I offer that people on this forum ask Cryptic to bring back Unique Drops. I have to say constantly doing STF's for the same useless gear and for dilithium is really getting boring. There needs to be a reason beyond the daily grind to fight the "Elite" missions. The idea for this came to mind when finally completing all the optionals for Hive Space Elite; it was HIGHLY underwhelming. The Queen doesn't drop any special item/DOFF/Ship console/Acquisition...etc., it just ends like a regular ESTF. I know after playing Ground Hive, this has to be even more disappointing.
So, I propose that Cryptic finally add Unique and Legendary drops; One having a 2% drop rate and the other having a 1% drop rate. At first this might seem ridiculous, but this is only to add some flavor to the game in between all these "Upgrades" and "Expansions". I think the area that could benefit the most from this is the Foundry missions, as some of the ground bosses in those missions could drop unique clothing and legendary weapons -- as they seem to do ungodly damage.
An easy way to do this is just insert a variable item drop for equipped gear on a particular ship, upgrade that with random stats at the appropriate lvl. These items would be more powerful than current max weapons/gear but be bound to character the minute they are EQUIPPED(this means they would be sellable on the exchange). Bound to character would really make the uniqueness work as no 2 characters would "possibly" have the same exact gear.
My first proposes weapon would be the Tactical Cube cutting beam, which would have 3x damage of the regular cutting beam(but not work as part of the set and could not be equipped with the regular cutting beam) at a 12 power requirement and have the ability to drain shields simultaneously. Thus, the stats would be:
Kinetic Adaptive Cutting Beam Mk XII [Dmg]x9
Legendary Ship Weapon
Character Bind On Equip
Vice Admiral
Values do not reflect skills or other modifiers
Adaptive Cutting Beam - Blue
Energy Damage
360' targeting arc
to target: 1074.15 Kinetic Damage (859.9 DPS)
to self: -12 Weapon Power when firing other weapons
to target: Enables CuttingBeam mode
2.5% Chance: Lesser of -20 or -20% Able Crew
1% Chance: Lesser of -10 or -10% Alive Crew
5% Chance to drain 2% shields per second for 5 seconds
This item would only drop when fighting Unimatrix or Borg Queen. And it would work as follows:
http://borgcollective.wikia.com/wiki/Borg_Cutting_Beam
The reasoning behind this item would be the statement below that is part of Star Trek Universe:
"With the wide-spread implementation of ablative armour among many races the cutting beam proved to be highly ineffective and outdated. It was thus removed as the primary armament of Borg vessels, being substituted for traditional weaponry such as gravametric torpedos and high-energy disruptor beams."
With things like this ESTF's would not feel so stale, and bring some life back to this game wihout Cryptic always making these "sets" that only add 2 to 3 items to the game everyone 2-3 months. I have stressed before, the MAIN issue with STO, besides the continued bugs and useless PVP, is the lack of VARIETY. Most MMO have a some type of very unique drop system BECAUSE sets take time, and one pop items like this don't imbalance the game because they don't work with sets.
I welcome everyone's opinions and ideas on bring variety to STO, without making the devs "think" to much.
Comments
I think that idea sounds rather good.
I think that it would be better incorporated if it were used while adding a new difficulty for stfs. Elite stfs as are is a complete joke, and the joke is only getting funnier. I'd just get some friends and grind stfs until we all got the legendary drops. It would only serve to be another grind, however if the difficulty were increased, cool down timers shorted, rewards buffed, and those unique drops added, I think it would be much more fun.
The only reason I even bother doing stfs anymore is because I love parsing.
That would be no different from the old random mk xii drop system.
Sort of. The reputation gear would still be obtained through the normal rep progression and projects, this would just be an added bonus.
2 reasons i like this..
1. it gives incentive to do said missions, i mean i know they give us marks and what not, but cmon, this everyone is entitled to the best equipment thing is kind of killing this game for me..
2. makes said missions easier to replay.. i play wow, rift, and swtor as well, (not all at once, i rotate and keep myself entertained).. but.. ive never gotten tired of doing a dungeon or raid as long as there was still a carrot at the end. i dont usually think of it as doing the dungeon, but rather, hunting for my gear..
and a bonus to the two above, is you feel a sense of accomplishment, which i have never really felt with this game, since its basically on easy mode 100 percent of the time.. (ie, oh, peeps dont like the stf's cause they are two hard, well lets us seperate them so you dont have to do the parts you arnt good at... or, oh, the crystaline entity is too hard, waaa waa waa, make it super easy so a 3 year old can complete it.. )..
we need to start bringing the challenge back into the game, and part of the challenge is, not being super geared in 10 minutes.. working towards your final build... i get no satisfaction from gaining tiers in the rep program. it feels cheap, and unsatisfying. its a silly thought that cryptic has by thinking they can stop the character levels from climbing. this game is gonna be dull and boring if i never have to replace my old gear... ie, tiers as they raise.
The whole point of the Rep System is to know that you will get those items by putting in the time rather then putting in the time and getting nothing.
The rep gear is just time gated, I wouldn't want to see everyone running this gear, I'd like to see it being a rare sight.
I like to see things that not everyone to get. I think that there should be ships the same way. I think a major problem in this game is that anyone can get anything. There are really no unique items that are "worth having" in my opinion. Featured episode series run often enough for those ground devices, and the ships from summer/winter events are meh and are widespread instead of unique.
So I propose this, keep the existing gear as is, but add a few outstanding items with a drop rate of that of a lockbox ship. Make it drop on stf completion instead of just from an enemy and I think that it would be interesting.
Best of both worlds in my opinion.
something that is space related for space ones and ground related for ground ones..
and something that is only available for that stf.. so people have a reason to do something other then ise over and over.
of course they need to be char bind on pickup.. and no trading allowed..
[12:44] Vessel One of Two Unimatrix 01 deals 1019527 (1157678) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Energy Bolt Explosion.
Exactly. The Rep system was brought in to make it fairer to all. Agree or disagree, but it is alot fairer than it was before.
The only problem I see with that is that people will cry, and cry and cry, that there not getting the items and other people have them. Time after time in this game when there is an item that requires people to work at something to get it, they come on here to the forums and ask for change. So as much as I love this idea.. it wont happen.
And I think cryptic already mentioned sometime ago that this type of loot drop system isn't what they want for this game. This is more a casual player mmo.
MY FLEET:http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=498091
I know people complained about random drops because it was "unfair" - I guess people dont understand what "chance" means. But in this day and age, we all want instant gratification rather than being lucky.
I like this idea as well because there would be a chance to get something worthwhile while NOT being in a fleet. Everything new that gets in game gets moved to fleet stores. I don't want that, I want to get something worthwhile for myself.
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And the whole part about removing the incentive to make alts, incentive to continue playing and the incentive to play all maps, was brought up many times prior to season 7.
I even saw an interview with dstalh that "we'd have to see" so it's not like it wasn't presented to them.
I mean come on now, wouldn't it have been a lot simpler to just increase the drop rate.
The point was of course to force everyone to be actively daily - no matter how much time or money one had, grinding the rep artifically created gameplay.
Only problem is, what happens when you are done ? It forces them to continue to release reputations and unless you want to invalidate them, as with the tholian rep, it has to be better than the omega one - at which point balance becomes a problem.
I can honestly say the reputation system prevents me from creating more alts because I don't have it in me to go through all that again - that's how terrible it is.
In oppose to before season 7 where I'd create alts happily all the time.
Right now I am semi inactive waiting for them to fix some of the many problems I have. Can't say I expect them to do it or it would be fair to ask, it being a f2p game.
I totally disagreed with all their decisions and the concerns brought up were vaild what else is there to say.
Without an increase in difficulty to put the gear out of reach of more casual players, then players will still feel like their only source of advancement is that gear. Giving it an exceptionally low drop rate won't change that, but will ramp up player frustration a good deal.
Exactly this. I am so bored because everytime I log on the only thing I can do is click through static menus to advance the reps to get halfway decent gear. If I was in a fleet I could buy fleet gear, but what for? Do the grinds?
The random drop chance for good items didn't make for a more diverse gameplay but you had to play all the maps and if you were lucky you could get the high end gear in a few playthroughs. The need to cooperate with other players was much higher, today people that pug ESTFs don't even talk anymore because you're doing the same one over and over anyway.
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I agree totally, as I did in the other thread.
They have made alts a no go. The easiest way to fix that is to make the reps account wide.
You would still have to unlock stuff and buy items on each character, but you would not have to grind the reps again.
Never liked the old drop system, this is speaking as someone who did hundreds of stf's and still could not complete even one Mk12 space or ground set.
Getting the sets never equalled skill (despite what some might say), but rather you just had to be lucky....
"I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek:
Thats the best suggestion really. You can grind the events till you puke hoping for a drop or you can grind them till you puke to get the marks to buy em.
"I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek:
Take Defera hards for an example. You get four boxes to open at the end of the STF and in those boxes is the exact same loot which is a random choice of about maybe 12 different things. Like shields, weapons, armor, etc.
The other day at the end of my defera run I got my four boxes and when I opened them I got 4 of the exact same armor, how useless is that? Especially seeing as I do Defera runs daily for fleet marks to donate to fleet projects and all of my boffs already have as good or better gear then those drops provide me with. It is nothing but vendor TRIBBLE and a complete and utter waste of mine and everyone else's time to even open the loot boxes. The only good thing is they don't require master keys to open them...:rolleyes:
I can't count how many white or green mk x items drop during a average ELITESTF run. I really would like to know what they were thinking. I mean your average drops in this game are utterly useless, you NEED to rep grind or buy fleet stuff in order to get anything worthwhile. The last opportunity players had without a fleet to get half decent gear were the STF stors where you could buy purple MK XI and MK XII items for drops. But they took that away...
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cuz there are chances a random player got lucky and have a collection veeeery quickly of these stuff and start going OP.
The incentives to do the STFs after you get all the gear is the Dilithium, not more drops. If you don't want the Dilithium then simply don't do the STFs.
who doesn't want Dilithium? it is the drug of the game
Dil=Zen OR stuff
Zen=Awesome stuff (and i heard most players dont go TRIBBLE% around to pay)
Awesome stuff = LOOOL:rolleyes:
The only problem with this is that dilithium is used for almost everything in this game and stfs are still one of the major ways to get dilithium.
Bleed Green and Gold
so you are suggesting to add more ways to get Dilithium?
shields make them idential or make it so that you need a token and the rep shield and that you can turn them in at ds9 for a shield with a different color glow or something like that. same stats and setbonus.
Impulse engine give them a cooler trail.
weapons make them so that if you hit anything that your target lights up with a specific color.
stuff like that makes a cool reward without needing te rebalance everthing.