Because my powers tray is already full and I've had to get rid of a couple if things to get the useful stuff in there. Ten more level is jus more powers to jam in there!
I mean, sure, no one uses abandon ship. But the bottom of my screen is really cluttered and all them small buttons can get confusing to parse with bad eyes after a while.
It wouldn't take any restructuring at all, the current limit to VA is an arbitrary one, ships and gear get buffed by captains specialization skills, so it's unlikely that they would be superseded by newer ships and gear and with a new tier of skills existing ships and gear would get buffed even further. A new tier of ships and gear does not necessarily imply that they are superior to tier 5 equipment, only rarer. Even if ships and gear are superseded, players that have been asking to be able to advance their characters must realize that would come at a price of making their current gear obsolete and it would not be the first time such has happened.
We've already passed the point of realism where promotions are concerned, admirals don't command ships, they command fleets and since ours do not, they should not have been able to advance beyond the rank of captain, instead only achieving advancing sub grades.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
Some players have spent thousands of dollars on ships and should not be forced to pay more money.
If players have in fact "spent thousands of dollars" (though i dont see how thats even possible) It was their choice to do so. PWE has not "Forced" anyone to buy a thing.
This game can be played completely FREE. You dont have to have the fancy ships. Even if you want the fancy ships, like me, you can still buy everything in the c-store by using dilithium. I am even working my way to a "FREE" galor off the exchange, by saving EC, and selling keys. Here is a handy chart for ya.
Dilithium = Gear & Zen Zen = Ships & Keys Keys = EC
By using this chart, EVERYTHING in the game is COMPLETELY FREE. Including LOCKBOX SHIPS! There is only 2 reasons anyone would spend real money on the game. #1 they want something right now, and cant spend the time to grind it. #2 They care about the game and want to support it, by using real cash.
So I am sorry, but i find it really comical when someone says "They force us to spend money". That is just a rediculous way of thinking, and obviously NOT TRUE.
I am also against raising the level cap. If all my gear and ships are rendered end-game worthless by the addition of new and superfluous levels I will be very tempted to just stop playing. Plus, this sort of thing just sets-up a situation where they are doing it again and again and you wind-up with grossly over-powered players who experience no challenge of any sort. The game would become intollerably boaring. If new features need adding (and I agree they do) then just make them VA abilities and end it there.
Personally, I think it's silly that characters can reach admiral at all. It would have been far better to structure the levels something like: 1-20 = Lt. Commander; 21-40 = Commander, 41 and up = Captain. They could still have the new ship tiers at every 10 levels; not all Captains are created alike and one with longer time in grade would be higher on the list when new ships were available.
I think Cryptic should expand the power tray from 10 buttons across to 12 (using the - and = buttons to access the last 2 new ability slots per row). This will give us more hot-key-accessible skills, abilities, and other clickables.
They also could add new low level content especially to make a different level path for the classes. So that leveling another class actually lets you play in another way. The problem, I see, with all MMO'S is the fact that there are different classes, but they all have to be pushed through the same game content, which makes the point of having different classes rather moot.
I'd love to see them do something similar to LOTRO. That game has two tutorial zones (Human/Hobbit, Dwarf/Elf), which then expands to four early zones (one for each race) that take you to about level 17.
Everybody ends up in Bree at that point, but after leveling through that content, there are at least two major zones available. This continues throughout most of the game. It's possible to run quite a few characters without having them follow the exact same leveling path (there is overlap and of course the Epic questline is there for everyone who wants to play it).
For myself, I don't really need more levels or more skills (more variety to choose from like we do with kits, perhaps). More mission/episodic content would be much appreciated, though, with different leveling paths available via missions. Dailies and adventure zones just don't have the strength of story to remain interesting over time, although they are excellent change of pace activities. Variety is good.:)
What STO has is pretty solid, story-wise, but there is just less of it compared to other games of the same age (or even younger; STO had a short development cycle by necessity without enough time to truly flesh out the episodic experience).
My guess of what Admiral endgame content would be is that you can promote your Bridge Officers to Captains. Each Captain would control a ship that you no longer use. You can set the equipment, bridge officer skills, and duty officers on each ship. You can send these ships on something similar to duty officer assignments or have them fight with you in space. This way you can still use your current ships if Tier 6 ships come out. Of course, Admirals are the only ones that can command Tier 6 ships and your Captains can use Tier 5.5 and below ships. Could open up 1 vs 1 pvp fleet duels where you send your fleet and your opponents sends out their fleet and you see who has the best synergy with their fleet.
Instead of going "UP" or raising the level cap, can we please widen or go sideways by adding LOTS more story content. Ya know, like as in more sectors to explore in other quadrants? And more reputations to grind out? More things to do using the ships and characters that we've invested so heavily in?
I am for it, unless it comes with a new tier of ships, then I am strongly against it.
Some players have spent thousands of dollars on ships and should not be forced to pay more money.
I will be carefully watching how they handle this.
I'm in favor of T6 ships and admiral rank. More powers, boff slots on ships, and cpt level boffs can be interesting and i'm ready to buy a couple or more of new ships for that.
Of course it would require to increase significantly the difficulty of lvl 50 to 60 endgame content as well.
No need to raise lvl cap. If anything they could put missions in which are more difficult, require teamwork and strategy. They are already planning on adding more "rep" to the game, this is you lvl increase.
We need engaging end game content, not more of the same to get more skill points and abilities.
Although missions which require us to order around a small fleet of our own ships would be nice.
Personally I'm sick of facerolling every enemy except the ones in Elite runs.
A level cap raise not only finally gets me those last two pips on my collar but provides an infusion of fresh blood.
No more "Grind, chat, refine, repeat".
I mean, I put off re-running the first Ophidian mission for the Subspace field Modulator simply because it was something I needed to do and didn't really want to check the very last "to do" off of my list.
I agree with the original point that adding even more powers is a frightening, and horrible thought. The number of skills you have at L 50 in space is frankly a bit nuts already. I fear for that element as this game does suffer from button clutter. I would much rather see you and your BOFFS gain extra passives of some kind instead. Much much rather see that. Absolute last thing the game needs is even more skills to fill trays with.
Also, I don't see how they can raise the cap to 60 without adding new Mk XIII and XIV items to the game, maybe even MK XV as the uber-endgame-level-60-only items. In which case the whole Reputation system is basically shot all to hell and all that gear becomes more or less worthless without a free upgrade for existing players to re-organize it all (IE making the current MK X stuff MK XII, the XI into XIII, the XII into XIV... otherwise the whole system is pointless).
Very complicated to consider. But hard to imagine you can raise the cap 10 levels and add no new Mk levels for gear. That would basically make anything less than Mk XII worth 1 EC (which granted isn't far from the truth already).
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
To the comments about how people will not allow Cryptic to make Mk XII gear outdated and useless I present my counterpoint, the last two panels of this comic.
To the comments about how people will not allow Cryptic to make Mk XII gear outdated and useless I present my counterpoint, the last two panels of this comic.
The unfortunate part is that regardless of your guys feelings, they are going to raise the level cap, and ships like the Typhoon and Jupiter will make appearances as new tier 6 command ships. I personally don't mind if they do this, but I am curious as to how they are going to do it, and if they add a new set of skills we can put skill points into, or if they are going to just keep the existing skills and allow us to just flesh ourselves out more.
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
There will also probably be a requirement for each player to stand in for Quinn whilst he takes a break on Risa, you need to do 5 hours a week or be demoted back to VA LOL.
I'll do all the hours! aslong as I get called "Your Majesty" by everyone ...
Deal?
RachelJ88
*P.S. - Obviously the level cap will be raised, I like the idea of being an Admiral, the only question is, how will Cryptic infuence Ship progression so that players won't flip out about buying the Vesta and now you gotta buy some new fancy dancy thing to do MEGA STF's etc... so maybe Cryptic will add something like a Tier Up Ship Token that gives you a console slot, X ammount of hull say 5k yadayada...
I can see reaching Admiral being a Reputation thing, I'd like to see like the Omega/Romulan Tier perks/skills/passives/etc, say a Tier gives you an option to rank up Bridge Officer station, or a passive that increases a ships shield mod. <- totally wishful thinking*
I noticed someone mentioned "go out instead of up". A level cap raise is an alarm call that the devs really don't have many ideas left on how to flesh out this already rather weedy endgame experience. Pushing the cap up to 60 gives them a little breathing space whilst the players sort out the mess they have been landed in. When that is all over, then what? A new grind for the new top level gear? You can only do this for so long.
Not opposed to raising the level cap and frankly it's premature to bash the idea before more details are known.
STO is not the first RPG in which level caps were raised and to dismiss it right off the bat simply because it clutters... well I'm lost for words there.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
I noticed someone mentioned "go out instead of up". A level cap raise is an alarm call that the devs really don't have many ideas left on how to flesh out this already rather weedy endgame experience. Pushing the cap up to 60 gives them a little breathing space whilst the players sort out the mess they have been landed in. When that is all over, then what? A new grind for the new top level gear? You can only do this for so long.
I have the same wish, hoping that Cryptic will give the game some meat instead of fluff around the edge.
but sadly and unfortunately as a friend tells me "Fluff Sells"
the game makes me feel like Cryptic are those type of designers that like to decorate the walls instead of putting something in the middle of the room. sure it looks fancy... but not entirely useful... but you buy it... and put on "your" wall.
The unfortunate part is that regardless of your guys feelings, they are going to raise the level cap, and ships like the Typhoon and Jupiter will make appearances as new tier 6 command ships. I personally don't mind if they do this, but I am curious as to how they are going to do it, and if they add a new set of skills we can put skill points into, or if they are going to just keep the existing skills and allow us to just flesh ourselves out more.
I'm also curious to see how they will add this to the game. I hope it won't be tied to a rep system, which would be somewhat ridiculous (no game ever capped levelling), but I guess they'll do that anyway since the rep system is their current new toy. Just expect a lot of legitimate rage on the forums when people notice they have to level up every 20h because cryptic's devs wanted to make requirements as low as possible for some reason. I'd rather see tremendous expertise requirements with a reset of our current expertise but it's not the path the game is taking unfortunately.
I'll do all the hours! aslong as I get called "Your Majesty" by everyone ...
Deal?
Well, of course, your majesty.
Meanwhile, I'll do the stuff that doesn't involve sitting at a desk doing the paperwork produced by all those lowly away missions
But really, what's the point of raising the level cap, considering that we'll just reach the next cap in a couple of days anyway?
Higher tiers of gear? Rather overrated, considering green mk x's and quest rewards can get you through elite stf's easily, as it is. Sure, it'll be something to grind for, probably a 60k dil each, but it's hardly content.
I think levelling really doesn't play as big a role as some people assume. We need stuff to do, because it is fun and nice. Introducing new content doesn't have to involve new ranks at all, as I think we've proven by now, with the Featured Episodes, the Reputation systems, even the fleet actions.
Sure, if you introduce new ranks of ships, gear and progression, people will rage, then achieve them, then become apathetic again, probably in the course of about three weeks, but it isn't productive endgame. Not unless you, as a company, are prepared to do this every 3 months or so, and frankly, the c-store ships are just to pricey to be made redundant every couple of months.
As a counterexample, I'll throw in the original Guild Wars, where people reached max level in the tutorial of the first game, pretty much. The came an entire story, 3 expansions with more stories, loads of new skills and stuff to do, and a decent bunch of endgame content. All at the same level you'd been since the end of the first tutorial.
tl;dr: I'm not particularly militant about how they do it, but I think cryptic should focus on keeping us busy with fun content at endgame level, rather than inventing new sticks & carrots to keep us grinding the same stuff.
From Cryptic, "Details Known" usually comes in the form of someone spotting it after a Tribble update, by which time it is generally too late.
Don't worry about tomorrow, today has enough problems of its own. It's simply premature to complain without knowing details.
Cryptic is not some bogeyman doing all it can to make your life miserable, just wait and see instead of foolishly complaining about something you don't even know the details from.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
My guess of what Admiral endgame content would be is that you can promote your Bridge Officers to Captains. Each Captain would control a ship that you no longer use. You can set the equipment, bridge officer skills, and duty officers on each ship. You can send these ships on something similar to duty officer assignments or have them fight with you in space. This way you can still use your current ships if Tier 6 ships come out. Of course, Admirals are the only ones that can command Tier 6 ships and your Captains can use Tier 5.5 and below ships. Could open up 1 vs 1 pvp fleet duels where you send your fleet and your opponents sends out their fleet and you see who has the best synergy with their fleet.
This is one of the best ideas I've heard. I'd really like to see this implemented. Imagine if you could give your DOFFS that command other ships their own DOFFS. That would expand gameplay greatly.
EDIT--- Why the heck does it says Join Date Jan 2013? I joined the STO forums back in 2009?
I take back my original post, I will be ok with lvl cap increase as long as my Z-Store ships move up to new max lvl. I mean... I spent money on end game stuff. If they dont then I will have no drive to spend more money on end game content cause they will just increase again in the future.
I take back my original post, I will be ok with lvl cap increase as long as my Z-Store ships move up to new max lvl. I mean... I spent money on end game stuff. If they dont then I will have no drive to spend more money on end game content cause they will just increase again in the future.
I doubt that they'll move the Vice Admiral C-Store ships up to max level because otherwise they'll have nothing to sell at Vice Admiral level, however it's more than likely that they'll be viable in end game content similar to how Rear Admiral ships are viable options in the current end game.
Comments
We've already passed the point of realism where promotions are concerned, admirals don't command ships, they command fleets and since ours do not, they should not have been able to advance beyond the rank of captain, instead only achieving advancing sub grades.
If players have in fact "spent thousands of dollars" (though i dont see how thats even possible) It was their choice to do so. PWE has not "Forced" anyone to buy a thing.
This game can be played completely FREE. You dont have to have the fancy ships. Even if you want the fancy ships, like me, you can still buy everything in the c-store by using dilithium. I am even working my way to a "FREE" galor off the exchange, by saving EC, and selling keys. Here is a handy chart for ya.
Dilithium = Gear & Zen Zen = Ships & Keys Keys = EC
By using this chart, EVERYTHING in the game is COMPLETELY FREE. Including LOCKBOX SHIPS! There is only 2 reasons anyone would spend real money on the game. #1 they want something right now, and cant spend the time to grind it. #2 They care about the game and want to support it, by using real cash.
So I am sorry, but i find it really comical when someone says "They force us to spend money". That is just a rediculous way of thinking, and obviously NOT TRUE.
Personally, I think it's silly that characters can reach admiral at all. It would have been far better to structure the levels something like: 1-20 = Lt. Commander; 21-40 = Commander, 41 and up = Captain. They could still have the new ship tiers at every 10 levels; not all Captains are created alike and one with longer time in grade would be higher on the list when new ships were available.
I'd love to see them do something similar to LOTRO. That game has two tutorial zones (Human/Hobbit, Dwarf/Elf), which then expands to four early zones (one for each race) that take you to about level 17.
Everybody ends up in Bree at that point, but after leveling through that content, there are at least two major zones available. This continues throughout most of the game. It's possible to run quite a few characters without having them follow the exact same leveling path (there is overlap and of course the Epic questline is there for everyone who wants to play it).
For myself, I don't really need more levels or more skills (more variety to choose from like we do with kits, perhaps). More mission/episodic content would be much appreciated, though, with different leveling paths available via missions. Dailies and adventure zones just don't have the strength of story to remain interesting over time, although they are excellent change of pace activities. Variety is good.:)
What STO has is pretty solid, story-wise, but there is just less of it compared to other games of the same age (or even younger; STO had a short development cycle by necessity without enough time to truly flesh out the episodic experience).
I'm in favor of T6 ships and admiral rank. More powers, boff slots on ships, and cpt level boffs can be interesting and i'm ready to buy a couple or more of new ships for that.
Of course it would require to increase significantly the difficulty of lvl 50 to 60 endgame content as well.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
We need engaging end game content, not more of the same to get more skill points and abilities.
Although missions which require us to order around a small fleet of our own ships would be nice.
All ships were free at the launch of the game. Look how that's worked out....
Personally I'm sick of facerolling every enemy except the ones in Elite runs.
A level cap raise not only finally gets me those last two pips on my collar but provides an infusion of fresh blood.
No more "Grind, chat, refine, repeat".
I mean, I put off re-running the first Ophidian mission for the Subspace field Modulator simply because it was something I needed to do and didn't really want to check the very last "to do" off of my list.
At this point I'm just grinding to kit.
Also, I don't see how they can raise the cap to 60 without adding new Mk XIII and XIV items to the game, maybe even MK XV as the uber-endgame-level-60-only items. In which case the whole Reputation system is basically shot all to hell and all that gear becomes more or less worthless without a free upgrade for existing players to re-organize it all (IE making the current MK X stuff MK XII, the XI into XIII, the XII into XIV... otherwise the whole system is pointless).
Very complicated to consider. But hard to imagine you can raise the cap 10 levels and add no new Mk levels for gear. That would basically make anything less than Mk XII worth 1 EC (which granted isn't far from the truth already).
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
http://www.crispygamer.com/comics/ding/ding-2008-11-11.aspx
Can you give me the gist of it? I saw the words "Scott Kurtz" and closed the tab.
Every time WoW has a level cap increase, the ultra-rare gear that people worked for months to get is now replaced by greens in less than a week.
I'll do all the hours! aslong as I get called "Your Majesty" by everyone
Deal?
RachelJ88
*P.S. - Obviously the level cap will be raised, I like the idea of being an Admiral, the only question is, how will Cryptic infuence Ship progression so that players won't flip out about buying the Vesta and now you gotta buy some new fancy dancy thing to do MEGA STF's etc... so maybe Cryptic will add something like a Tier Up Ship Token that gives you a console slot, X ammount of hull say 5k yadayada...
I can see reaching Admiral being a Reputation thing, I'd like to see like the Omega/Romulan Tier perks/skills/passives/etc, say a Tier gives you an option to rank up Bridge Officer station, or a passive that increases a ships shield mod. <- totally wishful thinking*
STO is not the first RPG in which level caps were raised and to dismiss it right off the bat simply because it clutters... well I'm lost for words there.
I have the same wish, hoping that Cryptic will give the game some meat instead of fluff around the edge.
but sadly and unfortunately as a friend tells me "Fluff Sells"
the game makes me feel like Cryptic are those type of designers that like to decorate the walls instead of putting something in the middle of the room. sure it looks fancy... but not entirely useful... but you buy it... and put on "your" wall.
RachelJ88
I'm also curious to see how they will add this to the game. I hope it won't be tied to a rep system, which would be somewhat ridiculous (no game ever capped levelling), but I guess they'll do that anyway since the rep system is their current new toy. Just expect a lot of legitimate rage on the forums when people notice they have to level up every 20h because cryptic's devs wanted to make requirements as low as possible for some reason. I'd rather see tremendous expertise requirements with a reset of our current expertise but it's not the path the game is taking unfortunately.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Well, of course, your majesty.
Meanwhile, I'll do the stuff that doesn't involve sitting at a desk doing the paperwork produced by all those lowly away missions
But really, what's the point of raising the level cap, considering that we'll just reach the next cap in a couple of days anyway?
Higher tiers of gear? Rather overrated, considering green mk x's and quest rewards can get you through elite stf's easily, as it is. Sure, it'll be something to grind for, probably a 60k dil each, but it's hardly content.
I think levelling really doesn't play as big a role as some people assume. We need stuff to do, because it is fun and nice. Introducing new content doesn't have to involve new ranks at all, as I think we've proven by now, with the Featured Episodes, the Reputation systems, even the fleet actions.
Sure, if you introduce new ranks of ships, gear and progression, people will rage, then achieve them, then become apathetic again, probably in the course of about three weeks, but it isn't productive endgame. Not unless you, as a company, are prepared to do this every 3 months or so, and frankly, the c-store ships are just to pricey to be made redundant every couple of months.
As a counterexample, I'll throw in the original Guild Wars, where people reached max level in the tutorial of the first game, pretty much. The came an entire story, 3 expansions with more stories, loads of new skills and stuff to do, and a decent bunch of endgame content. All at the same level you'd been since the end of the first tutorial.
tl;dr: I'm not particularly militant about how they do it, but I think cryptic should focus on keeping us busy with fun content at endgame level, rather than inventing new sticks & carrots to keep us grinding the same stuff.
From Cryptic, "Details Known" usually comes in the form of someone spotting it after a Tribble update, by which time it is generally too late.
Don't worry about tomorrow, today has enough problems of its own. It's simply premature to complain without knowing details.
Cryptic is not some bogeyman doing all it can to make your life miserable, just wait and see instead of foolishly complaining about something you don't even know the details from.
This is one of the best ideas I've heard. I'd really like to see this implemented. Imagine if you could give your DOFFS that command other ships their own DOFFS. That would expand gameplay greatly.
EDIT--- Why the heck does it says Join Date Jan 2013? I joined the STO forums back in 2009?
I doubt that they'll move the Vice Admiral C-Store ships up to max level because otherwise they'll have nothing to sell at Vice Admiral level, however it's more than likely that they'll be viable in end game content similar to how Rear Admiral ships are viable options in the current end game.