... I think Cryptic should analyze the amount and see that it does need to be a bit more.
Here's my reasoning. Many arguments have been made against the skill cap. While at first I was dismayed I realized that it offers a bit of uniqueness to each characters setup. Imagine if everyone had maxed the exact same skills, essentially the only difference would be our ships, BO's and equipment.
I ran through the Character builder for over an hour just thinking about what I could possibly spend my skills on, and I can tell you that it got me thinking hard about what my play style will be. Without a limit, I really wouldn't care because I could be anything at anytime, but now I have to think If I want to be more a cruiser or an escort Captain? Do I want more power to shields or to my weapons? etc...
Basically it requires some thought and brings a sense of risk, even if you can respec later. I risk losing a ground mission if I only focus on my ship and so forth.
An earlier post suggested that even though there are missions left to be done at Admrl 5, the skillcap makes it pointless to do them. Well of the MMO's Ive played, I've always hit max with plently of missions left and I didn't do them because I would be waisting potential XP down the road. The skillcap is their gauge for creating further advancement down the road.
After much LOGICAL thought, I find A skillcap to be a good decision, but the limit that they chose may have been too low even for admiral 5. Each tier should have the equal ability to MAX out a certain number of skills, just enough so that you can't max everything and have to think about where to put your points. At 45, You should be getting half the amount of neccessary skill points to max out that X amount of skills as you did for the other tiers. I didn't do the math, but I would love a mathematician to look at some empirical data on this.
LONG text, but I would love to hear what others have to say.
EDIT - I also think there should be better literature out there that explains what adding points actually does and how it affects the skill and your overal character.
The Skill cap was NOT a good decision becuase the skill trees are badly designed if that was there original intent. Being forced to put points into something that offers no benefit down the line in order to open up the next tier at the apropriate rang grade is fine, if theres no cap, but with a cap?
Its a bda design as it stands, a bad design with no respec option!
The Skill cap was NOT a good decision becuase the skill trees are badly designed if that was there original intent. Being forced to put points into something that offers no benefit down the line in order to open up the next tier at the apropriate rang grade is fine, if theres no cap, but with a cap?
Its a bda design as it stands, a bad design with no respec option!
Exactly.
The skill trees are a mess with no rhyme or reason. Fix that before you start some capping.
If it was such a good decision then someone on cryptics team needs to be fired for not realising the ramafacations of putting the cap in but not enough skill credits to even reach the cap.
Poor design philophsy or sheer ignorance take your pick.
NO, limiting skillpoints RESTRICTS variety and LIMITS unqiue playstyles in favour of what is most EFFICIENT.
There is NO VALID GAMEPLAY REASON FOR THE CAP.
END OF STORY.
Uncapped systems have been proven to work, there is no debate and up until one week before launch Cryptic said they were going to follow that trend. The very mechanics of STO hinge on the fact that the system was not meant to have a cap.
Now they DO have a cap and the only valid reason for it is corporate GREED coupled with laziness. They want to charge people for the ability to respec their characters. Oh sure, they will implement an ingame method but lets not forget that if it was easy to use this method they remove the gouging from CHARGING for it.
If it was EASY to respec then why have the respec at all ?
Just let everyone have the skills and there is no need to respec, no need to implement this new system and everyone can happily use whatever system they want without penalty from training the wrong skills. There is no overpowering advantage if everyone has the potential to be just as good statwise as everyone else.
Shock: The only thing that would matter would be player SKILL, A.K.A The thing between your ears rather than a stupid stat % that means guy A can get loot drops faster than you because HE skilled properly.
As for the lazy aspect, they claimed it would be easier to make content against players who dont have every skill trained. This is a blatant lie because the developers were quoted and said they could make content that would work within an uncapped system.
Again, uncapped systems have been proven to work and have content that matches those with more skills.
When STO was in Beta Cryptic had to LOWER THE DIFFICULTY of the game because people thought it was too hard. A few simple stat changes and it went to super easy and now its shifted back towards a bit harder though easy.
Are people so dense they cannot understand that altering endgame stats to be alot harder would be TRIVIAL to scale against players. This wont change wether its capped or UNcapped.
A guy with every skill might be able to take on a single cube easily so drop 3 of them or boost the cube to be equal to 3 cubes. Thats how easy it is to scale content and anyone who has played this game even a fraction of the way through will see thats how Cryptic is actually operating.
We have the regular mobs, then we have things like Swordmasters that are alot tougher then we have the bosses which are even stronger. Thus scale the regular mobs to boss level and make the bosses even STRONGER than that = tada, players are being challenged.
"Oh, but its harder to scale content against someone that has all the skills because they are uber powerful"
Seriously, tell me how a person with 9 in quantum torpedoes is any weaker than someone who has 9 in quantum torpedoes, Photons, Tricobalt, Chroniton, Transphasic and plasma.
They cant have ALL of those weapon system on their ship, they have to pick and since all weapon stats are BALANCED to each other then there is absolutly no overpowering advantage from someone who can CHOOSE what weapon system they want than someone who is basically stuck using the ONE weapon system they specialised into.
The same goes for beam weapons, consoles, powers and ships. In the end, its one ship that enters the instance with the equipment fitted. Thats all Cryptic need to scale against and if they cannot scale properly against ONE GODDAMN SHIP then it dosent matter if the player has ALL skills or NO skills.
The problem lies with Cryptic NOT the player and NOT the system which has been demonstrated to work.
Comments
Its a bda design as it stands, a bad design with no respec option!
Exactly.
The skill trees are a mess with no rhyme or reason. Fix that before you start some capping.
Poor design philophsy or sheer ignorance take your pick.
We disagree on the skill cap issue but we certainly agree on the poor documentation. That should be their top priority.
There is NO VALID GAMEPLAY REASON FOR THE CAP.
END OF STORY.
Uncapped systems have been proven to work, there is no debate and up until one week before launch Cryptic said they were going to follow that trend. The very mechanics of STO hinge on the fact that the system was not meant to have a cap.
Now they DO have a cap and the only valid reason for it is corporate GREED coupled with laziness. They want to charge people for the ability to respec their characters. Oh sure, they will implement an ingame method but lets not forget that if it was easy to use this method they remove the gouging from CHARGING for it.
If it was EASY to respec then why have the respec at all ?
Just let everyone have the skills and there is no need to respec, no need to implement this new system and everyone can happily use whatever system they want without penalty from training the wrong skills. There is no overpowering advantage if everyone has the potential to be just as good statwise as everyone else.
Shock: The only thing that would matter would be player SKILL, A.K.A The thing between your ears rather than a stupid stat % that means guy A can get loot drops faster than you because HE skilled properly.
As for the lazy aspect, they claimed it would be easier to make content against players who dont have every skill trained. This is a blatant lie because the developers were quoted and said they could make content that would work within an uncapped system.
Again, uncapped systems have been proven to work and have content that matches those with more skills.
When STO was in Beta Cryptic had to LOWER THE DIFFICULTY of the game because people thought it was too hard. A few simple stat changes and it went to super easy and now its shifted back towards a bit harder though easy.
Are people so dense they cannot understand that altering endgame stats to be alot harder would be TRIVIAL to scale against players. This wont change wether its capped or UNcapped.
A guy with every skill might be able to take on a single cube easily so drop 3 of them or boost the cube to be equal to 3 cubes. Thats how easy it is to scale content and anyone who has played this game even a fraction of the way through will see thats how Cryptic is actually operating.
We have the regular mobs, then we have things like Swordmasters that are alot tougher then we have the bosses which are even stronger. Thus scale the regular mobs to boss level and make the bosses even STRONGER than that = tada, players are being challenged.
"Oh, but its harder to scale content against someone that has all the skills because they are uber powerful"
Seriously, tell me how a person with 9 in quantum torpedoes is any weaker than someone who has 9 in quantum torpedoes, Photons, Tricobalt, Chroniton, Transphasic and plasma.
They cant have ALL of those weapon system on their ship, they have to pick and since all weapon stats are BALANCED to each other then there is absolutly no overpowering advantage from someone who can CHOOSE what weapon system they want than someone who is basically stuck using the ONE weapon system they specialised into.
The same goes for beam weapons, consoles, powers and ships. In the end, its one ship that enters the instance with the equipment fitted. Thats all Cryptic need to scale against and if they cannot scale properly against ONE GODDAMN SHIP then it dosent matter if the player has ALL skills or NO skills.
The problem lies with Cryptic NOT the player and NOT the system which has been demonstrated to work.