This is all really good feedback, and we're happy to look at any Reputation Trait that feels underwhelming in the new system and make sure it's up to snuff. We want them all to feel really potent.
I don't think increasing the number of slots really meets the system revamp's goal of containing power creep or making Reputation trait choices more interesting and fulfilling to make, but as I think I wrote in the blog, everything is still up for discussion pending playtest feedback on Tribble.
Jeff--may I call you Jeff?--while I really, sincerely appreciate the sentiment and the attempts to halt power creep, there are a few issues with the changes outlined in the blog.
First and foremost, the changes would increase the value of min-maxing builds as opposed to playing smart.
This is a huge, critical, glaring flaw. It'll be great for my Rommie, who will be able to solo entire teams of opponents in PVP with the appropriate rep traits slotted, but...that's not a good thing.
I don't WANT to be able to solo ISE in 30 seconds or single-handedly wipe entire teams in PVP. I want to work as a team with other players, cooperating and playing smart instead of mashing buttons wildly. If I can solo any STF or non-1v1 PVP match in my T'varo, then this is not a halt to power creep. If I can min-max my scimitar to make it completely invincible AND able to instakill anything in the game, the game is no longer fun.
I prefer the system as-is because it provides a set of buffs that reward dedicated players without giving anyone the power to single-handedly beat elite Borg STFs. The new version makes it hypothetically possible to solo ISE, if you min-max a scimmy or fleet Dhelan right. And then to respec rep traits and go 3-man Infected ground elite, if you have the right gear.
This is bad. Like most Trekkies, I love challenges. I THRIVE on challenges. To me, the rewards earned by figuring out the best strategies and tactics to take down a ridiculously OP boss monster are by far the sweetest. Not the rewards earned by min-maxing my gear to a stupid extent and running in pushing buttons.
It's all fun games until everything comes crashing down... I'll see what happens.:cool:
The dress is gold and white. Over 70% people says so. When viewed from a certain screen angle it appears blue and black. The dress displayed on amazon is a blue and black dress, but it's not the same dress in the picture. If you're seeing blue & black you're slightly colored blind. A normal upright screen = white and gold.
I think its really hard to judge the impact of these changes until we have chance to use them on tribble. On first glance I was fuming but after reading this entire blog and Hawk's remarks, I think this might actually be a great change.
You can swap these powers at anytime, out of combat, without paying, and basically have stronger stats for the ones you choose. I think when you combine this with the other changes being tested with various enemies being improved, the upcoming changes to the rep systems and the associated gear, and kit powers revamp, there is going to be much to consider and other ways to balance your character. We also know that a revamp of the Doff system will be coming at some point too.
I think all in all its a good thing and we should reserve judgement until the system can be fully vetted. Hawk said they are open to changes and tweaks where needed. I'm ready for this game to get back to providing challenging content and not just repetition and I think balancing out the skills is the first step.
I think when you combine these changes with all of the great new makeovers on the old content and the Undine as well as ESD this is shaping up to be a great season release. Stephen D and the whole team are really doing a superb job on improving the "quality of life" things in the game. I think balance has a long way to go but this is a good start.
Gold Sub since March 2010
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
I spent over a year getting my reps to tier 4 and tier 5 on my character and now I'm going to be limited in which ones I can and can't use!? OVER A YEAR! Cryptic is again taking the lazy way out instead of building options into pvp that could potentially limit number of passives used or universal consoles used. It's also another blatant cash grab because we all know Cryptic will eventually offer +1 slots through fleet holdings. Pathetic.
OK and? All that means is that you personally are ok with the fact you are giving up that work you did, good for you(not sarcasm)
Great... Another person with both Temporal Consoles XD something I have been trying to get XD. No sir, I am not begrudging you, in fact I have nothing but respect for you, since you have kept a very calm attitude with me, and I apologize if I had been rude at all, it is just I have been trying to get the Mobius console myself
You might not be, but other are which is probably why this is happening, or at least PART of the reason why
I don't mind giving things up if it is for the good of the game honestly. I also don't really look at as giving them up. I still have them all unlocked and because I fly so many different ships I can think of times where I might slot almost all of the options... so having them unlocked isn't really a bad thing.
The temp consoles are over rated. I know easy to say when you have some TIF. I honestly used the 2 piece for a short while and then decided I didn't like having to run the manhim console which is just unusable really.
Honestly I play mainly to PvP... and I have always looked at all the PvE as just a means to get my ships ready to go... having said that I don't not enjoy the PvE and I will admit at times I just want to play a trek game.
In any event as a PvP guy I can argue hard so you probaly only slighly mis read me if you did at all... I can be more "aggressive" then I ought to be at times.
I don't think this is happening due to any player wine though to be honest... if that was the case I think they would have been changing things that where on more top 5 broken things lists.
After looking at what they are doing and thinking about it a bit this afternoon though I think I see where they are coming from.
I guess we will see now if they stick with 4 back track to 8 or 6... I am sure they won't budge on the cap going forward though.
I finally figured out how to get thing changed in game by Cryptic. First you need to post in the PvP forums then say it is totally OP how it needs to be nerfed. After you post that you haveto rage about it over and over and complain about how unbalanced it makes the game. Oh and dont forget to glorify yourself to say how much you test for Cryptic because the PvP player are the only people on earth who are able to do that and everyone else that tests is inferior. Then theres more whining, moaning, crying, and raging. Throw in the huge mass posts from the 1-2% of the player base to add to the complaining and crying about balancing and nerfing and finally guess what the nerf hammer falls and the rest of the player base suffers for the minority. Honestly I hope the companies trent continues and no new PvP maps ever get released or updates and more and more P2W console just keep flooding the game. Why do I feel this way I would rather see Cryptic make money and the game to live on then to cater to a very small minority of players who pay close to nothing and cry about everything. I truely hope all these new game changes ruin all the cookie cutter builds out there and pre-made teams. Thank you Cryptic hahahaha.
Honestly this change isn't some Unique Cryptic idea... pretty much every MMO with a trait system (and even other Video games in general) limits the amount you can slot at one time. They limit them 2 give players build opitons. (they could never release 100 traits with out a limit)... they also do limit creep by allowing them to do new content with new rewards constantly that don't effect overall balance points.
It's only a trait system because they ret-conned it into their new scheme. As it was originally designed, it was more akin to EQ's AA points: stuff to do after you're max level. And given the obscene grind requirements the rewards have to be good enough to be attractive.
I think its really hard to judge the impact of these changes until we have chance to use them on tribble. On first glance I was fuming but after reading this entire blog and Hawk's remarks, I think this might actually be a great change.
You can swap these powers at anytime, out of combat, without paying, and basically have stronger stats for the ones you choose. I think when you combine this with the other changes being tested with various enemies being improved, the upcoming changes to the rep systems and the associated gear, and kit powers revamp, there is going to be much to consider and other ways to balance your character. We also know that a revamp of the Doff system will be coming at some point too.
I think all in all its a good thing and we should reserve judgement until the system can be fully vetted. Hawk said they are open to changes and tweaks where needed. I'm ready for this game to get back to providing challenging content and not just repetition and I think balancing out the skills is the first step.
I think when you combine these changes with all of the great new makeovers on the old content and the Undine as well as ESD this is shaping up to be a great season release. Stephen D and the whole team are really doing a superb job on improving the "quality of life" things in the game. I think balance has a long way to go but this is a good start.
Know how many times I've respec'd my reputations? 0. None. Not once. Why? Because I don't want the other types on certain characters. My healing characters don't need crit change or anything for more powerful attacks---when I need to survive and attack. I want to attack and have powerful hits? I'll use a tac.
How many times, when you have an Omega/Maco set, did you think "wow, I really should've gone with the borg adapt slower instead?"
Know what's going to happen? People are going to talk, and everyone's going to have very similar/identicle specs for all the choices at all times.... just like now.
Didn't Cryptic say the pvp in this game was negligible? So why should Cryptic care if the rep powers are making pvp unbalanced? If you care so much, why haven't you fixed the aux to battery technician spam nonsense we have going on in this game? Why are the team abilities not on a global cooldown anymore since this now favors the big battle cruisers like the scimitar and disfavors science builds?
I agree this is only one change that is pretty much needed to bring things into a better state of balance. No game can be perfectly balanced. Your right though most people can agree on a list of stuff that is obviously to powerful.
I know "all passives on all the time" wasn't on many people list.
I think if you follow the thought out though you can see how it WILL be a major issue going forward.
Right now I think we where right on the edge. 4 Full reps with 8 passives was/is very very powerful. There is also no real choices. Yes you choose one of the other all the time but people in general just took what was accepted to be the best of the 2 options.
Cryptic has even been selling respecs on Rep powers... I think its clear them dropping the idea of charging for that is them admitting that they didn't really make much money off that idea.
Is 4 to low... I don't know perhaps... I think they want to reduce current levels somewhat though and so a reduction to 4 makes sense there. However with the buff to some of the traits yes it can be seen as a buff for specific builds .... sort of. Truth is its a buff to one aspect of those builds. In that regard I think they want to make it more attractive to swap traits around... and there for make it more attractive to unlock new ones.
Honestly this change isn't some Unique Cryptic idea... pretty much every MMO with a trait system (and even other Video games in general) limits the amount you can slot at one time. They limit them 2 give players build opitons. (they could never release 100 traits with out a limit)... they also do limit creep by allowing them to do new content with new rewards constantly that don't effect overall balance points.
Here is a link to the LOTRO system... I point it out because I think its a pretty standard MMO example and its well described. All these games have something similer though... the names change and the ideas blend between skill trees / skill traits / passive bonuses / Reputation skills / Virtues / Racial traits / skill customization.... ect ect it all blends but most games have 2-3 different stat options you can tailor on a toon... the names change the ideas are all the same... and the only thing common is that you always have a Limited amount of space to slot them or a limited amount of points to spend on them. I can't think of any other MMO where you can just keep stacking as you unlock new stuff.
http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Traits (one of my all time fav MMOs... Race Class and Virtue traits... unlocked through deeds and had a limited number of each slottable)
i see and respect your point, in fact something in your post said to me: "maybe this is not bad at all", stil there is this in my mind:
pwe/cryp started the rep system, it was perfectly clear that it will not only be omega rep. S7 with new romulus gave us rom rep and suddenly nukara rep...now dyson rep...and it will be undine rep...
stacking all up was their idea, we/me get to use the best of it. for my part: i'm used to have all the passives working in order to make some ships worth while (like Intrepid, Wells, Nebula). Now we have to suffer from their fault. I'm still convinced bringing back the omega shop on Ds9 would be the best way -but that would be difficult^^ -
.
Making a assimilated gear in Mk X, XI and XII + assimilated set was a very bad step.
now pwe trys to limit the dmg (haha in both ways) by restricting the players to only certain rep powers.... that is a step in the wrong direction...
instead of this AND bringing up a new rep system they should concider going an other way for new content.
tbh, undine rep will suck like hell. f.e. i like the dyson gear, but i still keep my adapted maco, i may not the only one thinking this way.
i think pwe/cryp is playing a very bad Bull****-game with the players: for one reason they want money, revamp hole species, low-level-missions - both will be soon forgotten - but the real bugs and problems stay the way they are...there are no power creep problems and no problems with OP ships. Still people belive they can enter a PVP game without keybinds...
the problem at hand is, the way they treat their players and the way they bring up new stuff. in every other MMO there wouldnt be that kind of farm/grind, because everyone knows that the base of every MMO are the hardcore-max-lvl-players and not the small casuals...
the hole pwe/cryptic strategy with STO is wrong an no limiting with rep powers will ever solve this.
as long as they pretend to do Star Trek without ever looking deeper into ST, Gaming and other MMOs, they will do it wrong.
Just another example of no respect to the hard long term players.
1. They kill the great orginal STF's. Remember when they were almost stories. Yea took a while but it was fun!
2. They change the forums so we don't even have our orginal names or dates.
3. They go free to play and just about give everything to the free people and step on the still Subs.
4. After stepping on the lifers and subs they then kill vet rewards
5. Then kick the lifers again with the fire sale on the vet rewards and new lifers.
6. Kill STF's again by making it eaiser for new people over the hard working players by turning STF's into Reps.
Now this! I got news for you cryptic. I want to be more powerful than the newb! A 4 year player that has played his but off should me more powerful than the guy playing for a month. OMG its not all about the new players!! Its good we have new ones but don't p*ss on the long term players. We are worth something!!
At first i was a little upset about this but thinking about it and checking the power, i noticed that, for my sci character, which is nerfed so hard its laughable already, its not really a problem. Of all the rep powers there are, maybe 2 or 3 of the passives are remotely relevant to my torpedo-boat. And those will get buffed.
So for my neglected Sci in his rather weak sci-ship, this is actually not a nerf at all - its a buff!
It's just not infinitely scalable. As I pointed out in the blog, if we had 100 reps in the current live setup, the difference in performance between a fresh 50 and a "complete" 50 would be so immense they wouldn't fit in the same proverbial room.
And really? What is wrong with this? The guy who has put in upteen hours, years, money into the game to progress his character to the best possible is told "s%#ew you, you are not as important as a fresh player". Why not try using gear rating systems if you guys refuse to increase the level cap rather than nullify players playtime all the time? Figure out a better way to combat the powercreep because you sure as heck don't combat the powercreep of your NPC MOBS. Are you going to make a pass now on all the recent MOBs added to the game that were balanced based on the higher levels of powercreep now? Now waste even more resources going back and back and back.
I honestly do not care because I could care less for this whole rep grind thing. It adds minimal playable content to the game and is a very lazy way to tackle end-game content. So what is the real reward for grinding this TRIBBLE out? You guys need to figure something out to improve end-game, if you even care.
What you guys fail and have failed to understand is that PvP and PvE gameplay should follow different rules in a healthy game. You will never balance the twain and you will just keep chasing your tails. How about something simpler than all this...disable rep TRIBBLE in PvP. Keep things on a basically more even footing. Keep the rep garbage for PvE only.
Just another example of no respect to the hard long term players.
1. They kill the great orginal STF's. Remember when they were almost stories. Yea took a while but it was fun!
2. They change the forums so we don't even have our orginal names or dates.
3. They go free to play and just about give everything to the free people and step on the still Subs.
4. After stepping on the lifers and subs they then kill vet rewards
5. Then kick the lifers again with the fire sale on the vet rewards and new lifers.
6. Kill STF's again by making it eaiser for new people over the hard working players by turning STF's into Reps.
Now this! I got news for you cryptic. I want to be more powerful than the newb! A 4 year player that has played his but off should me more powerful than the guy playing for a month. OMG its not all about the new players!! Its good we have new ones but don't p*ss on the long term players. We are worth something!!
Exactly. If I've invested 1-2 years in the rep system, don't kick me in the rear end right when I'm nearly finishing the rep on my other characters. Cryptic, you wanted this rep system and now you're undoing all of the hard work the veteran players have put into it. It makes absolutely zero sense! NONE! Zero sense, unless you don't give a flying hoot about balance and all you care about is money.
However, the basic idea is not fatally flawed in my view. It simply doesn't go far enough.
I do agree they need to make many many more changes to get things where they need to be no doubt.
I am not saying perfect game fixed Hawk and the other guys should take a vacation. They have a lot more to do... but this is a better first step then I was expecting honestly.
As far as Min Max benifit.
It is really a double edged sword.
Your right on the Max end of it there is a way to max both offense and defense further with improved traits... but it does mean you drop the other side of the coin completely.
So yes you can boost your offense more then current... but you get NONE of the passive defense that was more a problem then I think people realized before.
Yes the "vaper" pvp builds and FAW builds will be able to hurt more with the new system... however they both will have to drop the free shield heals and halve there shield regeneration to do it... take that in combo with the fix/nerf what ever you want to call it to the borg set. At that point they are at least trading a good chunk of defense for the uber offense. The reverse is true as well... you can choose defense options some of which are getting a nice bump... but you have to drop the free dmg console from omega tier 2 and such to get there.
So sustain healing from tanks should go down even if there pressure dmg goes up...
Top end DPS will go up slightly but at the cost of a lot of tank...
Super healers should be able to boost there own survival if they wish but trade some dmg to get there.
Again alone its not a complete solution your right and I agree.... but its a good START. I just hope they realize they need to keep the cuts coming and slim this B down.
I am shocked by the amount of whining in this thread. Sometimes the truth is a bitter pill to swallow, I guess, but here's the cold hard truth -
The reputation passives in their current form had to go. Right now, it takes a new player an hour a day for nearly two months to get all their reputations done. That's 30 mins for the Tau Dewa daily, 10 for cure regular, 5 for a dyson daily commendation, and 15 for a storming the spire. Yes, I know I and everyone else in a fully kitted out character can do everything much faster, but for a new VA they're gonna take that long and we're going to lose a lot of new blood if that's the kind of investment someone has to put in to be good at this game, and for every new rep added that differential in power level and grind required is only going to get worse.
On the flip side, what do these powers accomplish besides rampant power creep with ever new reputation? As far as I can tell, absolutely nothing. Sure, it's fun to have a little more crit here, a bit more damage there, but under the system now we'll eventually arrive at an unsustainable point with so many reputation passives our ships are going to be instagibbing the content newbies will still be struggling with, and that's not healthy for the game. But it's like peeling off a bandaid, something that'll hurt but has to be done.
Honestly I play mainly to PvP... and I have always looked at all the PvE as just a means to get my ships ready to go... having said that I don't not enjoy the PvE and I will admit at times I just want to play a trek game.
In any event as a PvP guy I can argue hard so you probaly only slighly mis read me if you did at all... I can be more "aggressive" then I ought to be at times.
Oh good, glad you said that.
Now your smug posts and mocking smilies make perfect sense.
I appreciate knowing that you are a "PvP guy" so we know where your interests lay - you couldn't care less if they start tearing apart the PvE portion of the game that the vast majority of players spend their playtime in so you can have what you want. :P
It's only a trait system because they ret-conned it into their new scheme. As it was originally designed, it was more akin to EQ's AA points: stuff to do after you're max level. And given the obscene grind requirements the rewards have to be good enough to be attractive.
As nerfed, the grind isn't that attractive.
The way it will look when there is 5+ rep systems... it is almost the same idea as Lord of the Rings virtue system... where you can earn all sorts of cool little bonuses but you can never slot more then X amount of them.
People where always hunting there Virtues in Lotro... I doubt it will be any different here. You play the content and as you go you finish achievements that allow you to gain virtues.
In Lotro they do it by having lots of Virtues (which this game will have soon enough)... and by leveling each to 10... so level 1 is a basic version with say a +0.2 resistance to poison, so after killing another 100 poison shooting baddies you get level 2 and +0.4 ect ect until you get to level 10... now you can slot it or not... and sometimes you only slot it for say a specific content that has a Spider boss or something....
Exact same thing will work here... where we have multiple unlocked Reputation traits... and we will continue to unlock them because it should happen just playing the content. Which will also unlock the stores for gear ect.... and once there unlocked we can slot them as we need them for X or Y content ect.
Now your smug posts and mocking smilies make perfect sense.
I appreciate knowing that you are a "PvP guy" so we know where your interests lay - you couldn't care less if they start tearing apart the PvE portion of the game that the vast majority of players spend their playtime in so you can have what you want. :P
Yeah.... and we've done it.... I was here before the rep system... then I ground out the rep systems.... so the new players are better than us?
And a previous point is highly valid for fixing it: Just stop putting in more reputations! Seriously, it can be that simple.
It's just not infinitely scalable. As I pointed out in the blog, if we had 100 reps in the current live setup, the difference in performance between a fresh 50 and a "complete" 50 would be so immense they wouldn't fit in the same proverbial room.
This makes sense from a certain standpoint. However, this once again puts emphasis on new players instead of long-term veteran players. As with the ESD revamp, your design decisions are undoubtedly saying that player population churn and turn-over rate is more important than people who have dedicated a long portion of their game time to leveling up rep systems.
While I have stated before that I understand the necessity for rep systems, I think the execution of this is... flawed, to put it lightly.
I'm not saying this is the worst thing ever, but it does cause some discomfort at the idea that even after the game has gone f2p, and Cryptic has been going "full steam ahead" now that PWE has given you a large budget, the ability to hire additional designers, etc., that you are still making short-sighted decisions and simply telling us to deal with that short-sightedness.
If you knew reputation powers were going to be the 'norm' from this point forward in your earliest design discussions, then why was this not addressed at the time? If you knew it was not going to be infinitely scalable, then why did you simply continue to worsen the problem while watching the players grind their reputations up?
The reputation grinds are something Cryptic must be very well aware is an unpopular feature of STO, so to 'pull the rug' out from under those who have dedicated their time to this and blame it on the 'sudden' realization this can't be an infinitely scalable game feature is... misleading at best.
---
TL;DR: You knew this was going to be a regular thing. You knew these reputation powers would be planned out over the long term. You knew and purposefully designed the rep systems to be a grind and dangled a carrot for those players to be rewarded for completing them. Moreso, you did this with the auspice that with increased budgetary flow and more labor that you guys wanted a 'second chance' to show us what you were capable of -- but you're still showing you have time and money to do the same thing over and over again, but not the time and money to do things right the first time.
This was not a sudden realization to you. You knew this would happen. There is no way you couldn't. To make changes now, once many veteran players earned their just rewards is (despite invoking a cliche) a slap in the face.
However, for the sake of constructive criticism... I'd suggest you implement a two-part feature system. For those active powers and passive powers the players no longer have... give them something else.
Make it an even more miniscule passive that becomes more powerful when slotted actively, and then does something much less -- or something else entirely when put into 'inactive' mode.
The reputation passives in their current form had to go. Right now, it takes a new player an hour a day for nearly two months to get all their reputations done.
Wow! A whole two months to finish the end game!
Good thing they are ramping up that nerf bat - two months, man - that's just too much to ask anyone!
/sarcasm off
In fact, it will get even easier to do rep with the changes to projects.
So, you just proved the point - it's not that difficult to get to the rep anyway. Two months is no big deal. How long should it take? A week?
That's why this has nothing to do with bringing new players into the existing game - or keeping them. That's a smoke screen. They are going to turn the PvP portion of this game into a MOBA, where people expect to pick up and play and immediately pwn - I am guessing we'll also see a Zen store item added that starts you out at level 50 and throws you some MK XII gear.
It's a short-term jump on a bandwagon - an attempt to grab a notoriously fickle audience who moves on constantly, who won't stay and play the rest of the game.
i have $200 in my bank that i WAS going to buy zen with. Its been sitting there for almost a week. Next week will be 3 or $400. Looks like PWE dont want my money, and dont care too much about my opinions.
So PWE, do everything for the newbs, cause now, im stopping supporting this game with my money.
Every mmo i have played, the vets have ALWAYS been more powerful than the newbs. Im guessing PWE dont know how to make this game or any game for that matter. Because they cant make up their minds if they are coming or going. Heck, cant even fix 4 year old bugs
Even their prices on costumes across all their games fluctuate from 1 game to another. Some games dont have lockboxes.
When Star Citizen and Elite comes, i think thats where i will put my money. Unless, PWE pull their heads out of the sand and listen to what we want. What the vets want, what the subs want, and what the money spenders want, you aint seeing another red cent from me! And i do hope majority follow suit
I believe God created the universe, because he knew we wanted to explore. So, he made us a playground...
Didn't Cryptic say the pvp in this game was negligible? So why should Cryptic care if the rep powers are making pvp unbalanced? If you care so much, why haven't you fixed the aux to battery technician spam nonsense we have going on in this game? Why are the team abilities not on a global cooldown anymore since this now favors the big battle cruisers like the scimitar and disfavors science builds?
Comments
Jeff--may I call you Jeff?--while I really, sincerely appreciate the sentiment and the attempts to halt power creep, there are a few issues with the changes outlined in the blog.
First and foremost, the changes would increase the value of min-maxing builds as opposed to playing smart.
This is a huge, critical, glaring flaw. It'll be great for my Rommie, who will be able to solo entire teams of opponents in PVP with the appropriate rep traits slotted, but...that's not a good thing.
I don't WANT to be able to solo ISE in 30 seconds or single-handedly wipe entire teams in PVP. I want to work as a team with other players, cooperating and playing smart instead of mashing buttons wildly. If I can solo any STF or non-1v1 PVP match in my T'varo, then this is not a halt to power creep. If I can min-max my scimitar to make it completely invincible AND able to instakill anything in the game, the game is no longer fun.
I prefer the system as-is because it provides a set of buffs that reward dedicated players without giving anyone the power to single-handedly beat elite Borg STFs. The new version makes it hypothetically possible to solo ISE, if you min-max a scimmy or fleet Dhelan right. And then to respec rep traits and go 3-man Infected ground elite, if you have the right gear.
This is bad. Like most Trekkies, I love challenges. I THRIVE on challenges. To me, the rewards earned by figuring out the best strategies and tactics to take down a ridiculously OP boss monster are by far the sweetest. Not the rewards earned by min-maxing my gear to a stupid extent and running in pushing buttons.
Anyway, that's my personal opinion on this.
(Brings in a huge bucket of popcorn) Got a few extra bottles?
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10052253
Why are you not rejoicing?
You can swap these powers at anytime, out of combat, without paying, and basically have stronger stats for the ones you choose. I think when you combine this with the other changes being tested with various enemies being improved, the upcoming changes to the rep systems and the associated gear, and kit powers revamp, there is going to be much to consider and other ways to balance your character. We also know that a revamp of the Doff system will be coming at some point too.
I think all in all its a good thing and we should reserve judgement until the system can be fully vetted. Hawk said they are open to changes and tweaks where needed. I'm ready for this game to get back to providing challenging content and not just repetition and I think balancing out the skills is the first step.
I think when you combine these changes with all of the great new makeovers on the old content and the Undine as well as ESD this is shaping up to be a great season release. Stephen D and the whole team are really doing a superb job on improving the "quality of life" things in the game. I think balance has a long way to go but this is a good start.
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
There. Now there won't be a huge divide no matter how new a player is.
I don't mind giving things up if it is for the good of the game honestly. I also don't really look at as giving them up. I still have them all unlocked and because I fly so many different ships I can think of times where I might slot almost all of the options... so having them unlocked isn't really a bad thing.
The temp consoles are over rated.
Honestly I play mainly to PvP... and I have always looked at all the PvE as just a means to get my ships ready to go... having said that I don't not enjoy the PvE and I will admit at times I just want to play a trek game.
In any event as a PvP guy I can argue hard so you probaly only slighly mis read me if you did at all... I can be more "aggressive" then I ought to be at times.
I don't think this is happening due to any player wine though to be honest... if that was the case I think they would have been changing things that where on more top 5 broken things lists.
After looking at what they are doing and thinking about it a bit this afternoon though I think I see where they are coming from.
I guess we will see now if they stick with 4 back track to 8 or 6... I am sure they won't budge on the cap going forward though.
I'll see your J. Jonah Jameson and raise you Judge Judy.
No. It'll get merged with that mega thread and just be confusing.
OP: the designers or the developers?
It's only a trait system because they ret-conned it into their new scheme. As it was originally designed, it was more akin to EQ's AA points: stuff to do after you're max level. And given the obscene grind requirements the rewards have to be good enough to be attractive.
As nerfed, the grind isn't that attractive.
Know how many times I've respec'd my reputations? 0. None. Not once. Why? Because I don't want the other types on certain characters. My healing characters don't need crit change or anything for more powerful attacks---when I need to survive and attack. I want to attack and have powerful hits? I'll use a tac.
How many times, when you have an Omega/Maco set, did you think "wow, I really should've gone with the borg adapt slower instead?"
Know what's going to happen? People are going to talk, and everyone's going to have very similar/identicle specs for all the choices at all times.... just like now.
i see and respect your point, in fact something in your post said to me: "maybe this is not bad at all", stil there is this in my mind:
pwe/cryp started the rep system, it was perfectly clear that it will not only be omega rep. S7 with new romulus gave us rom rep and suddenly nukara rep...now dyson rep...and it will be undine rep...
stacking all up was their idea, we/me get to use the best of it. for my part: i'm used to have all the passives working in order to make some ships worth while (like Intrepid, Wells, Nebula). Now we have to suffer from their fault. I'm still convinced bringing back the omega shop on Ds9 would be the best way -but that would be difficult^^ -
.
Making a assimilated gear in Mk X, XI and XII + assimilated set was a very bad step.
now pwe trys to limit the dmg (haha in both ways) by restricting the players to only certain rep powers.... that is a step in the wrong direction...
instead of this AND bringing up a new rep system they should concider going an other way for new content.
tbh, undine rep will suck like hell. f.e. i like the dyson gear, but i still keep my adapted maco, i may not the only one thinking this way.
i think pwe/cryp is playing a very bad Bull****-game with the players: for one reason they want money, revamp hole species, low-level-missions - both will be soon forgotten - but the real bugs and problems stay the way they are...there are no power creep problems and no problems with OP ships. Still people belive they can enter a PVP game without keybinds...
the problem at hand is, the way they treat their players and the way they bring up new stuff. in every other MMO there wouldnt be that kind of farm/grind, because everyone knows that the base of every MMO are the hardcore-max-lvl-players and not the small casuals...
the hole pwe/cryptic strategy with STO is wrong an no limiting with rep powers will ever solve this.
as long as they pretend to do Star Trek without ever looking deeper into ST, Gaming and other MMOs, they will do it wrong.
thats my opp
1. They kill the great orginal STF's. Remember when they were almost stories. Yea took a while but it was fun!
2. They change the forums so we don't even have our orginal names or dates.
3. They go free to play and just about give everything to the free people and step on the still Subs.
4. After stepping on the lifers and subs they then kill vet rewards
5. Then kick the lifers again with the fire sale on the vet rewards and new lifers.
6. Kill STF's again by making it eaiser for new people over the hard working players by turning STF's into Reps.
Now this! I got news for you cryptic. I want to be more powerful than the newb! A 4 year player that has played his but off should me more powerful than the guy playing for a month. OMG its not all about the new players!! Its good we have new ones but don't p*ss on the long term players. We are worth something!!
So for my neglected Sci in his rather weak sci-ship, this is actually not a nerf at all - its a buff!
Sweet!
And really? What is wrong with this? The guy who has put in upteen hours, years, money into the game to progress his character to the best possible is told "s%#ew you, you are not as important as a fresh player". Why not try using gear rating systems if you guys refuse to increase the level cap rather than nullify players playtime all the time? Figure out a better way to combat the powercreep because you sure as heck don't combat the powercreep of your NPC MOBS. Are you going to make a pass now on all the recent MOBs added to the game that were balanced based on the higher levels of powercreep now? Now waste even more resources going back and back and back.
I honestly do not care because I could care less for this whole rep grind thing. It adds minimal playable content to the game and is a very lazy way to tackle end-game content. So what is the real reward for grinding this TRIBBLE out? You guys need to figure something out to improve end-game, if you even care.
What you guys fail and have failed to understand is that PvP and PvE gameplay should follow different rules in a healthy game. You will never balance the twain and you will just keep chasing your tails. How about something simpler than all this...disable rep TRIBBLE in PvP. Keep things on a basically more even footing. Keep the rep garbage for PvE only.
Exactly. If I've invested 1-2 years in the rep system, don't kick me in the rear end right when I'm nearly finishing the rep on my other characters. Cryptic, you wanted this rep system and now you're undoing all of the hard work the veteran players have put into it. It makes absolutely zero sense! NONE! Zero sense, unless you don't give a flying hoot about balance and all you care about is money.
I do agree they need to make many many more changes to get things where they need to be no doubt.
I am not saying perfect game fixed Hawk and the other guys should take a vacation.
As far as Min Max benifit.
It is really a double edged sword.
Your right on the Max end of it there is a way to max both offense and defense further with improved traits... but it does mean you drop the other side of the coin completely.
So yes you can boost your offense more then current... but you get NONE of the passive defense that was more a problem then I think people realized before.
Yes the "vaper" pvp builds and FAW builds will be able to hurt more with the new system... however they both will have to drop the free shield heals and halve there shield regeneration to do it... take that in combo with the fix/nerf what ever you want to call it to the borg set. At that point they are at least trading a good chunk of defense for the uber offense. The reverse is true as well... you can choose defense options some of which are getting a nice bump... but you have to drop the free dmg console from omega tier 2 and such to get there.
So sustain healing from tanks should go down even if there pressure dmg goes up...
Top end DPS will go up slightly but at the cost of a lot of tank...
Super healers should be able to boost there own survival if they wish but trade some dmg to get there.
Again alone its not a complete solution your right and I agree.... but its a good START. I just hope they realize they need to keep the cuts coming and slim this B down.
The reputation passives in their current form had to go. Right now, it takes a new player an hour a day for nearly two months to get all their reputations done. That's 30 mins for the Tau Dewa daily, 10 for cure regular, 5 for a dyson daily commendation, and 15 for a storming the spire. Yes, I know I and everyone else in a fully kitted out character can do everything much faster, but for a new VA they're gonna take that long and we're going to lose a lot of new blood if that's the kind of investment someone has to put in to be good at this game, and for every new rep added that differential in power level and grind required is only going to get worse.
On the flip side, what do these powers accomplish besides rampant power creep with ever new reputation? As far as I can tell, absolutely nothing. Sure, it's fun to have a little more crit here, a bit more damage there, but under the system now we'll eventually arrive at an unsustainable point with so many reputation passives our ships are going to be instagibbing the content newbies will still be struggling with, and that's not healthy for the game. But it's like peeling off a bandaid, something that'll hurt but has to be done.
Oh good, glad you said that.
Now your smug posts and mocking smilies make perfect sense.
I appreciate knowing that you are a "PvP guy" so we know where your interests lay - you couldn't care less if they start tearing apart the PvE portion of the game that the vast majority of players spend their playtime in so you can have what you want. :P
The way it will look when there is 5+ rep systems... it is almost the same idea as Lord of the Rings virtue system... where you can earn all sorts of cool little bonuses but you can never slot more then X amount of them.
People where always hunting there Virtues in Lotro... I doubt it will be any different here. You play the content and as you go you finish achievements that allow you to gain virtues.
In Lotro they do it by having lots of Virtues (which this game will have soon enough)... and by leveling each to 10... so level 1 is a basic version with say a +0.2 resistance to poison, so after killing another 100 poison shooting baddies you get level 2 and +0.4 ect ect until you get to level 10... now you can slot it or not... and sometimes you only slot it for say a specific content that has a Spider boss or something....
Exact same thing will work here... where we have multiple unlocked Reputation traits... and we will continue to unlock them because it should happen just playing the content. Which will also unlock the stores for gear ect.... and once there unlocked we can slot them as we need them for X or Y content ect.
This really is standard MMO stuff.
Yeah.... and we've done it.... I was here before the rep system... then I ground out the rep systems.... so the new players are better than us?
And a previous point is highly valid for fixing it: Just stop putting in more reputations! Seriously, it can be that simple.
This makes sense from a certain standpoint. However, this once again puts emphasis on new players instead of long-term veteran players. As with the ESD revamp, your design decisions are undoubtedly saying that player population churn and turn-over rate is more important than people who have dedicated a long portion of their game time to leveling up rep systems.
While I have stated before that I understand the necessity for rep systems, I think the execution of this is... flawed, to put it lightly.
I'm not saying this is the worst thing ever, but it does cause some discomfort at the idea that even after the game has gone f2p, and Cryptic has been going "full steam ahead" now that PWE has given you a large budget, the ability to hire additional designers, etc., that you are still making short-sighted decisions and simply telling us to deal with that short-sightedness.
If you knew reputation powers were going to be the 'norm' from this point forward in your earliest design discussions, then why was this not addressed at the time? If you knew it was not going to be infinitely scalable, then why did you simply continue to worsen the problem while watching the players grind their reputations up?
The reputation grinds are something Cryptic must be very well aware is an unpopular feature of STO, so to 'pull the rug' out from under those who have dedicated their time to this and blame it on the 'sudden' realization this can't be an infinitely scalable game feature is... misleading at best.
---
TL;DR: You knew this was going to be a regular thing. You knew these reputation powers would be planned out over the long term. You knew and purposefully designed the rep systems to be a grind and dangled a carrot for those players to be rewarded for completing them. Moreso, you did this with the auspice that with increased budgetary flow and more labor that you guys wanted a 'second chance' to show us what you were capable of -- but you're still showing you have time and money to do the same thing over and over again, but not the time and money to do things right the first time.
This was not a sudden realization to you. You knew this would happen. There is no way you couldn't. To make changes now, once many veteran players earned their just rewards is (despite invoking a cliche) a slap in the face.
However, for the sake of constructive criticism... I'd suggest you implement a two-part feature system. For those active powers and passive powers the players no longer have... give them something else.
Make it an even more miniscule passive that becomes more powerful when slotted actively, and then does something much less -- or something else entirely when put into 'inactive' mode.
Wow! A whole two months to finish the end game!
Good thing they are ramping up that nerf bat - two months, man - that's just too much to ask anyone!
/sarcasm off
In fact, it will get even easier to do rep with the changes to projects.
So, you just proved the point - it's not that difficult to get to the rep anyway. Two months is no big deal. How long should it take? A week?
That's why this has nothing to do with bringing new players into the existing game - or keeping them. That's a smoke screen. They are going to turn the PvP portion of this game into a MOBA, where people expect to pick up and play and immediately pwn - I am guessing we'll also see a Zen store item added that starts you out at level 50 and throws you some MK XII gear.
It's a short-term jump on a bandwagon - an attempt to grab a notoriously fickle audience who moves on constantly, who won't stay and play the rest of the game.
So PWE, do everything for the newbs, cause now, im stopping supporting this game with my money.
Every mmo i have played, the vets have ALWAYS been more powerful than the newbs. Im guessing PWE dont know how to make this game or any game for that matter. Because they cant make up their minds if they are coming or going. Heck, cant even fix 4 year old bugs
Even their prices on costumes across all their games fluctuate from 1 game to another. Some games dont have lockboxes.
When Star Citizen and Elite comes, i think thats where i will put my money. Unless, PWE pull their heads out of the sand and listen to what we want. What the vets want, what the subs want, and what the money spenders want, you aint seeing another red cent from me! And i do hope majority follow suit
This has nothing to do with PvP alone.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=15925801#post15925801
Please add your voice to others though its time to Fix and Nerf all the other junk in this game as well.
Joker's Wild
I believe the OP wants to oust them all. French Revolution style.
Then we put in people that will give the OP and his friends list stuff they want.
I hope this happens and I hope the OP /friends me.