short and easy', why am I not surprised you're suggesting that!? But nah: you want to effectively punish people some more for having had the audacity of having bought a ship! Let's don't, and say we did. In fact, let's not even say we did.
I want people to have interesting stuff to do in this game and rewards worth acquiring while doing so. That having bought a ship would give opportunity to play the game and do new things and in doing so power up said ship, rather than just a boring half-hour XP grind that's the same every time.
But I'm also not surprised people here suggesting they get everything for free, because playing a video game, what a horrible punishment that is.
But I'm also not surprised people here suggesting they get everything for free, because playing a video game, what a horrible punishment that is.
And it's precisely this last sentence of yours in which you, again, fail to grasp people already paid for the ship they now have to train up too: nothing 'free' about it. If anything, Cryptic should make it easier to grind XP, and in more than just one place than Argala. We should be having fun, not feel like we're constantly doing battle with a lead Dev, bent on artificially keeping you in the game for hours on end, just to pad his metrics.
And it's precisely this last sentence of yours in which you, again, fail to grasp people already paid for the ship they now have to train up too: nothing 'free' about it.
Just wanted to quote this because it's so well said.
No one is asking for anything for 'free.' One way or another, these ships were paid for, rather it was with cash or with time is irrelevant. These items are sold to the players in some form or another and the players are willing to pay it, asking for the trait unlock from the store isn't asking for anything for free. It's asking for the removal of a pointless time gate on something we have already earned/bought/whatever.
There is nothing entitled or unreasonable about this request.. not one thing.
And it's precisely this last sentence of yours in which you, again, fail to grasp people already paid for the ship they now have to train up too: nothing 'free' about it.
Just wanted to quote this because it's so well said.
No one is asking for anything for 'free.' One way or another, these ships were paid for, rather it was with cash or with time is irrelevant. These items are sold to the players in some form or another and the players are willing to pay it, asking for the trait unlock from the store isn't asking for anything for free. It's asking for the removal of a pointless time gate on something we have already earned/bought/whatever.
There is nothing entitled or unreasonable about this request.. not one thing.
You bought the ship. The trait comes from gameplay. It's the exact same thing back when DR was released and people demanded T5U upgrades or even T6 for free because they "already bought the ship." Except they didn't, they bought the T5 version.
You are asking for the removal of gameplay. For giving you the reward you would get from gameplay without playing. For free, as in not with a paid skip.
I did already suggest an option of putting in dil in place of XP and/or skipping to the trait for 500Z. But of course you don't want that, because you want it for free.
That the gameplay in question is "a pointless time gate" is why I said, it's too easy and short. It should be interesting gameplay, with some thought put into it, maybe even some of that dreaded challenge. Not guessing what enemies in what missions they care to give ship XP from and then repeating ad nauseum when you find some.
You are asking for the removal of gameplay. For giving you the reward you would get from gameplay without playing. For free, as in not with a paid skip.
That's how you see it, not me. The trait is a feature of the ship, there is nothing wrong with wanting that feature 'out of the box.' When I buy a car, I don't expect to have to drive it a certain amount of miles before I can use the bluetooth or the Air Conditioning. Of course, that's a silly and comedic comparison, but no less valid.
By your system, it would be cool to buy ships and have to unlock them before they can even be claimed. You might consider grinding over and over to unlock something you own 'game play' but I don't. You can't just slap the label 'gameplay' on every grind and expect it to be cool with everyone.
I could see being able to use the Trait on the ship out-of-the-box, but ON THAT SHIP that the Trait comes with. Ship Mastery would then allow you to unlock it for use on other ships.
This is probably the most reasonable suggestion that I've seen so far in this thread.
I'd also like to see Traits that are bound to Faction specific ships claimable for toons of other Factions once unlocked on the account (I believe this is possible with some Traits already, but could be expanded upon).
This only occurs on with certain ships/traits. These are c-store ships with no multi-faction variant except for reciprocity I believe. I only support this as a remote possibility if you actually own the alternate faction ship since people would just buy a single faction ship to avoid spending more. Also, c-store ships only. No lock box, lobi or promo account wide unlocks
I don't agree with putting Traits in a box, Traits that are also bound to a Faction specific ship (talking about Lockbox ships), making the Trait cheaper to get for non-Faction toons, but much more expensive for toons that are required to acquire the actual ship. In this case especially, I'd much prefer the account unlock of the Trait and cross-Faction reclaim of said Trait.
Account wide trait unocks for lock box ships is probably not going to happen. They tend to like to keep every aspect of a lock box ship a character unlock. At best there would probably be some kind of dil unlock. Maybe 100,000 - 250,000 per character.
The whole ship+trait vs trait-in-a-box thing creates some headaches and burns a hole in some people's pockets for sure. Not a big deal though IMO. Not a big deal though as nobody "needs" say honored dead to enjoy playing the game.
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
You are asking for the removal of gameplay. For giving you the reward you would get from gameplay without playing. For free, as in not with a paid skip.
That's how you see it, not me. The trait is a feature of the ship, there is nothing wrong with wanting that feature 'out of the box.' When I buy a car, I don't expect to have to drive it a certain amount of miles before I can use the bluetooth or the Air Conditioning.
Just wanted to quote this because it's so well said. XD
You might consider grinding over and over to unlock something you own 'game play' but I don't. You can't just slap the label 'gameplay' on every grind and expect it to be cool with everyone.
Problem, the way I say it, is not even the Mastery ystem itself per se, but our constantly having to do battle with Gecko over ship XP -- thus, effectively, only leaving a 'mandatory' series of 'warp-out-at-lv-4' Argala runs to remedy the situation of your still gimped ship. As you said, that's no fun; and is not what I'd call 'playing the game.' It's just an annoying grind, that serves no real purpose. What is needed, is ship XP being readily, and equally, available elsewhere, so we can, in fact, start 'just playing the game' and have fun, and meanwhile level our ship in the process at a normal, not horrendously nerfed pace.
I could see being able to use the Trait on the ship out-of-the-box, but ON THAT SHIP that the Trait comes with. Ship Mastery would then allow you to unlock it for use on other ships.
This is probably the most reasonable suggestion that I've seen so far in this thread.
No offense to BMR, but it really isn't. Thing is, oddly enough, many ship Traits don't mesh particularly well with the ship they come with. So you often just want the Trait for another ship.
I could see being able to use the Trait on the ship out-of-the-box, but ON THAT SHIP that the Trait comes with. Ship Mastery would then allow you to unlock it for use on other ships.
This is probably the most reasonable suggestion that I've seen so far in this thread.
No offense to BMR, but it really isn't. Thing is, oddly enough, many ship Traits don't mesh particularly well with the ship they come with. So you often just want the Trait for another ship.
That's not the point. Or rather, it is, in a way. The OP was crying about the trait grind. Others cried about paying for a ship to get a trait only to have to grind for it. BMR's suggestion nullifies both complaints in a way that effectively changes nothing for the negative and preserves the current balanced system.
It obviously won't happen though since it would require actual dev work for zero return monetarily.
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
You are asking for the removal of gameplay. For giving you the reward you would get from gameplay without playing. For free, as in not with a paid skip.
That's how you see it, not me. The trait is a feature of the ship, there is nothing wrong with wanting that feature 'out of the box.' When I buy a car, I don't expect to have to drive it a certain amount of miles before I can use the bluetooth or the Air Conditioning. Of course, that's a silly and comedic comparison, but no less valid.
No, but you may well have to pay extra for bluetooth or AC.
As I said, I have no problem with people wanting an option to pay to skip the gameplay. Just the idea of removing the gameplay from everyone so you can get it for free.
Problem, the way I say it, is not even the Mastery ystem itself per se, but our constantly having to do battle with Gecko over ship XP -- thus, effectively, only leaving a 'mandatory' series of 'warp-out-at-lv-4' Argala runs to remedy the situation of your still gimped ship. As you said, that's no fun; and is not what I'd call 'playing the game.' It's just an annoying grind, that serves no real purpose. What is needed, is ship XP being readily, and equally, available elsewhere, so we can, in fact, start 'just playing the game' and have fun, and meanwhile level our ship in the process at a normal, not horrendously nerfed pace.
True. That is the worst designed aspect of the system as currently implemented. If ship XP is to be given from killing enemy ships, it should be given in all content, not arbitrarily turned off in areas with a large number of respawning enemies.
If, on the other hand, they want to make players play specific content to unlock mastery, they should make that explicit by adding lock nodes that require completion of specific mission(s) or acquisition of specific reward(s) to unlock.
Having a generic reward that inexplicably doesn't count half the time is BS.
As I said, I have no problem with people wanting an option to pay to skip the gameplay. Just the idea of removing the gameplay from everyone so you can get it for free.
That's a fair concern, but if the trait unlocked from the store, nothing would stop you from still going and spending 30 minutes in Argala if that was what you really wanted.
Here is a question for compromise, would you support a system where the trait stays exactly like it is now, but with the change that once unlocked.. it's unlocked account wide? So that the 'trait grind' still needs to be done, it just doesn't need to be done on every single alt you have.
But I'm also not surprised people here suggesting they get everything for free, because playing a video game, what a horrible punishment that is.
And it's precisely this last sentence of yours in which you, again, fail to grasp people already paid for the ship they now have to train up too: nothing 'free' about it.
So what? People that pay for a game and they still "have" to play through the game and unlock achievements if they use gaming platforms like X-Box, Play-Station, Steam or Good Old Games.
I am all for adding more reasonable options to get Ship Mastery XP, though. Nor would I mind if the traits would account unlock (maybe like with the Jem'Hadar ships with a 6th Mastery step.)
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I am all for adding more reasonable options to get Ship Mastery XP, though.
This would nullify a lot of the complaints IMO. If you could just freely play the game and grind for your trait in a player-time-friendly "argalaish" time frame but have it work anywhere, it wouldn't be as big of a deal for some people.
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
As I said, I have no problem with people wanting an option to pay to skip the gameplay. Just the idea of removing the gameplay from everyone so you can get it for free.
That's a fair concern, but if the trait unlocked from the store, nothing would stop you from still going and spending 30 minutes in Argala if that was what you really wanted.
But then you wouldn't get a worthwhile reward for doing it.
Here is a question for compromise, would you support a system where the trait stays exactly like it is now, but with the change that once unlocked.. it's unlocked account wide? So that the 'trait grind' still needs to be done, it just doesn't need to be done on every single alt you have.
Would you oppose something like that?
For account unlocked ships, that might work. Some C-Store ship traits are already account unlocked as it is...at least for those factions that don't have access to the ship. But probably not for single-character ships, since that would reduce demand for the ships.
I would still rather prefer they change the mechanism to be more interesting less grindy instead, so that players may want to play it more.
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I think the point is that the trait shouldn't be part of the 'reward' at all. It's a feature of a ship you bought, why is it really necessary to then earn a reward? Especially when that reward is an advertised feature of the ship.
I have no problem with Starship Mastery, if they want people to get better with a ship the more they use it.. cool. I just think it's silly to have the trait wrapped up in that system. Personally, I don't like to have to grind for something I feel I already bought. Plus, as I said above, it discourages me from experimentation on other characters knowing each trait I want to try is yet another 20-30 min pointless slog that I would rather not be required to endure.
Ship mastery is fine, but the Trait should be unbundled from that process in my opinion. I thought that opinion was popular, but apparently.. it isn't.
Again, I don't actually expect it to change, I just think it should.
Personally, I don't see the problem with giving people the trait right after you've bought the ship. Or maybe as the first mastery node. And you've already done the labor anyway by either grinding dil for zen, or going to work (or in some cases, begging your parents) to get the money.
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And yet, the 'waste of time' is precisely why it's there: to keep you in the game. That you can effectively only do Argala, well, that's courtesy of Gecko, feverishly spending time behind his desk, after each expansion, looking for ways to frustrate player progress (he even nerfed Argala again this time around too: his metrics probably told him ppl were going 17x faster than elsewhere). If he hadn't been so obsessed with nerfing XP, wherever he can, ppl could do others things besides Argala, and Mastery would have been a more-or-less enjoyable experience -- or painless, at least.
The thing just is, that this knife cuts both ways: if you detach the Trait from the Mastery, then ppl will be upset because now they're doing extra grinding for extra stats on a ship they already paid for. So, the Trait at the end of the rainbow, I think, is there to make the grind more palatable, giving you some cool doohickey to look forward to.
For the record, I do agree with you that Mastery, on a whole, is kinda lame. I would prefer they just gave the ship maxed out 'as is', and have it come with the Trait out of box. But the topic of this thread was not 'The pros and cons of the Mastery system,' but 'Starship trait relocation,' aka, putting the pot of gold not at the end of the rainbow, but at the start: which makes Mastery, in its current incarnation, rather pointless.
All fair points, thank you for the clarifications.
This I can get behind. Well said.
Absolutely NOT! Levelling ships is TOO easy for a start! Traits are HIGHLY valued, so should be at the end!! And yes, I did read what you wrote. Why should it take an hour or so, if that to full master a ship, when it took Geordi et all YEARS to master their's....and they were still learning!? What Cryptic have done is NOTHING like what EA did AT ALL!
As for the Level 6 Mastery.....dissappointed with it after all that grind because it's pointless, but I can see Cryptic's point here and I think I know what they may be intending.
This would require several of ship traits either moved or reworked, cause they just do hardly nothing to the particular ship they come with. Let's take for example Yorktown (T6 Sci Odyssey), its trait "Checkmate" serves sci-torp platform the best, while the ship itself makes a very bad sci-torp build. Dauntless doesn't make a smashing healer, nevertheless it comes with "Radiant Nanite Cloud". And then there are number of ship traits that are just totally (well, almost) useless.
Not a fan of your idea.
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.
I could see being able to use the Trait on the ship out-of-the-box, but ON THAT SHIP that the Trait comes with. Ship Mastery would then allow you to unlock it for use on other ships.
I'd love to see the Traits account unlocked, too, once they've been unlocked on at least one toon.
I'd also like to see Traits that are bound to Faction specific ships claimable for toons of other Factions once unlocked on the account (I believe this is possible with some Traits already, but could be expanded upon).
I don't agree with putting Traits in a box, Traits that are also bound to a Faction specific ship (talking about Lockbox ships), making the Trait cheaper to get for non-Faction toons, but much more expensive for toons that are required to acquire the actual ship. In this case especially, I'd much prefer the account unlock of the Trait and cross-Faction reclaim of said Trait.
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I think ship mastery is kinda lame, too, but for the exact opposite reason. It's too short and easy, a fact that then has to be arbitrarily counterbalanced by making almost nothing contribute to it (all these new missions full of endless swarms of enemies and nothing gives XP). It should have a 50-level (minimum) tree with choice nodes, and locks you have to open with special tasks or items.
As Nr. 2 told Dr. Evil: "This, too, already has happened." You can run endless Swarm Advanced queues, and still get virtually no XP. As outlined above, that's a bad system, as it, de facto, forces ppl to do countless Argala runs, ere their ship is truly space worthy. A certain someone at Cryptic should be less uptight about, OMG, ppl doing something as horrible as earning XP!
As for 'too short and easy', why am I not surprised you're suggesting that!?
It’s not only great for the player base who has to endure to fly a ship they dislike (or at least don’t want to fly) in dull content (because it pays out best), it’s also great for cryptic as they would get same out of it as they do now. Oh man, considering how many complaints I got from players over the years on topic I could even see an increase in sales over it.
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The sad part is, the time-gated waiting queues like Swarm, Dranuur Gauntlet, etc could actually be popular if all those hordes of ships would give ship XP, instead of being just a meaningless distraction from the reality of waiting out a timer to auto-win. And maybe people wouldn't idle so much in the Mirror event, either.
I want people to have interesting stuff to do in this game and rewards worth acquiring while doing so. That having bought a ship would give opportunity to play the game and do new things and in doing so power up said ship, rather than just a boring half-hour XP grind that's the same every time.
But I'm also not surprised people here suggesting they get everything for free, because playing a video game, what a horrible punishment that is.
And it's precisely this last sentence of yours in which you, again, fail to grasp people already paid for the ship they now have to train up too: nothing 'free' about it. If anything, Cryptic should make it easier to grind XP, and in more than just one place than Argala. We should be having fun, not feel like we're constantly doing battle with a lead Dev, bent on artificially keeping you in the game for hours on end, just to pad his metrics.
Just wanted to quote this because it's so well said.
No one is asking for anything for 'free.' One way or another, these ships were paid for, rather it was with cash or with time is irrelevant. These items are sold to the players in some form or another and the players are willing to pay it, asking for the trait unlock from the store isn't asking for anything for free. It's asking for the removal of a pointless time gate on something we have already earned/bought/whatever.
There is nothing entitled or unreasonable about this request.. not one thing.
You are asking for the removal of gameplay. For giving you the reward you would get from gameplay without playing. For free, as in not with a paid skip.
I did already suggest an option of putting in dil in place of XP and/or skipping to the trait for 500Z. But of course you don't want that, because you want it for free.
That the gameplay in question is "a pointless time gate" is why I said, it's too easy and short. It should be interesting gameplay, with some thought put into it, maybe even some of that dreaded challenge. Not guessing what enemies in what missions they care to give ship XP from and then repeating ad nauseum when you find some.
That's how you see it, not me. The trait is a feature of the ship, there is nothing wrong with wanting that feature 'out of the box.' When I buy a car, I don't expect to have to drive it a certain amount of miles before I can use the bluetooth or the Air Conditioning. Of course, that's a silly and comedic comparison, but no less valid.
By your system, it would be cool to buy ships and have to unlock them before they can even be claimed. You might consider grinding over and over to unlock something you own 'game play' but I don't. You can't just slap the label 'gameplay' on every grind and expect it to be cool with everyone.
This only occurs on with certain ships/traits. These are c-store ships with no multi-faction variant except for reciprocity I believe. I only support this as a remote possibility if you actually own the alternate faction ship since people would just buy a single faction ship to avoid spending more. Also, c-store ships only. No lock box, lobi or promo account wide unlocks
Account wide trait unocks for lock box ships is probably not going to happen. They tend to like to keep every aspect of a lock box ship a character unlock. At best there would probably be some kind of dil unlock. Maybe 100,000 - 250,000 per character.
The whole ship+trait vs trait-in-a-box thing creates some headaches and burns a hole in some people's pockets for sure. Not a big deal though IMO. Not a big deal though as nobody "needs" say honored dead to enjoy playing the game.
Just wanted to quote this because it's so well said. XD
Problem, the way I say it, is not even the Mastery ystem itself per se, but our constantly having to do battle with Gecko over ship XP -- thus, effectively, only leaving a 'mandatory' series of 'warp-out-at-lv-4' Argala runs to remedy the situation of your still gimped ship. As you said, that's no fun; and is not what I'd call 'playing the game.' It's just an annoying grind, that serves no real purpose. What is needed, is ship XP being readily, and equally, available elsewhere, so we can, in fact, start 'just playing the game' and have fun, and meanwhile level our ship in the process at a normal, not horrendously nerfed pace.
No offense to BMR, but it really isn't.
It obviously won't happen though since it would require actual dev work for zero return monetarily.
As I said, I have no problem with people wanting an option to pay to skip the gameplay. Just the idea of removing the gameplay from everyone so you can get it for free.
True. That is the worst designed aspect of the system as currently implemented. If ship XP is to be given from killing enemy ships, it should be given in all content, not arbitrarily turned off in areas with a large number of respawning enemies.
If, on the other hand, they want to make players play specific content to unlock mastery, they should make that explicit by adding lock nodes that require completion of specific mission(s) or acquisition of specific reward(s) to unlock.
Having a generic reward that inexplicably doesn't count half the time is BS.
That's a fair concern, but if the trait unlocked from the store, nothing would stop you from still going and spending 30 minutes in Argala if that was what you really wanted.
Here is a question for compromise, would you support a system where the trait stays exactly like it is now, but with the change that once unlocked.. it's unlocked account wide? So that the 'trait grind' still needs to be done, it just doesn't need to be done on every single alt you have.
Would you oppose something like that?
I am all for adding more reasonable options to get Ship Mastery XP, though. Nor would I mind if the traits would account unlock (maybe like with the Jem'Hadar ships with a 6th Mastery step.)
For account unlocked ships, that might work. Some C-Store ship traits are already account unlocked as it is...at least for those factions that don't have access to the ship. But probably not for single-character ships, since that would reduce demand for the ships.
I would still rather prefer they change the mechanism to be more interesting less grindy instead, so that players may want to play it more.