well i guess i know where i'll be for the next month or two while this particular cluster 'fudge', to put it politely, lands on holodeck
i'll be enjoying myself in Elder Scrolls Online ^^
suppose i'll come back during the summer event (maybe stop by for first contact day)
seriously, the amount of nerfing and uneeded changes to mechanics is starting to push me away from the game
i worked hard, put a lot of hours into the game to gain those rep passives and active abilities, and now i'm being forced to choose between them as if all that work was for nothing
i did the work cryptic, i should be able to use all of my abilities
KDF for Life! Romulan at Heart Fed cause they made me ~ :P
On the flip side... As someone who is just starting out, (while also starting to pay into zen), I am having a hard time with working through the grind. Since I haven't worked on my avatar for many years, I am unable to cause over 300,000-400,000 points of damage. While everyone else is getting over a million points in damage, the small amount of damage I am making keeps me from competing. I am unable to fight for a better share of the rewards. I always walk away from space missions with the least marks.
So, what should Cryptic do? "Star Trek: Online" is currently top heavy; thus, the majority of the players have been around for a long time. Prices on the exchange prove my point. If the population consisted of equal halves (50% new and 50% veteran), the prices on the exchange would not be sitting so high.
Its a conundrum. Is "Star Trek: Online" a veterans only game, or is there room to improve the game for new players? I personally cannot answer the question. All I know is that the grind is getting harder, longer, and boring. Unless there is a way for me to make more resources, within a decent period of time, I will have no choice but to leave "Star Trek: Online".
Is that what you guys want? Or, is there room for compromises?
As far as I know, most missions give the same amount of marks to everyone.
In reality though, the reputation system has very little do with the problems you are bringing up. I know it suck being the new guy starting out in a field of vets. I was there too. Thrust is, there is a lot of free advice out there which will get you dishing out the deeps in no time. Most of your issues are
A. lack of experience (no offense intended, it just takes some practice to know when to use certain powers and looking for certain visual ques.)
B. You ship build. This is easily 75-90% of your character (in space I mean, you mentioned hundreds of thousands of damage, so I assume you don't mean ground :P )
Rep powers are handy, but certainly not the biggest source of power for a character. Doubling their effectiveness though, that might make it worse.
Most of us are just angry that most of what we have worked hard for is now moot.
Yes, but still, gear and dps is a big thing in PVE, and would be an improvement over totally random matchmaking.
Honestly, Cryptic could at least try to make some new harder content. The bad thing is all the hours I put into doing reps I no longer need, like Nukara. I just feel tricked, cheated out of, like with the Valdore console.
People may say it is too OP, but I bought it with money. That should not be devalued.
Of course, perhaps more playtesting could prevent OP items from being put in the game in the first place.
And...really, Reputations are a small part of power creep. The biggest is the super rare doffs and the lockbox ships.
I can see your point on spending $... but you have to think it has no value at all. We are buying pixels not advantages in a game.
I look at everything I buy in any MMO as being something that can be changed at any time. Its not real, it keeps me from getting upset by change. Cause every developer changes things... or makes things cheaper later or gives you a way to earn it in game ect. You can't sweat that stuff in these things. Yes I still buy things in MMOs though... I judge things by did I have enough fun with it to justify the $ value... if I buy something and they completely change it a day later perhaps I would be annoyed... but valdor got left in its op state for way longer then I would have bet.
The valdore console I think everyone saw that coming the day it was released. Frankly its still to powerful isn't it ?
The way I see it if I know something is to good... I don't expect it to NOT get corrected at some point.
The nukura rep isn't really wasted time either. You still have it unlocked You may choose to not trait those passives ever... or you may trait them in specific instances. We got load out swapping recently... perhaps at some point you will have a carrier or science ship on that toon... and you will want to swap in the Nukura Aux powered passives. New system you can use all of it I have no doubt on some ship setup.
The easiest way to fix the power creep would be of course to make the enemies hard to kill and not make a single ship take out a Borg Cube in an Elite STF.
Ah, but there's the rub. To make a Borg ship "harder" to kill keeps widening the gap between a new level 50 and one that has been geared. Add a reputation, bump up the power level... add another rep, bump it up.... At some point new players would never be able to catch up enough participate. Scaling the "bad guys" is not going to solve the problem of power creep. It would be a band-aid at best. Curbing player power is the more drastic, but probably best solution overall. Then, after that has been stabilized, then look to scale the encounters better. But they won't have to scale it much or as often as your solution.
The solution is going to be hard for players to swallow because we are probably operating at a level that is "too powerful." If this is the first step in curbing power creep then we are in for even bigger changes later on, and they will probably be harder to accept than this.
and please get rid of the TRIBBLE missions on new romulus. Who can imagine Kirk running after eppohs. Picard herding big eyed octopuses. Jenaway doing errands for some no name npc who can't move his behind 10m ti pick up some reports. Or sisko going from captain to bug exterminator. Really, we have a mosquito problem, let's call the prophets. FACEPALM
LOL, you made me laugh ! THANK YOU !
It's been an amazingly difficult day. I needed that.
Only 4 active space traits at any one time? Beyond the fact that high DPS/survivability badly needs a nerf (which this won't really do), it also counters any future problematic power creep caused by the rep system powers.
Traits swappable outside of combat? Excellent and helps my science and engineer toons when they want to change roles for a few fights.
Not so sure about the T4 Romulan replacement for the placate. Sure it'll be less annoying than losing you're target lock every few seconds, but a 4 second weapon disable feels like it'll be almost as bad (especially vs a team of FAWers). It'll be like a phaser proc, but without phasers. Any chance you can make it 1-2 seconds for players?
For the most part, I'm all for the change to be honest.
That's why I'm only nerdraging as much as I do, and not as much as I'm capable of.
This makes min maxing my alts much easier. I just put Romulan, Dyson and maybe Nukara to TIer2, and Omega to tier5.
Much less work for my alts, even if I'm shafted on my fully maxed chars.
Still... the big problem I see here is the violation of taking stuff away from me that I earned. That's my problem.
If the rep powers were just nerfed, I would not be this upset.
Well it's possible they could add at least 1 ground, 1 space, and 1 activateable reputation power slot to a new fleet holding store, like they did with the active space and ground duty officer slots making it so you can slot up to 6 doffs each for ground and space.
If they do that, or find some other way for us to obtain additional slots, it would make things a little nicer and a bit more flexible.
Personally I think we should get at least 5 slots for each; ground, space, and activateable tier 5 powers.
But at least for now it means I can skip powers completely of a tier that I find to be useless for a character instead of being forced to take 1, and take both powers in a tier of a different rep that suits my build better. It's much more flexible even with the limitation of 4 slots each.
Example: Both tier 4 nukara passives give you a boost to damage or damage resistance based on how high your auxiliary level is. I find this useless on characters that don't run high auxiliary but with the current system I have to choose 1 of them. With the new system I can skip both of them and take something else that works better for my toon.
Are everyone a bit stupid? you cant use all of them at the same time now only 50%
so it's not as a big loss.
+ the ones you get to use after will be more power full.
Or am I missing something?
You also need to include the change to the grind itself that makes it quicker.
This is actually a good time for the change as it happens right before they add the 5th grind, the one where it would make a difference.
If you make the enemies harder to kill, the only people who will make enough damage are those on top. Problem will still exist. New players will leave because of the difficulty level.
Elite is already super easy I just did an Elite STF on a brand new 50 and I was doing the most damage. Compared to other MMOS the Endgame missions are a joke. They are not chalanging and way to easy. I mean you can do them in Tier II ships and get the optional. I have not seen this in any other MMO.
Cant say what I really want to say so I'll settle for "Bugger off."
Really?!! Yea I get it's your sandbox (and your shovel) Cryptic. You can do whatever the he[[ you want too. Still I take a change like this personally and I damn sure don't think your little smoke and mirror game has me fooled for a moment.
Reputation is exactly that ... REPUTATION. It's earned and stays with you. For many of us it has been earned already. You shouldn't just come along and change the "impressions/benefits" our already earned reputation merits.
If you want to change the system going forward, fine, whatever, go right ahead ... but no, you want to change all the rules AFTER the work and time have been put in. That's BS.
Again I get it ... your sandbox, your shovel. Nice thing is it's my money and my choice. Frankly this little move just gives me reason to question why I'm spending my time here and how I won't be spending any money here.
With all do respect IMO you need to do a better job of balancing going forward, planning forward, implementing correctly up front. Seems to me lately you've been full of excuses for your changes, "things haven't worked out how we thought so we're changing Everything." That's bad vision and planning on your part, and the players shouldn't be punished for it.
Speak for yourself. You don't represent the majority of the long-term players. I am a long-term player, I have been playing this game since Jan. 2012, as a free player (bought the LTS in August of last year), and this change to the reputation system is a great and much-appreciated change.
You may feel that you have gotten "the fist, " but that's just you. Don't lump all the veterans of this game in the same boat as you.
No I do not represent the majority and a definatly was not refereeing to you the free to play player that started playing in 2012, but I was here when it was a sub and as one of those I must say that I was pretty pissed when they gave anyone that buys the lifetime sub instant access to all the vet rewards 100- 1000 day. Like they earned it, what a joke Now they want to add insult to injury and make it more pleasant for those of you that picked the wrong ability or haven't spent hours busting out the rep sytem. PLEASE you sound like you are one of those people that believe there are no winners or losers , What has happened to us ,that we need to give people that don't want to work for it the rewards. Get a sac and Grind the **** like we all have and do your research to find what abilities to use or not use and give us that have done the work a break
I stop reading about page 22 so I apologize in advance if anyone has come up with this solution.
Now, the idea has merits, but not the way it presently is presented to be changed is S9.
How about this:
1 Passive trait for both Ground and Space from each Rep, plus the Active Tier 5 once unlocked.
For EACH Rep, just have the current 2 Passives for Ground and Space, but make them scalable for what Tier of Rep you have, meaning each Tier increases it at an exponential percentile.
Plus with us only being able to select on of the two Passives per Rep means we still have to do all Rep if we want to have the maximum Passives available.
So say for example you have only 3 (of the current 4) Reps at any Tier, you could only have 3 Passives for Ground and Space each, plus any actives that you've reached to Tier 5.
Cant say what I really want to say so I'll settle for "Bugger off."
Really?!! Yea I get it's your sandbox (and your shovel) Cryptic. You can do whatever the he[[ you want too. Still I take a change like this personally and I damn sure don't see think your little smoke and mirror game has me fooled for a moment.
Reputation is exactly that ... REPUTATION. It's earned and stays with you. For many of us it has been earned already. You shouldn't just come along and change the "impressions/benefits" our already earned reputation merits.
If you want to change the system going forward, fine, whatever, go right ahead ... but no, you want to change all the rules AFTER the work and time have been put in. That's BS.
Again I get it ... your sandbox, your shovel. Nice thing is it's my money and my choice. Frankly this little move just gives me reason to question why I'm spending my time here and how I won't be spending any money here.
With all do respect IMO you need to do a better job of balancing going forward, planning forward, implementing correctly up front. Seems to me lately you've been full of excuses for your changes, "things haven't worked out how we thought so we're changing Everything." That's bad vision and planning on your part, and the players shouldn't be punished for it.
Heh. They finally make a change that is designed to better address "balancing going forward" and you take personal offense to it. They're doing exactly what you wanted them to do ... balance going forward. But you hate the change.
We spent several months putting Dillithium, Experience and EC into this freakin Reputation systems and now we are supposed to accept this?
WE PAID FOR THESE POWERS!
With our time and some even with their money.
Wouldn't it be fairer to...
a) make sure that Veteran Players won't be paired with Casual Players in STFs in the future.
b) let the enemy strength be determined by the whole Veteran group who is playing the STF?
No I do not represent the majority and a definatly was not refereeing to you the free to play player that started playing in 2012, but I was here when it was a sub and as one of those I must say that I was pretty pissed when they gave anyone that buys the lifetime sub instant access to all the vet rewards 100- 1000 day. Like they earned it, what a joke Now they want to add insult to injury and make it more pleasant for those of you that picked the wrong ability or haven't spent hours busting out the rep sytem. PLEASE you sound like you are one of those people that believe there are no winners or losers , What has happened to us ,that we need to give people that don't want to work for it the rewards. Get a sac and Grind the **** like we all have and do your research to find what abilities to use or not use and give us that have done the work a break
You don't like this change, that's fine, but guess what? it's happening anyway, like it or not. I'm going to accept the change, since I don't want to get all bent out of shape over something that isn't really all that important. It's a game, it's not a real thing.
Heh. They finally make a change that is designed to better address "balancing going forward" and you take personal offense to it. They're doing exactly what you wanted them to do ... balance going forward. But you hate the change.
That's awesome.
Their proposed changes should not affect present reputations powers or passives. Simple as that. That's done, long since earned and part of the past storyline.
Now you want any future Rep systems to follow the new 4/4/4 rules ... fine. Completely cool with that. But you want to let'em change the past while changing the future. I'm calling BS on that. New is new ... let it start from 1 and stop TRIBBLE over old systems because now they find they "don't work as intended."
Looking forward to Season 10 when Cryptic decides Fleet Credits aren't working as intended and do another TRIBBLE poor exchange rate conversion to some "better" fleet type currency because some how FCs are the next FoTM necessary fix. Bah!
I Agree
- Too much power creep is bad.
- Fewer but more meaningful choices is good.
The new Problem
Purely Horizontal character progression reduces desire to partake in the progression. This is a case of going from one extreme to the other extreme. Why did the Dyson rep take myself so little time to finish? Because out of all the reputations it had the fewest number of items I desired. If this revamp goes live exactly as it is I cannot think of a good reason to bother with any new reputation progression other than just to do it. There be no carrot.
Secondly the issue of new player vs old player has far less to do with the reputation system than it does with the wild variation of performance between a great build and a terrible build. It even has less of an impact I dare say than some of the Pay to Win Doffs, consoles, and ship options. So I just don't buy it.
I recommend a more balanced approach. Allow some power creep from completing a reputation but not too much. Perhaps make half of the gains be passives and fairly weak, with the other half stronger but with this new system and maybe only 2 or 3 selectable.
My Proposal
So for Romulan Reputation as an example. At tier 1 reward both Enhanced Personal Shields and Enhanced Shield Systems but instead of +30 only +15. Then at tier 2 reward the Emergency Secondary Healing and Reactive Shielding as options to slot. At tier 3 reward both Lethality and Precision possibly reducing to 2%. Finally at tier 4 reward the Sensor Targeting Assault and Disabling Strikes as options to slot.
This will allow you to have a better baseline for character performance and growth both offensively and defensively while still allowing a character to gain a small amount of power growth for progressing in the reputation. Additionally it makes the more 'interesting' traits the ones to be chosen from instead of the more passive mundane ones. Just my personal option.
Final Thoughts
I would be much more worried about the increased length of time and resources it now takes to progress from start to finish both for characters and fleets than this. Perhaps when a new reputation is released it would be a good idea to say decrease the amount of time/marks it takes to finish one of the older reputations? Ditto with fleets.
You don't like this change, that's fine, but guess what? it's happening anyway, like it or not. I'm going to accept the change, since I don't want to get all bent out of shape over something that isn't really all that important. It's a game, it's not a real thing.
I agree, problem as I see it though, Is I'm less likely to spend the time in game doing the next rep that comes along.
You know, as I think of it, maybe this is a blessing in disguise after all.
Now that I won't be participating as much in the rep system any longer, there will be less of a conflict with my fleet holdings participation.
tl;dr: Power creep is bad. New players being able to get on our level in a more reasonable time frame means more people to play with and have fun.
Thing is, all those people are "straw men".
It's pure fantasy to suddenly think that more players are going to arrive and continue playing because of a change in the end-game that they aren't even going to understand, one of many complex systems this game has.
It's also pure folly to think that people get up to level 50 and then go "oh, I quit because that other guy can do a mission much faster than I can". The only thing this does is make PvP more accessible to them, which could be done without touching the PvE game by adding PvP modifiers. When you enter PvP, dial some players up, dial some down.
What this is going to do is make average players just not bother with doing more than a couple of trees of reputation. What's the point of doing a tree if you already have your slots filled, and don't really need another 3-5pc set only good in specific circumstances. At least in the existing system, you earn something that doesn't take further maintenance, isn't another thing that you don't have to remember to turn on and off, and gives you a sense of progression.
To think this is going to increase players when in fact it's going to do quite the opposite is just not thinking this through. If there is no reason to spend time on new reps, people aren't going to do it - we'll log in every few months when a new episode arrives, play it through, and then be back again in a couple of months. At least reputation gives repeatable content with progression and benefits to doing it. And very few are going to do an entire rep tree just to get one "good" power they want which they will have to take away another one to get.
Well they could have introduced the so called "nightmare-mode" for STFs or they could have nerved the players's damage and defense potential. The option they have chosen shouldn't surprise anyone really.
We spent several months putting Dillithium, Experience and EC into this freakin Reputation systems and now we are supposed to accept this?
WE PAID FOR THESE POWERS!
With our time and some even with their money.
Wouldn't it be fairer to...
a) make sure that Veteran Players won't be paired with Casual Players in STFs in the future.
b) let the enemy strength be determined by the whole Veteran group who is playing the STF?
Same goes for PVP.
That has to be possible!
Not only is this not possilbe in anyway, at least not in a way that is fair, but this is one of the single greatest balance passes i have seen in this game, AND THERE ARE PEOPLE COMPLAINING ABOUT IT!!! REALLY!!!!
To Cryptic: I have no idea what happened that caused you to grow common sense, BUT THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU1
Yeah but the Dyson rep didn't take nearly as long as the older reps and having a toon sponsored in it made it take half the time for even less grind. Now all the reps are going to be like that. Less grind and costs overall since the costs for the XP projects will stay exactly the same at each tier.
Currently with the 3 older reps, even with a toon sponsored it's time consuming and costly because the XP projects still increase in marks and other costs each tier. So it takes the same amount of time to grind out all those marks whether you're sponsored or not. The difference is the amount of XP you get at each tier is doubled.
So grind out a single toon in all reps for a lot less time than the old system, get sponsorship tokens for each rep for a new toon, then take half the time for the new toon. You can have your alts maxed in each rep in a couple weeks or so instead of a month or more. And if you have a single toon maxed in all reps already then you only have to worry about grinding out new reps for sponsorship tokens.
Edit: To be perfectly honest I never liked the idea of the XP projects for reputation increasing in costs and commodities, etc., because they give the same exact amount of XP no matter what tier you're working on. Having a flat cost across the board makes things much easier. I would have been fine with them costing commodities and hypos/shield charges/power cells since the amount wouldn't go up. But what they're doing is much better.
except, as i stated before, cryptic is adding more of a grind to the reputation system. they are doing away with the commendations and the ability to do unlimited hourlies like you could in the dyson rep so, no the new rep systems will not be faster. knowing cryptic they will now take longer.
Well it's possible they could add at least 1 ground, 1 space, and 1 activateable reputation power slot to a new fleet holding store, like they did with the active space and ground duty officer slots making it so you can slot up to 6 doffs each for ground and space.
If they do that, or find some other way for us to obtain additional slots, it would make things a little nicer and a bit more flexible.
Personally I think we should get at least 5 slots for each; ground, space, and activateable tier 5 powers.
But at least for now it means I can skip powers completely of a tier that I find to be useless for a character instead of being forced to take 1, and take both powers in a tier of a different rep that suits my build better. It's much more flexible even with the limitation of 4 slots each.
Example: Both tier 4 nukara passives give you a boost to damage or damage resistance based on how high your auxiliary level is. I find this useless on characters that don't run high auxiliary but with the current system I have to choose 1 of them. With the new system I can skip both of them and take something else that works better for my toon.
In your example you still have to grind to t5 for the passive even if you dont want to use any of previous t1-4 powers of that rep. same is true if you want a set from a particular rep since the pieces will be split up between the tiers.
What I am referring to is as I am tiering up I choose from the list, not the 2 you have decided to gate at that tier.
As it stands now, I am slowly tiering up the nukara rep, but with this change you have made me not want to touch the reps any more as its time/cost prohibitive for what is essentially very little payout (as far as powers go, as I can only USE a grand total of 12)
it won't cost nearly as much as it did come S9 so why not wait and finish it then then you can't complain that it "cost" so much.
I really think people are not getting how this can be a good thing although it will take a lil time to figure what is good for each character, I myself was kinda hesitant when I first read this but after thinking about it I was like this won't be so bad it I do it right.
You don't like this change, that's fine, but guess what? it's happening anyway, like it or not. I'm going to accept the change, since I don't want to get all bent out of shape over something that isn't really all that important. It's a game, it's not a real thing.
Well, yes, it will happen. Probably. The only thing left to do is decide whether it's something you can stomach or not.
Someone said earlier "kudos" to those that quit earlier when they knew worse was coming. Well, yeah, it's just a game, not a real thing, and if it feels like you're getting screwed in it.... why put up with it anyway right?
Are everyone a bit stupid? you cant use all of them at the same time now only 50%
so it's not as a big loss.
+ the ones you get to use after will be more power full.
Or am I missing something?
As I wrote earlier, with the buffs that BOTH offensive and defensive Reputation passives get, it is a pretty much 'No Brain' Choice. You get 4 Space, 4 Ground Passive slots. Tier 1 and Tier 2 of each current existing Rep line is a straight up bonus to Damage (Crit Chance, Crit Damage, Shield Bleedthrough, flat out base damage bonus). So unless you want to grind more, for higher tiers, there is no reason to go above T2 unlocked. 6 Days without the 'fast' Project or a Sponsorship in the future, to get the best picks for all 4 slots.
The only way that defensive traits would now ever be taken again would be if the buffed values would be doubled AGAIN, while the current offensive passive should stay as they are NOW, before the buff. Only then might the 'Defensive' passives actually be a valid choice.
The Health/Hull Bonus on Nukara? Not worth it. Damage Reduction RATINGS? Nope. Since 'Rating' usually turns out significantly lower. Dyson T3/T4? The Defensive ones, in this case, were actually the better choices, for once, since the 'Scaling Defense Debuff' usually only applied when the fight was more or less decided anyway (aka already at 50% Hull/Health, Shield down, so 1-2 volleys from death). And so on.
Plus there is the valid concern that there WILL be a way to add additional passive slots via Unlock/Purchase in future Fleet Holdings. For example, how about an 'Undine Gene Forge' Holding. Tier 1: Update Project, 500k Dil (plus other assets), 1 Additional 'Clickie' power slot purchaseable.
Tier 2: Update Project, 750k Dil, 1 Additional 'Ground' passive slot.
Tier 3, 1 Mill Dil, 1 Additional 'Space' passive slot.
Keep in mind that, while one CAN grind and refine it, at the end of the day, Dilithium equals MONEY. The numbers I listed are just rough values taken from various Holding Upgrades, mind you. Still, if one would take the numbers I listed there, the ZEN Value would be, when one transferred Zen to Dil via Exchange, 17442 Zen.
I Agree
- Too much power creep is bad.
- Fewer but more meaningful choices is good.
The new Problem
Purely Horizontal character progression reduces desire to partake in the progression. This is a case of going from one extreme to the other extreme. Why did the Dyson rep take myself so little time to finish? Because out of all the reputations it had the fewest number of items I desired. If this revamp goes live exactly as it is I cannot think of a good reason to bother with any new reputation progression other than just to do it. There be no carrot.
Secondly the issue of new player vs old player has far less to do with the reputation system than it does with the wild variation of performance between a great build and a terrible build. It even has less of an impact I dare say than some of the Pay to Win Doffs, consoles, and ship options. So I just don't buy it.
I recommend a more balanced approach. Allow some power creep from completing a reputation but not too much. Perhaps make half of the gains be passives and fairly weak, with the other half stronger but with this new system and maybe only 2 or 3 selectable.
My Proposal
So for Romulan Reputation as an example. At tier 1 reward both Enhanced Personal Shields and Enhanced Shield Systems but instead of +30 only +15. Then at tier 2 reward the Emergency Secondary Healing and Reactive Shielding as options to slot. At tier 3 reward both Lethality and Precision possibly reducing to 2%. Finally at tier 4 reward the Sensor Targeting Assault and Disabling Strikes as options to slot.
This will allow you to have a better baseline for character performance and growth both offensively and defensively while still allowing a character to gain a small amount of power growth for progressing in the reputation. Additionally it makes the more 'interesting' traits the ones to be chosen from instead of the more passive mundane ones. Just my personal option.
Final Thoughts
I would be much more worried about the increased length of time and resources it now takes to progress from start to finish both for characters and fleets than this. Perhaps when a new reputation is released it would be a good idea to say decrease the amount of time/marks it takes to finish one of the older reputations? Ditto with fleets.
Problem is, its not the reputation passives that cause the power creep. Its the super expensive doffs, lockbox ships and min max builds vs new player not even knowing what build to use.
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
Please people this is not a big alteration at all.
The more I think of it the better it's looking to me smart I say.
And for you ppl saying "I fell robed been grinding out the rep system
and can now only have 4" Your so wrong the way it is now you only get 50% of them
and need to pay to swap powers.
New way get access to 100% of the only dif that you can only slot 4-4-4
at a time but you can swap powers for free when ever you want.
PS both you and me know you would have been grinding out them rep levels
no mater what so stop ******** :P
YES! I don't have to do reputation ever again! Never! It won't ever matter because they've just nurfed the TRIBBLE out of 2/3 of the classes I play! This is going to be a huge time saver.... now to nurf the rewards from the grinding missions and my STO time will become next-to-nothing as there's no actual fun content to play.
And to think, I was planning on doing reputation things because it'd be useful.... silly me.
Seriously.... it's just a thing to make the PvP people who can't kill a powerful tac who can tank happy... Or be annoyed that they can't take out a sci/eng without effort. It doesn't take long to get a char's reputation up--saying "a month is too long to do reputation" kind of makes the whole idea of "spending a month grinding for events" also seem like too long of a time.
It's just a way to annoy the players.... but seriously, I'm not even going to bother with reputation now.
They just added two new PVP functions onto Tribble a few minutes ago: its all Cross-faction and an option for No-Teams.
This change smells like the first stage in the rumored PVP revamp. Just saying.
That said, those who feel like its a slap in the face: You still have all your powers, you're just limited in how many of those passives you can have. I do agree that 4 for ground and Space is too low. Make it 8/8 and make us choose from here on out if we want to keep old passives or choose new ones.
Comments
i'll be enjoying myself in Elder Scrolls Online ^^
suppose i'll come back during the summer event (maybe stop by for first contact day)
seriously, the amount of nerfing and uneeded changes to mechanics is starting to push me away from the game
i worked hard, put a lot of hours into the game to gain those rep passives and active abilities, and now i'm being forced to choose between them as if all that work was for nothing
i did the work cryptic, i should be able to use all of my abilities
As far as I know, most missions give the same amount of marks to everyone.
In reality though, the reputation system has very little do with the problems you are bringing up. I know it suck being the new guy starting out in a field of vets. I was there too. Thrust is, there is a lot of free advice out there which will get you dishing out the deeps in no time. Most of your issues are
A. lack of experience (no offense intended, it just takes some practice to know when to use certain powers and looking for certain visual ques.)
B. You ship build. This is easily 75-90% of your character (in space I mean, you mentioned hundreds of thousands of damage, so I assume you don't mean ground :P )
Rep powers are handy, but certainly not the biggest source of power for a character. Doubling their effectiveness though, that might make it worse.
Most of us are just angry that most of what we have worked hard for is now moot.
I can see your point on spending $... but you have to think it has no value at all. We are buying pixels not advantages in a game.
I look at everything I buy in any MMO as being something that can be changed at any time. Its not real, it keeps me from getting upset by change. Cause every developer changes things... or makes things cheaper later or gives you a way to earn it in game ect. You can't sweat that stuff in these things. Yes I still buy things in MMOs though... I judge things by did I have enough fun with it to justify the $ value... if I buy something and they completely change it a day later perhaps I would be annoyed... but valdor got left in its op state for way longer then I would have bet.
The valdore console I think everyone saw that coming the day it was released. Frankly its still to powerful isn't it ?
The way I see it if I know something is to good... I don't expect it to NOT get corrected at some point.
The nukura rep isn't really wasted time either. You still have it unlocked You may choose to not trait those passives ever... or you may trait them in specific instances. We got load out swapping recently... perhaps at some point you will have a carrier or science ship on that toon... and you will want to swap in the Nukura Aux powered passives. New system you can use all of it I have no doubt on some ship setup.
Ah, but there's the rub. To make a Borg ship "harder" to kill keeps widening the gap between a new level 50 and one that has been geared. Add a reputation, bump up the power level... add another rep, bump it up.... At some point new players would never be able to catch up enough participate. Scaling the "bad guys" is not going to solve the problem of power creep. It would be a band-aid at best. Curbing player power is the more drastic, but probably best solution overall. Then, after that has been stabilized, then look to scale the encounters better. But they won't have to scale it much or as often as your solution.
The solution is going to be hard for players to swallow because we are probably operating at a level that is "too powerful." If this is the first step in curbing power creep then we are in for even bigger changes later on, and they will probably be harder to accept than this.
LOL, you made me laugh ! THANK YOU !
It's been an amazingly difficult day. I needed that.
Traits swappable outside of combat? Excellent and helps my science and engineer toons when they want to change roles for a few fights.
Not so sure about the T4 Romulan replacement for the placate. Sure it'll be less annoying than losing you're target lock every few seconds, but a 4 second weapon disable feels like it'll be almost as bad (especially vs a team of FAWers). It'll be like a phaser proc, but without phasers. Any chance you can make it 1-2 seconds for players?
For the most part, I'm all for the change to be honest.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Well it's possible they could add at least 1 ground, 1 space, and 1 activateable reputation power slot to a new fleet holding store, like they did with the active space and ground duty officer slots making it so you can slot up to 6 doffs each for ground and space.
If they do that, or find some other way for us to obtain additional slots, it would make things a little nicer and a bit more flexible.
Personally I think we should get at least 5 slots for each; ground, space, and activateable tier 5 powers.
But at least for now it means I can skip powers completely of a tier that I find to be useless for a character instead of being forced to take 1, and take both powers in a tier of a different rep that suits my build better. It's much more flexible even with the limitation of 4 slots each.
Example: Both tier 4 nukara passives give you a boost to damage or damage resistance based on how high your auxiliary level is. I find this useless on characters that don't run high auxiliary but with the current system I have to choose 1 of them. With the new system I can skip both of them and take something else that works better for my toon.
You also need to include the change to the grind itself that makes it quicker.
This is actually a good time for the change as it happens right before they add the 5th grind, the one where it would make a difference.
And all future grinds.
Elite is already super easy I just did an Elite STF on a brand new 50 and I was doing the most damage. Compared to other MMOS the Endgame missions are a joke. They are not chalanging and way to easy. I mean you can do them in Tier II ships and get the optional. I have not seen this in any other MMO.
That is all I am getting.
Really?!! Yea I get it's your sandbox (and your shovel) Cryptic. You can do whatever the he[[ you want too. Still I take a change like this personally and I damn sure don't think your little smoke and mirror game has me fooled for a moment.
Reputation is exactly that ... REPUTATION. It's earned and stays with you. For many of us it has been earned already. You shouldn't just come along and change the "impressions/benefits" our already earned reputation merits.
If you want to change the system going forward, fine, whatever, go right ahead ... but no, you want to change all the rules AFTER the work and time have been put in. That's BS.
Again I get it ... your sandbox, your shovel. Nice thing is it's my money and my choice. Frankly this little move just gives me reason to question why I'm spending my time here and how I won't be spending any money here.
With all do respect IMO you need to do a better job of balancing going forward, planning forward, implementing correctly up front. Seems to me lately you've been full of excuses for your changes, "things haven't worked out how we thought so we're changing Everything." That's bad vision and planning on your part, and the players shouldn't be punished for it.
No I do not represent the majority and a definatly was not refereeing to you the free to play player that started playing in 2012, but I was here when it was a sub and as one of those I must say that I was pretty pissed when they gave anyone that buys the lifetime sub instant access to all the vet rewards 100- 1000 day. Like they earned it, what a joke Now they want to add insult to injury and make it more pleasant for those of you that picked the wrong ability or haven't spent hours busting out the rep sytem. PLEASE you sound like you are one of those people that believe there are no winners or losers , What has happened to us ,that we need to give people that don't want to work for it the rewards. Get a sac and Grind the **** like we all have and do your research to find what abilities to use or not use and give us that have done the work a break
Now, the idea has merits, but not the way it presently is presented to be changed is S9.
How about this:
1 Passive trait for both Ground and Space from each Rep, plus the Active Tier 5 once unlocked.
For EACH Rep, just have the current 2 Passives for Ground and Space, but make them scalable for what Tier of Rep you have, meaning each Tier increases it at an exponential percentile.
Plus with us only being able to select on of the two Passives per Rep means we still have to do all Rep if we want to have the maximum Passives available.
So say for example you have only 3 (of the current 4) Reps at any Tier, you could only have 3 Passives for Ground and Space each, plus any actives that you've reached to Tier 5.
Heh. They finally make a change that is designed to better address "balancing going forward" and you take personal offense to it. They're doing exactly what you wanted them to do ... balance going forward. But you hate the change.
That's awesome.
We spent several months putting Dillithium, Experience and EC into this freakin Reputation systems and now we are supposed to accept this?
WE PAID FOR THESE POWERS!
With our time and some even with their money.
Wouldn't it be fairer to...
a) make sure that Veteran Players won't be paired with Casual Players in STFs in the future.
b) let the enemy strength be determined by the whole Veteran group who is playing the STF?
Same goes for PVP.
That has to be possible!
Their proposed changes should not affect present reputations powers or passives. Simple as that. That's done, long since earned and part of the past storyline.
Now you want any future Rep systems to follow the new 4/4/4 rules ... fine. Completely cool with that. But you want to let'em change the past while changing the future. I'm calling BS on that. New is new ... let it start from 1 and stop TRIBBLE over old systems because now they find they "don't work as intended."
Looking forward to Season 10 when Cryptic decides Fleet Credits aren't working as intended and do another TRIBBLE poor exchange rate conversion to some "better" fleet type currency because some how FCs are the next FoTM necessary fix. Bah!
- Too much power creep is bad.
- Fewer but more meaningful choices is good.
The new Problem
Purely Horizontal character progression reduces desire to partake in the progression. This is a case of going from one extreme to the other extreme. Why did the Dyson rep take myself so little time to finish? Because out of all the reputations it had the fewest number of items I desired. If this revamp goes live exactly as it is I cannot think of a good reason to bother with any new reputation progression other than just to do it. There be no carrot.
Secondly the issue of new player vs old player has far less to do with the reputation system than it does with the wild variation of performance between a great build and a terrible build. It even has less of an impact I dare say than some of the Pay to Win Doffs, consoles, and ship options. So I just don't buy it.
I recommend a more balanced approach. Allow some power creep from completing a reputation but not too much. Perhaps make half of the gains be passives and fairly weak, with the other half stronger but with this new system and maybe only 2 or 3 selectable.
My Proposal
So for Romulan Reputation as an example. At tier 1 reward both Enhanced Personal Shields and Enhanced Shield Systems but instead of +30 only +15. Then at tier 2 reward the Emergency Secondary Healing and Reactive Shielding as options to slot. At tier 3 reward both Lethality and Precision possibly reducing to 2%. Finally at tier 4 reward the Sensor Targeting Assault and Disabling Strikes as options to slot.
This will allow you to have a better baseline for character performance and growth both offensively and defensively while still allowing a character to gain a small amount of power growth for progressing in the reputation. Additionally it makes the more 'interesting' traits the ones to be chosen from instead of the more passive mundane ones. Just my personal option.
Final Thoughts
I would be much more worried about the increased length of time and resources it now takes to progress from start to finish both for characters and fleets than this. Perhaps when a new reputation is released it would be a good idea to say decrease the amount of time/marks it takes to finish one of the older reputations? Ditto with fleets.
I agree, problem as I see it though, Is I'm less likely to spend the time in game doing the next rep that comes along.
You know, as I think of it, maybe this is a blessing in disguise after all.
Now that I won't be participating as much in the rep system any longer, there will be less of a conflict with my fleet holdings participation.
Thing is, all those people are "straw men".
It's pure fantasy to suddenly think that more players are going to arrive and continue playing because of a change in the end-game that they aren't even going to understand, one of many complex systems this game has.
It's also pure folly to think that people get up to level 50 and then go "oh, I quit because that other guy can do a mission much faster than I can". The only thing this does is make PvP more accessible to them, which could be done without touching the PvE game by adding PvP modifiers. When you enter PvP, dial some players up, dial some down.
What this is going to do is make average players just not bother with doing more than a couple of trees of reputation. What's the point of doing a tree if you already have your slots filled, and don't really need another 3-5pc set only good in specific circumstances. At least in the existing system, you earn something that doesn't take further maintenance, isn't another thing that you don't have to remember to turn on and off, and gives you a sense of progression.
To think this is going to increase players when in fact it's going to do quite the opposite is just not thinking this through. If there is no reason to spend time on new reps, people aren't going to do it - we'll log in every few months when a new episode arrives, play it through, and then be back again in a couple of months. At least reputation gives repeatable content with progression and benefits to doing it. And very few are going to do an entire rep tree just to get one "good" power they want which they will have to take away another one to get.
Not only is this not possilbe in anyway, at least not in a way that is fair, but this is one of the single greatest balance passes i have seen in this game, AND THERE ARE PEOPLE COMPLAINING ABOUT IT!!! REALLY!!!!
To Cryptic: I have no idea what happened that caused you to grow common sense, BUT THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU1
except, as i stated before, cryptic is adding more of a grind to the reputation system. they are doing away with the commendations and the ability to do unlimited hourlies like you could in the dyson rep so, no the new rep systems will not be faster. knowing cryptic they will now take longer.
In your example you still have to grind to t5 for the passive even if you dont want to use any of previous t1-4 powers of that rep. same is true if you want a set from a particular rep since the pieces will be split up between the tiers.
it won't cost nearly as much as it did come S9 so why not wait and finish it then then you can't complain that it "cost" so much.
I really think people are not getting how this can be a good thing although it will take a lil time to figure what is good for each character, I myself was kinda hesitant when I first read this but after thinking about it I was like this won't be so bad it I do it right.
Well, yes, it will happen. Probably. The only thing left to do is decide whether it's something you can stomach or not.
Someone said earlier "kudos" to those that quit earlier when they knew worse was coming. Well, yeah, it's just a game, not a real thing, and if it feels like you're getting screwed in it.... why put up with it anyway right?
As I wrote earlier, with the buffs that BOTH offensive and defensive Reputation passives get, it is a pretty much 'No Brain' Choice. You get 4 Space, 4 Ground Passive slots. Tier 1 and Tier 2 of each current existing Rep line is a straight up bonus to Damage (Crit Chance, Crit Damage, Shield Bleedthrough, flat out base damage bonus). So unless you want to grind more, for higher tiers, there is no reason to go above T2 unlocked. 6 Days without the 'fast' Project or a Sponsorship in the future, to get the best picks for all 4 slots.
The only way that defensive traits would now ever be taken again would be if the buffed values would be doubled AGAIN, while the current offensive passive should stay as they are NOW, before the buff. Only then might the 'Defensive' passives actually be a valid choice.
The Health/Hull Bonus on Nukara? Not worth it. Damage Reduction RATINGS? Nope. Since 'Rating' usually turns out significantly lower. Dyson T3/T4? The Defensive ones, in this case, were actually the better choices, for once, since the 'Scaling Defense Debuff' usually only applied when the fight was more or less decided anyway (aka already at 50% Hull/Health, Shield down, so 1-2 volleys from death). And so on.
Plus there is the valid concern that there WILL be a way to add additional passive slots via Unlock/Purchase in future Fleet Holdings. For example, how about an 'Undine Gene Forge' Holding. Tier 1: Update Project, 500k Dil (plus other assets), 1 Additional 'Clickie' power slot purchaseable.
Tier 2: Update Project, 750k Dil, 1 Additional 'Ground' passive slot.
Tier 3, 1 Mill Dil, 1 Additional 'Space' passive slot.
Keep in mind that, while one CAN grind and refine it, at the end of the day, Dilithium equals MONEY. The numbers I listed are just rough values taken from various Holding Upgrades, mind you. Still, if one would take the numbers I listed there, the ZEN Value would be, when one transferred Zen to Dil via Exchange, 17442 Zen.
Problem is, its not the reputation passives that cause the power creep. Its the super expensive doffs, lockbox ships and min max builds vs new player not even knowing what build to use.
Please people this is not a big alteration at all.
The more I think of it the better it's looking to me smart I say.
And for you ppl saying "I fell robed been grinding out the rep system
and can now only have 4" Your so wrong the way it is now you only get 50% of them
and need to pay to swap powers.
New way get access to 100% of the only dif that you can only slot 4-4-4
at a time but you can swap powers for free when ever you want.
PS both you and me know you would have been grinding out them rep levels
no mater what so stop ******** :P
And to think, I was planning on doing reputation things because it'd be useful.... silly me.
Seriously.... it's just a thing to make the PvP people who can't kill a powerful tac who can tank happy... Or be annoyed that they can't take out a sci/eng without effort. It doesn't take long to get a char's reputation up--saying "a month is too long to do reputation" kind of makes the whole idea of "spending a month grinding for events" also seem like too long of a time.
It's just a way to annoy the players.... but seriously, I'm not even going to bother with reputation now.
They just added two new PVP functions onto Tribble a few minutes ago: its all Cross-faction and an option for No-Teams.
This change smells like the first stage in the rumored PVP revamp. Just saying.
That said, those who feel like its a slap in the face: You still have all your powers, you're just limited in how many of those passives you can have. I do agree that 4 for ground and Space is too low. Make it 8/8 and make us choose from here on out if we want to keep old passives or choose new ones.
TRIBBLE Hydra! Hail Janeway!