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Solution to skill descriptions/what they affect being too confusing.

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
Excuse the poor GIMP skills.. was trying to do a simple colour replace but couldn't really get it right. picture will explain all:

http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/2474/screenshot2010042010010.jpg

this would be great because it will help give people an idea how to properly spend their skill points instead of just guessing what everything does
Post edited by Unknown User on

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  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    YES!

    10 chars
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    I don't think they care. The attitude I've seen has been "let's make it as nebulous as possible to avoid people exploiting imbalanced stuff".

    19 04 10 19:18:35 <&Cryptic_Falkoren> That and knowing exact details generally only overtly benefits min/maxers
    19 04 10 19:18:44 <&Cryptic_Falkoren> Casual players just accept stuff at face value and enjoy as is


    Never mind the fact that keeping it nebulous doesn't REMOVE the imbalanced stuff, and without mass exploitation, they'll probably have no idea what to balance.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    Exactly like this Skill builder.

    http://sto-builder.binarybit.ch/

    Would be an aswome idea.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    Ubung wrote: »
    Exactly like this Skill builder.

    http://sto-builder.binarybit.ch/

    Would be an aswome idea.

    Thanks for the Linky, Not seen that before.

    @OP

    I agree. I know quite alot about the Tech of Star Trek but the skill system still confuses the hell out of me. We need to know What does What to What :)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    proxidro wrote: »
    I don't think they care. The attitude I've seen has been "let's make it as nebulous as possible to avoid people exploiting imbalanced stuff".

    19 04 10 19:18:35 <&Cryptic_Falkoren> That and knowing exact details generally only overtly benefits min/maxers
    19 04 10 19:18:44 <&Cryptic_Falkoren> Casual players just accept stuff at face value and enjoy as is


    Never mind the fact that keeping it nebulous doesn't REMOVE the imbalanced stuff, and without mass exploitation, they'll probably have no idea what to balance.

    I dunno.

    I seem to recall Jack Emmert griping about it in an interview, saying that he'd be in his office playing STO, he'd see some of the descriptions and he'd immediately get up, go to the person who wrote the nebulous text and say, "What the hell were you thinking?"

    The flipside of that of that according to him is that fixing typos and clarifying things takes time out of doing new stuff and so they have to ration how much time they spend correcting and improving or else they'd never get anything new done.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    The flipside of that of that according to him is that fixing typos and clarifying things takes time out of doing new stuff and so they have to ration how much time they spend correcting and improving or else they'd never get anything new done.

    Perhaps they should fix what's there instead of adding more. If you are doing DIY. Do you start more jobs while others are left unfinished? That is a recipe for disaster.

    Basically the Skill Descriptions suck and need to be made more clear and I am not having that it would take too much time to correct.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    Intrepidox wrote: »
    Excuse the poor GIMP skills.. was trying to do a simple colour replace but couldn't really get it right. picture will explain all:

    http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/2474/screenshot2010042010010.jpg

    this would be great because it will help give people an idea how to properly spend their skill points instead of just guessing what everything does

    That is a nice QoL improvement. I wonder how much programming would need to go in to that to implement...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    Loxanna wrote:
    Perhaps they should fix what's there instead of adding more. If you are doing DIY. Do you start more jobs while others are left unfinished? That is a recipe for disaster.

    Basically the Skill Descriptions suck and need to be made more clear and I am not having that it would take too much time to correct.

    Fixing what they have might mean six months to a year without STFs, new features or updates of any kind. Maybe without certain kinds of bug fixes or balancing too.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    Intrepidox wrote: »
    this would be great because it will help give people an idea how to properly spend their skill points instead of just guessing what everything does

    My problem isn't with the colors, it's with the descriptions. In your example, for example, you've got a skill that improves hull repair and related abilities. By how much? How does it improve the abilities? We have some numbers down below, but there's no way of telling how they relate to the hull repair or related abilities. Those numbers could be nicely useful bonuses, or they could be unnoticeable in game play. One would have to do extensive play testing to figure them out, or haunt the internet looking for useful information.

    I'm not asking for an explanation here. I'm pointing out that the information needs to be in the game, in the skill descriptions.

    If you color code the skills, I still won't know what they really do or how to spend my points in a useful manner.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    BTW, I'm not arguing for no fixes. I think THIS THREAD is an excellent suggestion. I also highly endorse bugging any typos or art errors you see. I just think the realistic thing is for these things to be worked into development rather than grinding development to a halt for it.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    I agree, Leviathan
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    proxidro wrote: »
    I don't think they care. The attitude I've seen has been "let's make it as nebulous as possible to avoid people exploiting imbalanced stuff".

    19 04 10 19:18:35 <&Cryptic_Falkoren> That and knowing exact details generally only overtly benefits min/maxers
    19 04 10 19:18:44 <&Cryptic_Falkoren> Casual players just accept stuff at face value and enjoy as is


    Never mind the fact that keeping it nebulous doesn't REMOVE the imbalanced stuff, and without mass exploitation, they'll probably have no idea what to balance.


    Most of that is a Cryptic design philosophy. Jack (Head of Cryptic) back in the day when he ran CoH said pretty much the same thing, "we wont give you real numbers, it only helps the min/maxers". Thats not an exact quote but the meaning and "flavor" are about the same. One of the 1st things the CoH players got after Jack and crew sold CoH to NCsoft was.....real numbers that players could see in real time when they planned their builds at any level. This allowed players to see exactly what affected what and whatnot.

    I just think as a company policy, Cryptic does not want to give out real numbers.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    Personally, I would enjoy seeing better descriptions simply so that I know my skills are actually doing something useful. I've been roleplaying my skill point allocation, putting skill points where I think best fits the character concepts. That doesn't make the skills fun. It just helps a little in fleshing out the character concept. And of course it allows me to improve in rank, but just plugging enough points into random skills will do that.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    Buffalo-6 wrote:
    Most of that is a Cryptic design philosophy. Jack (Head of Cryptic) back in the day when he ran CoH said pretty much the same thing, "we wont give you real numbers, it only helps the min/maxers". Thats not an exact quote but the meaning and "flavor" are about the same. One of the 1st things the CoH players got after Jack and crew sold CoH to NCsoft was.....real numbers that players could see in real time when they planned their builds at any level. This allowed players to see exactly what affected what and whatnot.

    I just think as a company policy, Cryptic does not want to give out real numbers.

    Hm. Maybe. I think they should avoid fake numbers if that's the case.

    I mean, the next MMO I'm looking forward to is DCU Online later this year and it seems to be built around a philosophy of NO VISIBLE NUMBERS. The trick to that is that the system has to feel intuitive enough that people don't feel underpowered and say, "I need to look at the numbers."

    The Cryptic MMOs haven't accomplished that. On the whole, I think you'd need to have a game where specs are 95% cosmetic (ie. do I shoot flames out of my eyes or my elbows, how big do my weapons look) to get people to stop worrying about that 5% that minmaxers gnash and wail about in most MMOs. I think there is actually merit in the idea of everyone playing one class with a few special abilities though. You will lose some people that way but I think, particularly in a super-hero game, you have an audience used to things happening because the plot dictates it or because actions taken in the fight dictate it.

    To do that with Trek, you'd need a more abstract system than what we have, probably closer to Decipher's card game, which had math, but was mainly plot driven with items representing abstract plot developments. That's really more the direction I would have taken STO, honestly, and kinda what I hope the Diplomacy System is like.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/2474/screenshot2010042010010.jpg

    anyone with better image editing skills care to try their hand at a better mockup? hehe
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/5753/screenshot2010042619321.jpg

    well, looks like they took my suggestion and implimented it on Tribble.. i'll take my money via paypal, Cryptic :D

    (posting on brothers account)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    This is what I do.

    I hit P.
    I click on each of my abilities.
    I write down the 3 skills that each ability claims modifies it.
    I then sort the skills to see which ones are most important (if one skill affects 4 abilities and another 3, that first one is more valuable)
    I do all this again on ground.

    They need to fix typos and wrong information if it exists in the Powers Window. I can only recall maybe 2 items where I thought to myself, "Well there is missing or invalid information here". That drives me nuts.

    What most people want is to click on the skill and see what abilities it can modify. Although this might be a nice feature, it isn't as necessary as people think and I would rather see new content from the responsible persons being generated rather than a new way to get the same info that is already available to us.
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