'Can anyone remember when we used to be explorers?'
Blimey!
Raises the question is there a new crafting map? or is it going to be trapped in reputation like interfaces? Or even on board player ships? heck get SOME use out of them
Praying for an exploration revamp in the expansion. Fingers crossed.
"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"
'Can anyone remember when we used to be explorers?'
Blimey!
Raises the question is there a new crafting map? or is it going to be trapped in reputation like interfaces? Or even on board player ships? heck get SOME use out of them
You can do it anywhere, like a reputation.
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
"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'd still like to know if I should quickly go to memory alpha and craft a lifetime supply of nanoenergy cells for my beloved Jem'Hadar ground weapons, or if my ammo supply will be safe with this new system.
Also, does this mean first contact missions are being phased out? You can't delete those! That was what my first ticket was about back when I was young and naive and thought that something would come of that!
I'd still like to know if I should quickly go to memory alpha and craft a lifetime supply of nanoenergy cells for my beloved Jem'Hadar ground weapons, or if my ammo supply will be safe with this new system.
Also, does this mean first contact missions are being phased out? You can't delete those! That was what my first ticket was about back when I was young and naive and thought that something would come of that!
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
Pricing for items has been normalized.
This means that the disparity in value between weapons and non-weapon items has been removed.
Space weapons are now priced HIGHER.
Deflectors, shields, impulse engines, and warp cores are now priced LOWER.
Ground weapons are now priced HIGHER.
Ground armor is now priced LOWER.
Kit frames are now priced LOWER.
Ground items still have a lower value than space items.
Ground combat tends to be faster and involve more creatures, which means more items are gained in the same amount of time.
Is this DIL or EC prices?
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
Or, ya know, maybe they are working. Like on the patch that just got pushed to Tribble despite it being late on Friday afternoon.
It doesn't take a few minutes to post a reply either, and personally if I was working for a company which been at least perceived to be doing something wrong, I'd be responding and reassuring people.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
Pricing for items has been normalized.
This means that the disparity in value between weapons and non-weapon items has been removed.
Space weapons are now priced HIGHER.
Deflectors, shields, impulse engines, and warp cores are now priced LOWER.
Ground weapons are now priced HIGHER.
Ground armor is now priced LOWER.
Kit frames are now priced LOWER.
Ground items still have a lower value than space items.
Ground combat tends to be faster and involve more creatures, which means more items are gained in the same amount of time.
Is this DIL or EC prices?
EC. As far as I'm aware, any changes in dil prices are unintended.
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
Just so you devs don't get a chance thinking I somehow changed my mind, I'll repeat:
(...) BUT, I love doffing. You've pretty much butchered a very functional doff UI by grafting on it crafting only few might ever use. You have removed a large amount of doff assignements by only offering a handful of Operations assignements for every Cluster. You've removed the possibility of sharing Cluster Doff assignements on a ship's bridge. Please reconsider those changes. I don't want to lose one of the few very enjoyable pieces of STO because of some crafting system most people already despise.
Using current Doff UI for this crafting abomination comes as a better option.
Keeping at least blank maps (if you don't want to let players get materials for crafting) for clusters would at least keep them usable for doffing.
I'm going to have to agree. I liked the old DOFF UI better. If it's not broke, don't fix it.
I really hate it when companies come out with new products that they think are awesome, but aren't. They change things that shouldn't have been changed in the first place, because they think it will generate more money, but it doesn't, it just pisses off the consumers. Perfect example is Microsoft with Windows 8.
I want a simple Doff UI. I don't want to have to spend 3 hours sending my doffs out on missions when it should take less than 10 minutes. Just because it looks pretty, doesn't mean its better.
one little hope i have is that the current doff list is as hated as it is because it was a last minute change.
meaning, the gui was designed for r&d, and then quickly copied over to the doff system without adding any of the unique things doffing has (that r&d doesn't) because of crafting revamp being a much higher priority and no time to tinker with doff menus too much.
maybe in one of the next upgrades they'll take all the r&d placeholders out and code in some actual doff stuff.
then again, maybe not. who knows.
Now clowns, that's another story. They scare the crap out of me.
We fight them too. Entire armies spilling out of Volkswagens.
We do our best to fight them off, but they keep sending them in.
A Mark VI energy type damage console takes 1 hour to craft unless you throw in 225 Dilithium.
Mk II costs only 75. What will Mk X and XII cost? I am afraid not only 500 but 1000 Dilithium and the time might be a day.
Then the chances depend on crafter level/quality and stuff. Hard to determine how they are for a very advanced crafter.
I was crafting for 1h+ some minutes to make it to level 2 in Beams. I am not a crafter at heart, just don't see how this is fun.
Looking at the "SPEED ME UP FOR DIL, CLICK THIS BIG BUTTON!" button really made me somewhat angry and aggressive. Yeah I know, you want me to spend Dilithium, I got it, please don't shove it too hard down my throat, place that speed up thing to the right.
The general UI is too large atm. Takes up my full 1920x1080 screen for little info, should be compressed and contain more info.
-> I am afraid this is a tedious and unrewarding system compared to just buying "Fleet Gear"!
And don't dare to make Fleet Gear more expensive or hard to get, that would blow.
Rather work a lot on this system and its UI, and ideally leave the DOFF UI alone and don't mess it up with the crafting UI, it's slow and cumbersome and also needs improvement.
I am not sure if there is a way to transfer crafting materials between chars on the same account or to trade them on exchange / between different accounts?
It can be okay as crafting interface, but it makes the usual doffing a tedious and time consuming task.
A few doff assignments take up all screen, each has a small button to the right, it takes a lot of time to change even one doff.
Please keep the old DOFF UI and the crafting interface separate, I don't want crafting to mess up my doffing.
I'm trying to see how it takes longer with the new window compared to the current.
Current...
Scroll through the different types. Pick one. Slot the DOFFs, hunt them down if needed. Start it.
Proposed...
Scroll through the different ones. Pick one. Change DOFFs if needed. Start it.
With it preslotting DOFFs, you're not having to do all those clicks to slot DOFFs...which means less clicks even if you end up changing DOFFs.
That the damn thing takes up almost the whole screen at 1440x900, and that I find that I keep needing to make it wider to see some of the requirements/rewards is annoying as Hell...but it's actually a faster process, imho. Just kind of on the fugly side...
The only way i will get in this crafting on this price is if we can select the modes Acc, CrtiD,..... . Cryptic can limit the abuse players if can select only 2 of the same modes, and you you can add the Borg, Klingon,...... to be selectable just 1 time(for thews type of mode you can link it whit the accolade get max kill on borg them you can get to select the mode for whit you get bonus Borg dmg and others).
I'm trying to see how it takes longer with the new window compared to the current.
Current...
Scroll through the different types. Pick one. Slot the DOFFs, hunt them down if needed. Start it.
Proposed...
Scroll through the different ones. Pick one. Change DOFFs if needed. Start it.
With it preslotting DOFFs, you're not having to do all those clicks to slot DOFFs...which means less clicks even if you end up changing DOFFs.
That the damn thing takes up almost the whole screen at 1440x900, and that I find that I keep needing to make it wider to see some of the requirements/rewards is annoying as Hell...but it's actually a faster process, imho. Just kind of on the fugly side...
That would be fine, but it slots the wrong doffs. For crafting, it slots greens when you got purples.
For doff assigments, it slots in a purple assault officer, even if its an assigment that would need your blue astrometric officer.
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
Wow, overall I am extremely disappointed in the crafting system. Here are the few major constructive criticisms that I feel need to be done before this system launches:
1 - Removal of the Exploration Clusters now removes a huge chunk of a player's ability to gather resources. How will this issue be rectified? We need maps somewhere where we can gather resources. Having them in nodes of all missions like before is fine, but a true crafter is going to just want to have the ability to gather. You have removed that option.
2 - The dilithium costs need to go completely. I am tired of having to constantly grind for dilithium for everything in game, especially when dilithium is not rewarded everywhere in game and the refining limit per day is still so low. It is still not the time-based currency as promised. Fix the issues with obtaining refined dilithium.
3 - We need a "deconstruction"/"reverse engineering" mechanic so we can break items down into raw materials. Every decent crafting system has one. If we get an item as a loot drop we should have the ability to either sell it or break it down.
4 - We need to be able to slot the Modifiers we want at the launch of the system. Waiting for it to come later leaves this system incomplete. Right now it feel more like a crafting lockbox system.
5 - Costs for DOFFs at the Academy need to be drastically reduced since this is yet another system that eats or heavily uses DOFFs. Imagine the costs of grinding for a random DOFF to fill one of those slots, let alone use them as a "catalyst"
6 - DOFFs as "catalysts" needs to be replaced with items that are found, replicated, purchased, rewarded etc...
7 - The XP curves between crafting levels are too steep compared to the XP granted from crafting an item. Those need to be brought down more in line with the XP granted.
8 - The timers to complete crafting an item are too long and need to be drastically reduced. This system has way to many grind, timer, and paywalls to be of any fun for players to use.
9 - There are a few errors in item names, e.g. in Beams Component - Subprocessor Unit is really the Emitter Module.
10 - When crafting components the system does not recognize your "best" DOFF like it does for crafting the item.
11 - There needs to be more diversity in DOFFs used for crafting. With so many different ones there should not really be any duplication and in reality there should be two options to choose from.
12 - The categories are very odd. Breaking weapons into three is just not logical and arbitrarily increases the grind. These need to be more streamlined.
13 - We need to be able to turn in old data samples in bulk, there is already entirely too much clicking in this game and clicking for no real reason.
14 - We need a way to make components in bulk, the ability to loop component crafting repeatedly rather than click click click every three seconds.
That will make us become unable to gather a big chunk of accolade points for cluster exploration and those accolades will probably remain pending if not finished and use up a lot of space in the list. Sometimes I create a new toon and make the old one die because of all the chunked up lists of tasks I will never be able to cumplete due to the game changes over time and stuff taken out without a new chance to get the same accolade.
"Everything about the Jham'Hadar is lethal!" - Eris
Original Join Date: January 30th, 2010
Coming to a Zen store near you.....Catalysts. (Speculation) The quality gamble feels very similar to Neverwinter's enchantment upgrade system with Wards.
If that is indeed the route they are going, I'm done. I hope I am wrong but this doesn't feel good.
Also did they up the time on pretty much all DOFF assignments across the board? I could have sworn EVA Training was 1/2 hour, I was looking around and I saw that it was 4 hours. :eek:
Coming to a Zen store near you.....Catalysts. (Speculation) The quality gamble feels very similar to Neverwinter's enchantment upgrade system with Wards.
If that is indeed the route they are going, I'm done. I hope I am wrong but this doesn't feel good.
I hope the "Catalysts" end up being similar to the various rarity "Tools" (Artifacts and/or Particle Traces) and "Tradesman" (DoFF's) that Nevewinter uses to increase speed and quality of the crafted item.
I agree, that if they turn out to be like the Wards, and if they add a % Success System like the Enchanting in Neverwinter, I'm going to spit my coffee and say something ... naughty ...
15 - The UI is not well designed and does not have a good workflow. There are too many alternate popup menus and shifting to different screens. It would be better if there was not as much wasted space with huge icons and blank areas if everything was consolidated onto one page. Take the beam crafting...we should only see one window where we select things and instead of having a separate window for all the subcomps, we should be able to craft them from the beam page etc.. Doff should be in a drop down and not from another popup. The UI just has too many windows.
16 - The timer for the subcomps is routinely going into negative time. Is there really a need for a timer on those items? Especially 5 seconds?
17 - The crafting bonus for DOFFs needs to be upped a bit. perhaps 10, 20, 40.
18 - The number of crafting nodes needs to be drastically increased or the drop stacks need to be upped quite a bit.
19 - We will desperately need "farming" areas. If you want a true crafting system you have to provide non-combat opportunities to collect resources. Will resources be included in loot drops as well? Not replacing things, but added as an additional. Active resource gathering missions or areas or do you plan it to be all passive DOFF related?
20 - The new UI for the DOFF system is not very intuitive. Having to hover over everything to see what you need and what you will be rewarded is cumbersome. Also, why were the job categories removed and it put all into one long scrolling mash? Again, there is a great deal of wasted space in the UI interface and the small picture and job bar are not the same height which adds to its awkward look.
there is no means of selecting [Mods], the actual quality is variable based on skill and doff quality, and it uses timers. Whereas the old system took a few seconds to fill the little progress bar when crafting a Rare Mk VII Beam Array (the highest quality/Mk you can make without dilithium costs), under the new system a Mk II Beam Array takes 5 minutes. Yay.
"Yay" is right. 5 minutes for a Mk II item is ludicrous. 5 minutes for a Mk X or XII item seems much more realistic. One hour is insanity.
Cleverly sticking a dilithium price while the timer counts down... yeah, the only time I'm clicking that is when I'm on my laptop and accidentally brush the touchpad. Remind me to disable the touchpad...
Already disabled on mine! Yeah, that's something that I will never ever use.
Crafting should be a means of bypassing random loot at the cost of invested effort and resources.
I'm going to quote this one more time.
Crafting should be a means of bypassing random loot at the cost of invested effort and resources.
When I played Dark Age of Camelot, I spent days making my Blademaster a legendary Weaponsmith and Armorsmith. I went out and gathered as many materials as I could, amassed gold from killing mobs, and invested tons of time and resources into grinding them both up.
And I had a BLAST doing it. I never got him to level cap, but he had by far the most hours played on him...ALL because of crafting.
Crafting is a grind that I actually enjoy. As I increased skills, I would sell items of various levels on my consignment merchant to match RvR levels, and made some money to help fund my crafting as I went along. Eventually I was able to craft weapons and armor for many of my various toons (and toons of friends) as I leveled them up, including some of the best endgame gear you could get. Along the way I sold matching sets of weapons and armor for various classes and made a killing off of it. It made the considerable time and gold investment so worthwhile.
I will not be able to do this in STO with the build currently on Tribble. There's no fun factor involved because you've focused on monetizing it, and making it like gambling ("Life is like crafting in STO; you never know what you're gonna get!").
I get that you have a F2P model and need to make money from people who don't sub. I don't have an issue with that. But I don't believe crafting is the place to do it. That's just my opinion, because crafting is in the top 3 activities I enjoy doing in any MMO, and I'm kind of a purist about it. Either that, or subbers shouldn't have to pay for crafting perks. "Finish Now' costs EC instead of dil. Dil costs for high end gear are significantly reduced. Oh, and we get to choose our modifiers! :rolleyes:
I think we can do better with Fleet, Rep, and even random drops via the Exchange if the thing is going to be luck based. Eliminate the dilithium cost and I'd consider a crapshoot, but when you have to invest a couple days' worth of refining cap to get a shot at random gear... nuh uh. Dilithium costs or crapshoot might be tolerable individually, but having both plus yet another time gate is really going to limit the value of this system.
I completely agree. For now, I'm sticking with Fleet and Rep gear and disregarding crafting completely, based on its current incarnation. It really hurts to say that, because I've been looking forward to the crafting revamp for so long now, but this is not at all what I was hoping for.
I'm trying to see how it takes longer with the new window compared to the current.
Current...
Scroll through the different types. Pick one. Slot the DOFFs, hunt them down if needed. Start it.
Proposed...
Scroll through the different ones. Pick one. Change DOFFs if needed. Start it.
With it preslotting DOFFs, you're not having to do all those clicks to slot DOFFs...which means less clicks even if you end up changing DOFFs.
That the damn thing takes up almost the whole screen at 1440x900, and that I find that I keep needing to make it wider to see some of the requirements/rewards is annoying as Hell...but it's actually a faster process, imho. Just kind of on the fugly side...
You're oversimplifying it.
In the proposed UI:
- it takes longer to find the right assignement, because you need to scroll more (which is caused by huge new tiles).
- if you're not looking for a specific assignement, it takes more clicks (more time) to compare several assignements (success chances as well as other info is only available in the 'slotting doffs screen', you've got to go back and forth between assignement list and this screen; currently you see both the list and all the details on the same one screen)
- the preslotted doffs are less than ideal. Even if they may be the best for the job, I may want to keep them for another assignement where they're even better and use only marginally worse ones. And changing preslotted doffs takes more time than picking doffs now (scrolling through hundreds of doffs without any sorting takes a lot of time)
That's what comes to my mind right now.
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
21 - When making a MK VI beam, I see at the bottom I will get 10 beam XP and the duration takes one minute. However, in reality, I get 600 Beam XP and the duration is ONE HOUR. Is this a typo on the UI or did someone misplace a few decimal points?
22 - The system is far from balanced and it is clear it was not tested for leveling internally. In order for me to advance in beams to make MK VIII Beams, I need to make a Firing Sequencer, which we cannot do until level 5. So we have to slowly and ponderously inch ourselves forward at 600 XP a shot? The XP payout needs to be re-calibrated. For example in the case of the MK VI Beams, 600 should be for a white, and we should get progressively more XP for the higher the quality of an item we make. As it is we get just 600 XP for purple, blue, green, or white. This does not make any sense.
23 - Rare and Very Rare component costs need to be re-assessed as they are too large and depend on too many rare materials for which we have no real active way of harvesting.
I don't often post, but having tried it on Tribble, this new interface is /extremely/ irritating.
For most of my 18 toons, I'm working on one particular category of doffing first, then others as available. I.e., a diplomatic-themed toon concentrates on Diplomacy doff missions, then will fill in with whatever up to 20.
The new system a) looks like it was made for a tablet, and b) isn't grouped by mission category.
a) I'm not playing on my iPad.
b) Even if I were Doffing offline via Gateway (presumably, the reason for the design choice in a) is to be able to do this eventually), I'd want to be able to find Diplomacy missions (or whatever chosen category) easily. Which leads to:
c) No labels for the types, just the icons which we now have to memorize if we want to find missions by type? I'd appreciate it if whomever conceived of this TRIBBLE would stop smoking cheap weed.
d) Speaking of which, who thought it would be a good idea for me to not be able to see a potential Doff's traits when trying to choose them? If I'm trying to select candidates to recover contraband from my crew, or to conduct an ambassadorial tour of my ship, why do I give a flying f*** what their crafting modifier is?
There's just not enough facepalm to describe this new system.
I don't often post, but having tried it on Tribble, this new interface is /extremely/ irritating.
For most of my 18 toons, I'm working on one particular category of doffing first, then others as available. I.e., a diplomatic-themed toon concentrates on Diplomacy doff missions, then will fill in with whatever up to 20.
The new system a) looks like it was made for a tablet, and b) isn't grouped by mission category.
a) I'm not playing on my iPad.
b) Even if I were Doffing offline via Gateway (presumably, the reason for the design choice in a) is to be able to do this eventually), I'd want to be able to find Diplomacy missions (or whatever chosen category) easily. Which leads to:
c) No labels for the types, just the icons which we now have to memorize if we want to find missions by type? I'd appreciate it if whomever conceived of this TRIBBLE would stop smoking cheap weed.
d) Speaking of which, who thought it would be a good idea for me to not be able to see a potential Doff's traits when trying to choose them? If I'm trying to select candidates to recover contraband from my crew, or to conduct an ambassadorial tour of my ship, why do I give a flying f*** what their crafting modifier is?
There's just not enough facepalm to describe this new system.
RANT FIRST:
+1 to this post.
This is so perfectly stated:
There is no way to accurately measure the amount of fail in the current state of this "revamp." To have both random chance and dilithium cost included is beyond terrible thinking, and I can only hope the current UI is a work in progress.
Why would I even want to engage in a mini game of crafting when this is possible:
After multiple attempts and loads of dilithium and other resources invested I finally craft a Very Rare MK XII weapon and it gets [dmg]x3 as the modifier.
The random chance in crafting is interesting in some games where all the modifiers are equally interesting. In the current STO meta, however, [acc] [crth] and [crtd] are the only desirable mods. As it stand s currently, there is literally nothing that can be crafted that would be more desirable than fleet/rep gear or the best drop gear currently on the exchange. (also for the cost of the crafting the item, I could have just exchanged my dilithium for zen, bought and sold keys and used the Energy Credits to buy exactly what I wanted form the exchange)
CONSTRUCTIVE COMMENTS NOW:
1. If you MUST introduce randomness to the process, either eliminate the dilithium cost altogether OR make it so specific mods are guaranteed byt he addition of dilithium.
2. A better solution would be to make specific mods attainable by adding specific materials.
3. Crafted gear should be unique in a way that makes it attainable only by crafting. Examples would be Phased Plasma Weapons or Disrupted Phasers. For 20K Dilithium, I can buy a Romulan Plasma weapon with my choice of mods. The idea that someone would spend the same dilithium to craft a stock type weapon with a chance of terrible mods is not clear thinking at all.
As someone who is an avid crafter in other games I have played, I really appreciatte the IDEA of this crafting revamp but if the devs working on it are not going to be open to seriously accpeting that so far they are missing the mark drastically, then this will be a complete waste of man hours that could have been better spent on anything else.
QR to thread - I was sick on Friday and over the weekend, so I'm catching up on your feedback now. Hopefully by the end of the day I'll have some more useful responses for you.
Jeff "Adjudicator Hawk" Hamilton
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
Comments
Praying for an exploration revamp in the expansion. Fingers crossed.
You can do it anywhere, like a reputation.
handy... but disappointing
I remember starting the game and going to memory alpha thinking it was pretty cool, a huge R&D facility, each to their own i guess
(thanks for the swift answer :P)
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=17584251
Also, does this mean first contact missions are being phased out? You can't delete those! That was what my first ticket was about back when I was young and naive and thought that something would come of that!
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1148761
lawlz
Joined January 2009
This means that the disparity in value between weapons and non-weapon items has been removed.
Space weapons are now priced HIGHER.
Deflectors, shields, impulse engines, and warp cores are now priced LOWER.
Ground weapons are now priced HIGHER.
Ground armor is now priced LOWER.
Kit frames are now priced LOWER.
Ground items still have a lower value than space items.
Ground combat tends to be faster and involve more creatures, which means more items are gained in the same amount of time.
Is this DIL or EC prices?
It doesn't take a few minutes to post a reply either, and personally if I was working for a company which been at least perceived to be doing something wrong, I'd be responding and reassuring people.
EC. As far as I'm aware, any changes in dil prices are unintended.
Joined January 2009
It can be okay as crafting interface, but it makes the usual doffing a tedious and time consuming task.
A few doff assignments take up all screen, each has a small button to the right, it takes a lot of time to change even one doff.
Please keep the old DOFF UI and the crafting interface separate, I don't want crafting to mess up my doffing.
I very much second this!
I'm going to have to agree. I liked the old DOFF UI better. If it's not broke, don't fix it.
I really hate it when companies come out with new products that they think are awesome, but aren't. They change things that shouldn't have been changed in the first place, because they think it will generate more money, but it doesn't, it just pisses off the consumers. Perfect example is Microsoft with Windows 8.
I want a simple Doff UI. I don't want to have to spend 3 hours sending my doffs out on missions when it should take less than 10 minutes. Just because it looks pretty, doesn't mean its better.
meaning, the gui was designed for r&d, and then quickly copied over to the doff system without adding any of the unique things doffing has (that r&d doesn't) because of crafting revamp being a much higher priority and no time to tinker with doff menus too much.
maybe in one of the next upgrades they'll take all the r&d placeholders out and code in some actual doff stuff.
then again, maybe not. who knows.
We fight them too. Entire armies spilling out of Volkswagens.
We do our best to fight them off, but they keep sending them in.
Mk II costs only 75. What will Mk X and XII cost? I am afraid not only 500 but 1000 Dilithium and the time might be a day.
Then the chances depend on crafter level/quality and stuff. Hard to determine how they are for a very advanced crafter.
I was crafting for 1h+ some minutes to make it to level 2 in Beams. I am not a crafter at heart, just don't see how this is fun.
Looking at the "SPEED ME UP FOR DIL, CLICK THIS BIG BUTTON!" button really made me somewhat angry and aggressive. Yeah I know, you want me to spend Dilithium, I got it, please don't shove it too hard down my throat, place that speed up thing to the right.
The general UI is too large atm. Takes up my full 1920x1080 screen for little info, should be compressed and contain more info.
-> I am afraid this is a tedious and unrewarding system compared to just buying "Fleet Gear"!
And don't dare to make Fleet Gear more expensive or hard to get, that would blow.
Rather work a lot on this system and its UI, and ideally leave the DOFF UI alone and don't mess it up with the crafting UI, it's slow and cumbersome and also needs improvement.
Right now they seem bound to the character.
I'm trying to see how it takes longer with the new window compared to the current.
Current...
Scroll through the different types. Pick one. Slot the DOFFs, hunt them down if needed. Start it.
Proposed...
Scroll through the different ones. Pick one. Change DOFFs if needed. Start it.
With it preslotting DOFFs, you're not having to do all those clicks to slot DOFFs...which means less clicks even if you end up changing DOFFs.
That the damn thing takes up almost the whole screen at 1440x900, and that I find that I keep needing to make it wider to see some of the requirements/rewards is annoying as Hell...but it's actually a faster process, imho. Just kind of on the fugly side...
That would be fine, but it slots the wrong doffs. For crafting, it slots greens when you got purples.
For doff assigments, it slots in a purple assault officer, even if its an assigment that would need your blue astrometric officer.
1 - Removal of the Exploration Clusters now removes a huge chunk of a player's ability to gather resources. How will this issue be rectified? We need maps somewhere where we can gather resources. Having them in nodes of all missions like before is fine, but a true crafter is going to just want to have the ability to gather. You have removed that option.
2 - The dilithium costs need to go completely. I am tired of having to constantly grind for dilithium for everything in game, especially when dilithium is not rewarded everywhere in game and the refining limit per day is still so low. It is still not the time-based currency as promised. Fix the issues with obtaining refined dilithium.
3 - We need a "deconstruction"/"reverse engineering" mechanic so we can break items down into raw materials. Every decent crafting system has one. If we get an item as a loot drop we should have the ability to either sell it or break it down.
4 - We need to be able to slot the Modifiers we want at the launch of the system. Waiting for it to come later leaves this system incomplete. Right now it feel more like a crafting lockbox system.
5 - Costs for DOFFs at the Academy need to be drastically reduced since this is yet another system that eats or heavily uses DOFFs. Imagine the costs of grinding for a random DOFF to fill one of those slots, let alone use them as a "catalyst"
6 - DOFFs as "catalysts" needs to be replaced with items that are found, replicated, purchased, rewarded etc...
7 - The XP curves between crafting levels are too steep compared to the XP granted from crafting an item. Those need to be brought down more in line with the XP granted.
8 - The timers to complete crafting an item are too long and need to be drastically reduced. This system has way to many grind, timer, and paywalls to be of any fun for players to use.
9 - There are a few errors in item names, e.g. in Beams Component - Subprocessor Unit is really the Emitter Module.
10 - When crafting components the system does not recognize your "best" DOFF like it does for crafting the item.
11 - There needs to be more diversity in DOFFs used for crafting. With so many different ones there should not really be any duplication and in reality there should be two options to choose from.
12 - The categories are very odd. Breaking weapons into three is just not logical and arbitrarily increases the grind. These need to be more streamlined.
13 - We need to be able to turn in old data samples in bulk, there is already entirely too much clicking in this game and clicking for no real reason.
14 - We need a way to make components in bulk, the ability to loop component crafting repeatedly rather than click click click every three seconds.
Those are just the ones right off the bat I see.
Original Join Date: January 30th, 2010
That's not a bad idea, I was worried about those too. They're not in this new build? I love the piercing rifle.
If that is indeed the route they are going, I'm done. I hope I am wrong but this doesn't feel good.
Also did they up the time on pretty much all DOFF assignments across the board? I could have sworn EVA Training was 1/2 hour, I was looking around and I saw that it was 4 hours. :eek:
I hope the "Catalysts" end up being similar to the various rarity "Tools" (Artifacts and/or Particle Traces) and "Tradesman" (DoFF's) that Nevewinter uses to increase speed and quality of the crafted item.
I agree, that if they turn out to be like the Wards, and if they add a % Success System like the Enchanting in Neverwinter, I'm going to spit my coffee and say something ... naughty ...
15 - The UI is not well designed and does not have a good workflow. There are too many alternate popup menus and shifting to different screens. It would be better if there was not as much wasted space with huge icons and blank areas if everything was consolidated onto one page. Take the beam crafting...we should only see one window where we select things and instead of having a separate window for all the subcomps, we should be able to craft them from the beam page etc.. Doff should be in a drop down and not from another popup. The UI just has too many windows.
16 - The timer for the subcomps is routinely going into negative time. Is there really a need for a timer on those items? Especially 5 seconds?
17 - The crafting bonus for DOFFs needs to be upped a bit. perhaps 10, 20, 40.
18 - The number of crafting nodes needs to be drastically increased or the drop stacks need to be upped quite a bit.
19 - We will desperately need "farming" areas. If you want a true crafting system you have to provide non-combat opportunities to collect resources. Will resources be included in loot drops as well? Not replacing things, but added as an additional. Active resource gathering missions or areas or do you plan it to be all passive DOFF related?
20 - The new UI for the DOFF system is not very intuitive. Having to hover over everything to see what you need and what you will be rewarded is cumbersome. Also, why were the job categories removed and it put all into one long scrolling mash? Again, there is a great deal of wasted space in the UI interface and the small picture and job bar are not the same height which adds to its awkward look.
"Yay" is right. 5 minutes for a Mk II item is ludicrous. 5 minutes for a Mk X or XII item seems much more realistic. One hour is insanity.
Already disabled on mine! Yeah, that's something that I will never ever use.
I'm going to quote this one more time.
When I played Dark Age of Camelot, I spent days making my Blademaster a legendary Weaponsmith and Armorsmith. I went out and gathered as many materials as I could, amassed gold from killing mobs, and invested tons of time and resources into grinding them both up.
And I had a BLAST doing it. I never got him to level cap, but he had by far the most hours played on him...ALL because of crafting.
Crafting is a grind that I actually enjoy. As I increased skills, I would sell items of various levels on my consignment merchant to match RvR levels, and made some money to help fund my crafting as I went along. Eventually I was able to craft weapons and armor for many of my various toons (and toons of friends) as I leveled them up, including some of the best endgame gear you could get. Along the way I sold matching sets of weapons and armor for various classes and made a killing off of it. It made the considerable time and gold investment so worthwhile.
I will not be able to do this in STO with the build currently on Tribble. There's no fun factor involved because you've focused on monetizing it, and making it like gambling ("Life is like crafting in STO; you never know what you're gonna get!").
I get that you have a F2P model and need to make money from people who don't sub. I don't have an issue with that. But I don't believe crafting is the place to do it. That's just my opinion, because crafting is in the top 3 activities I enjoy doing in any MMO, and I'm kind of a purist about it.
I completely agree. For now, I'm sticking with Fleet and Rep gear and disregarding crafting completely, based on its current incarnation. It really hurts to say that, because I've been looking forward to the crafting revamp for so long now, but this is not at all what I was hoping for.
You're oversimplifying it.
In the proposed UI:
- it takes longer to find the right assignement, because you need to scroll more (which is caused by huge new tiles).
- if you're not looking for a specific assignement, it takes more clicks (more time) to compare several assignements (success chances as well as other info is only available in the 'slotting doffs screen', you've got to go back and forth between assignement list and this screen; currently you see both the list and all the details on the same one screen)
- the preslotted doffs are less than ideal. Even if they may be the best for the job, I may want to keep them for another assignement where they're even better and use only marginally worse ones. And changing preslotted doffs takes more time than picking doffs now (scrolling through hundreds of doffs without any sorting takes a lot of time)
That's what comes to my mind right now.
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
21 - When making a MK VI beam, I see at the bottom I will get 10 beam XP and the duration takes one minute. However, in reality, I get 600 Beam XP and the duration is ONE HOUR. Is this a typo on the UI or did someone misplace a few decimal points?
22 - The system is far from balanced and it is clear it was not tested for leveling internally. In order for me to advance in beams to make MK VIII Beams, I need to make a Firing Sequencer, which we cannot do until level 5. So we have to slowly and ponderously inch ourselves forward at 600 XP a shot? The XP payout needs to be re-calibrated. For example in the case of the MK VI Beams, 600 should be for a white, and we should get progressively more XP for the higher the quality of an item we make. As it is we get just 600 XP for purple, blue, green, or white. This does not make any sense.
23 - Rare and Very Rare component costs need to be re-assessed as they are too large and depend on too many rare materials for which we have no real active way of harvesting.
For most of my 18 toons, I'm working on one particular category of doffing first, then others as available. I.e., a diplomatic-themed toon concentrates on Diplomacy doff missions, then will fill in with whatever up to 20.
The new system a) looks like it was made for a tablet, and b) isn't grouped by mission category.
a) I'm not playing on my iPad.
b) Even if I were Doffing offline via Gateway (presumably, the reason for the design choice in a) is to be able to do this eventually), I'd want to be able to find Diplomacy missions (or whatever chosen category) easily. Which leads to:
c) No labels for the types, just the icons which we now have to memorize if we want to find missions by type? I'd appreciate it if whomever conceived of this TRIBBLE would stop smoking cheap weed.
d) Speaking of which, who thought it would be a good idea for me to not be able to see a potential Doff's traits when trying to choose them? If I'm trying to select candidates to recover contraband from my crew, or to conduct an ambassadorial tour of my ship, why do I give a flying f*** what their crafting modifier is?
There's just not enough facepalm to describe this new system.
RANT FIRST:
+1 to this post.
This is so perfectly stated:
There is no way to accurately measure the amount of fail in the current state of this "revamp." To have both random chance and dilithium cost included is beyond terrible thinking, and I can only hope the current UI is a work in progress.
Why would I even want to engage in a mini game of crafting when this is possible:
After multiple attempts and loads of dilithium and other resources invested I finally craft a Very Rare MK XII weapon and it gets [dmg]x3 as the modifier.
The random chance in crafting is interesting in some games where all the modifiers are equally interesting. In the current STO meta, however, [acc] [crth] and [crtd] are the only desirable mods. As it stand s currently, there is literally nothing that can be crafted that would be more desirable than fleet/rep gear or the best drop gear currently on the exchange. (also for the cost of the crafting the item, I could have just exchanged my dilithium for zen, bought and sold keys and used the Energy Credits to buy exactly what I wanted form the exchange)
CONSTRUCTIVE COMMENTS NOW:
1. If you MUST introduce randomness to the process, either eliminate the dilithium cost altogether OR make it so specific mods are guaranteed byt he addition of dilithium.
2. A better solution would be to make specific mods attainable by adding specific materials.
3. Crafted gear should be unique in a way that makes it attainable only by crafting. Examples would be Phased Plasma Weapons or Disrupted Phasers. For 20K Dilithium, I can buy a Romulan Plasma weapon with my choice of mods. The idea that someone would spend the same dilithium to craft a stock type weapon with a chance of terrible mods is not clear thinking at all.
As someone who is an avid crafter in other games I have played, I really appreciatte the IDEA of this crafting revamp but if the devs working on it are not going to be open to seriously accpeting that so far they are missing the mark drastically, then this will be a complete waste of man hours that could have been better spent on anything else.
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton