I think these proposed changes need to be either scrapped or go back to the drawing board. Here's my feedback from testing so far:
1. Trade in materials 1 at a time - I assume that this was a bug or an oversight that will just get fixed.
2. Doff system integration - Please no. The doff system is the doff system and the crafting system should be unrelated. At the very least make doffs have no bearing on the outcome.
3. Too many steps - take a bunch of stuff and turn it in to other things to use to make an final item. This is not an improvement on the current system, over-complicates things, and will put people off using the system.
4. Random quality and modifiers - If you thought lock boxes were unpopular, this will be worse. This takes the reason for crafting and throws it out the window.
5. Costs - Combined with the randomness, you might as well get rid of crafting all together, because I predict very limited usage of the crafting system as is stands.
5. Leveling system - I think it takes too long to progress to a stage where you would be able to craft level appropriate items. Having maxed crafting skills on one of my current toons, the thought of grinding through the process all over again from scratch is something I probably wont do.
Suggestion:
Get rid of the intermediary stage for a common rarity version of the item you are trying to craft. Have additional options to apply a certain modifier of choice up to a max of 3 modifiers with a dil cost for each modifier.
e.g.
Stage 1: Turn materials into a common phaser beam array Mk XII. Material cost increases with the mark of the weapon, but no dil cost.
Stage 2: Add an Acc modifier to the weapon at the cost of say 5k dil, resulting in an uncommon phaser beam array Mk XII [Acc].
Stage 3: Add an additional Acc modifier to the weapon at the cost of 5k dil, resulting in an rare phaser beam array Mk XII [Acc]x2.
Stage 4: Add a CritD modifier to the weapon at the cost of 5k dil, finally resulting in a Very Rare Phaser Beam Array Mk XII [Acc]x2 [CritD].
This way crafters get exactly what they want in a clear easy to understand way, but at the cost of dilithium. The ability to craft higher marks of gear can be tied to character level so the majority of toons that are currently level 50 will get some immediate benefit from using a new system.
There are other "business" things that can be implemented like crafting the 3rd modifier binds the gear to account and new special crafting project drops from lock boxes (or some new very rare doff missions) that allow the crafting of unique consoles that currently come with c-store ships (because pvp has become out of hand with some of these consoles, and thing are only going downhill). At the end of the day, a decent and fair crafting system will get people investing dilithium in crafting and turning c-store points into dilithium.
TLDR: I will prefer the current system unless some serious changes are made (which is why this is on Tribble in the first place). I then made a suggestion for a rework that in my opinion is better for everyone.
I like this suggestion. Maybe add option to add 4th modifier when fully maxed out research level.
Well, I guess this would make them better than fleet weapons. Better in the sense that you can control the mods more. Maybe have increasing scale for each additional mod. 5k, 10k, 15k, 20k dilithium
Get rid of the intermediary stage for a common rarity version of the item you are trying to craft. Have additional options to apply a certain modifier of choice up to a max of 3 modifiers with a dil cost for each modifier.
This would be an acceptable use of dilithium for crafted items. Lower quality items have a lower dilithium cost, and the higher quality items will have a cost more in line with fleet items. Plus, we get to choose our modifiers.
Crafted items still need something to make them stand apart from other items, including fleet, in game. Not necessarily better, just different .
As you know, Season 9 extended the ship/console logic to kits and their modules. Now that a revamp of the crafting system is in the offing I (and others) have asked 'why not apply that to weapons and their mods as well?'. It seems a logical progression, true, but let's have a look at what this might mean in terms of crafting.
the Mk. and rarity of the weapon would still be affected by your crafting skill.
weapon mods (i.e. [Acc], [CrtH], etc.) would become craftable components, with rarity affecting their effectiveness in the same way it does for kit module.
the number of mod slots available on a weapon is determined by its rarity (uncommon = 1; rare = 2, etc.).
mods may be freely swapped among weapons while out of combat, with each weapon type having its own pool of mods... in other words, you can't rip the [Dmg] from a torpedo launcher in your inventory and stick it onto your rifle!
some mod recipes would be rewarded by progression within a rep (case in point, one would get [Sonic] and [Refract] from Nukara; [Borg] from Omega).
Legacy weapons in players' inventories, or posted to the Exchange, at the time of the changeover would continue to exist, of course; reputation and fleet stores remain viable alternatives for people willing to ante up the dil and/or marks for an item with a particular desired mod combination. Exotic base weapon types (i.e. nanite-infused disruptor; destabilizing tetryon; bio-molecular phaser) could even be added to the recipe pool as well.
Having tried the new system out I agree with what other people have commented on about customising items.
As you rank-up towards the higher tiers, you should be able to customise the items you craft more and more.
Examples:
Adding a second effect to a console. I.e so if you have a ship that has phaser weapons and photon projectiles you could craft a console to increase damage on these 2 types.
More varied selection of items? How about crafting unique consumables like an item that would improve performance on your ship in a certain way for a limited duration, like batteries but more varied. Perhaps an upgrade to exotic damage or a certain power?
Basically my point is that since now there are so many ways you can customise your ship builds and characters etc. the crafting system is a perfect way to cater to that variety. It's not about being able to craft the most powerful items in game, more about customisation!
It's called "research" and development, but wheres the research????
Having played Skyrim again recently, an interesting thing about crafting potions is that you could mix and match ingredients with unkown outcomes and thus learn new recipies as you progressed, this method would work well and make crafting infinitely more interesting I think!
When you do research/experiments you learn from failing!
As you know, Season 9 extended the ship/console logic to kits and their modules. Now that a revamp of the crafting system is in the offing I (and others) have asked 'why not apply that to weapons and their mods as well?'. It seems a logical progression, true, but let's have a look at what this might mean in terms of crafting..l.
Agreed.
I would even be satisfied if Suffix "modules" were installed during an assembly stage, at the end (and thus fused to the item), allowing customization of the product without later fiddling by the owner. (meaning, create a purple quality Disruptor DHC Assembly with 3 slots, then start an Assembly project, where 3 modules were installed to create a final result)
Regardless - allow customized creation, and have that customization use objects even novice crafters can generate (or allow refinement of novice created items to higher tiers) in order to ensure all tiers of crafting have purpose.
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Ok, here goes.I hope someone really reads all these posts.Maybe by some miracle they hear this good feedback
1. All component should be in one menu so we don't need to jump all over to get what we need.
2. Allow to choose how many components and how many of what ever item person is trying to create.
3 Random quality of final item must be removed.Nobody will create these items for anything other than "xp".If i'm aiming for green,blue or purple item then it should create that item.
4. It takes far too long to create final item like Quantum Torpedo MK6, 1 hour per item.Should be more like 1 minute.
5. Using dilithium for anything in crafting is not a good idea. I just go over to fleet store and buy directly whatever weapons or items i need.In other words bypassing this crafting system.
6. Item requirement levels: 0, 5 or 10. Wow.I don't even know what to say. Change it to 0,1,2 and 3...? or 0, 2, 4, 6... ? Anything else than 5, 10, 15, 20.... see the idea?
Yet still work in progress...well i say that this system has a long way to go before it's good enough.Will 1 month be enough time to get it there? I'd like to hope so. At it's current state: it's worse than what we have now.
Aside from the new procs which would only require a single weapon not even a set, what do the rewards from this new system offer to make it desireable compared to reputation and fleet gear?
Customizable mods? Nope.
Specific Energy Type? Beats some rep items but not fleet.
Lower Cost? You can gamble for weapons at the cost of 15 marks or get a 100% guaranteed quality out of fleet.
Honestly what is even the point of all this aside from creating a grind? Would it not have the same exact end result just to create a single doff mission for each end piece item similar to the console crafting doff mission?
The more I look at it, the more I think on it, it simply screams of another half assed game system tossed in without the necessary polish or quality to make it shine that creates another item to add into lockboxes/crafting boxes.
A quality R&D system would involve an actual research component that would allow the player to expand their options discovering a variety of potential items to craft and mods or customization tweaks and options to apply to them. An actual development component that would allow the player to piece together the various options into the exact result they desired. If you want to toss in a bit of random it could be a random time period to craft, it could consume a random amount of components, it could have a failure to create chance, it could have random quality of the selected mods being applied.
This? This is just an alternative method of getting a loot box drop from a slightly narrow loot pool.
I would even be satisfied if Suffix "modules" were installed during an assembly stage, at the end (and thus fused to the item)...
Close, but.. no. The idea of the modules being fused to the base item neither fits with the abovementioned logic nor makes sense given the setting. The old RPG trope of forcing the player to choose between destroying an item to recover its mods or destroying the mods to free up the item's slots really doesn't belong here.
Regardless - allow customized creation, and have that customization use objects even novice crafters can generate (or allow refinement of novice created items to higher tiers) in order to ensure all tiers of crafting have purpose.
I hadn't honestly considered to the idea of crafting projects that just upgrade the rarity of an item (another sort might add slots to an item, to the absolute max of 4, without affecting rarity), but we do seem to agree on what the crafting system should allow.
Another idea an acquaintance and I were discussing was that of adding a second roll to the process. For example, you start a project to create a [Dmg] mod; the possible results would be common, uncommon, rare, or very rare (with the exact numbers modified by skill). The second roll is independent of that (and also modified by crafting skill), and represents the odds of a, well, lucky break causing the resulting module to have a bonus effect chosen at random from a pool unavailable by other means. In the case of our hypothetical [Dmg] mod, it might be something like [SHeal] or [SDisrupt] (representing the only way you can get either outside of fleet ordinance), or even [Odds] or [Enhc]; the latter pair are explained below:
[Odds]: boosts the chances of all on-hit effects associated with the weapon by 50%. For example, [KB2] would have a 15% chance of triggering instead of 10%.
[Enhc]: all secondary effects associated with the weapon multiplied by 1.5. This would include, for example, the damage from [DoT*] or the crit severity from [CritD] or [CrtX] (but not the latter's chance) or the knockback distance from [KB*]... or the time shaved by [Rch].
What I'm presently having a little :mad:, or just with is the rigid implementation of different crafting schools. I don't just need torpedos, nor do I just need science consoles, but if I'm going to start investing in this system I'm going to have to make some sort of long-term decision about which school I'm going to invest most in just to put the grinding and material exchange costs to a bearable minimum. And that decision is going to be based far more on the utility of being able to craft a particular kind of equipment rather than having a particular equipment piece.
IE. I feel I'm being forced into the broader categories of items (ex. consoles) even though for my playstyle and ship loadouts the more confined schools are of greater interest (ex. Projectiles).
What may help with this is unbalancing the leveling rate of "niche" schools (Projectiles, Shields, Ground Weapons) is greater than the more pragmatic categories (anything with consoles or energy weapons) so that exploring those other areas of the crafting system doesn't come at so much of a cost to practicality.
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I have about 5000 crafting materials in my bank, we need a bulk conversion option as I am not interested in trying to convert them to the new system one a time.
I'm not a fan of the random nature of the results. Could you work in a method where we can choose the traits we are trying to craft? There is nothing more frustrating than successfully creating a very rare MK XII cannon and it has Dam x 3 when i wanted Acc x 3.
Couple questions/concerns (probably mentioned elsewhere but hey, doesn't hurt):
1. All my characters already have the existing crafting system maxed out. What happens to this investment ... is it simply lost? :eek:
2. What about Common/Uncommon Unreplicateable materials ... bought with Dilithium? Are they used anywhere? If not, what do they convert into or is that investment simply lost too? :eek:
3. Bulk conversion of old -> new is desperately needed. A slider, or something but not one at a time ...
4. Whilst we're on the topic of doing things in bulk, the bulk crafting of components/items would be useful too.
5. Converting old common -> new common/uncommon ... seems fair but old rare -> RANDOM common/uncommon??? really???
6. I'm sorry but having to spend Dilithium to craft components doesn't wash with me, there are more than enough dilithium-sinks in this game already. And it's the sole reason I never actually made full use of the original crafting system, other than to max out the skill.
7. I don't need or want seperate R&D inventory slots per character ... it needs to be per ACCOUNT, so all characters can access the same R&D inventory.
I'm not a fan of the random nature of the results. Could you work in a method where we can choose the traits we are trying to craft? There is nothing more frustrating than successfully creating a very rare MK XII cannon and it has Dam x 3 when i wanted Acc x 3.
8. Neither am I. If I'm having to invest the time & effort in crafting something, I want to choose what I craft & what traits it has & not have those traits, or the quality for that matter, randomized. Even more so, if I'm having to spend dilithium to craft it.
I have about 5000 crafting materials in my bank, we need a bulk conversion option as I am not interested in trying to convert them to the new system one a time.
Same Issue here...
I am not spending countless time click one by one...
As several other posters have mentioned, this randomness combined with the high dillithium cost will result in no one using the system.
Why not use all the component crafting to take the randomness out of the equation? First, the quality must be static then have optional component slots for an item.
Say I want to make a Very Rare MK XII Beam Array - it then has 3 optional component slots. If I want [Acc]x3 I build 3 Targeting Processors, if I want [Dmg]x3 - then build 3 Focusing Lenses or combine them if I want [Acc]x2 [Dmg]x1.
If you still want the luck chance in there - use it to reward people instead of punishing them with inferior results. Say I get a crit on the above Beam Array - it turns out my Duty Officers was really efficient and actually managed to make two of those Beam Arrays! Great if I'm equipping a ship - if not, I can sell the surplus.
And just to chime in:
- conversion way too clunky - need a slider system ASAP - and better conversion rate, especially particle traces
- UI too clunky, components spread over different categories, have to basically craft an item just to see which components it requires. Must be able to queue multiple crafts - especially components.
- Projects take way too long - especially the levelling ones - 1 hour for a mk VI weapon?!? If you really want this, at least make the rush job EC based.
- Desperately need a non-combat way to gather aside from DOFF missions - keep exploration clusters! Same goes for Very Rare materials - Elite STFs should not be the only non-zen source of these.
- More recipies: Kits/Modules and Costumes would be great.
- The majority of levelling XP should come from components, not the final items - it's a waste of materials just to make vendor junk. Also a scavenge materials option to break down said vendor junk would help in getting a little return on the material investment.
In it's current implementation I'm sorry to say that I won't spend one minute on it. If just the conversion tool changes, I'll use that to free up bank space. And please don't make this system more appealing by just raising cost for rep and fleet gear!!! (I believe saw somewhere that the price for Romulan Plasma weapons had been raised to over 40k dil.)
Without the high cost, randomness and time gating, it could be made in to a fun and engaging system.
The UI looks nice enough, but I feel the old Doff interface was better. Things are just taking up way too much space on the screen, and isn't conveying the information any better.
As people have said, converting old materials to new materials is just dreadful to do.
Having to build one component at a time is pretty dreadful. Trying to find the Emitter component for beams was a pain, since unlike everything else, the name of the project is not the result of that project. Having to go into the project to build the item in order to see what you need, then switch back and slowly build each part one at a time is just bad. What, I couldn't walk into Engineering and just give them a list of basic components I'd like for them to build?
I doubt I'll ever use the 'finish it now' button. An hour costs 900 dilithium? There are way too many other things demanding my dilithium to justify that. If you want to create sinks for things, then make people happy to actually sink whatever it is in.
Having a chance to get a very rare that you might possibly want isn't going to draw people into the system. As the system stands, it'll mainly get used by people who want the buff(s), and even many of them won't bother with the amount of grind it would take to max out.
The system just isn't fun in general. The grind and costs are large, the interface is clunky, and the main reward is a trait.
I have 12 toons, only one of them had crafting maxed on old system and I have only crafted 1 Aegis set (and bought another one on exchange as it was cheaper) and one Bath'let that I used. Things were cheaper on exchange.
So I hoped that the new system would make crafting useable, but I am disappointed.
Again, it's too expensive, too unpredictable and too much effort. I know this is a beta version and I have just had a look at it, so I am still a noob to that system.
I don't mind the grinding up to high xp until you can make decent stuff. I also wouldn't mind if the items were character or account bound on pickup
But what I do mind:
you grind a fair bit until you can make decent stuff. Then it's expensive, complicated and no guaranteed success. In short: a few EC grinding missions and searching the exchange is more efficient and more fun.
I had hoped for a few things:
that one could upgrade items - makes levelling easier, if you have your blue/purple beams that you can upgrade from II to IV and so on.
I had hoped that the crafting system was revamped in such a manner that it would rival the exchange. Like, collecting materials on missions, getting max XP on crafting and then being able to get some decent stuff
I had hoped for new craftable consoles, in the style of Dyson rep consoles (only more usable)
Also the reward for toons that had crafting skill maxed already is ridiculous.
But then again, a part of me had hoped that rep stores would partially be payable with marks rather than just Dilithium - so I am an optimist.
Question is: what's the point of it?
In short: you put a lot of work and thinking into something completely useless. Ressources would have been better spent bughunting. CLaiming that this is the big feature of S9,5 will not go down too well with players.
18 characters
KDF: 2 tacs, 2 engs, 3 scis
KDF Roms: 3 tacs, 1 eng, 1 scis
FED: 2 tacs, 1 eng, 2 scis
TOS: 1 tac
all on T5 rep (up to temporal)
all have mastered Intel tree (and some more specs Points)
highest DPS: 60.982
I do have play today and try it and i have few thing to note for the crafting revamp.
1. make it so we can convert more just one at the time
2. discard comment, uncomment...... items transfer it component items and very rare items get very rare component.
3.for old players to be benefaction (wort the time) we need to select modes like Acc, CritD....
you can limit the use of the same mode like 4xAcc to just 2. Other wise thews items are not as good that fleet weapons even if we get a very rare item you get a random mode so for this price to get 1 good weapon (modes you wont ore need for you build) whit i will get 4 ore 5 Elit fleet(main Dilithium cost).
And for thews who will say crafting is a alternation to the fleet ore reputation i`ts not in practices mb on paper but nooooo. I`ts far more to get their now i`ts not, this way because there are a lot of fleet hit level 5 so you can join and some fleet have it set so you can get on first rank ore second to bye from the fleet store(you just need the fleet marks and whit the new project for fleet marks for just fleet marks i`ts no brainier)
No, no, no. Bad, Cryptic, bad!
I will probably repeat stuff others said, but I feel like the issue needs voices.
1) Converting materials:
At who were you aiming this? Did you expect that all players just stopped collecting materials after tutorial level? Even if they did, there are still some doff missions that reward them so...
2) New doff UI:
No, just no. The old one was better keep that one. So far I didn't see changes that I would expect doff revamp to have - like a better track of assignment chains for example. Now there is just a mess that doesn't properly scale with the UI so the first hour of the game of the patch will be trying to figure out the UI setup of whoever designed this thing.
Then there is lack of indication of what department this assignment belongs too as well as alphabetical order (wtf? why?). The old system is functional. If you are not revamping the doff system don't mess with it.
3.) Crafting schools:
Why? This serves no purpose. Especially since some of the components are in more than one school. Just remove schools all together but make it like RnD department of doffs.
You know what I mean... like diplomacy, science, medical, ets + JUST RnD with single progress bar.
But keep it in separate tab as it is now so it doesn't get lost in other doff stuff.
4.) Crafting UI:
Again no breakdown as to type of the thing you are about to craft or quality, but alphabet order. I guess I see why you did it here. Your heart was on the right place (I need to craft xy for that I need EPS conduit so that would be under E), but it doesn't work very well.
5.) Crafting components:
Why is there no option to craft more than one piece? Why? It's components. They are even put in special bag, so its not like we are going to queue 150 personal shields and then complain (cause we would) that it doesn't fit in our inventory. And its not like there is chance to get different result, right?
6.) The confirm button:
When crafting equipment, you first have to select type of weapon, then energy type, then mark then press confirm and THEN you find out you are missing some components. So you go back and craft components and repeat the process. Not good.
Remove the confirm button have it reflect the changes as you change stuff.
7.) Missing components:
When you are trying to craft equipment you find out some component is missing. Would be nice if we could click on the icon in the requirements section and the dialog would pop up : to craft this you need this, this and this - you have the materials, would you like to craft it?
8.) Assign the doff:
The list as it is right now does not sit right with me. And I can't come up with something better that is already in place in doff system. Just keep that one for now.
9) Catalysts:
This I don't like. But its free to play game and free to play games have to get moneys somewhere, right?
BUT so far you did a nice job avoiding this sort of things. Please rethink this.
10) Dilithium rush:
Again don't like this, but doesn't really bother me that much. Might as well stay. I could even use it sometime to skip 5minutes out of 24 hours to get something and slot new thing before I log out.
11) Dilithium costs:
Now I haven't crafted that far. From what I hear though the dilithium costs for some of the average stuff is outrageous.
12) Randomness of the thing:
Should be removed completely. This is crafting. I know what I want and I am assigning competent men and spending resources on the thing. Its unacceptable that I would get some random result.
13) Unappealing results:
There is nothing that would interest me here. Honestly I thought crafting would start off as you can craft whatever you want. As in you can put whatever mods you want on your shield for example. Maybe even sacrifice one mod in favor of different engine trail color. Or I don't know maybe like MACO set with Dyson visuals. I don't know. I expected customized equipment, but we are getting just some random things that are no better than stuff from rep stores (does not = nerf rep stores).
14) Future:
I hope stuff will be added there on regular basis. Sort of like fleet store is updated with every season.
As it stand I don't see myself doing this crafting any more than I did the one that is live now.
I also realize that the thing on Tribble is not going to change much (if at all).
But I still thought I would voice my opinion on it.
First of all: Where the hell is that conversion store people are talking about?
Now my thoughts to the new crafting/Doff assignment UI:
In general, I think this is a good idea, but it needs some major tender love and care...
There are missing some filtering functions, especially regarding the Doff selection, but also for the assignments themselves.
The old filtering functions for the doff selection gave me a good control over finding the best doffs for the assignment.
Now? Not so much. The average amout of clicks per assignment has easily tripled, as I have to click on each doff's info button to see if their traits fit in.
The selection feels like quite a mess, as you've always got to scroll through all your doffs from purple to green/white, showing all schools in no particular order (except the quality). And this even though the system behind the curtain still rewards using a doff from a fitting school.
But finding the right doff has been made even more difficult, as there are no longer hints to the profession that may provide a success.
And the selection of assignments got a real mess. If you're searching for assignments of a specific class (like, "sience") you need some experience with the old system to be able to identify these, as the list is completely unsorted.
For the Doff selection, I'd suggest to implement the old filter system. Oh, and bring back the trait info on the doff suggestion window. The extra click to see the traits is unneccessary, in my opinion.
For the assignment selection, it might be making sense to break them up into several tabs, one for each section (diplomatic/engineering/science etc.).
(Note: I didn't read the other posts, as I simply don't have the time to read 20+ pages.)
"I came from a time long gone, saw many other times...
But I'm still a mere human."
Vice Admiral Chris Curtiss, Temporal Ambassador
Some more thoughts about it from me: Is this new crafting system meant to be something that everyone can do as they level up to get equipment for their level, or exclusively an 'endgame' thing?
The items you get out of it imply that it's something you could do as you level up, and use the equipment you produce. To me, that's how crafting should be. It was something you could do under the older systems, but only if you went out of your way to grind out materials. Adding the dilithium cost effectively prevented that, as new characters aren't likely to have any dilithium, and older players making new characters are unlikely to bother wasting their other characters' dilithium on crafting.
Under this new system, any player's best bet for using the crafting system is just to skip straight to producing Mk VI equipment. But even if they grind the crafting system pretty hard, by the time they can produce Mk VIII equipment (which requires level 5 in the school in order to produce the necessary components), they'll be using Mk XI/XII equipment. It's just not possible for anyone to reasonably accrue the kind of crafting experience to be able to produce equipment for themselves as they level. Since it's basically unusable for lower level characters, that would imply that it's an endgame system.
As an endgame system, you have to grind out a huge number of nigh worthless items for lower levels before being able to produce anything remotely juicy. That's not making it interesting or appealing, that's just making it a [Repetitive Stain Injury Generator Mk XII]. Either the special equipment coming from crafting is rather overpowered, or people aren't really going to bother much with it. More power creep is not a good thing, so I'd rather everything from crafting be good alternatives, not 'must haves' for the DPS crowd. So if people are going to use it, and it's not going to be overpowered goodies, then it's got to have a reasonable grind.
I'd like it to be how crafting is in other games, something that you can do to make equipment that's useful to you as you level up, and if you stick with it, it'll allow you to produce some nice unique pieces (like how the Delta Flyer was. Never a must have, but a nice reward for the week(?) it took to build). Then with some extra effort, producing gear that's on the level of what you'd expect from other sources like the rep gear. Let crafting be something like a rep system that you can start working on from level 1, which if you level it along side your character with some effort, will enable you to produce appropriate mk gear. Once you hit max level, then you can either leave it and move on to the rep system, or you can keep pushing it further, producing some unique and useful equipment. If you started work on it from the start, you'll likely be maxing it out before you're maxing out any of the Reps. If you're only starting crafting at level 50 along side your reps, the reps will be done first.
Thinking even more on the Doff UI, it's just plain bad as far as usability goes. It gives less information and takes up more room; I know the same amount about the rewards, but know less about the requirements to run a mission. When I'm in a sector looking at the doff missions, fairly often I'm looking for things from particular departments. I want Sci cxp, so I scroll down to the Sci section and see if there's any that look good. I can click once on it to see what sorts of doffs it needs, and if it's not one that appeals to me, then I can just continue looking through the list. In this new system, if I want Sci cxp, I have to look through the entire list, looking for each one that shows that it gives Sci cxp. Then if one looks interesting, I have to begin planning the assignment before I really know what sort of doffs are needed, and if I decide to leave the mission, then I have to click back, and start searching again.
The only improvement that the new system provides is showing how much cxp you get for a mission. That's not really much of an issue anyway, since you can quickly and easily check how much cxp you'd get for a mission just by clicking on it. If you really want to add in the ability to see what you'd get from a doff mission without having to click on it (which I'm sure is one of the least requested things for STO) there would be much better, and more functional ways to go about it.
If nothing else, I'd scrap the new UI. But the crafting system is definitely not fun or interesting.
let start with the possitve point:
I like the new types of materials and componets, that a befite comparded with the old system.
Also the new inventory for that stuff is a good thing.
now to the bad things:
UI: As i say before with the new doff layout, it not used the space well in anyway. It need to be better structured.
Dilitium requiement for items: u should reduce the prices by 50% if not the entire system will not have any befit, u need to kind why to long to craft something and then its even more expansive that rep stuff or fleetstuff, not a good thing.
Random droops: A bit random is not a fault so far (if price fits see above), but its way to much random.
Why not use that doff trait that are already there to make it less randome, let say use a accurte doff has high chance to give to weapons with one or more [Acc] mode, agressive give [Dmg] and so one.
Also the componets shoudl give u more XP for the crafting system as it is now it its way to grindy to make fun.
One other thing to the craftet components, what about use them to repair ship damages instand of the componets we have now?
The new interface is very big and clunky, some things take up more than double the space. We've gone from being able to read the officer requirements in a list, to lots of icons, that are not very descriptive.
There's assignments with a longer list of icons for the requirements, but the icons are spaced in such as way as we can't see them.
It now takes more steps to make materials for crafting. Before we had to collect the materials, buy the unreplicatables and a schematic, and then craft the item. Now we harvest the materials, convert them, craft them to usuable parts (and a lot of navigating back and forth to find and craft those), THEN select the iten, and after all that, can still end up with a MK XII Common item of whatever you want to craft. Granted the DOFF and Catalysts will increase the chances of getting a better item. And a MK IV item takes 15 minutes.
If we have an icon telling us what kinds of resources we're missing for a proejct, can that icon link to the project so it can be crafted, rather than having to navigate back through the menus to find it? One of the cannon items isn't found on the cannons menu.
Assignable officers on the left with their traits, with slots to fill and the requirements was more efficient. Adding the additional interacts made selecting officers inneficient. I now have to bring up a window and confirm from a list of bigger slots which means I see fewer officers at one time.
It also doesn't list their traits when selecting the officers for assignments, but it lists their crafting bonus. That's helpful when crafting, but not when sending them on a diplomatic mission.
Missions in the Current Sector and Personal tabs used to be grouped by category, they're not harder to find. Would it be useful to have the option to sort by name or category?
The larger icons look cool, although looking cool doesn't mean much if it's hard to use.
Bonus to the new system, being able to select the various energy types and MK Levels from drop downs is cool.
The efficiency of the old system was one of it's best points. If we were trying to mimic a lot of the other time consuming crafting systems out there, we did an outstanding job.
What I don't understand: Why does STO need Fantasy-MMO-crafting?
Forging a thousand blades to finally craft that mythic masterpiece of a sword is already certainly not practical or realistic, but to some degree understandable.
However our themepark isn't set in a mythical past, but in a technologically highly advanced future. "Chance" shouldn't be a factor, expertise/xp neither. Our engineers are supposed to be academy-graduates, they should be able to read the blueprint they downloaded via subspace uplink and be able to right away craft the needed parts in order to build that [acc]x3 space weapon their captain demands...
Gathering resources is fine. Utilizing the doff system for time-gating, simulating the production steps, is also ok.
Random modifiers and rarity not. This minigame is supposed to simulate crafting, not roulette.
Converting old resources to new resources needs a way to convert in bulk. Sliders for everyone!
Crafting should have the slots and crafting times removed completely. Having to wait when the old system was nearly instant feels like a step backwards. The results should also be automatically put into your inventory, rather than having to manually claim them. STO already has a system that works (almost exactly) like Neverwinter's profession system with the Doff assignments. We don't need a second one.
Even without removing the crafting times (if the time is actually an issue to prevent master crafters on day one), at least remove the crafting times for components. Making components is way too tedious.
Tooltips for components should say which trees can create them. e.g. Dual Heavy Cannons need a targeting interface, which is made in the beams tree, not the cannons tree. Alternatively, all components needed by any given tree should be craftable in that tree. Alternate alternatively, remove components entirely. Simply use raw materials to make things and cut out the pointless middleman.
I dislike catalysts and duty officers being used to determine the quality of an item. Crafting should have a guaranteed result based solely on what materials are used, with more and/or better materials guaranteeing a higher quality result. Skill level should determine the highest level of item you can craft. This could be done by adding a quality drop-down selection to the item parameters. Further customization, such as choosing the special bonuses like [Acc] or [Dmg], and choosing any special appearance options, would also be appropriate. Chance-based crafting is VERY bad.
If given the choice between trying over and over to craft something I like, or simply buying exactly what I want from reputation/fleet/dilithium stores, I will choose to buy the item every time. Looking at this new system, I'd be better off doing that anyway, since the top end results are subpar. Why should I bother trying to make a purple item, with a high cost, only to have it blow up in my face and give me a blue or a green instead? I could use the same, or less, resources to buy a purple item right off one of the shops.
Here's an example of how guaranteed crafting could work in the interface. You first choose an item type, then a mark level, then a quality. Beneath these three choices would be another set of dropdown choices, which activate based on the quality chosen, to allow the choice of special stats like [Acc] or [Dmg]. The task difficulty and skill part of the interface could be removed entirely, or moved down on the interface. No catalysts or duty officers would also free up space for these drop-down options.
A good example of a well designed crafting system is the one in Elder Scrolls Online. In it, you decide what general item type you want to make, what tier to make, what general quality, what appearance it has, and what special ability the item will have if any. You would choose boots, then leather, then add some extra leather to make it a higher level version of normal leather boots, make it khajiit style, then add a stamina reduction ability or something. The final materials cost is based on all of your choices, and the item is guaranteed to be exactly what you wanted. Your skill level determines the highest tier of item you can create. This is a good setup.
As a request, the ability to customize some aspect of appearance for ship and ground equipment would also be a welcome addition. The aegis set is fine and all, but I want to give my Atrox something with more purple. I want sleeker ground weapons too.
A goal for crafting should be to make it a comparable way to acquire end-game equipment, relative to reputation/fleet/dilithium stores. The biggest difference, however, should be in customization. Updating the crafting system to allow for more personal choice would be the best possible outcome.
Doff UI Commentary
Where did this mess come from? This thing needs some serious work. Here's a nice easy to read list of what's wrong and how it can be fixed.
Big icons say nothing. Instead of pretty pictures, give us the information we need to better decide which assignments to start. The images are also far too large, which is quite easy to see when there are more than about 3 items on the list. It cuts off extra requirements beyond that. Rewards cut off at 4.
Doff selection during planning is cumbersome and lacking in information. Large pop-up windows with people sorted by name doesn't assist in deciding which doffs are best for an assignment. Instead, knowing what type of doff is more important, since that type is also a frequent requirement. I don't want to accidentally assign my only warp core specialist as a generic person for a culinary assignment, just because he's purple, when I still need him to do a specific engineering assignment.
Assignments should be grouped by type. I want to be able to ignore assignments that don't give me the experience I want, without having to mouse over each and every icon to see what it is.
In short, though, the easiest solution would be to leave it alone. The current Doff UI works just fine, and it's easy to use. If it isn't broken, don't fix it!
All done
Comments
1. Trade in materials 1 at a time - I assume that this was a bug or an oversight that will just get fixed.
2. Doff system integration - Please no. The doff system is the doff system and the crafting system should be unrelated. At the very least make doffs have no bearing on the outcome.
3. Too many steps - take a bunch of stuff and turn it in to other things to use to make an final item. This is not an improvement on the current system, over-complicates things, and will put people off using the system.
4. Random quality and modifiers - If you thought lock boxes were unpopular, this will be worse. This takes the reason for crafting and throws it out the window.
5. Costs - Combined with the randomness, you might as well get rid of crafting all together, because I predict very limited usage of the crafting system as is stands.
5. Leveling system - I think it takes too long to progress to a stage where you would be able to craft level appropriate items. Having maxed crafting skills on one of my current toons, the thought of grinding through the process all over again from scratch is something I probably wont do.
Suggestion:
Get rid of the intermediary stage for a common rarity version of the item you are trying to craft. Have additional options to apply a certain modifier of choice up to a max of 3 modifiers with a dil cost for each modifier.
e.g.
Stage 1: Turn materials into a common phaser beam array Mk XII. Material cost increases with the mark of the weapon, but no dil cost.
Stage 2: Add an Acc modifier to the weapon at the cost of say 5k dil, resulting in an uncommon phaser beam array Mk XII [Acc].
Stage 3: Add an additional Acc modifier to the weapon at the cost of 5k dil, resulting in an rare phaser beam array Mk XII [Acc]x2.
Stage 4: Add a CritD modifier to the weapon at the cost of 5k dil, finally resulting in a Very Rare Phaser Beam Array Mk XII [Acc]x2 [CritD].
This way crafters get exactly what they want in a clear easy to understand way, but at the cost of dilithium. The ability to craft higher marks of gear can be tied to character level so the majority of toons that are currently level 50 will get some immediate benefit from using a new system.
There are other "business" things that can be implemented like crafting the 3rd modifier binds the gear to account and new special crafting project drops from lock boxes (or some new very rare doff missions) that allow the crafting of unique consoles that currently come with c-store ships (because pvp has become out of hand with some of these consoles, and thing are only going downhill). At the end of the day, a decent and fair crafting system will get people investing dilithium in crafting and turning c-store points into dilithium.
TLDR: I will prefer the current system unless some serious changes are made (which is why this is on Tribble in the first place). I then made a suggestion for a rework that in my opinion is better for everyone.
Well, I guess this would make them better than fleet weapons. Better in the sense that you can control the mods more. Maybe have increasing scale for each additional mod. 5k, 10k, 15k, 20k dilithium
This would be an acceptable use of dilithium for crafted items. Lower quality items have a lower dilithium cost, and the higher quality items will have a cost more in line with fleet items. Plus, we get to choose our modifiers.
Crafted items still need something to make them stand apart from other items, including fleet, in game. Not necessarily better, just different .
Legacy weapons in players' inventories, or posted to the Exchange, at the time of the changeover would continue to exist, of course; reputation and fleet stores remain viable alternatives for people willing to ante up the dil and/or marks for an item with a particular desired mod combination. Exotic base weapon types (i.e. nanite-infused disruptor; destabilizing tetryon; bio-molecular phaser) could even be added to the recipe pool as well.
A MK VI weapon is a level 20-30 item, right? What level 20-30 character has 20k dilithium to blow on a single item?
No. All items Mk X or lower do not have a dilithium cost.
As you rank-up towards the higher tiers, you should be able to customise the items you craft more and more.
Examples:
Adding a second effect to a console. I.e so if you have a ship that has phaser weapons and photon projectiles you could craft a console to increase damage on these 2 types.
More varied selection of items? How about crafting unique consumables like an item that would improve performance on your ship in a certain way for a limited duration, like batteries but more varied. Perhaps an upgrade to exotic damage or a certain power?
Basically my point is that since now there are so many ways you can customise your ship builds and characters etc. the crafting system is a perfect way to cater to that variety. It's not about being able to craft the most powerful items in game, more about customisation!
It's called "research" and development, but wheres the research????
Having played Skyrim again recently, an interesting thing about crafting potions is that you could mix and match ingredients with unkown outcomes and thus learn new recipies as you progressed, this method would work well and make crafting infinitely more interesting I think!
When you do research/experiments you learn from failing!
Agreed.
I would even be satisfied if Suffix "modules" were installed during an assembly stage, at the end (and thus fused to the item), allowing customization of the product without later fiddling by the owner. (meaning, create a purple quality Disruptor DHC Assembly with 3 slots, then start an Assembly project, where 3 modules were installed to create a final result)
Regardless - allow customized creation, and have that customization use objects even novice crafters can generate (or allow refinement of novice created items to higher tiers) in order to ensure all tiers of crafting have purpose.
More ideas and review here:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1149071
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How is this new system FUN? Can the designers of this new system honestly said they would enjoy playing it?
1. All component should be in one menu so we don't need to jump all over to get what we need.
2. Allow to choose how many components and how many of what ever item person is trying to create.
3 Random quality of final item must be removed.Nobody will create these items for anything other than "xp".If i'm aiming for green,blue or purple item then it should create that item.
4. It takes far too long to create final item like Quantum Torpedo MK6, 1 hour per item.Should be more like 1 minute.
5. Using dilithium for anything in crafting is not a good idea. I just go over to fleet store and buy directly whatever weapons or items i need.In other words bypassing this crafting system.
6. Item requirement levels: 0, 5 or 10. Wow.I don't even know what to say. Change it to 0,1,2 and 3...? or 0, 2, 4, 6... ? Anything else than 5, 10, 15, 20.... see the idea?
Yet still work in progress...well i say that this system has a long way to go before it's good enough.Will 1 month be enough time to get it there? I'd like to hope so. At it's current state: it's worse than what we have now.
Customizable mods? Nope.
Specific Energy Type? Beats some rep items but not fleet.
Lower Cost? You can gamble for weapons at the cost of 15 marks or get a 100% guaranteed quality out of fleet.
Honestly what is even the point of all this aside from creating a grind? Would it not have the same exact end result just to create a single doff mission for each end piece item similar to the console crafting doff mission?
The more I look at it, the more I think on it, it simply screams of another half assed game system tossed in without the necessary polish or quality to make it shine that creates another item to add into lockboxes/crafting boxes.
A quality R&D system would involve an actual research component that would allow the player to expand their options discovering a variety of potential items to craft and mods or customization tweaks and options to apply to them. An actual development component that would allow the player to piece together the various options into the exact result they desired. If you want to toss in a bit of random it could be a random time period to craft, it could consume a random amount of components, it could have a failure to create chance, it could have random quality of the selected mods being applied.
This? This is just an alternative method of getting a loot box drop from a slightly narrow loot pool.
I hadn't honestly considered to the idea of crafting projects that just upgrade the rarity of an item (another sort might add slots to an item, to the absolute max of 4, without affecting rarity), but we do seem to agree on what the crafting system should allow.
Another idea an acquaintance and I were discussing was that of adding a second roll to the process. For example, you start a project to create a [Dmg] mod; the possible results would be common, uncommon, rare, or very rare (with the exact numbers modified by skill). The second roll is independent of that (and also modified by crafting skill), and represents the odds of a, well, lucky break causing the resulting module to have a bonus effect chosen at random from a pool unavailable by other means. In the case of our hypothetical [Dmg] mod, it might be something like [SHeal] or [SDisrupt] (representing the only way you can get either outside of fleet ordinance), or even [Odds] or [Enhc]; the latter pair are explained below:
IE. I feel I'm being forced into the broader categories of items (ex. consoles) even though for my playstyle and ship loadouts the more confined schools are of greater interest (ex. Projectiles).
What may help with this is unbalancing the leveling rate of "niche" schools (Projectiles, Shields, Ground Weapons) is greater than the more pragmatic categories (anything with consoles or energy weapons) so that exploring those other areas of the crafting system doesn't come at so much of a cost to practicality.
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I'm not a fan of the random nature of the results. Could you work in a method where we can choose the traits we are trying to craft? There is nothing more frustrating than successfully creating a very rare MK XII cannon and it has Dam x 3 when i wanted Acc x 3.
1. All my characters already have the existing crafting system maxed out. What happens to this investment ... is it simply lost? :eek:
2. What about Common/Uncommon Unreplicateable materials ... bought with Dilithium? Are they used anywhere? If not, what do they convert into or is that investment simply lost too? :eek:
3. Bulk conversion of old -> new is desperately needed. A slider, or something but not one at a time ...
4. Whilst we're on the topic of doing things in bulk, the bulk crafting of components/items would be useful too.
5. Converting old common -> new common/uncommon ... seems fair but old rare -> RANDOM common/uncommon??? really???
6. I'm sorry but having to spend Dilithium to craft components doesn't wash with me, there are more than enough dilithium-sinks in this game already. And it's the sole reason I never actually made full use of the original crafting system, other than to max out the skill.
7. I don't need or want seperate R&D inventory slots per character ... it needs to be per ACCOUNT, so all characters can access the same R&D inventory.
8. Neither am I. If I'm having to invest the time & effort in crafting something, I want to choose what I craft & what traits it has & not have those traits, or the quality for that matter, randomized. Even more so, if I'm having to spend dilithium to craft it.
I am not spending countless time click one by one...
Nope...Nope...Nope...Nope...Nope...Nope...Nope...Nope...Nope...Nope...Nope...Nope...Nope...
NOPE!!!
http://i1353.photobucket.com/albums/q675/Jr_Comrademoco/Capture_zpse7d48ea8.jpg
Why not use all the component crafting to take the randomness out of the equation? First, the quality must be static then have optional component slots for an item.
Say I want to make a Very Rare MK XII Beam Array - it then has 3 optional component slots. If I want [Acc]x3 I build 3 Targeting Processors, if I want [Dmg]x3 - then build 3 Focusing Lenses or combine them if I want [Acc]x2 [Dmg]x1.
If you still want the luck chance in there - use it to reward people instead of punishing them with inferior results. Say I get a crit on the above Beam Array - it turns out my Duty Officers was really efficient and actually managed to make two of those Beam Arrays! Great if I'm equipping a ship - if not, I can sell the surplus.
And just to chime in:
- conversion way too clunky - need a slider system ASAP - and better conversion rate, especially particle traces
- UI too clunky, components spread over different categories, have to basically craft an item just to see which components it requires. Must be able to queue multiple crafts - especially components.
- Projects take way too long - especially the levelling ones - 1 hour for a mk VI weapon?!? If you really want this, at least make the rush job EC based.
- Desperately need a non-combat way to gather aside from DOFF missions - keep exploration clusters! Same goes for Very Rare materials - Elite STFs should not be the only non-zen source of these.
- More recipies: Kits/Modules and Costumes would be great.
- The majority of levelling XP should come from components, not the final items - it's a waste of materials just to make vendor junk. Also a scavenge materials option to break down said vendor junk would help in getting a little return on the material investment.
In it's current implementation I'm sorry to say that I won't spend one minute on it. If just the conversion tool changes, I'll use that to free up bank space. And please don't make this system more appealing by just raising cost for rep and fleet gear!!! (I believe saw somewhere that the price for Romulan Plasma weapons had been raised to over 40k dil.)
Without the high cost, randomness and time gating, it could be made in to a fun and engaging system.
The UI looks nice enough, but I feel the old Doff interface was better. Things are just taking up way too much space on the screen, and isn't conveying the information any better.
As people have said, converting old materials to new materials is just dreadful to do.
Having to build one component at a time is pretty dreadful. Trying to find the Emitter component for beams was a pain, since unlike everything else, the name of the project is not the result of that project. Having to go into the project to build the item in order to see what you need, then switch back and slowly build each part one at a time is just bad. What, I couldn't walk into Engineering and just give them a list of basic components I'd like for them to build?
I doubt I'll ever use the 'finish it now' button. An hour costs 900 dilithium? There are way too many other things demanding my dilithium to justify that. If you want to create sinks for things, then make people happy to actually sink whatever it is in.
Having a chance to get a very rare that you might possibly want isn't going to draw people into the system. As the system stands, it'll mainly get used by people who want the buff(s), and even many of them won't bother with the amount of grind it would take to max out.
The system just isn't fun in general. The grind and costs are large, the interface is clunky, and the main reward is a trait.
So I hoped that the new system would make crafting useable, but I am disappointed.
Again, it's too expensive, too unpredictable and too much effort. I know this is a beta version and I have just had a look at it, so I am still a noob to that system.
I don't mind the grinding up to high xp until you can make decent stuff. I also wouldn't mind if the items were character or account bound on pickup
But what I do mind:
you grind a fair bit until you can make decent stuff. Then it's expensive, complicated and no guaranteed success. In short: a few EC grinding missions and searching the exchange is more efficient and more fun.
I had hoped for a few things:
that one could upgrade items - makes levelling easier, if you have your blue/purple beams that you can upgrade from II to IV and so on.
I had hoped that the crafting system was revamped in such a manner that it would rival the exchange. Like, collecting materials on missions, getting max XP on crafting and then being able to get some decent stuff
I had hoped for new craftable consoles, in the style of Dyson rep consoles (only more usable)
Also the reward for toons that had crafting skill maxed already is ridiculous.
But then again, a part of me had hoped that rep stores would partially be payable with marks rather than just Dilithium - so I am an optimist.
Question is: what's the point of it?
In short: you put a lot of work and thinking into something completely useless. Ressources would have been better spent bughunting. CLaiming that this is the big feature of S9,5 will not go down too well with players.
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1. make it so we can convert more just one at the time
2. discard comment, uncomment...... items transfer it component items and very rare items get very rare component.
3.for old players to be benefaction (wort the time) we need to select modes like Acc, CritD....
you can limit the use of the same mode like 4xAcc to just 2. Other wise thews items are not as good that fleet weapons even if we get a very rare item you get a random mode so for this price to get 1 good weapon (modes you wont ore need for you build) whit i will get 4 ore 5 Elit fleet(main Dilithium cost).
And for thews who will say crafting is a alternation to the fleet ore reputation i`ts not in practices mb on paper but nooooo. I`ts far more to get their now i`ts not, this way because there are a lot of fleet hit level 5 so you can join and some fleet have it set so you can get on first rank ore second to bye from the fleet store(you just need the fleet marks and whit the new project for fleet marks for just fleet marks i`ts no brainier)
No, no, no. Bad, Cryptic, bad!
I will probably repeat stuff others said, but I feel like the issue needs voices.
1) Converting materials:
At who were you aiming this? Did you expect that all players just stopped collecting materials after tutorial level? Even if they did, there are still some doff missions that reward them so...
2) New doff UI:
No, just no. The old one was better keep that one. So far I didn't see changes that I would expect doff revamp to have - like a better track of assignment chains for example. Now there is just a mess that doesn't properly scale with the UI so the first hour of the game of the patch will be trying to figure out the UI setup of whoever designed this thing.
Then there is lack of indication of what department this assignment belongs too as well as alphabetical order (wtf? why?). The old system is functional. If you are not revamping the doff system don't mess with it.
3.) Crafting schools:
Why? This serves no purpose. Especially since some of the components are in more than one school. Just remove schools all together but make it like RnD department of doffs.
You know what I mean... like diplomacy, science, medical, ets + JUST RnD with single progress bar.
But keep it in separate tab as it is now so it doesn't get lost in other doff stuff.
4.) Crafting UI:
Again no breakdown as to type of the thing you are about to craft or quality, but alphabet order. I guess I see why you did it here. Your heart was on the right place (I need to craft xy for that I need EPS conduit so that would be under E), but it doesn't work very well.
5.) Crafting components:
Why is there no option to craft more than one piece? Why? It's components. They are even put in special bag, so its not like we are going to queue 150 personal shields and then complain (cause we would) that it doesn't fit in our inventory. And its not like there is chance to get different result, right?
6.) The confirm button:
When crafting equipment, you first have to select type of weapon, then energy type, then mark then press confirm and THEN you find out you are missing some components. So you go back and craft components and repeat the process. Not good.
Remove the confirm button have it reflect the changes as you change stuff.
7.) Missing components:
When you are trying to craft equipment you find out some component is missing. Would be nice if we could click on the icon in the requirements section and the dialog would pop up : to craft this you need this, this and this - you have the materials, would you like to craft it?
8.) Assign the doff:
The list as it is right now does not sit right with me. And I can't come up with something better that is already in place in doff system. Just keep that one for now.
9) Catalysts:
This I don't like. But its free to play game and free to play games have to get moneys somewhere, right?
BUT so far you did a nice job avoiding this sort of things. Please rethink this.
10) Dilithium rush:
Again don't like this, but doesn't really bother me that much. Might as well stay. I could even use it sometime to skip 5minutes out of 24 hours to get something and slot new thing before I log out.
11) Dilithium costs:
Now I haven't crafted that far. From what I hear though the dilithium costs for some of the average stuff is outrageous.
12) Randomness of the thing:
Should be removed completely. This is crafting. I know what I want and I am assigning competent men and spending resources on the thing. Its unacceptable that I would get some random result.
13) Unappealing results:
There is nothing that would interest me here. Honestly I thought crafting would start off as you can craft whatever you want. As in you can put whatever mods you want on your shield for example. Maybe even sacrifice one mod in favor of different engine trail color. Or I don't know maybe like MACO set with Dyson visuals. I don't know. I expected customized equipment, but we are getting just some random things that are no better than stuff from rep stores (does not = nerf rep stores).
14) Future:
I hope stuff will be added there on regular basis. Sort of like fleet store is updated with every season.
As it stand I don't see myself doing this crafting any more than I did the one that is live now.
I also realize that the thing on Tribble is not going to change much (if at all).
But I still thought I would voice my opinion on it.
Now my thoughts to the new crafting/Doff assignment UI:
In general, I think this is a good idea, but it needs some major tender love and care...
There are missing some filtering functions, especially regarding the Doff selection, but also for the assignments themselves.
The old filtering functions for the doff selection gave me a good control over finding the best doffs for the assignment.
Now? Not so much. The average amout of clicks per assignment has easily tripled, as I have to click on each doff's info button to see if their traits fit in.
The selection feels like quite a mess, as you've always got to scroll through all your doffs from purple to green/white, showing all schools in no particular order (except the quality). And this even though the system behind the curtain still rewards using a doff from a fitting school.
But finding the right doff has been made even more difficult, as there are no longer hints to the profession that may provide a success.
And the selection of assignments got a real mess. If you're searching for assignments of a specific class (like, "sience") you need some experience with the old system to be able to identify these, as the list is completely unsorted.
For the Doff selection, I'd suggest to implement the old filter system. Oh, and bring back the trait info on the doff suggestion window. The extra click to see the traits is unneccessary, in my opinion.
For the assignment selection, it might be making sense to break them up into several tabs, one for each section (diplomatic/engineering/science etc.).
(Note: I didn't read the other posts, as I simply don't have the time to read 20+ pages.)
But I'm still a mere human."
Vice Admiral Chris Curtiss, Temporal Ambassador
I know what you mean. There's little or no information which, given that it's still under development is understandable, I guess.
I found it by accident - if you dbl-click on a stack of the old materials, it appears.
The items you get out of it imply that it's something you could do as you level up, and use the equipment you produce. To me, that's how crafting should be. It was something you could do under the older systems, but only if you went out of your way to grind out materials. Adding the dilithium cost effectively prevented that, as new characters aren't likely to have any dilithium, and older players making new characters are unlikely to bother wasting their other characters' dilithium on crafting.
Under this new system, any player's best bet for using the crafting system is just to skip straight to producing Mk VI equipment. But even if they grind the crafting system pretty hard, by the time they can produce Mk VIII equipment (which requires level 5 in the school in order to produce the necessary components), they'll be using Mk XI/XII equipment. It's just not possible for anyone to reasonably accrue the kind of crafting experience to be able to produce equipment for themselves as they level. Since it's basically unusable for lower level characters, that would imply that it's an endgame system.
As an endgame system, you have to grind out a huge number of nigh worthless items for lower levels before being able to produce anything remotely juicy. That's not making it interesting or appealing, that's just making it a [Repetitive Stain Injury Generator Mk XII]. Either the special equipment coming from crafting is rather overpowered, or people aren't really going to bother much with it. More power creep is not a good thing, so I'd rather everything from crafting be good alternatives, not 'must haves' for the DPS crowd. So if people are going to use it, and it's not going to be overpowered goodies, then it's got to have a reasonable grind.
I'd like it to be how crafting is in other games, something that you can do to make equipment that's useful to you as you level up, and if you stick with it, it'll allow you to produce some nice unique pieces (like how the Delta Flyer was. Never a must have, but a nice reward for the week(?) it took to build). Then with some extra effort, producing gear that's on the level of what you'd expect from other sources like the rep gear. Let crafting be something like a rep system that you can start working on from level 1, which if you level it along side your character with some effort, will enable you to produce appropriate mk gear. Once you hit max level, then you can either leave it and move on to the rep system, or you can keep pushing it further, producing some unique and useful equipment. If you started work on it from the start, you'll likely be maxing it out before you're maxing out any of the Reps. If you're only starting crafting at level 50 along side your reps, the reps will be done first.
Thinking even more on the Doff UI, it's just plain bad as far as usability goes. It gives less information and takes up more room; I know the same amount about the rewards, but know less about the requirements to run a mission. When I'm in a sector looking at the doff missions, fairly often I'm looking for things from particular departments. I want Sci cxp, so I scroll down to the Sci section and see if there's any that look good. I can click once on it to see what sorts of doffs it needs, and if it's not one that appeals to me, then I can just continue looking through the list. In this new system, if I want Sci cxp, I have to look through the entire list, looking for each one that shows that it gives Sci cxp. Then if one looks interesting, I have to begin planning the assignment before I really know what sort of doffs are needed, and if I decide to leave the mission, then I have to click back, and start searching again.
The only improvement that the new system provides is showing how much cxp you get for a mission. That's not really much of an issue anyway, since you can quickly and easily check how much cxp you'd get for a mission just by clicking on it. If you really want to add in the ability to see what you'd get from a doff mission without having to click on it (which I'm sure is one of the least requested things for STO) there would be much better, and more functional ways to go about it.
If nothing else, I'd scrap the new UI. But the crafting system is definitely not fun or interesting.
let start with the possitve point:
I like the new types of materials and componets, that a befite comparded with the old system.
Also the new inventory for that stuff is a good thing.
now to the bad things:
UI: As i say before with the new doff layout, it not used the space well in anyway. It need to be better structured.
Dilitium requiement for items: u should reduce the prices by 50% if not the entire system will not have any befit, u need to kind why to long to craft something and then its even more expansive that rep stuff or fleetstuff, not a good thing.
Random droops: A bit random is not a fault so far (if price fits see above), but its way to much random.
Why not use that doff trait that are already there to make it less randome, let say use a accurte doff has high chance to give to weapons with one or more [Acc] mode, agressive give [Dmg] and so one.
Also the componets shoudl give u more XP for the crafting system as it is now it its way to grindy to make fun.
One other thing to the craftet components, what about use them to repair ship damages instand of the componets we have now?
There's assignments with a longer list of icons for the requirements, but the icons are spaced in such as way as we can't see them.
It now takes more steps to make materials for crafting. Before we had to collect the materials, buy the unreplicatables and a schematic, and then craft the item. Now we harvest the materials, convert them, craft them to usuable parts (and a lot of navigating back and forth to find and craft those), THEN select the iten, and after all that, can still end up with a MK XII Common item of whatever you want to craft. Granted the DOFF and Catalysts will increase the chances of getting a better item. And a MK IV item takes 15 minutes.
If we have an icon telling us what kinds of resources we're missing for a proejct, can that icon link to the project so it can be crafted, rather than having to navigate back through the menus to find it? One of the cannon items isn't found on the cannons menu.
Assignable officers on the left with their traits, with slots to fill and the requirements was more efficient. Adding the additional interacts made selecting officers inneficient. I now have to bring up a window and confirm from a list of bigger slots which means I see fewer officers at one time.
It also doesn't list their traits when selecting the officers for assignments, but it lists their crafting bonus. That's helpful when crafting, but not when sending them on a diplomatic mission.
Missions in the Current Sector and Personal tabs used to be grouped by category, they're not harder to find. Would it be useful to have the option to sort by name or category?
The larger icons look cool, although looking cool doesn't mean much if it's hard to use.
Bonus to the new system, being able to select the various energy types and MK Levels from drop downs is cool.
The efficiency of the old system was one of it's best points. If we were trying to mimic a lot of the other time consuming crafting systems out there, we did an outstanding job.
Forging a thousand blades to finally craft that mythic masterpiece of a sword is already certainly not practical or realistic, but to some degree understandable.
However our themepark isn't set in a mythical past, but in a technologically highly advanced future. "Chance" shouldn't be a factor, expertise/xp neither. Our engineers are supposed to be academy-graduates, they should be able to read the blueprint they downloaded via subspace uplink and be able to right away craft the needed parts in order to build that [acc]x3 space weapon their captain demands...
Gathering resources is fine. Utilizing the doff system for time-gating, simulating the production steps, is also ok.
Random modifiers and rarity not. This minigame is supposed to simulate crafting, not roulette.
Converting old resources to new resources needs a way to convert in bulk. Sliders for everyone!
Crafting should have the slots and crafting times removed completely. Having to wait when the old system was nearly instant feels like a step backwards. The results should also be automatically put into your inventory, rather than having to manually claim them. STO already has a system that works (almost exactly) like Neverwinter's profession system with the Doff assignments. We don't need a second one.
Even without removing the crafting times (if the time is actually an issue to prevent master crafters on day one), at least remove the crafting times for components. Making components is way too tedious.
Tooltips for components should say which trees can create them. e.g. Dual Heavy Cannons need a targeting interface, which is made in the beams tree, not the cannons tree. Alternatively, all components needed by any given tree should be craftable in that tree. Alternate alternatively, remove components entirely. Simply use raw materials to make things and cut out the pointless middleman.
I dislike catalysts and duty officers being used to determine the quality of an item. Crafting should have a guaranteed result based solely on what materials are used, with more and/or better materials guaranteeing a higher quality result. Skill level should determine the highest level of item you can craft. This could be done by adding a quality drop-down selection to the item parameters. Further customization, such as choosing the special bonuses like [Acc] or [Dmg], and choosing any special appearance options, would also be appropriate. Chance-based crafting is VERY bad.
If given the choice between trying over and over to craft something I like, or simply buying exactly what I want from reputation/fleet/dilithium stores, I will choose to buy the item every time. Looking at this new system, I'd be better off doing that anyway, since the top end results are subpar. Why should I bother trying to make a purple item, with a high cost, only to have it blow up in my face and give me a blue or a green instead? I could use the same, or less, resources to buy a purple item right off one of the shops.
Here's an example of how guaranteed crafting could work in the interface. You first choose an item type, then a mark level, then a quality. Beneath these three choices would be another set of dropdown choices, which activate based on the quality chosen, to allow the choice of special stats like [Acc] or [Dmg]. The task difficulty and skill part of the interface could be removed entirely, or moved down on the interface. No catalysts or duty officers would also free up space for these drop-down options.
A good example of a well designed crafting system is the one in Elder Scrolls Online. In it, you decide what general item type you want to make, what tier to make, what general quality, what appearance it has, and what special ability the item will have if any. You would choose boots, then leather, then add some extra leather to make it a higher level version of normal leather boots, make it khajiit style, then add a stamina reduction ability or something. The final materials cost is based on all of your choices, and the item is guaranteed to be exactly what you wanted. Your skill level determines the highest tier of item you can create. This is a good setup.
As a request, the ability to customize some aspect of appearance for ship and ground equipment would also be a welcome addition. The aegis set is fine and all, but I want to give my Atrox something with more purple. I want sleeker ground weapons too.
A goal for crafting should be to make it a comparable way to acquire end-game equipment, relative to reputation/fleet/dilithium stores. The biggest difference, however, should be in customization. Updating the crafting system to allow for more personal choice would be the best possible outcome.
Doff UI Commentary
Where did this mess come from? This thing needs some serious work. Here's a nice easy to read list of what's wrong and how it can be fixed.
Big icons say nothing. Instead of pretty pictures, give us the information we need to better decide which assignments to start. The images are also far too large, which is quite easy to see when there are more than about 3 items on the list. It cuts off extra requirements beyond that. Rewards cut off at 4.
Doff selection during planning is cumbersome and lacking in information. Large pop-up windows with people sorted by name doesn't assist in deciding which doffs are best for an assignment. Instead, knowing what type of doff is more important, since that type is also a frequent requirement. I don't want to accidentally assign my only warp core specialist as a generic person for a culinary assignment, just because he's purple, when I still need him to do a specific engineering assignment.
Assignments should be grouped by type. I want to be able to ignore assignments that don't give me the experience I want, without having to mouse over each and every icon to see what it is.
In short, though, the easiest solution would be to leave it alone. The current Doff UI works just fine, and it's easy to use. If it isn't broken, don't fix it!
All done
Well, almost. CHANCE BASED CRAFTING IS BAD.
Now I'm done.