Well, I now have two characters at T5 on Omega and Romulan. Both are T2 Nukara; I'll probably leave one there, and take the other through T4 for the passives. I don't feel any real pressure to finish that one. The rewards don't justify it to me.
I'm about to start grinding STFs and Epohhs on a third character. Taking them one at a time does make it more manageable.
My best recommendations to Cryptic so far are:
1) Increase both the number and variety of missions that reward marks, and make them reward a worthwhile amount of marks. Every Rep should have 4-6 "elite" team missions like STFs. But they should also have good solo content, and the Tau Dewa sector patrol is a good start.
2) Allow all ground consumables used as rep inputs to be purchased and stored in stacks of 250. It will not break game balance to let people carry 250 hypos. It will preserve our sanity. Or else remove the ground consumables from inputs entirely.
3) Currently each rep rewards a decent amount of marks and dilithium upon T5 completion. Give this reward to us in an account-bound box.
I've got to the point of having a Rommie at lvl 47, the only reason she isn't lvl 50 is the rep system, its a shame really, I quite like the ship and would like to see it in Rommie rep gear but I have forever and a day to wait for it with the rep system in the way.
Oh good another rep system next season... I think I'm done with this now. What the hell would the the next rep even be? The pakled rep where you can get amazing eyebrows at tier 5? Enough already, I hate the stupid grind, and when you are done with this rep guess what? You get another rep system! How about fixing PvP, something that has been neglected since the game began, you know, add one map. Either make it account wide, or stop the time gate and give us a chance to get the rep and actually play the game.
We all know, Rep won't be account wide due to it would it stop players from coming back and replaying it with your alts (In the Devs' eyes). However, I would like an account-wide discount if you already have a toon at max level with each rep.
It's easy to see that the reputation system keeps people playing, but it is such a deterrent to starting new characters that I have a hard time imagining it makes Cryptic more money in the long run.
_________________________________________________ [Kluless][Kold][Steel Heels][Snagtooth] [Louis Cipher][Outta Gum][Thysa Kymbo][Spanner][Frakk] [D'Mented][D'Licious]
Joined October 2009. READ BEFORE POSTING
1) Increase both the number and variety of missions that reward marks, and make them reward a worthwhile amount of marks. Every Rep should have 4-6 "elite" team missions like STFs. But they should also have good solo content, and the Tau Dewa sector patrol is a good start.
2) Allow all ground consumables used as rep inputs to be purchased and stored in stacks of 250. It will not break game balance to let people carry 250 hypos. It will preserve our sanity. Or else remove the ground consumables from inputs entirely.
3) Currently each rep rewards a decent amount of marks and dilithium upon T5 completion. Give this reward to us in an account-bound box.
1 and 2 are pretty good, but I don't think marks should be account wide. Dilithium and EC can already be transferred between characters.
1 and 2 are pretty good, but I don't think marks should be account wide. Dilithium and EC can already be transferred between characters.
Yeah, I know dil can be traded easily.
But letting us send the mark reward to another character would take a bit of the sting out of starting the rep again on a new one... and once a player begins gaining rep XP, they'd be more likely to continue.
I leveled my romulan to level 50 in a week. It was fun but she is on the bench as of right now.
it is simply too much to grind on more than one character. I dont have time to sit and run the required number of STF's and all of that to level multiple characters. I don't know how some people do it because it is painful at best.
Personally I think if cryptic is going to add more rep systems they should make them account wide like with zen store purchases instead of making each character have to grind it out.
If I wanted to farm endlessly I wouldn't have quit evony.
My fleet is small and although we have 90 members not many of them are active. Some are casual and don't even contribute to projects which is another reason why alternates are needed by the 2-5 top contributors (as some say) but the tedious, never ending grinding is making things difficult. Also, with the addition of full out romulan playable faction many of the players are focusing solely on grinding out their romulan characters.
You will be surprised. I know people who are always online...when i go to sleep and wake up they are still there. Lack of social life, un employed..living on government aid, insomania. Plenty of reasons why so many people have no trouble doing it on multiple toons.
I am only doing the rep stuff on my mains; the rest can do without. Even the thought of doing it all on more than one character makes me want to just quit sometimes.
It's like planetary interaction in EVE Online, except you have to put more and more materials into it, rather than getting more and more materials out of it.
it is simply too much to grind on more than one character. I dont have time to sit and run the required number of STF's and all of that to level multiple characters. I don't know how some people do it because it is painful at best.
Omega rep is easy, just do a couple of STFs every few days and you will have more than enough marks to feed the dialog boxes. Clicking the dialogs isnt hard. Whats the problem?
Romulan rep is much more annoying since you have to either do a lot more space combats (azura every day sometimes twice) or you have to chase epohhs every day. Most people can stop Romulan rep at level 4 though, so at least it doesnt take as long.
Nukera... do you need it for something? Its a pain in the butt, most people dont need anything from it.
I dont understand why people complain about it being hard, its not hard at all, its just time-consuming. That is what I dislike about it, the fact that it takes a couple of months of "hurry up and wait" time-gate BS before somebody can get a level footing
it is simply too much to grind on more than one character. I dont have time to sit and run the required number of STF's and all of that to level multiple characters. I don't know how some people do it because it is painful at best.
The key is the time taken - while I have 3 x Tier 5 reps on all 4 of my Alts, it took ages. About 6 months post FTP, which left most with a good whack of Omega marks once the reps came in; then about 4 months to clear Rom and Omega reps. Nukara has been a concerted blitz (it turned out that running 4 x CCs with the toons back-to-back was efficient, if painfully grind-y, for an hour a day). Just level at whatever rate you can manage. "Concurrent activity" really helped on the Rom and Nukara reps.
That said... I am already past the point where I can be bothered to create another alt. I've got 4 that cover the character archetypes I like, and the level of grind / investment for a 5th is too much for the return. I haven't bothered with a Romulan character at all; while LoR is undoubtedly the best thing Cryptic have done since launch, I've never been overly taken with the Romulans, and I feel no more obligation to play every bit of STO than I do to watch every episode of a TV series.
Omega rep is easy, just do a couple of STFs every few days and you will have more than enough marks to feed the dialog boxes. Clicking the dialogs isnt hard. Whats the problem?
Romulan rep is much more annoying since you have to either do a lot more space combats (azura every day sometimes twice) or you have to chase epohhs every day. Most people can stop Romulan rep at level 4 though, so at least it doesnt take as long.
Nukera... do you need it for something? Its a pain in the butt, most people dont need anything from it.
I dont understand why people complain about it being hard, its not hard at all, its just time-consuming. That is what I dislike about it, the fact that it takes a couple of months of "hurry up and wait" time-gate BS before somebody can get a level footing
I would also like to add the Tau Dewa patrol mission is a decent source of Romulan Marks. If you complete it during the bonus time you can get 75 at a time. Personally, I use Nequencia... after cycling through a few times you will start to learn the patterns well enough to get the patrol completed pretty quickly. It is by no means exciting... but then neither are slider bars and merchant runs; it's the reward you want.
As far as the time gate... that is probably the biggest failing of the Reputation system. Given that the sources of each mark type are also time gated, adding any gate to the Reputation as well is irksome. I REALLY miss the old STF stores, with no timers or secondary material requirements...
Anyway, to toss my two cents out there for the OP... now, this many, three. I currently have one captain of each career and faction, and I've barely bothered to get much done in the Nukara Reputation on my Fed/KDF captains. The Reputation System has nice rewards, but all the fetch this, grind that, drag the slider bar, stare at a timer stuff makes the system itself godawful. Add to that the strange attachment limit thing that seems to crop up when I transfer doffs and I have no interest in adding new characters... and especially buying character slots, lol.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Long story short, no new players, not even with if it is the Cardies, and not probably not repping my current players much more if any more.
I am not even going to start Nukara on my other players. I have 3 feds (1 each), a klink, and a Reman. I have maxed out all of the reps on one toon, did 2 reps with 2 others, and am way less than excited to do any rep with my last 2 toons.
My Reman is not even level 50 yet, he has been in the 30s for a long time. Maybe if we get more science ships (yes we have one that counts, but only one) I might feel inspired to work on him. Looking at the vast selection fed side is what inspired me to create my third fed. Not sure if I will do more than the Romulan rep with him or not.
Any new playable race is likely to be even more half assed than the Romulans with even less reason to play them. Don't get me wrong I rather liked the parts of the Romulan story that are new content, but they have fewer end game options than the poor Klinks. No thanks
I've one toon currently and start soon my Rom. i will only grind the Omega stuff for the Rom. Rep grinding is for me the same as fleetbase grinding. The latter is fun for a short while, after that i recognized that its way more fun if you play the PVE/STF stuff with fleeties. However even in my 3rd fleet i have the same problem i face with the previous ones: not so much team play. I would love to play stuff together everyday together but it doesn't seem to be possible. Also fleets seems to be quite idle in chat channels.
Other thing is it gets bored if you have to do the same stuff over and over again to get the marks of your type. Thats why i liked epohh tagging, its just a brainless short activity. However it takes too much time to get the rom marks to get the stuff you want.
My advise to Cryptic:
create short multi missions optimised for co-op, remake all the fleet actionswhich are currently not in the game, like battle of DS9. And create a lot more pve stuff.
According to Geko and this Massively Interview, there will be a new Reputation with the next Season.
I have nothing against grinding, but what we have in STO is beyond grinding, it has become a job outside my job.
Cryptic it is enough, make them account wide!
Oh yes, I very much expect we will see at least 1 new rep system every 6 months on average from this point forward.
I'm generally OK with that, here are the main issues.
1) It's severely detrimental and highly unrealistic to manage this across many alts for the majority of players.
2) The amount of expertise is one of the largest bottle necks for newly created characters. At this time only repeatedly running MU Incursion events are the only realistic way to generate the large amount of expertise required in any reasonable time frame.
I have to say, I've reached my limit on the rep system. I started a couple Roms, even decided to final level my KDF... I got through the leveling ... then looked at the rep system, sighed, signed out, and signed in on one of my two main toons that is already done with the systems.
Honestly, I don't think it should be account wide unlocks... but i do think that for each toon that levels you should get X% discount (cost and time) on rep projects (same chain i.e. Omega, Nukara, Romulan) for all other toons. I like 10%... knowing that the toons currently languishing would get a 20% bump because I have already ground out the rep twice before.. this seems fair. You level 10 toons in a rep, gratz... you unlocked it for the entire account. You've put your time in, and should get a break
I have to say, I've reached my limit on the rep system. I started a couple Roms, even decided to final level my KDF... I got through the leveling ... then looked at the rep system, sighed, signed out, and signed in on one of my two main toons that is already done with the systems.
Honestly, I don't think it should be account wide unlocks... but i do think that for each toon that levels you should get X% discount (cost and time) on rep projects (same chain i.e. Omega, Nukara, Romulan) for all other toons. I like 10%... knowing that the toons currently languishing would get a 20% bump because I have already ground out the rep twice before.. this seems fair. You level 10 toons in a rep, gratz... you unlocked it for the entire account. You've put your time in, and should get a break
I like your idea on % based discounts per number of characters in the system.
I would also add the following:
An ability to distribute/share marks and expertise account wide.
Just as I have the ability to send/store consumables for use in the rep system (hypos, commodities) using mail/account bank, I would like to be able to send the marks & expertise to toons that need them.
This would free me up to play what I want, when I want, as opposed to having to run X content on Y character.
Particularly this would alleviate the massive amount of expertise required.
I have old characters with 4 to 8 million expertise, and I have new characters with under 500k.
Allowing me to take that resource I've earned playing the game from an older toon, and distribute it to a new toon, would be a humongous boon.
So how about you? How are you taking the grind in stride?
How many characters will you maintain if they add another 1, 2, 3 or even 4 new Rep systems?
If in 1 year from now, there are a total of 6 Rep systems - would you even dare create a new character?
What happens when a new faction is launched and you have to start all of it over again?
I'm not going to create any more new characters, unless something changes.
I have a Tac and Sci with maxed out reputations in all three current ones, and an Engi I leisurely click along whenever I happen to log her on. My Romulan is in level limbo around ten and unlikely to ever progress from there.
There's just too much annoying busywork involved in the reputation grind. Click-click-clicking the seemingly endless consumable purchases, avoiding AFK leeches in rep mark missions and doing the Mirror Invasion over and over to afford the expertise all combine into a powerful deterrent to bothering with any more alts.
The reputation system and its bonuses are nice things to have and do add to the game, but they've made the system excessively grindy. Taking one character through a new reputation is tolerable, second starts to feel bleh and third... well, that's where I called it.
So, to answer the question posed in the subject, I'm already at that point.
I like your idea on % based discounts per number of characters in the system.
I would also add the following:
An ability to distribute/share marks and expertise account wide.
Just as I have the ability to send/store consumables for use in the rep system (hypos, commodities) using mail/account bank, I would like to be able to send the marks & expertise to toons that need them.
This would free me up to play what I want, when I want, as opposed to having to run X content on Y character.
{snip}
I definitely see your point. But IIRC, there is a post out there somewhere by a dev stating that reputations are meantto be character based. I want to make it easier, while maintaining the need for the individual captain to work at his own reputation. But I definitely see your point that I (the player) am going to perform the missions anyway.. so why not allow me divy up the points and experience amongst my account as I see fit.
Omega rep is easy, just do a couple of STFs every few days and you will have more than enough marks to feed the dialog boxes. Clicking the dialogs isnt hard. Whats the problem?
Romulan rep is much more annoying since you have to either do a lot more space combats (azura every day sometimes twice) or you have to chase epohhs every day. Most people can stop Romulan rep at level 4 though, so at least it doesnt take as long.
Nukera... do you need it for something? Its a pain in the butt, most people dont need anything from it.
I dont understand why people complain about it being hard, its not hard at all, its just time-consuming. That is what I dislike about it, the fact that it takes a couple of months of "hurry up and wait" time-gate BS before somebody can get a level footing
Nukkara sucks. They simply copypasta'd the old missions into 5-man missions which are HARD without a A) crack team or Engineers with barrier shields. Total BS.
As for Romulans, I'd suggest Mine Trap over Azure Neb ANY day - Azure NEb is both HARD CAPPED at 18 (23 during the event) AND time capped, so its a total POS - just do Mine trap for a smidge longer with at least 2x the rep.
HUmm unless its from an outstanding idea I wont be rolling new characters. The ones Iv got (6) is a big enough logistical problem to keep grinding rep. Now if they did something like having an account wide flag that lowered the costs for alts if you maxed out a rep on a character, yes account wide rep would be nicer but Im trying to stay realistic here.
Nukkara sucks. They simply copypasta'd the old missions into 5-man missions which are HARD without a A) crack team or Engineers with barrier shields. Total BS.
As for Romulans, I'd suggest Mine Trap over Azure Neb ANY day - Azure NEb is both HARD CAPPED at 18 (23 during the event) AND time capped, so its a total POS - just do Mine trap for a smidge longer with at least 2x the rep.
If you run Crystalline Entity you get 60 marks on normal + sometimes 80 on elite.
The sad fact here is, i was planning to gear up more of my toons, i had plans for them, buy new ships, lockboxes or cstore ships.
But now... i cant do it anymore knowing i will ever have the motivation to rep up all of those toons, i just dont think buyimg new ships is worth it on toons i know never will be geared/repped up to the max.
So in all honesty i think that this will eventually hit cryptic/pwe's wallet as well big time.
Ive known tons of players who left this game because of the horrible grind.
Cryptic better reads this. You cant enforce chinese farming methods on mostly US/EU players it will kill them.
At the moment I have five alts I consider "played" - three Starfleet, one KDF, one Romulan. I have the rep system completed only on my main, who is a tac in Starfleet. My first character (a Starfleet engineer) and KDF have the Omega rep completed but are glacial on the other two, and my Starfleet scientist isn't even fully leveled yet.
I think the only way I'd start a new alt at this point would be to either a) add a science or engineer alt as KDF or Romulan-KDF, or b) restart my main. Ironically in the case of the latter I might be interested in buying a re-race token to make them a human or buy Joined Trill for them, but this is not currently available and since I'm not going to make another character at this point, I won't be buying new slots, so this has actually cost Cryptic a few bucks.
I like your idea on % based discounts per number of characters in the system.
I would also add the following:
An ability to distribute/share marks and expertise account wide.
Just as I have the ability to send/store consumables for use in the rep system (hypos, commodities) using mail/account bank, I would like to be able to send the marks & expertise to toons that need them.
This would free me up to play what I want, when I want, as opposed to having to run X content on Y character.
Particularly this would alleviate the massive amount of expertise required.
I have old characters with 4 to 8 million expertise, and I have new characters with under 500k.
Allowing me to take that resource I've earned playing the game from an older toon, and distribute it to a new toon, would be a humongous boon.
I like these ideas a lot. I also would propose a cooldown reduction for having multiple toons (not sure how that would work - I know why it's THERE, it's needed for the system to work so they actually have time to make new content, but a reduction would help matters). One thing that stunts my interest in it is the fact that I know that even if I go at maximum speed it'll be about two months before I actually hit paydirt and can start grinding for the gear I want on a new toon. This is especially true in the Omega system, which has most of the stuff I actually want.
An alternative might be if some of the gear becomes more available early in the rep system for new toons, although that might be a bit difficult to wrangle, and possibly too confusing to manage.
I have 5 Federation and 3 Klingon characters. Will start a romulan in the near future (i have just returned to STO).
So i started my grind for the reputation system (all 3 trees T4 now) and realizing how much work it is to farm all the marks (also get some good Doffs and so on), i decided that i will only continue to play one main character.
I think it wouldn't be fun for me getting to T5 on all my toons, ...getting good doffs, ...also getting "hard to get"-ships (maybe LockBox or Lobi Ships). I think that would feel like "hard work". No, thx...
But you know what? - Somehow i like it that i now had to decide for only 1 character... I tended to keep all my toons "on top", that's now all gone... of course i will play the romulan content, just for fun, but i think that's all. No plans to get (and keep) my romulan on top (Reputation T5, doffs, and so on...)
Like i said, i somehow like it now to focus on just 1 toon... makes things easier for me, even if i will miss all my other toons.
I have four chars. Focus to get max rep is only on my main char with occasional attemts for my second other faction main char. The other now and eventually new characters in the future? No, thanks. Outside a few Tiers in Omega no rep grind for them.
The Rep System as it is is a good well thought out system if you focus on a single character and don't twink much or not at all. As soon as somebody likes to play with multiple characters it falls apart.
In answer to question posed in title: right now. I do not play my romulan because I will NOT re-level three reps. It's just not going to happen. So I am stick with tac-fed I guess! Not a bad place to be stuck. Fed gets all the good stuff, according to the KDF, and Tacticals are the darlings of Cryptic according to the Sci and Eng captains.
____________________________________________________
Pay no attention to the dates and titles under my name at the left! I am a Career Officer, Lifetime Sub since launch, was in the Beta. Having problems with my forum account.
Comments
I have nothing against grinding, but what we have in STO is beyond grinding, it has become a job outside my job.
Cryptic it is enough, make them account wide!
I'm about to start grinding STFs and Epohhs on a third character. Taking them one at a time does make it more manageable.
My best recommendations to Cryptic so far are:
1) Increase both the number and variety of missions that reward marks, and make them reward a worthwhile amount of marks. Every Rep should have 4-6 "elite" team missions like STFs. But they should also have good solo content, and the Tau Dewa sector patrol is a good start.
2) Allow all ground consumables used as rep inputs to be purchased and stored in stacks of 250. It will not break game balance to let people carry 250 hypos. It will preserve our sanity. Or else remove the ground consumables from inputs entirely.
3) Currently each rep rewards a decent amount of marks and dilithium upon T5 completion. Give this reward to us in an account-bound box.
[Kluless][Kold][Steel Heels][Snagtooth]
[Louis Cipher][Outta Gum][Thysa Kymbo][Spanner][Frakk]
[D'Mented][D'Licious]
Joined October 2009. READ BEFORE POSTING
1 and 2 are pretty good, but I don't think marks should be account wide. Dilithium and EC can already be transferred between characters.
Yeah, I know dil can be traded easily.
But letting us send the mark reward to another character would take a bit of the sting out of starting the rep again on a new one... and once a player begins gaining rep XP, they'd be more likely to continue.
You will be surprised. I know people who are always online...when i go to sleep and wake up they are still there. Lack of social life, un employed..living on government aid, insomania. Plenty of reasons why so many people have no trouble doing it on multiple toons.
It's like planetary interaction in EVE Online, except you have to put more and more materials into it, rather than getting more and more materials out of it.
Romulan rep is much more annoying since you have to either do a lot more space combats (azura every day sometimes twice) or you have to chase epohhs every day. Most people can stop Romulan rep at level 4 though, so at least it doesnt take as long.
Nukera... do you need it for something? Its a pain in the butt, most people dont need anything from it.
I dont understand why people complain about it being hard, its not hard at all, its just time-consuming. That is what I dislike about it, the fact that it takes a couple of months of "hurry up and wait" time-gate BS before somebody can get a level footing
The key is the time taken - while I have 3 x Tier 5 reps on all 4 of my Alts, it took ages. About 6 months post FTP, which left most with a good whack of Omega marks once the reps came in; then about 4 months to clear Rom and Omega reps. Nukara has been a concerted blitz (it turned out that running 4 x CCs with the toons back-to-back was efficient, if painfully grind-y, for an hour a day). Just level at whatever rate you can manage. "Concurrent activity" really helped on the Rom and Nukara reps.
That said... I am already past the point where I can be bothered to create another alt. I've got 4 that cover the character archetypes I like, and the level of grind / investment for a 5th is too much for the return. I haven't bothered with a Romulan character at all; while LoR is undoubtedly the best thing Cryptic have done since launch, I've never been overly taken with the Romulans, and I feel no more obligation to play every bit of STO than I do to watch every episode of a TV series.
I would also like to add the Tau Dewa patrol mission is a decent source of Romulan Marks. If you complete it during the bonus time you can get 75 at a time. Personally, I use Nequencia... after cycling through a few times you will start to learn the patterns well enough to get the patrol completed pretty quickly. It is by no means exciting... but then neither are slider bars and merchant runs; it's the reward you want.
As far as the time gate... that is probably the biggest failing of the Reputation system. Given that the sources of each mark type are also time gated, adding any gate to the Reputation as well is irksome. I REALLY miss the old STF stores, with no timers or secondary material requirements...
Anyway, to toss my two cents out there for the OP... now, this many, three. I currently have one captain of each career and faction, and I've barely bothered to get much done in the Nukara Reputation on my Fed/KDF captains. The Reputation System has nice rewards, but all the fetch this, grind that, drag the slider bar, stare at a timer stuff makes the system itself godawful. Add to that the strange attachment limit thing that seems to crop up when I transfer doffs and I have no interest in adding new characters... and especially buying character slots, lol.
I am not even going to start Nukara on my other players. I have 3 feds (1 each), a klink, and a Reman. I have maxed out all of the reps on one toon, did 2 reps with 2 others, and am way less than excited to do any rep with my last 2 toons.
My Reman is not even level 50 yet, he has been in the 30s for a long time. Maybe if we get more science ships (yes we have one that counts, but only one) I might feel inspired to work on him. Looking at the vast selection fed side is what inspired me to create my third fed. Not sure if I will do more than the Romulan rep with him or not.
Any new playable race is likely to be even more half assed than the Romulans with even less reason to play them. Don't get me wrong I rather liked the parts of the Romulan story that are new content, but they have fewer end game options than the poor Klinks. No thanks
Other thing is it gets bored if you have to do the same stuff over and over again to get the marks of your type. Thats why i liked epohh tagging, its just a brainless short activity. However it takes too much time to get the rom marks to get the stuff you want.
My advise to Cryptic:
create short multi missions optimised for co-op, remake all the fleet actionswhich are currently not in the game, like battle of DS9. And create a lot more pve stuff.
Oh yes, I very much expect we will see at least 1 new rep system every 6 months on average from this point forward.
I'm generally OK with that, here are the main issues.
1) It's severely detrimental and highly unrealistic to manage this across many alts for the majority of players.
2) The amount of expertise is one of the largest bottle necks for newly created characters. At this time only repeatedly running MU Incursion events are the only realistic way to generate the large amount of expertise required in any reasonable time frame.
Honestly, I don't think it should be account wide unlocks... but i do think that for each toon that levels you should get X% discount (cost and time) on rep projects (same chain i.e. Omega, Nukara, Romulan) for all other toons. I like 10%... knowing that the toons currently languishing would get a 20% bump because I have already ground out the rep twice before.. this seems fair. You level 10 toons in a rep, gratz... you unlocked it for the entire account. You've put your time in, and should get a break
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....
I like your idea on % based discounts per number of characters in the system.
I would also add the following:
An ability to distribute/share marks and expertise account wide.
Just as I have the ability to send/store consumables for use in the rep system (hypos, commodities) using mail/account bank, I would like to be able to send the marks & expertise to toons that need them.
This would free me up to play what I want, when I want, as opposed to having to run X content on Y character.
Particularly this would alleviate the massive amount of expertise required.
I have old characters with 4 to 8 million expertise, and I have new characters with under 500k.
Allowing me to take that resource I've earned playing the game from an older toon, and distribute it to a new toon, would be a humongous boon.
I'm not going to create any more new characters, unless something changes.
I have a Tac and Sci with maxed out reputations in all three current ones, and an Engi I leisurely click along whenever I happen to log her on. My Romulan is in level limbo around ten and unlikely to ever progress from there.
There's just too much annoying busywork involved in the reputation grind. Click-click-clicking the seemingly endless consumable purchases, avoiding AFK leeches in rep mark missions and doing the Mirror Invasion over and over to afford the expertise all combine into a powerful deterrent to bothering with any more alts.
The reputation system and its bonuses are nice things to have and do add to the game, but they've made the system excessively grindy. Taking one character through a new reputation is tolerable, second starts to feel bleh and third... well, that's where I called it.
So, to answer the question posed in the subject, I'm already at that point.
I definitely see your point. But IIRC, there is a post out there somewhere by a dev stating that reputations are meantto be character based. I want to make it easier, while maintaining the need for the individual captain to work at his own reputation. But I definitely see your point that I (the player) am going to perform the missions anyway.. so why not allow me divy up the points and experience amongst my account as I see fit.
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....
Nukkara sucks. They simply copypasta'd the old missions into 5-man missions which are HARD without a A) crack team or
As for Romulans, I'd suggest Mine Trap over Azure Neb ANY day - Azure NEb is both HARD CAPPED at 18 (23 during the event) AND time capped, so its a total POS - just do Mine trap for a smidge longer with at least 2x the rep.
If you run Crystalline Entity you get 60 marks on normal + sometimes 80 on elite.
But now... i cant do it anymore knowing i will ever have the motivation to rep up all of those toons, i just dont think buyimg new ships is worth it on toons i know never will be geared/repped up to the max.
So in all honesty i think that this will eventually hit cryptic/pwe's wallet as well big time.
Ive known tons of players who left this game because of the horrible grind.
Cryptic better reads this. You cant enforce chinese farming methods on mostly US/EU players it will kill them.
At the moment I have five alts I consider "played" - three Starfleet, one KDF, one Romulan. I have the rep system completed only on my main, who is a tac in Starfleet. My first character (a Starfleet engineer) and KDF have the Omega rep completed but are glacial on the other two, and my Starfleet scientist isn't even fully leveled yet.
I think the only way I'd start a new alt at this point would be to either a) add a science or engineer alt as KDF or Romulan-KDF, or b) restart my main. Ironically in the case of the latter I might be interested in buying a re-race token to make them a human or buy Joined Trill for them, but this is not currently available and since I'm not going to make another character at this point, I won't be buying new slots, so this has actually cost Cryptic a few bucks.
I like these ideas a lot. I also would propose a cooldown reduction for having multiple toons (not sure how that would work - I know why it's THERE, it's needed for the system to work so they actually have time to make new content, but a reduction would help matters). One thing that stunts my interest in it is the fact that I know that even if I go at maximum speed it'll be about two months before I actually hit paydirt and can start grinding for the gear I want on a new toon. This is especially true in the Omega system, which has most of the stuff I actually want.
An alternative might be if some of the gear becomes more available early in the rep system for new toons, although that might be a bit difficult to wrangle, and possibly too confusing to manage.
So i started my grind for the reputation system (all 3 trees T4 now) and realizing how much work it is to farm all the marks (also get some good Doffs and so on), i decided that i will only continue to play one main character.
I think it wouldn't be fun for me getting to T5 on all my toons, ...getting good doffs, ...also getting "hard to get"-ships (maybe LockBox or Lobi Ships). I think that would feel like "hard work". No, thx...
But you know what? - Somehow i like it that i now had to decide for only 1 character... I tended to keep all my toons "on top", that's now all gone... of course i will play the romulan content, just for fun, but i think that's all. No plans to get (and keep) my romulan on top (Reputation T5, doffs, and so on...)
Like i said, i somehow like it now to focus on just 1 toon... makes things easier for me, even if i will miss all my other toons.
The Rep System as it is is a good well thought out system if you focus on a single character and don't twink much or not at all. As soon as somebody likes to play with multiple characters it falls apart.
Pay no attention to the dates and titles under my name at the left! I am a Career Officer, Lifetime Sub since launch, was in the Beta. Having problems with my forum account.