There are a lot of complaints about too little information about what skills do.
This is a completely valid criticism - there is surprisingly little documentation on what stuff actually does.
However, there's also way too much useless information that clogs description text.
Let's take a skill you're training:
It'll show entire paragraphs but only detail two abilities that it will effect. Many players are justifiably confused as to what their skill investments are really doing (other than being used to bulk up to the next rank).
At the same time, we have to wade through dozens of verbose descriptors to find anything of meaning.
Here is where a poet is handy:
Why use a sentence when the right word can sum up the same idea?
My Big UI Formatting changes:
- Reformat Skill interface to color code headings
- Use indents to show lists as subsets of heading.
- Show Practical Effects of an item before the lore description
- Blank lines (white-space) and ellipsis (...) sometimes appear without serving much of purpose, pushing useful information down so we have to scroll more
- Some love the graphs but the interface could handle this more simply (i.e Rank 2/10)
These are basic design principles that could help ease the processing of complex data.
That said, I really enjoy this game and (being a lifetime subscriber) wish the best for it. There are a lot of good idea from the community and the development team that could refine the rough edges and bring the gameplay back to the forefront.
Omelie's List of Information to Add
- The effect each console has on ship, weapons, and abilities - a title, the rank, what it changes and by what amount. No more, no less.
- Explain stacking items reduces effects
- Show affected abilities/items before and after a skill change. For example,
Raising Beam Weapon from 2->3:
- +5 Damage: Phaser Beam Array Mk II (29->34)
- -2 Power Consumption: Phaser Beam Array MkII (4->2)
- Which skills/abilities share cooldowns with others - show this information in description
- Complete list of affected skills (not "etc." after listing two)
- Include option to display a list of alternative skills that could fill a particular Bridge Officer's skill slot.
- Abilities/Skills of Bridge Officers need a similar system to above mentioned system
see:
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=122641
More Forthcoming...
Comments
Flipside: http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=122641
I notice a lack of replies on legitimate topics so I am in before this make the 2nd page.
Science Team I
Skills that effect this skill:
-Starship Operations
-Shield Maintance
Information:
...........
Now when we are looking at the officer skills we can get a better sense of where to place our skills to optimize our ship and command.
I really hope the developers do something about this. Everything seems so confusing and as I go up in level that confusion seems to grow and that sucks
EDIT: Added Omelie's Information
Overall, there are both layout/design issues that make reading it difficult.
This is only worsened by the content itself being too wordy and not actually saying what it does.
This was aprticularly true at the times when I got my new rank, as I was eager to get my new ship and all that.
Now that I'm at 45 I wish I could respec as I have noticed that alot of points are wasted in skills I have no use for, points I could have used to improve skills I do have use for.
More info on what the different skills do and improve upon would be greatly apreciated.
signature radious's of ships :eek:
blast velocity in torp systems :eek:
flight time and speed :eek:
energy consumption
with real life or death meaning
collision damage
war head upgrades
beam crystals
mods to weapons.
but before they do all that they have to add a huge number of base attribute similiar to EvE i would hate to say it and know i will get blasted for even suggesting it but seriously my skills and fitting of the ship should only vary the preformance of the ship and weapons base attributes by a maximum % of the base. in order to balance the playing field. with older to newer players.
there is like 50 damage types the enemy can do to you through the stat menu of your ship.
as it stands it seems to me that its mostly about getting the blue items or at least thats what i am seeing in the forumns
and people are more focused on pve content
in pve what your ship / player attributes are, is irrelivant if they can be so massivilly changed buy equiping huge over strengthed items.
in pvp it becomes more about getting the complete blue sets then about good piloting.
You should the Ultimate Suggestion Thread:
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=122694
It links to this and shows similar threads.
A functional reformat of GUI and description elements could make this game FAR less confusing at times.
because it is pretty irrelevent to even look at the ship stats.
it was lmfao
and you cant even see base stats on the weapons that would effect your hit or miss ratio
i miss enough to know that accuracy bonus on the weapons is irrelevent LOL
1 out of 100 shots maybe.
the damage does not vary much either based on the targets orientation/range/speed relative to my own.
the weapons all fire at 10 km LAZY as **** range.
the ship does not have a base sensor strenth so sensor jamming will last a default 16 seconds and will always happen
if alls you want is more irrelevant info go for it, hope you get them
but they still wont mean anything if they dont take more of a simulator approach to the problem
in eve in order to properly calculate chance to hit with you turrets.
the angular velocity must be lower then the tracking speed
your targets angular velocity is the targets distance/heading/velocity/signaure vs. my velocity and speed.
(signature radious does play a role in it as well)
and all the before mentioned can be manipulated by skills and mods quantifiable on the fitting window.
i really dont think cryptic devs would be able to pull if off, to put that much detail in the games mechanics they are to focuse on end game raids LOL
says it right here
http://www.startrekonline.com/upcoming_content