We've changed how Clusters work in 9.5 - they're now locations on the Sector Space map that was adjacent to them. There aren't any material harvesting interacts at these locations, but Doffing at them should now be much more convenient.
We're removing these missions in 9.5. To be honest, they were universally not up to the standard of quality that we want missions to be in the game, and they were also often where new players would go shortly after the tutorial and get lost.
Ah, so the next expansion will be an exploration revamp?
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I'm glad to see crafting will be getting some attention, and I'm particularly glad it will cease taking up vault space. Crafting has been relegated to equipping under-cap alts; I haven't really wanted to craft much at end game, but I just cannot bring myself to sell or discard them. What I really hope to see is something to make crafting useful to me personally at end game beyond trying to make EC.
On the topic of materials, I do have a small suggestion around naming: Call the energy type of material a source; e.g., "tachyon source" or "polaron radiation source" or "tetryon particle source".
Calling them traces and samples always sounded a little off to me, and I doubt my massive starship beam array only needs a single tetryon particle to be effective. Source is a term commonly used in science and medicine for material or "equipment used for generating X-rays or gamma rays or other penetrating radiation sources (e.g. protons, neutrons, Beta rays)".
Thanks for the link. Looks like I better consider breaking my normal habits and start testing Crafting.
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Romulan Plasma weapons in the rep store are 32k Dilithium on holodeck...which is why I haven't bought any, I felt the actual Romulan ship set was more important. 32,000 dilithium is a big deal, especially on an alt.
But how would that play out in STO? You need to have an entirely different structured game to have any sort of lee-way on how, say, the Tholians react to your T5 Nukara rep. Ditto for friendly NPC's. If there ever is another ST MMO that might be something to consider but I don't think that sort of elaborated reputation system can work in this game.
I've discussed this at length in more relevant threads, my general idea for it is that you would get different AI and different options.
It doesn't need to be static. For instance Tau Dewa Sector Patrol. If I have Tier 5 Romulan rep and I cruise into Carraya where the Tal Shiar are attacking then I would have one of two options. 1st the Tal Shiar would remember how many times I've kicked the TRIBBLE out of them and bail auto completing that for the 20% that that mission rewards. 2nd, they would remember that I've kicked the TRIBBLE out of them and call in reinforcements including up to a Scimitar (weaker than the Fleet and STF grade Scimitars obviously, more along the lines of Sela's warbird in strength), but in this scenario on victory you get an additional 20% completion to the sector patrol.
I see it as being similar to the game triggering different character dialogue depending on whether or not you've completed certain content. For instance A Step Between Stars has different dialogue depending on whether you've completed Romulan Rep and actually discovered the Gateway.
Frankly I'm sick of Breen bringing up the fire bombing of Starfleet Headquarters in the Dominion War after I've already killed Thot Trell. It's immersion breaking.
There has to come a point in our careers where we get the Shepard effect and the enemy NPCs realize they're going up against a meat grinder and self preservation kicks in.
It should be logical to each species. A rep focused on Klingons or Hirogen for instance would actually trigger high level single enemies or small groups that actively are out to make a name for themselves off of taking you out. You could even add accolades for fighting off these prize fighters like you have for taking out named Fleet Alert flagships. Undine I don't see as running so it would only make them more aggressive, but maybe kamikaze like, changing the AI so it just attacks without regard for defense. The Borg are an exception as they don't change their tactics on a case by case basis nor do they experience fear or aggression. I honestly don't know how the Voth would react. Tholians would likely call in reinforcements and then leave if they don't win fast enough.
It's like in the name of the accolades, Tal Shiar's Most Wanted would be like tier 2 or 3 where they've recognized you as a real threat and start ramping up attacks against you. Tier 4 they start dedicating resources, and tier 5 they realize you're unstoppable.
Ultimately however I just think that a reputation system should cause logical side effects based on what your reputation is. And while it exists and is implemented to a degree with DOFF diplomatic commendation, there would need to be a Diplomatic reputation that would offer the opportunity to talk your way out of more fights.
...and, that is the real reason why they revamped the system. If they can make it approachable, Cryptic can use the new crafting system to make some revenue. Its not about helping players. Its about helping Cryptic.
I wonder if Lockboxes are becoming a less reliable revenue stream? They could just be diversifying however.
Thanks for the link. Looks like I better consider breaking my normal habits and start testing Crafting.
Wow, so they removed the straight dilithium store. Now that makes this all make quite a bit more sense. So this revamped both crafting AND the D-store.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
I have read the first dozen pages or so, and skimmed a lot of the rest. I appologize if I am repeating something that has already been confirmed, but I wish to weigh in on a topic very close to my heart.
First - I am excited that crafting is getting some love! Thank you devs for doing this. No matter how good or bad it turns out, I am willing to sacrifice the time and materials I have invested in the current system for even a chance at making it viable.
For those who complain that crafting materials should not involve dilithium: Building a starbase needs it. Aquiring Lobi for that shop and special rewards requires it. Rep systems and Fleet gear needs it. Adding crafting to that list did effectively kill the already-struggling current crafting system. However, farming dil can be seen as merely farming materials needed for crafting. Current amounts are too much imo, and I'd love to see it go entirely, but this is not realistically going to happen.
* Please make the materials tradable. That is, we can remove them from this special inventory and put them into fleet bank or shared bank for others to use. Or on the exchange. On that note, thank you for the special bag.
* PLEASE do not make the obtaining of the highest tier of materials available ONLY thru combat. Elite combat, at that. PLEASE. I beg of you. (Altho I grant making them available thru the c-store is sufficient if one thinks of grinding for dil to exchange for zen as equivalent to grinding for dil to sell to material merchant.) Crafting and gathering resources for crafting has been one of the precious few non-combat aspects of STO. I would hate to see all of STO crafting become like Defara. Pure crafting queued missions would make me cry for joy. Crafting solo missions would be better, however, because frankly the crafters are almost always a small but passionate subculture in any MMO.
* Somewhat off topic: Please do not remove Memory Alpha. Revamp it if you like, but please keep a centralized place for crafters to go. Many crafters enjoy the atmosphere of crafting with others. Not only that, but it's a lovey bit of TOS canon in an MMO based on Roddenberry's creation.
* PLEASE do not make any new crafting bound on pickup.
Is this now live as I went on Tribble and it still showed me the old particle and plasma traces so how do I test the crafting
Double click or right-click and Use an old style crafting material, that will pop up the conversion store. Prepare to do a -lot- more clicking if you have plenty of materials.
There needs to be something to convert all as someone who has only crafted a little but has a namk full of particles it will take me hours to convert them all to the new system
NO TO ARC
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Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Heh, I do hope there is some modular angle to it - won't be disappointed if it's not there, cause I didn't really expect it; but I'd really be happy if it was there cause it would be pretty awesome, imho.
It would kind of tie into the whole deck building thing they're trying to do - and - that they've been spreading to various areas of the game, like they did with the Kit Revamp.
THIS would be awesome indeed:
Imagine the ability to "swap" out modifiers to suit your build/playstyle.
purple Mk X RCS 1 hard coded modifier (as applicable to an RCS console) + 1 swap-able modifier MODULE (also as applicable to RCS)
purple Mk XI RCS 1 hard coded modifier + 2 swap-able modifier MODULES
purple Mk XII RCS 1 hard coded modifier + 3 swap-able modifier MODULES
Ultraviolet Mk XII RCS 1 hard coded modifier + 4 swap-able modifier MODULES
LOTS of possibilities for many different configurations with JUST 1 console.
Of course, this Modular capability/approach would only apply to the Crafted version of any given item (RCS engineering console as per my example) and if the UV mk12 Crafted version is deemed better/more powerful than the Fleet UV mk12 version, the Crafted version SHOULD cost more (Dil) AND be MORE difficult to craft as well.
Imagine the ability to "swap" out modifiers to suit your build/playstyle.
purple Mk X RCS 1 hard coded modifier (as applicable to an RCS console) + 1 swap-able modifier MODULE (also as applicable to RCS)
purple Mk XI RCS 1 hard coded modifier + 2 swap-able modifier MODULES
purple Mk XII RCS 1 hard coded modifier + 3 swap-able modifier MODULES
Ultraviolet Mk XII RCS 1 hard coded modifier + 4 swap-able modifier MODULES
LOTS of possibilities for many different configurations with JUST 1 console.
Of course, this Modular capability/approach would only apply to the Crafted version of any given item (RCS engineering console as per my example) and if the UV mk12 Crafted version is deemed better/more powerful than the Fleet UV mk12 version, the Crafted version SHOULD cost more (Dil) AND be MORE difficult to craft as well.
I love this idea. Flat out love it.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
Many have their reasons for feeling the old crafting system was of no use, I'm unsure
if agree with all of them but I do have my own. And if you are going to revamp the
crafting system perhaps it might be a good opportunity to at least try to mitigate
these issues.
My main issue...crafting currently produces items that are obtainable elsewhere in the
game. This practice is tolerable for the purpose of "leveling" in crafting, but should
not be the end goal. High end crafting does not need to yield uber items that trump
Fleet or Reputation items...they merely need to offer something that is unobtainable
elsewhere. It's the same principle as items found in lockboxes and the Lobi store, if
I could obtain those items from a random drop or a mission reward, that would nullify
the reason for purchasing lockboxes or Lobi store items. If end game crafting offered
it's own unique items I feel it would encourage it's intergration with the rest of the
game.
And I emphasize that crafted items don't need to be better than existing gear, just
different. Like batteries that last longer but put out less energy. Weapons that have
a faster (or slower) rate of fire but have adjusted damage to have the same DPS as
their non-crafted counterparts. Shields with larger capacity but some damage from
every attack leaks through. Ship cannons that can be mounted in the rear arc. And
endless possibilties to fill personal and ship device slots, like grenades for non-
Tactical characters (or Tacs that just want more grenades),a secondary overshield that
has limited charges, deployable cover shields, Hypos that can target other player,
etc...
The second issue is the high Dilithium cost. The game needs to make money, I
understand that, but if you're going to ask us to spend Dilithium it better be for
something worthwhile. Understand that crafting takes up play time and our time and
effort to gather the resources needed to craft items should be acknowledged. I hear
Dilithium is required to produce certain crafting components. I hope those components
are unbound so that those that are Dilithium rich and wish to sell those components to
crafters unwilling to part with their Dil, have a way of doing so. Some say that makes
crafting nothing more than another store...and it is. But if you offer things in
crafting I can't get anywhere else and for a reasonable price it is a store I will
use.
I have heard rumors that the quality of crafted items will have an element of
randomness to it. I'm okay with this mechanic as long as the item doesn't require any
Dil, but if you ask for any Dilithium in the crafted item I must strongly object with
any kind of randomness. I have no problem with crafting being a different kind of
store but I better get what I paid for.
I'm going to be pretty upset if they've destroyed the doff system in the game to try to augment a portion of the game that I've never been really interested in, which, from other threads around the forums, they seem to have done.
There has to come a point in our careers where we get the Shepard effect and the enemy NPCs realize they're going up against a meat grinder and self preservation kicks in.
This is the most memorable thing I've seen in a while. May I use this?
I loved your entire post. Point me to your bandwagon and I shall jump on it. Your suggestions would really liven up the game.
On topic, having tested the crafting system on Tribble for about an hour, I'm underwhelmed. I'm a huge crafter on MMORPGs. I've been a crafter for well over a decade. It's just something that I do. Mining metals and making swords is just as important to me as killing orcs. In STO, if it were a reasonably fun and reliable system, mining the rocks and crafting phaser banks would be just as important to me as blowing up Undine. I'm reserving final judgement until later in the testing cycle/live implementation, but so far my conclusion is "if it's going to be this tedious, take this long, have no streamlining, have individual items have a ridiculous time-gate, -AND- have the final product's quality be a TRIBBLE shoot, I'm going to walk away disappointed again."
The interesting thing is, individually, any of these might be acceptable. Some MMORPGs used multi-step crafting at one point before they moved to streamlining. That was okay, to a point. You should still be able to get through those steps in rapid succession and not have to start over from the "main menu" for every piece. Being able to make components in bulk is essential. Some MMOs have randomized quality (to a point.) That's okay too (by itself). The problem in the system in testing lies in the enormous time gates. Which the current system not-so-subtly has a way to circumnavigate if only you're willing to give up a chunk of your dilithium. And here we come to the biggest problem of all: the dilithium grab.
Now, dilithium "tax" would be acceptable if it felt supplementary. It should be just enough to make high-end pieces recognizable. However, the bulk of a crafted item's cost should always be the gathered raw materials. A bronze shortsword should be made by mining copper and tin, smelting them, perhaps an additional alloying step to make the bronze, then crafting it. The "time investment cost" that the dilithium is supposed to represent should already be represented by harvesting the materials. (And the whole harvesting thing in the new system is another discussion altogether...)
The other option is to keep the large dilithium costs but make the item's quality static. (For the piece itself, not for the time gate. That timer needs to be drastically reduced and the dilithium pay gate done away with. Unreasonably large time sinks aren't acceptable, this isn't EVE.)
The best option, in my opinion, would be to take the "why not both" approach. Have it be possible to craft any piece of gear, including the end-game items, using nothing but harvested materials, but in doing so have to deal with the RNG determining the quality of the result. Have the option available to use whatever large amount of dilithium as a "catalyst" to guarantee a superior result. I think that compromise would make a large number of people reasonably happy, insofar as the word "reasonable" can be applied to the population of an MMORPG.
Whew, that went on a lot longer than I intended.
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ Admiral Hawkye L. Narasumas
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Fleet Commander, No Fate ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
For those with banks filled with crafting stuff, we need a batch conversions for the thousands of anomalies that we have, but we don't have such a thing. For now we are confined to doing it one click at a time.
It appears that our dedicated crafters will be reset to zero experience. This means having to make, and destroy many items before we can craft something useful.... again. So great cost and lots of time will be needed to regain what we had achieved earlier.
Crafting will be duty officer driven. Not having the right duty officers will be a serious impediment. This is yet another layer of cost and time over our heads. Then items will cost TONS of dilithium in spite of everything else. And since making crafting a duty officer mission, that means you might lose everything you invested into making a piece of gear... even dilithium!
I dont see a crafting system, I see an attempt at an economy regulator. All I can see is that the need for EC will rise as prices for certain items will now go through the roof considering the dilith investment.
My advice to people, if this is implemented with even half the cost of dilith it has now and assuming you will be able to sell your crafted items then I suggest people who do not craft or have little dilith start farming EC BIG time NOW if you want the good stuff !
As for having to start again I find that a slap in the face of the people who levelled crafting. Not only was it time consuming but also cost in game currency to achieve. Do we get a refund on the resources we lost to achieve that (who am I kidding) ?
I finally got a chance to get on tribble and try out the new crafting system and ui, and I must say, I think I like it. But the anomaly material exchange definitely needs a slider system, especially for those of us with tons and tons of anomaly material. and the new doff ui setup is going to take a little getting used to, but I still think it looks good.
(Just wish those of us who had already completed the entire current crafting system didn't have to start all over again, but I understand why we need to; oh well...)
What I'm saddest about in the season update is the loss of exploration missions. I loved those things, just couldn't play them as much as I wanted cause I was always off getting marks, credits or doing the latest grind. I'm sure going to miss them! But I hope it is only a goodbye to the exploration missions as we knew them and that a new updated system will come in the not to distant future. Only having the story, feature and latest community authored missions without something more random will get boring fast, even with the updates every month.
(And lets face it, its hard to get to newer community authored missions in its current ui form; most often I only ever find the same missions I've already done or don't really want to do, unless I read about it on the forums and know exactly what to search for or it has been picked as a feature community authored mission, but I hope you are already working toward an update for that too; if I had any good ideas for this too, I'd offer them, but I'm afraid I don't right now).
Edit: I am also concerned though about the dillithium cost associated with some of the crafting items. I didn't get a chance to really work with those yet, but I'm worried the cost is going to be a bit too high, especially from what others have said they have seen on tribble. This especially concerns me with the loss of the exploration missions as it reduces the amount of dillithium we can earn each day. Can you consider cutting the dilithium crafting costs in half? Or are you going to increase the number of ways we can earn dillithium each day with season 9.5?
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I'm going to be pretty upset if they've destroyed the doff system in the game to try to augment a portion of the game that I've never been really interested in, which, from other threads around the forums, they seem to have done.
The Doff system isn't actually changed, but the interface is unwieldy as all get out. I find it visually jarring. It's not like the jump from STO classic UI to current LCARS either. That was a reskin, this is a reshuffle, and not one that I'm fond of. And the DOFF selection for the assignments is actually an added step bringing up a separate window to scroll through the doffs rather than the Holodeck current version which is actually streamlined compared to this. I actually don't know what the antonym for streamline is.
This is the most memorable thing I've seen in a while. May I use this?
I loved your entire post. Point me to your bandwagon and I shall jump on it. Your suggestions would really liven up the game.
Of course, I'm glad to have support for the idea.
In all truth it just makes sense to me.
On topic, having tested the crafting system on Tribble for about an hour, I'm underwhelmed. I'm a huge crafter on MMORPGs. I've been a crafter for well over a decade. It's just something that I do. Mining metals and making swords is just as important to me as killing orcs. In STO, if it were a reasonably fun and reliable system, mining the rocks and crafting phaser banks would be just as important to me as blowing up Undine. I'm reserving final judgement until later in the testing cycle/live implementation, but so far my conclusion is "if it's going to be this tedious, take this long, have no streamlining, have individual items have a ridiculous time-gate, -AND- have the final product's quality be a TRIBBLE shoot, I'm going to walk away disappointed again."
The interesting thing is, individually, any of these might be acceptable. Some MMORPGs used multi-step crafting at one point before they moved to streamlining. That was okay, to a point. You should still be able to get through those steps in rapid succession and not have to start over from the "main menu" for every piece. Being able to make components in bulk is essential. Some MMOs have randomized quality (to a point.) That's okay too (by itself). The problem in the system in testing lies in the enormous time gates. Which the current system not-so-subtly has a way to circumnavigate if only you're willing to give up a chunk of your dilithium. And here we come to the biggest problem of all: the dilithium grab.
Now, dilithium "tax" would be acceptable if it felt supplementary. It should be just enough to make high-end pieces recognizable. However, the bulk of a crafted item's cost should always be the gathered raw materials. A bronze shortsword should be made by mining copper and tin, smelting them, perhaps an additional alloying step to make the bronze, then crafting it. The "time investment cost" that the dilithium is supposed to represent should already be represented by harvesting the materials. (And the whole harvesting thing in the new system is another discussion altogether...)
The other option is to keep the large dilithium costs but make the item's quality static. (For the piece itself, not for the time gate. That timer needs to be drastically reduced and the dilithium pay gate done away with. Unreasonably large time sinks aren't acceptable, this isn't EVE.)
The best option, in my opinion, would be to take the "why not both" approach. Have it be possible to craft any piece of gear, including the end-game items, using nothing but harvested materials, but in doing so have to deal with the RNG determining the quality of the result. Have the option available to use whatever large amount of dilithium as a "catalyst" to guarantee a superior result. I think that compromise would make a large number of people reasonably happy, insofar as the word "reasonable" can be applied to the population of an MMORPG.
Whew, that went on a lot longer than I intended.
Agreed. I see the finish now button with dilithium and it reminds me of the same option in Civilization games when you need a unit now. If that was it it would be fine, dilithium is supposed to represent time in this game anyway.
Logically crafting is supposed to be an alternative to endgame gear acquisition right? Rather than going through the hardest content to acquire gear you go through all of the content to acquire materials that you can use with skill to make different gear.
I'm gonna spend some more time with it, but at the moment it seriously needs a tutorial. I haven't even gotten to the point where dilithium is a factor.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
I'm concerned about the level of sample conversion I will have to do.
The majority of my regular samples are stored in one fleet bank.
The remainder are stored in a storage fleet bank.
The Blue quality samples are stored in the personal inventory of a specific character.
This means all 3 characters will have to empty out the banks, do the sample conversion and then put all the new materials back.
In the case of the first regular samples, this amounts to just over 4 bank tabs of samples.
I doubt my personal inventory can handle that many at once, so it's probably going to take me ages to process them all!
I'm actually at the point where I get worried everytime Cryptic blogs about crafting updates!
I knew this was bad news before I heard about the sample conversion!
And another player told me it only gets worse.......
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Add my voice for being careful about dilithium costs. Sure, make the best items had Dil costs (maybe as a cost for items that go into it). But be careful that your Dil costs don't make the system unworkable.
Crafting also has to compete with Fleet and Reputation gear. We can only have one core, one shield, one deflector, one engine, and a limited number of weapons. Instead of building crafting as a competitor to Fleet/Reputation gear, perhaps look into making it a complement. Instead of making new gear from raw materials, instead, you start with existing gear and add features or modify features. Maybe allow swapping of one modifier for another (say, Acc for CritH?). Uncommon and rarer might allow you to swap out a common modifier for a rarer modifier, like adding a second proc to your weapon, adding energy drain, or so on. A cool idea might be putting the old [borg] modifier back in, requiring a borg neural processor plus some other mats, allowing you to use the reputation and crafting system together to make new stuff. Another cool idea I've seen bandied around is the idea of putting in a project that adds modifiers, effectively increasing the item's rarity. Going from white to green might require a green mat and a modest amount of other resources. From green to blue would require a blue mat and a moderate amount of other resources. From blue to purple, purple mat and lots of resources. And you could even allow crafting to take purple resources and add +1 (making them effectively fleet quality) or +2 (effectively unique) modifiers. That would be cool in so many ways, though you'd definitely have balance issues.
I hope you guys get this right. STO's crafting system has shown absolutely no interest to me before today...let's see what you can do with it.
pwlaughingtrendy, please transmit this post via subspace to the mother ship.
Speaking as someone who has loved MMO crafting since Gemstone and UO I feel safe in making this assertion:
Any game crafting system whose items are meant to compete for use in PvP/PvE combat is immediately a non--starter. Period. Stop. There are no successful examples in mainstream MMOs.
A game crafting system should focus on things that do not affect/imbalance game play. Wearables, unusual housing items, non-combat pets, etc. Of this there are plenty of successful examples. Raph Koster learned that lesson from UO for STO.
For example, a swimsuit shouldn't be something everyone gets after stockpiling Favors. They should have been craftable: not just styles but patterns/decals. Favors for the patterns and mats? Sure.
So this revamp doesn't really matter because it ignores the desired outcome by players: a crafting system that allows them to make things for other players to delight those other players and for the crafter to get recognition for what they make.
The current design assumption is completely misdirected. To paraphrase The Jerk, it is NOT a profit motive. Think Etsy, not Smith & Wesson. Crafters want recognition, not EC. Going back to Koster, that's why we saw things like Maker's Marks.
Add my voice for being careful about dilithium costs. Sure, make the best items had Dil costs (maybe as a cost for items that go into it). But be careful that your Dil costs don't make the system unworkable.
Crafting also has to compete with Fleet and Reputation gear. We can only have one core, one shield, one deflector, one engine, and a limited number of weapons. Instead of building crafting as a competitor to Fleet/Reputation gear, perhaps look into making it a complement. Instead of making new gear from raw materials, instead, you start with existing gear and add features or modify features. Maybe allow swapping of one modifier for another (say, Acc for CritH?). Uncommon and rarer might allow you to swap out a common modifier for a rarer modifier, like adding a second proc to your weapon, adding energy drain, or so on. A cool idea might be putting the old [borg] modifier back in, requiring a borg neural processor plus some other mats, allowing you to use the reputation and crafting system together to make new stuff. Another cool idea I've seen bandied around is the idea of putting in a project that adds modifiers, effectively increasing the item's rarity. Going from white to green might require a green mat and a modest amount of other resources. From green to blue would require a blue mat and a moderate amount of other resources. From blue to purple, purple mat and lots of resources. And you could even allow crafting to take purple resources and add +1 (making them effectively fleet quality) or +2 (effectively unique) modifiers. That would be cool in so many ways, though you'd definitely have balance issues.
I hope you guys get this right. STO's crafting system has shown absolutely no interest to me before today...let's see what you can do with it.
This absolutely. Much of this game is solid customization. Allowing us to customize our equipment from a base item is a natural extension. Especially after the excellent Kit revamp. I am hoping that this crafting will go in that direction.
pwlaughingtrendy, please transmit this post via subspace to the mother ship.
Speaking as someone who has loved MMO crafting since Gemstone and UO I feel safe in making this assertion:
A game crafting system should focus on things that do not affect/imbalance game play. Wearables, unusual housing items, non-combat pets, etc. Of this there are plenty of successful examples. Raph Koster learned that lesson from UO for STO.
For example, a swimsuit shouldn't be something everyone gets after stockpiling Favors. They should have been craftable: not just styles but patterns/decals. Favors for the patterns and mats? Sure.
So this revamp doesn't really matter because it ignores the desired outcome by players: a crafting system that allows them to make things for other players to delight those other players and for the crafter to get recognition for what they make.
The current design assumption is completely misdirected. To paraphrase The Jerk, it is NOT a profit motive. Think Etsy, not Smith & Wesson. Crafters want recognition, not EC. Going back to Koster, that's why we saw things like Maker's Marks.
I think that a modding system would work, but crafting non combat items is certainly an excellent idea. Though many crafters do want EC.
I would love swimsuit patterns available, though someone's bound to say I'm a Starfleet officer not a tailor. That said, Ben Sisko was certainly a chef.
After I saw the YouTube post someone made, I thought along the same lines. Cryptic is removing a hallmark feature, which connected the game to the main premise of the franchise. Exploration.
"Star Trek: Online" is a game that contains 'Star Trek' elements, but it does not use them in a "Star Trek" like manner. Players are not: (1) exploring new regions of space, (2) discovering new lifeforms, (3) learning about a civilization's culture and philosophy, etc...
If they kept the exploration aspects of the game, cryptic could have updated them with new types of missions. Some of those missions include, not limited to: (1) assist in colonization, (2) free captives, (3) scan & study new lifeforms, (4) learn a new language to help in peace negotiations, (5) chart a system with astrometrics, (6) diplomatically solve territory disputes, etc... While a tiny percentage of them are in feature episodes, Cryptic should have made them apart of the exploration mechanic.
What we now have is grinding resources and filling buckets.
Even though "Star Trek: Online" is dressed like "Star Trek", the game's mechanics do not even reflect the franchise.
"Star Trek: Online" has more in common with "Farmville" and "YoVille".
Gather resources, fill buckets, and wait for timegates to expire. Rinse and repeat... As a result of converting everything over to timegates, buckets, and resource grinding, Cryptic ended up burying the main premise of the franchise.
I am holding out hope that the shut down of the clusters at this time is a prelude to an exploration revamp, and they would do well to use these ideas in addition to those posted across these forums.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
Am I missing something? I'm glad that the crafting system is being looked at, but I'm still unclear as to WHAT I can craft (which is all anyone really gives a TRIBBLE about considering peeps will grind for anything - including a Risan Love Boat). I'll be straight up though - if I can't craft items that are on par with fleet quality or better . . . I just don't see the point, or why anyone should care.
As it stands you will be able to craft up to MkXII Ultra Rare in certain areas, the question is the dilithium cost.
It's curious part of what Cryptic is doing is eliminating one of the things that killed crafting, mainly that almost anything you could craft, you could just buy from the dilithium store for less dilithium. Now they've eliminated the competition by removing craftable items from the D-store.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
OK so I was playing with this system, and it's not that bad. A little long to build anything good. A couple of issue I think might make the system a bit more usable:
Allow us to "reverse engineer" items (via duty officers) to obtain components
And I have to stress this, this is just a personal issue. Why does a player with a maxed out crafter have to spend all day trying to build a tier 1 item? Or am I missing something.
I like the easier Duty Officer Interface, and the mission rewards are better understood, but I am sad to see the exploration zones go (Unless the much talked about "Next Expansion" give us a whole new zone, then "SO LONG CLUSTER MISSIONS. HELLO SPACE ZONE.")
Comments
Ah, so the next expansion will be an exploration revamp?
/wild speculation
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On the topic of materials, I do have a small suggestion around naming: Call the energy type of material a source; e.g., "tachyon source" or "polaron radiation source" or "tetryon particle source".
Calling them traces and samples always sounded a little off to me, and I doubt my massive starship beam array only needs a single tetryon particle to be effective. Source is a term commonly used in science and medicine for material or "equipment used for generating X-rays or gamma rays or other penetrating radiation sources (e.g. protons, neutrons, Beta rays)".
Thanks for the link. Looks like I better consider breaking my normal habits and start testing Crafting.
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I've discussed this at length in more relevant threads, my general idea for it is that you would get different AI and different options.
It doesn't need to be static. For instance Tau Dewa Sector Patrol. If I have Tier 5 Romulan rep and I cruise into Carraya where the Tal Shiar are attacking then I would have one of two options. 1st the Tal Shiar would remember how many times I've kicked the TRIBBLE out of them and bail auto completing that for the 20% that that mission rewards. 2nd, they would remember that I've kicked the TRIBBLE out of them and call in reinforcements including up to a Scimitar (weaker than the Fleet and STF grade Scimitars obviously, more along the lines of Sela's warbird in strength), but in this scenario on victory you get an additional 20% completion to the sector patrol.
I see it as being similar to the game triggering different character dialogue depending on whether or not you've completed certain content. For instance A Step Between Stars has different dialogue depending on whether you've completed Romulan Rep and actually discovered the Gateway.
Frankly I'm sick of Breen bringing up the fire bombing of Starfleet Headquarters in the Dominion War after I've already killed Thot Trell. It's immersion breaking.
There has to come a point in our careers where we get the Shepard effect and the enemy NPCs realize they're going up against a meat grinder and self preservation kicks in.
It should be logical to each species. A rep focused on Klingons or Hirogen for instance would actually trigger high level single enemies or small groups that actively are out to make a name for themselves off of taking you out. You could even add accolades for fighting off these prize fighters like you have for taking out named Fleet Alert flagships. Undine I don't see as running so it would only make them more aggressive, but maybe kamikaze like, changing the AI so it just attacks without regard for defense. The Borg are an exception as they don't change their tactics on a case by case basis nor do they experience fear or aggression. I honestly don't know how the Voth would react. Tholians would likely call in reinforcements and then leave if they don't win fast enough.
It's like in the name of the accolades, Tal Shiar's Most Wanted would be like tier 2 or 3 where they've recognized you as a real threat and start ramping up attacks against you. Tier 4 they start dedicating resources, and tier 5 they realize you're unstoppable.
Ultimately however I just think that a reputation system should cause logical side effects based on what your reputation is. And while it exists and is implemented to a degree with DOFF diplomatic commendation, there would need to be a Diplomatic reputation that would offer the opportunity to talk your way out of more fights.
I'm done.
I wonder if Lockboxes are becoming a less reliable revenue stream? They could just be diversifying however.
Wow, so they removed the straight dilithium store. Now that makes this all make quite a bit more sense. So this revamped both crafting AND the D-store.
First - I am excited that crafting is getting some love! Thank you devs for doing this. No matter how good or bad it turns out, I am willing to sacrifice the time and materials I have invested in the current system for even a chance at making it viable.
For those who complain that crafting materials should not involve dilithium: Building a starbase needs it. Aquiring Lobi for that shop and special rewards requires it. Rep systems and Fleet gear needs it. Adding crafting to that list did effectively kill the already-struggling current crafting system. However, farming dil can be seen as merely farming materials needed for crafting. Current amounts are too much imo, and I'd love to see it go entirely, but this is not realistically going to happen.
* Please make the materials tradable. That is, we can remove them from this special inventory and put them into fleet bank or shared bank for others to use. Or on the exchange. On that note, thank you for the special bag.
* PLEASE do not make the obtaining of the highest tier of materials available ONLY thru combat. Elite combat, at that. PLEASE. I beg of you. (Altho I grant making them available thru the c-store is sufficient if one thinks of grinding for dil to exchange for zen as equivalent to grinding for dil to sell to material merchant.) Crafting and gathering resources for crafting has been one of the precious few non-combat aspects of STO. I would hate to see all of STO crafting become like Defara. Pure crafting queued missions would make me cry for joy. Crafting solo missions would be better, however, because frankly the crafters are almost always a small but passionate subculture in any MMO.
* Somewhat off topic: Please do not remove Memory Alpha. Revamp it if you like, but please keep a centralized place for crafters to go. Many crafters enjoy the atmosphere of crafting with others. Not only that, but it's a lovey bit of TOS canon in an MMO based on Roddenberry's creation.
* PLEASE do not make any new crafting bound on pickup.
~ Tanager - Specializing in non-combat gameplay!
Is this now live as I went on Tribble and it still showed me the old particle and plasma traces so how do I test the crafting
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Double click or right-click and Use an old style crafting material, that will pop up the conversion store. Prepare to do a -lot- more clicking if you have plenty of materials.
The new R&D is under the DOffs window, R&D tab.
The Dil Store from the mini-map's changed. The various Dil Vendors still have their goods for sale.
On Tribble...
Walked up to a Dilithium Ship Equipment Vendor...and...it's all still there.
In the other thread, found what might be causing the issue. It's still there on NRC...but not Qo'noS.
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
THIS would be awesome indeed:
Imagine the ability to "swap" out modifiers to suit your build/playstyle.
purple Mk X RCS 1 hard coded modifier (as applicable to an RCS console) + 1 swap-able modifier MODULE (also as applicable to RCS)
purple Mk XI RCS 1 hard coded modifier + 2 swap-able modifier MODULES
purple Mk XII RCS 1 hard coded modifier + 3 swap-able modifier MODULES
Ultraviolet Mk XII RCS 1 hard coded modifier + 4 swap-able modifier MODULES
LOTS of possibilities for many different configurations with JUST 1 console.
Of course, this Modular capability/approach would only apply to the Crafted version of any given item (RCS engineering console as per my example) and if the UV mk12 Crafted version is deemed better/more powerful than the Fleet UV mk12 version, the Crafted version SHOULD cost more (Dil) AND be MORE difficult to craft as well.
I love this idea. Flat out love it.
if agree with all of them but I do have my own. And if you are going to revamp the
crafting system perhaps it might be a good opportunity to at least try to mitigate
these issues.
My main issue...crafting currently produces items that are obtainable elsewhere in the
game. This practice is tolerable for the purpose of "leveling" in crafting, but should
not be the end goal. High end crafting does not need to yield uber items that trump
Fleet or Reputation items...they merely need to offer something that is unobtainable
elsewhere. It's the same principle as items found in lockboxes and the Lobi store, if
I could obtain those items from a random drop or a mission reward, that would nullify
the reason for purchasing lockboxes or Lobi store items. If end game crafting offered
it's own unique items I feel it would encourage it's intergration with the rest of the
game.
And I emphasize that crafted items don't need to be better than existing gear, just
different. Like batteries that last longer but put out less energy. Weapons that have
a faster (or slower) rate of fire but have adjusted damage to have the same DPS as
their non-crafted counterparts. Shields with larger capacity but some damage from
every attack leaks through. Ship cannons that can be mounted in the rear arc. And
endless possibilties to fill personal and ship device slots, like grenades for non-
Tactical characters (or Tacs that just want more grenades),a secondary overshield that
has limited charges, deployable cover shields, Hypos that can target other player,
etc...
The second issue is the high Dilithium cost. The game needs to make money, I
understand that, but if you're going to ask us to spend Dilithium it better be for
something worthwhile. Understand that crafting takes up play time and our time and
effort to gather the resources needed to craft items should be acknowledged. I hear
Dilithium is required to produce certain crafting components. I hope those components
are unbound so that those that are Dilithium rich and wish to sell those components to
crafters unwilling to part with their Dil, have a way of doing so. Some say that makes
crafting nothing more than another store...and it is. But if you offer things in
crafting I can't get anywhere else and for a reasonable price it is a store I will
use.
I have heard rumors that the quality of crafted items will have an element of
randomness to it. I'm okay with this mechanic as long as the item doesn't require any
Dil, but if you ask for any Dilithium in the crafted item I must strongly object with
any kind of randomness. I have no problem with crafting being a different kind of
store but I better get what I paid for.
This is the most memorable thing I've seen in a while. May I use this?
I loved your entire post. Point me to your bandwagon and I shall jump on it. Your suggestions would really liven up the game.
On topic, having tested the crafting system on Tribble for about an hour, I'm underwhelmed. I'm a huge crafter on MMORPGs. I've been a crafter for well over a decade. It's just something that I do. Mining metals and making swords is just as important to me as killing orcs. In STO, if it were a reasonably fun and reliable system, mining the rocks and crafting phaser banks would be just as important to me as blowing up Undine. I'm reserving final judgement until later in the testing cycle/live implementation, but so far my conclusion is "if it's going to be this tedious, take this long, have no streamlining, have individual items have a ridiculous time-gate, -AND- have the final product's quality be a TRIBBLE shoot, I'm going to walk away disappointed again."
The interesting thing is, individually, any of these might be acceptable. Some MMORPGs used multi-step crafting at one point before they moved to streamlining. That was okay, to a point. You should still be able to get through those steps in rapid succession and not have to start over from the "main menu" for every piece. Being able to make components in bulk is essential. Some MMOs have randomized quality (to a point.) That's okay too (by itself). The problem in the system in testing lies in the enormous time gates. Which the current system not-so-subtly has a way to circumnavigate if only you're willing to give up a chunk of your dilithium. And here we come to the biggest problem of all: the dilithium grab.
Now, dilithium "tax" would be acceptable if it felt supplementary. It should be just enough to make high-end pieces recognizable. However, the bulk of a crafted item's cost should always be the gathered raw materials. A bronze shortsword should be made by mining copper and tin, smelting them, perhaps an additional alloying step to make the bronze, then crafting it. The "time investment cost" that the dilithium is supposed to represent should already be represented by harvesting the materials. (And the whole harvesting thing in the new system is another discussion altogether...)
The other option is to keep the large dilithium costs but make the item's quality static. (For the piece itself, not for the time gate. That timer needs to be drastically reduced and the dilithium pay gate done away with. Unreasonably large time sinks aren't acceptable, this isn't EVE.)
The best option, in my opinion, would be to take the "why not both" approach. Have it be possible to craft any piece of gear, including the end-game items, using nothing but harvested materials, but in doing so have to deal with the RNG determining the quality of the result. Have the option available to use whatever large amount of dilithium as a "catalyst" to guarantee a superior result. I think that compromise would make a large number of people reasonably happy, insofar as the word "reasonable" can be applied to the population of an MMORPG.
Whew, that went on a lot longer than I intended.
Admiral Hawkye L. Narasumas
Commanding Officer, NX-91883 U.S.S. Harmony - Prometheus Class Custom Variant
Fleet Commander, No Fate
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For those with banks filled with crafting stuff, we need a batch conversions for the thousands of anomalies that we have, but we don't have such a thing. For now we are confined to doing it one click at a time.
It appears that our dedicated crafters will be reset to zero experience. This means having to make, and destroy many items before we can craft something useful.... again. So great cost and lots of time will be needed to regain what we had achieved earlier.
Crafting will be duty officer driven. Not having the right duty officers will be a serious impediment. This is yet another layer of cost and time over our heads. Then items will cost TONS of dilithium in spite of everything else. And since making crafting a duty officer mission, that means you might lose everything you invested into making a piece of gear... even dilithium!
I see no win here at this time.
Member since December 2009
My advice to people, if this is implemented with even half the cost of dilith it has now and assuming you will be able to sell your crafted items then I suggest people who do not craft or have little dilith start farming EC BIG time NOW if you want the good stuff !
As for having to start again I find that a slap in the face of the people who levelled crafting. Not only was it time consuming but also cost in game currency to achieve. Do we get a refund on the resources we lost to achieve that (who am I kidding) ?
(Just wish those of us who had already completed the entire current crafting system didn't have to start all over again, but I understand why we need to; oh well...)
What I'm saddest about in the season update is the loss of exploration missions. I loved those things, just couldn't play them as much as I wanted cause I was always off getting marks, credits or doing the latest grind. I'm sure going to miss them! But I hope it is only a goodbye to the exploration missions as we knew them and that a new updated system will come in the not to distant future. Only having the story, feature and latest community authored missions without something more random will get boring fast, even with the updates every month.
(And lets face it, its hard to get to newer community authored missions in its current ui form; most often I only ever find the same missions I've already done or don't really want to do, unless I read about it on the forums and know exactly what to search for or it has been picked as a feature community authored mission, but I hope you are already working toward an update for that too; if I had any good ideas for this too, I'd offer them, but I'm afraid I don't right now).
Edit: I am also concerned though about the dillithium cost associated with some of the crafting items. I didn't get a chance to really work with those yet, but I'm worried the cost is going to be a bit too high, especially from what others have said they have seen on tribble. This especially concerns me with the loss of the exploration missions as it reduces the amount of dillithium we can earn each day. Can you consider cutting the dilithium crafting costs in half? Or are you going to increase the number of ways we can earn dillithium each day with season 9.5?
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"Does anyone remember when we used to be explorers?"- Captain Jean-Luc Picard
Thank You, Cryptic......even when I don't agree with all your decisions....Thank You for Star Trek Online!
The Doff system isn't actually changed, but the interface is unwieldy as all get out. I find it visually jarring. It's not like the jump from STO classic UI to current LCARS either. That was a reskin, this is a reshuffle, and not one that I'm fond of. And the DOFF selection for the assignments is actually an added step bringing up a separate window to scroll through the doffs rather than the Holodeck current version which is actually streamlined compared to this. I actually don't know what the antonym for streamline is.
Of course, I'm glad to have support for the idea.
In all truth it just makes sense to me.
Agreed. I see the finish now button with dilithium and it reminds me of the same option in Civilization games when you need a unit now. If that was it it would be fine, dilithium is supposed to represent time in this game anyway.
Logically crafting is supposed to be an alternative to endgame gear acquisition right? Rather than going through the hardest content to acquire gear you go through all of the content to acquire materials that you can use with skill to make different gear.
I'm gonna spend some more time with it, but at the moment it seriously needs a tutorial. I haven't even gotten to the point where dilithium is a factor.
The majority of my regular samples are stored in one fleet bank.
The remainder are stored in a storage fleet bank.
The Blue quality samples are stored in the personal inventory of a specific character.
This means all 3 characters will have to empty out the banks, do the sample conversion and then put all the new materials back.
In the case of the first regular samples, this amounts to just over 4 bank tabs of samples.
I doubt my personal inventory can handle that many at once, so it's probably going to take me ages to process them all!
I'm actually at the point where I get worried everytime Cryptic blogs about crafting updates!
I knew this was bad news before I heard about the sample conversion!
And another player told me it only gets worse.......
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Crafting also has to compete with Fleet and Reputation gear. We can only have one core, one shield, one deflector, one engine, and a limited number of weapons. Instead of building crafting as a competitor to Fleet/Reputation gear, perhaps look into making it a complement. Instead of making new gear from raw materials, instead, you start with existing gear and add features or modify features. Maybe allow swapping of one modifier for another (say, Acc for CritH?). Uncommon and rarer might allow you to swap out a common modifier for a rarer modifier, like adding a second proc to your weapon, adding energy drain, or so on. A cool idea might be putting the old [borg] modifier back in, requiring a borg neural processor plus some other mats, allowing you to use the reputation and crafting system together to make new stuff. Another cool idea I've seen bandied around is the idea of putting in a project that adds modifiers, effectively increasing the item's rarity. Going from white to green might require a green mat and a modest amount of other resources. From green to blue would require a blue mat and a moderate amount of other resources. From blue to purple, purple mat and lots of resources. And you could even allow crafting to take purple resources and add +1 (making them effectively fleet quality) or +2 (effectively unique) modifiers. That would be cool in so many ways, though you'd definitely have balance issues.
I hope you guys get this right. STO's crafting system has shown absolutely no interest to me before today...let's see what you can do with it.
Speaking as someone who has loved MMO crafting since Gemstone and UO I feel safe in making this assertion:
A game crafting system should focus on things that do not affect/imbalance game play. Wearables, unusual housing items, non-combat pets, etc. Of this there are plenty of successful examples. Raph Koster learned that lesson from UO for STO.
For example, a swimsuit shouldn't be something everyone gets after stockpiling Favors. They should have been craftable: not just styles but patterns/decals. Favors for the patterns and mats? Sure.
So this revamp doesn't really matter because it ignores the desired outcome by players: a crafting system that allows them to make things for other players to delight those other players and for the crafter to get recognition for what they make.
The current design assumption is completely misdirected. To paraphrase The Jerk, it is NOT a profit motive. Think Etsy, not Smith & Wesson. Crafters want recognition, not EC. Going back to Koster, that's why we saw things like Maker's Marks.
That said I do look forward to emptying my various banks accounts. More people get rich selling supplies to crafters than crafters get rich selling their stuff. I stockpiled for this reason alone - I assumed Cryptic would not fundamentally rethink crafting. So few graphical MMOs do...
I would love swimsuit patterns available, though someone's bound to say I'm a Starfleet officer not a tailor. That said, Ben Sisko was certainly a chef.
I am holding out hope that the shut down of the clusters at this time is a prelude to an exploration revamp, and they would do well to use these ideas in addition to those posted across these forums.
As it stands you will be able to craft up to MkXII Ultra Rare in certain areas, the question is the dilithium cost.
It's curious part of what Cryptic is doing is eliminating one of the things that killed crafting, mainly that almost anything you could craft, you could just buy from the dilithium store for less dilithium. Now they've eliminated the competition by removing craftable items from the D-store.
I like the easier Duty Officer Interface, and the mission rewards are better understood, but I am sad to see the exploration zones go (Unless the much talked about "Next Expansion" give us a whole new zone, then "SO LONG CLUSTER MISSIONS. HELLO SPACE ZONE.")