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Traits and Reputation System
mustrumridcully0
Member Posts: 12,963 Arc User
The Tribble revamp of the trait system is looking good (well, except the UI perhaps). Yes, I know, some will disagree because "They are taking away our stuff", but whatever, this thread isn't about that.
What this thread is about how to move forward and further streamline and improve the system.
Each character gets the following slots:
Trait and Reputation Slots
4 Racial Ground Traits
4 Racial Space Traits
4 Reputation Ground Traits
4 Reputation Space Traits
2 Reputation Ground Actives
2 Reputation Ground Actives
2 Racial Actives (which means introducing 2 racial actives avialable to each race. Currently only some races have these. Stuff like the Vulcan Mind Meld or the Orion Pheromenes or Alien Telekinesis)
Rationale and Opportunities
By seperating ground and space racial traits, we eliminate the need for deciding whether you want a ground or space character. By seperating the ground and space actives, we achieve the same, and don't require constant reslots for characters in anticipation whether they want to run ground or space content next (which the new system will eventually lead to.)
The new category "Racial Actives" means that your race has more impact in active (ground) combat then before, and that every race gets to participate in the fun.
For Cryptic, it might also allow introducing new trait abiltiies via lockboxes or other mechanics.
New Traits
It will require a few new traits first, of course, because many races don't have any active powers.
Some ideas for racial actives:
Generic Actives (so even races we haven't considered before have a few options)
- Defensive Roll: You increase your dodge chance and movement strength for a brief time.
- Charge: You increase your melee damage and movement strength for a brief time.
Human Actives
- Inspiring Action: You motivate your allies, granting them a damage strength buff
- Rallying Action: You encourage a battered ally (50 % less hit points) to fight on, granting him some healing and a damage resistancebuff.
Klingon Actives
- Frightening Action: Your presence frightens your enemies, causing a damage strength debuff
- Targ Handler: You summon a Targ as combat pet
- Revenge is a Dish Best Served Immediately: Active this power near a dead ally. You gain a high damage strength and damage resistance buff.
- Headbutt: You strike with your head, dealing physical damage and stunning your foe briefly.
What this thread is about how to move forward and further streamline and improve the system.
Each character gets the following slots:
Trait and Reputation Slots
4 Racial Ground Traits
4 Racial Space Traits
4 Reputation Ground Traits
4 Reputation Space Traits
2 Reputation Ground Actives
2 Reputation Ground Actives
2 Racial Actives (which means introducing 2 racial actives avialable to each race. Currently only some races have these. Stuff like the Vulcan Mind Meld or the Orion Pheromenes or Alien Telekinesis)
Rationale and Opportunities
By seperating ground and space racial traits, we eliminate the need for deciding whether you want a ground or space character. By seperating the ground and space actives, we achieve the same, and don't require constant reslots for characters in anticipation whether they want to run ground or space content next (which the new system will eventually lead to.)
The new category "Racial Actives" means that your race has more impact in active (ground) combat then before, and that every race gets to participate in the fun.
For Cryptic, it might also allow introducing new trait abiltiies via lockboxes or other mechanics.
New Traits
It will require a few new traits first, of course, because many races don't have any active powers.
Some ideas for racial actives:
Generic Actives (so even races we haven't considered before have a few options)
- Defensive Roll: You increase your dodge chance and movement strength for a brief time.
- Charge: You increase your melee damage and movement strength for a brief time.
Human Actives
- Inspiring Action: You motivate your allies, granting them a damage strength buff
- Rallying Action: You encourage a battered ally (50 % less hit points) to fight on, granting him some healing and a damage resistancebuff.
Klingon Actives
- Frightening Action: Your presence frightens your enemies, causing a damage strength debuff
- Targ Handler: You summon a Targ as combat pet
- Revenge is a Dish Best Served Immediately: Active this power near a dead ally. You gain a high damage strength and damage resistance buff.
- Headbutt: You strike with your head, dealing physical damage and stunning your foe briefly.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
Cryptic supposedly did this to "diversify" the rep passives being used by all the players, since they felt that players were being rail-roaded into the exact same set of passives just to maintain top quality.
But what they are either conveniently ignoring or just outright fail to realize, is that instead of using the exact same 8 space passives and the exact same 8 ground passives, they will now see players using the exact same 4 space passives and the exact same 4 ground passives. The reason behind this is because some of the passives are just outright useless which is why they were never being used. Yes, they buffed a few of the passives, and changed a few others, but those passives were already no-brainers.
They will actually add to the problem instead of fixing it because now players are even MORE limited as to what is actually available for them to use, which will eliminate any wiggle room players had for experimentation.
Now if they had given a better reason for doing this, or at least gave us the REAL reasoning behind it (don't ask me, I don't actually know what it is, but I certainly don't buy in to the BS they're trying to make us swallow), then I wouldn't be so critical of the decision. But as is, I call total complete and unadulterated BULL.
It'd be great if they went in and gave each passive a minus, and nuked from orbit the across-the-board passive buffs. Like, say, +Crit Chance on everything, who's not gonna slot that? There's not enough niche traits out there to not make loading up on generally useful traits ideal... which isn't a problem of them making for limited numbers of slottable Rep traits, but a symptom of there just being really good generalist rep traits available.
[EDIT]
Just going to add that I favor any move or step towards getting rid of the "Space Captain/Ground Captain" paradigm. Nuke that from orbit.
That they need to balance the actual passives so the choices are not so damn obvious is yet another thing to work on. (Just as the reputation abilities are obviously not the only or even largest source of power creep.)
Anyway, that's not the point of this thread.
I think going forward it's really important to remove the force to spec into either space or ground at the expense of the other. A lot of the game's content is for both sides, there is just no good reason for players to force to choose on a mechanical level between the two. The proposed system still has that element.
The other is that also think that a choice between a passive ability and an active ability is not a good one. The two work too differently,
The trait system is not the only one with this problem. Consoles do have the exact same issue. (Maybe one should give every ship 4 additional device slots and turn all universe consoles with powers into devices?)
The specific abilities granted by the passives are not written in stone, you know. It's not an argument against the new system, it's an argument for further changes. Feedback on the changes is best put in the very thread where you are supposed to give feedback about the system: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1066201.
And it still has nothing to do with my proposal.
Than why is it the vast majority of skill points are invested in space skills? It itself shows there is no call for a space/ground balancing needed.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
I'm not going to go search for the quotes but the devs have said this is the first part of changing the game. They've said skills and other things will go through a pass at some point in the near future. They started with rep and traits because of the new lockbox (full of traits) and the new rep system.
THe gist of it was if the rep system continued the way it was going, the undine rep would have added 5 more rep traits to a pwer creeped system, the next sytem would have added 5 more etc so in year under the old system you would have as many space passives as actual BOff abilities. The new system while right now seems like well everyone is going to have the smae four is true but as you add more rep traits the pool gets bigger but the slots stay the same.
Right now we have 4 from dyson, 4 from Omega, 4 from nukara, 4 from Rommie. I say 4 because the T5 usually ends up a clickie. Right now we have 8 passive ground and space. When S9 comes we will most likely get 4 more passives and a clickie so that is 10 space and 10 ground you have to pick 4 for each next reap will ad more so you have 12 and 12 but you can only have 4 and 4 active.
Splitting XP between Space and ground right now if a ****ing pointless design decision given that both space and ground already have clear limits on how much XP can be spent in in either. Allowing players to reach those XP caps in both areas would be beneficial, not harmful, to the game.
Do you really want to take this game to that extreme where it will utterly destroy the casual player knowing that their skill tree looks like anyone elses but they still suck. :eek:
But that doesn't change the fact that those 4 passives on ground, space, and the actives, WILL ALL BE THE SAME. Because there are setups that are considered optimal that even the most incompetent players can figure out. They did this to increase diversity in builds, but in reality, they're just going to end up reducing it.
End result, it's just more or less a total fail on their part.
Just going to say that maxing each skill is beyond inefficient to begin with. Ones skills should never exceed 7 points, simply because the last two only add at most 3% of a bonus. 3%. I mean cmon, would I rather have a 3% bonus in 3 skills, or three skills that are 3% weaker and a fourth skill with 6 points in it? That's kind of a no brainer.
If you had a million Skill points and maxed every skill then you would have a 1 size fits all but it would destroy PvE.
My response was to corsairs which was corsairs response to me saying, "Give everyone a million skill points to do what they wish." I was being sarcastic. If you gave everyone 1 million skill points they could max out the whole skill tree and it would make the pvp game more balanced because the variables would come down to pilot/gear but the causual player will still not be good but would only have a handful of excuses to fall back on. Maximum skill points in all areas would horribly unbalance PvE cryptic woul dhave to give NPCs a billion hitpoints to handle all the skills PvEers would throw out at maximum setting.
I think you accidentally messed up the quote XD
And as for your comment, I've seen the Undine passives on tribble, and they aren't that impressive. Tbh, they are just too badly out-classed by the other currently existing passives. They are useful in their own right, but they aren't at the "WOW!! Let's use those instead!" level.
Species traits:
I do ground combat as well as space. Every time I do a mission, I don't want to be stuck respecting to swap out space traits with ground traits. So either they need load outs or specific # of ground and space.
Reputation powers:
Currently, a fully reped character has 8 of each ground and space passives. Now it will be 4 of each. Since we have half as many passives it would be logical to buff each passive x2 but that did not happen. Huge nerf, whatever.
I'm guessing that at least 90% of characters have not selected the "Rotating weapon frequency" passive as it only applies to fighting the Borg as opposed to the other option that helps in any situation. So the move to pick the right trait for the mission is a plus but as the skill tree respec is still a z-store thing, I've already had to make semi-permanent build decisions on what to spec for so I just don't think the rep passives will make things more flexible until the skill tree is a free respec. Similar to species traits, two fixes come to mind: 1) load outs for skill tree and rep passives. 2) keep passives stats how they were and limit the players to 8 of each ground and space. That way, new rep systems will add passives options without adding extra passives. In summary, if you want a new undine passive, you give up one of your current ones.
I understand that and that is the undine one. I personally have no care one way or the other but if they keep adding passives with different synergies with ships and gear eventually the best will change. Or would you prefere to add 5 more rep skills to the ones we all have now.
You want my honest answer?
I just wish they had never added the rep system to begin with. I rather liked how the old Omega system worked. If they added in a version of that for Romulan and Nukara and Dyson gear, I actually would be fine with it.
Keep Drinking your Kool-Aid.
Oh.
I should not go anywhere near these forums after being up for 24 hours. >.>
What they need to do IMO is punish people for min-maxing by going back to mixed ground and space missions like the original STFs, since traits can't be changed once you enter a mission. Make people not suck at both ground and space.
Not coincidentally that restores the story element of those missions that has been lost.