I think we might have a two birds one stone situation here:
The models for high mark ground weapons, in many people's eyes, are inferior to the earlier marks. When crafting ground weapons, could we get some way of manipulating their appearance? For instance, if you crafted a Mk XII phaser pistol, you could make it look like the standard issue phaser instead of that huge thing with holograms all over it you get as a random drop. Or make a plasma pistol look like a Romulan disruptor, for Republic players, instead of the other plasma gun style.
The style of the end game weapon models (some fleet and reputation aside) have always been disappointing to me. Letting us change them through the crafting system would be great, but I don't know if the tech's actually there to do it or not.
That's not a bad idea, sometimes the simplicity is best, though I did want the MACO Battle Rifle for looks. There's also a fleet phaser I'm interested in. Kind of a snub nosed rifle, but I don't know which one it is.
"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 took all the old crafting system Anomaly Traces and converted them on Tribble to see how much new Rare (blue) Material I received in the conversion (see attached matrix).
Of course, the conversion did net a large quantity of common and uncommon material, but the rare material is essential for the mid to high level component and gear. The amount of rare material obtained from existing anomaly traces will determine how much a player will have to grind later in the new crafting progression.
I had 427 anomaly traces and obtained 112 rare materials after conversion or 26% when comparing quantities based on only old rare types and new rare types (the uncommon and common types obtained are not considered for this experiment).
Addendum: I noticed that the anomalies identified as uncommon level for new material will always give a good quantity of uncommon (and only uncommon material); so why are trace conversions using this "random reward" system for the material given in return? Use a straightforward rare for rare even if it is a one for one and each type of trace matches with a type of new rare material... just don't rip us off on all the grinding we did for these traces and give us a fraction of the rare material that should be received in the conversion.
It's in the notes. You are getting a free spanking new version Odyssey fleet uniform, they just haven't finished designing it yet.
All you needed to say. We are the chorus.
Yesterday I was really upset so I was not clear. Sorry.
I know that we are getting a new uniform but I could not care less
But I care about the new crafting system I want to craft.
There are so many posts like:
Oh I heard that someone posted that he was listening and that we will be able to make
I would love that Cryptic enables posting to players who logged on to Tribble in last 24h.
After 21 crafting assignments and burning 1575 dil to bypass 2h building time to build MK II dual cannon I got:
0, yes zero very rare AP MK II dual canons
p.s. I will execute my rare Jamhadar who is serving under me for 1,5 years for incompetence its just a MK II dual canon, he is Energy Weapons Officer not a Doctor.
I greatly disagree with you putting "Crafting Packs" in Queued Events. First of all, not everyone wants to do Queued events. And KDF queues have been dead for months!!! So are KDF players supposed to buy off the exchange?
Second, you are going to overflow the Exchange with garbage crafted drops, while Very Rares will be sold by greedy players for far excessive amounts. Where average / casual players won't stand a chance to afford.
I greatly disagree with you putting "Crafting Packs" in Queued Events. First of all, not everyone wants to do Queued events. And KDF queues have been dead for months!!! So are KDF players supposed to buy off the exchange?
Second, you are going to overflow the Exchange with garbage crafted drops, while Very Rares will be sold by greedy players for far excessive amounts. Where average / casual players won't stand a chance to afford.
I think they meant ques like ISE and such. If you can't find an ISE team in 5 minutes, than the servers are down.
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
1. You take out exploration so we can all sit around in Drosana waiting for a queue to pop baisically taking out the boldly go and change it to stand around and wait for either your queue to pop or someone to use a dance ball. That is why I come and play a game, to stand around and do the same repeatable missions over and over again. Please tell me who thinks that is actually fun.
2. You add basically another grind to the game. Except the previous grinds you put your time in, and got a known reward for it. This time you put your time in, pay an huge price, and most likely get taken for a ride and get something that you had the same random chance to get for free by just doing missions.
3. Oh, and you do not reward players who spent the time to level up your previous systems and farm for mats, but penalize them for all the time they spent already. Nice.
So basically you set up a white board, listened to the community, wrote down all the fedback you were given, and then chose to create a system that universally contained everything that people said they dislike about your game, and leave nothing in that anyone finds even slightly enjoyable.
You know whnen you say that you are listening and taking our input under concideration, you are supposed to actually create systems that people may enjoy and find usef I l, not systems that contain everything people hate.
So Cryptic, let me get this straight...see if I understand this correctly...
1) once this officially releases, my max level crafting is getting reset and I have to start from scratch.
royal TRIBBLE up #1...why not just reset our character levels and progression while your at it? make us all start over from the beginning of the game at level 1 in our Mirandas.
2) your use of the word "regularly" when we are crafting, means we are spending obscene amounts of dilithium for a randomized quality of item (which mind you costs us players either, insane amounts of time most of don't have, or REAL MONEY)
royal TRIBBLE up #2....any % chance under 100% is unacceptable. I am not using gathered materials and dilithium...which you obviously are pushing us to spend the real money currency to obtain...on an item of random quality.
3) you've now turned the crafting process from something that takes seconds, into something that takes hours...AND requires duty officers (which mind you also requires spending of real cash to purchase more of)
royal TRIBBLE up #3 This isn't even worth commenting on. I wouldn't mind it so much if there was a way to reliably obtain those said duty officers without spending money.
4) According to people posting here, the conversion amount from old materials to new materials is so bad, it might as well not even exist, meaning...to re iterate bullet 1... I am starting from scratch...meaning there is zero"reward" as you put it for those of us who have spent a lot of time and money into the old crafting system.
royal TRIBBLE up #4, am I supposed to be pleased at the middle finger you just gave all of us players who put time and money into the old crafting system?
I think I've made my point with just these 4 points. Cryptic, until you design this new crafting system into something that's actually a player friendly, enjoyable, and USABLE alternate means of obtaining high quality end game gear...you know for those us who aren't swimming in our excess time, not to mention CASH instead of the most obviously greedy money sink I have ever seen in my life...I'm not spending so much as another cent on this game.
Mind you, bear one more thing in mind before you just assume I'm already not forking up money and take a look under my name Cryptic to see what kind of subscription my account is.
Sounds good to me. Plus, if crafting is gonna use doffs the doffs should be able to gather all mats in the system.
It's one of those things that might get tricky. Cause although they've added all sorts of new ways to get the Common/Uncommon/Rare - they've locked the Very Rare (and thus Mk XI/Mk XII) behind that chance from an Elite queued event. They've also mentioned Crafting Packs, which basically sound like Crafting Lock Boxes, eh?
Lots of folks have been focused on the Dil costs - and - I don't think they've quite looked at how difficult it is going to be to get those VR mats.
I was a bit snarky in my initial reply, and I apologize for that - I was just thinking about how easy it is to hit up CCE for a chance at VR mats...and that it sounded a little too much like a certain group of posters out there that...yeah, never mind - but that's what flooded into that.
But they're going to have to look at the overall cost/effort involved in getting to the point where the Dil costs come into play...and...if it sucks just to try to get the mats, the Dil cost won't matter cause folks will never get that far. Cryptic definitely needs to balance that angle...
Here's my gut reaction from just a bit of dabbling in the system.
It's too grindy!
Here's why I say this, and not that I have a problem with the grind. (although I kinda do, but that's a whole 'nother rant)
So far I can only craft Mark II items. Fine (except, I won't be using them any time soon as a VA50). Getting from Level 0 to Level 1 takes 30 xp. Easily done crafting components. I forgot to write down the difference from Level 1 to 2, but I'm currently working on Level 3 which takes 10,000 experience.
Here's my problem with that. Each Mark II item gives me 50 experience. So, by my back of the envelope math, that means I have to craft 200 items to level up. In the engineering category, that there's five options. That means I've crafted 40 EACH if I decide to diversify.
1) What am I going to do with 40 warp cores (or impulse engines, etc). I'm sure I could diversify it farther (plasma-infused, etc). But seriously, what? I only need one. My fleeties only need one (each). That's an obscene number of items.
2) That's going to flood the market, particularly low level items as people level up crafting. Or, it's going to inflate the energy credit market even more as people sell them off.
3) That's just level 2 to level 3. I can't even make higher Mark things (that I actually care about) until I get my crafting to level 5. So, I'll have a ton of consoles that I don't want/need.
Now, I admit, this crafting system is probably aimed at the new player who doesn't need to craft higher level stuff, and if you craft along the way it may work out better. However, given my experience with the DOff system, I doubt it.
Proposed solutions:
Lower the bar. That's right make it easier to increase levels. Getting from 0-5 just to make Mark IV (and possibly higher) items is a long slog.
Put consumables back in the crafting system. Right now my only options for gaining xp are components, which I only need so many of, or consoles I don't need. Give me something I can use to encourage me to craft until I can build something I actually want/need.
<signature under reconstruction>
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Want cheap commodities? Yeah you do. Commodity Cheat Sheet (includes food and data samples)
Want to make the game better? Might I suggest this form
Well it took 3 yrs for me to finally get into the old system, so I guess in 3 yrs (and after some modifications to the new crafting) I will be motivated to expend time in this crafting grind. :rolleyes:
Ah so you're tying the Crafting into the Doff system. Which means our current skills will have no bearing at all. This is NOT good news!
And what you're replacing it with is another attempt to Force us to buy High Quality Doffs... Really very bad! Wow! I can barely keep up with the Doffs system as it stands. Now It may permanently put me off even playing STO.
But my ONE Question is: Will we eventually be able to create top level gear? And make it reliably... It doesn't matter if I can only make a Mk XII purple Beam Array 1 time in ~10 attempts. NO ONE will use a system like that!
Doing this to the crafting system makes no sense to me. Sure the Lock Box game is like playing roulette. And most of the time it frustrating. Only giving you items that are fit for dumping off on the Exchange. Doing this to crafting just makes you folks seem like a bunch of trolls.
However, Since you are going to do this... Please make the conversion systems something other than tedious! What I'm talking about it the exchange system for old samples. From what I hear we will forced to convert them "one by one"... Do you have any Idea how many I have? If you force me to do it one at a time I'll never do it! It would simply take far too long.
The other thing I'm concerned about is what happens to the old Schematics? I've saved up a number of the ones that I use most frequently so I can make items for lower level Fleet members. What happens to them?
Also I have this more general question about the "Update"... If you want us to develop our Doff pool for crafting then why should I keep common Doffs around. And will the Fleet Development systems change? Right Now I get by with Uncommon Doffs for the most part. I have a Very Rare ones for Space and Ground duties. But the whole system needs to change if they are also going to be used for crafting. Something tells me that you haven't really thought this through very well.
I don't want to go too off topic in this thread, but the elite fleet phasers are absolutely gorgeous if you haven't seen them. The stun pistol is by-far the best weapon model in the game. The rifles are properly scaled and beautiful looking. There is currently no combination better than seeing a Starfleet officer wearing the Odyssey uniform and using one of these phasers in a ground mission. They're the 2410 phasers, in my eyes.
(The KDF elite disruptor compression pistol was a massive disappointment by comparison -- I'd rather have one of the standard models.)
I think we might have a two birds one stone situation here:
The models for high mark ground weapons, in many people's eyes, are inferior to the earlier marks. When crafting ground weapons, could we get some way of manipulating their appearance? For instance, if you crafted a Mk XII phaser pistol, you could make it look like the standard issue phaser instead of that huge thing with holograms all over it you get as a random drop. Or make a plasma pistol look like a Romulan disruptor, for Republic players, instead of the other plasma gun style.
The style of the end game weapon models (some fleet and reputation aside) have always been disappointing to me. Letting us change them through the crafting system would be great, but I don't know if the tech's actually there to do it or not.
I don't want to go too off topic in this thread, but the elite fleet phasers are absolutely gorgeous if you haven't seen them. The stun pistol is by-far the best weapon model in the game. The rifles are properly scaled and beautiful looking. There is currently no combination better than seeing a Starfleet officer wearing the Odyssey uniform and using one of these phasers in a ground mission. They're the 2410 phasers, in my eyes.
(The KDF elite disruptor compression pistol was a massive disappointment by comparison -- I'd rather have one of the standard models.)
I agree that most of the standard Mk XI and Mk XII weapons look too big. Elite fleet phasers are appropriately sized, but it would be nice to be able to reskin some of the standard weapons (or the MACO Phaser Battle Rifle, for that matter) to something less bulky. I wouldn't get my hopes up that such a feature will come with Season 9.5 though.
1: Add more goodies. Non-unique ARC dhcs/dcs, quad dcs/dhcs, beam turrets, maybe cannon arrays, tailgun dcs. Wide angle torpedoes. More type flavours, the better.
2: As long as Dilithium is involved, eliminate the randomness.
3: If you eliminate randomness, make Doffs give other bonuses. Like less materials used, faster completion times.
4: Catalysts could still have uses. Like perhaps a chance to craft a second item, increase xp gain, refund materials, etc. Creativity is the only boundary here.
5: The higher levels are way to grindy. Somehow please try to make this more akin to the reputation systems.
Maybe a long, expensive project that gives a lot of xp?
Something that would allow us to max crafting in around 2 months of work.
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
So Cryptic, let me get this straight...see if I understand this correctly...
1) once this officially releases, my max level crafting is getting reset and I have to start from scratch.
royal TRIBBLE up #1...why not just reset our character levels and progression while your at it? make us all start over from the beginning of the game at level 1 in our Mirandas.
CaptainGeko stated that because of the difference in the coding, they couldn't transfer what we've already done into the new system. That's why we get reset.
2) your use of the word "regularly" when we are crafting, means we are spending obscene amounts of dilithium for a randomized quality of item (which mind you costs us players either, insane amounts of time most of don't have, or REAL MONEY)
royal TRIBBLE up #2....any % chance under 100% is unacceptable. I am not using gathered materials and dilithium...which you obviously are pushing us to spend the real money currency to obtain...on an item of random quality.
The dilithium numbers right now are mainly arbitrary in order for them to test the system. There's still time to tweak it.
3) you've now turned the crafting process from something that takes seconds, into something that takes hours...AND requires duty officers (which mind you also requires spending of real cash to purchase more of)
royal TRIBBLE up #3 This isn't even worth commenting on. I wouldn't mind it so much if there was a way to reliably obtain those said duty officers without spending money.
so far, the only duty officers you need to use are ones that are not consumed. They don't have any that are consumed for crafting, yet.
4) According to people posting here, the conversion amount from old materials to new materials is so bad, it might as well not even exist, meaning...to re iterate bullet 1... I am starting from scratch...meaning there is zero"reward" as you put it for those of us who have spent a lot of time and money into the old crafting system.
royal TRIBBLE up #4, am I supposed to be pleased at the middle finger you just gave all of us players who put time and money into the old crafting system?[\quote]
It's not the conversion amount that's the problem, it's the conversion process that's bad. You have to click one at a time to convert and for someone whom has a stockpile of old data samples, it's tedious.
The only problem with the conversion is when you get to the rare traces. They don't easily convert to the new rare materials.
I think I've made my point with just these 4 points. Cryptic, until you design this new crafting system into something that's actually a player friendly, enjoyable, and USABLE alternate means of obtaining high quality end game gear...you know for those us who aren't swimming in our excess time, not to mention CASH instead of the most obviously greedy money sink I have ever seen in my life...I'm not spending so much as another cent on this game.
Mind you, bear one more thing in mind before you just assume I'm already not forking up money and take a look under my name Cryptic to see what kind of subscription my account is.
Once more, I'll point out that the system is still in an early WIP phase. They have about a month to hash out the details.
I have been to tribble to test the new crafting system and I seriously MEGA-LOATHE a few things about it. (Hate as a word has very little meaning anymore in regards to talking about this game.)
1. Dilithium/Random garbage - I am becoming seriously worried about the people at Cryptic I think they have a gambling problem they are projecting onto us. I really suggest Gambler's Anonymous.
2. Interface is clunky and gives less information it is not intuitive or helpful it is more of a hindrance.
3. The grind is beyond miserable the reward points need to be within reason. This here is nearly reason enough to ignore the new system.
4. Given the state of the duty officer system with the new interface I am concerned this will break something that isn't broken.
When the volunteer community moderator is able to test and have doubts about the system then that should speak volumes about how questionable this new system is., I followed his advice and tried it myself.
Random chance or dilithium PICK ONE.
Given what has been stated in interviews our feedback will likely be ignored.
CaptainGeko stated that because of the difference in the coding, they couldn't transfer what we've already done into the new system. That's why we get reset.
Then make a system that is coded TO accept transfers. It's not that hard in the grand scheme of things, when you still have the old code. It's not that they can't. They decided to go a totally different direction and attach crafting to a different system (with a different code) instead of tying the new crafting system to the old crafting system and simply updating it. Sure we may not have gotten DOffs out of it (darn my luck) but nothing else they're doing required them to tie it into the DOff system.
Ah so you're tying the Crafting into the Doff system. Which means our current skills will have no bearing at all. This is NOT good news!
And what you're replacing it with is another attempt to Force us to buy High Quality Doffs... Really very bad! Wow! I can barely keep up with the Doffs system as it stands. Now It may permanently put me off even playing STO.
But my ONE Question is: Will we eventually be able to create top level gear? And make it reliably... It doesn't matter if I can only make a Mk XII purple Beam Array 1 time in ~10 attempts. NO ONE will use a system like that!
Doing this to the crafting system makes no sense to me. Sure the Lock Box game is like playing roulette. And most of the time it frustrating. Only giving you items that are fit for dumping off on the Exchange. Doing this to crafting just makes you folks seem like a bunch of trolls.
However, Since you are going to do this... Please make the conversion systems something other than tedious! What I'm talking about it the exchange system for old samples. From what I hear we will forced to convert them "one by one"... Do you have any Idea how many I have? If you force me to do it one at a time I'll never do it! It would simply take far too long.
The other thing I'm concerned about is what happens to the old Schematics? I've saved up a number of the ones that I use most frequently so I can make items for lower level Fleet members. What happens to them?
Also I have this more general question about the "Update"... If you want us to develop our Doff pool for crafting then why should I keep common Doffs around. And will the Fleet Development systems change? Right Now I get by with Uncommon Doffs for the most part. I have a Very Rare ones for Space and Ground duties. But the whole system needs to change if they are also going to be used for crafting. Something tells me that you haven't really thought this through very well.
I agree that most of the standard Mk XI and Mk XII weapons look too big. Elite fleet phasers are appropriately sized, but it would be nice to be able to reskin some of the standard weapons (or the MACO Phaser Battle Rifle, for that matter) to something less bulky. I wouldn't get my hopes up that such a feature will come with Season 9.5 though.
The geometry of ground weapons is inextricably tied to the FX art of firing them. It would take a massive amount of FX and Character Art time to split these out, but customized weapons would be awesome. Maybe someday, but not soon.
Jeff "Adjudicator Hawk" Hamilton
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
The geometry of ground weapons is inextricably tied to the FX art of firing them. It would take a massive amount of FX and Character Art time to split these out, but customized weapons would be awesome. Maybe someday, but not soon.
Encouraging to hear! That would be incredibly cool.
With the revamp of the DOFFing/crafting interface is it possible to add a dilithium button to complete the DOFF assignments early similar to the crafting button? (My apologies for posting this in two places but saw the feedback thread)
Gold Sub since March 2010
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
I still think they should give the characters with top end crafting now, something. it's a bit silly that we hafta restart entirely from scratch yet again.
"..and like children playing after sunset, we were surrounded by darkness." -Ruri Hoshino
After leveling science to level 20... It seems there is a much larger demand for magnesite across the board because i'ts the base material used in crafting the majority of the components necessary to make other goods and it usually needs 3 magnesite per component while most others materials are only 2. This either needs to be decreased in quantity of magnesite needed or the drop rates increased. I was constantly running out of magnesite before anything else and needing to transfer more toons to tribble with resources.
Gold Sub since March 2010
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
I still think they should give the characters with top end crafting now, something. it's a bit silly that we hafta restart entirely from scratch yet again.
How do they tell the difference between the folks that did it in 15 minutes and the folks that may have spent quite a bit of time on it way back in the day?
After leveling science to level 20... It seems there is a much larger demand for magnesite across the board because i'ts the base material used in crafting the majority of the components necessary to make other goods and it usually needs 3 magnesite per component while most others materials are only 2. This either needs to be decreased in quantity of magnesite needed or the drop rates increased. I was constantly running out of magnesite before anything else and needing to transfer more toons to tribble with resources.
Thanks, excellent feedback - I'll double check the resource distributions.
Jeff "Adjudicator Hawk" Hamilton
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
The geometry of ground weapons is inextricably tied to the FX art of firing them. It would take a massive amount of FX and Character Art time to split these out, but customized weapons would be awesome. Maybe someday, but not soon.
Really, all I want is a Mk XII phaser rifle that looks like a Mk I phaser rifle. No ugly glowy bits (the elite fleet weapons make a good substitute).
Comments
Excellent point, those were beautiful.
Issues with tooltips of [Arc] weapons
Of course, the conversion did net a large quantity of common and uncommon material, but the rare material is essential for the mid to high level component and gear. The amount of rare material obtained from existing anomaly traces will determine how much a player will have to grind later in the new crafting progression.
I had 427 anomaly traces and obtained 112 rare materials after conversion or 26% when comparing quantities based on only old rare types and new rare types (the uncommon and common types obtained are not considered for this experiment).
https://www.flickr.com/photos/124844784@N05/14323351210/
Addendum: I noticed that the anomalies identified as uncommon level for new material will always give a good quantity of uncommon (and only uncommon material); so why are trace conversions using this "random reward" system for the material given in return? Use a straightforward rare for rare even if it is a one for one and each type of trace matches with a type of new rare material... just don't rip us off on all the grinding we did for these traces and give us a fraction of the rare material that should be received in the conversion.
Yesterday I was really upset so I was not clear. Sorry.
I know that we are getting a new uniform but I could not care less
But I care about the new crafting system I want to craft.
There are so many posts like:
Oh I heard that someone posted that he was listening and that we will be able to make
I would love that Cryptic enables posting to players who logged on to Tribble in last 24h.
0, yes zero very rare AP MK II dual canons
p.s. I will execute my rare Jamhadar who is serving under me for 1,5 years for incompetence its just a MK II dual canon, he is Energy Weapons Officer not a Doctor.
I greatly disagree with you putting "Crafting Packs" in Queued Events. First of all, not everyone wants to do Queued events. And KDF queues have been dead for months!!! So are KDF players supposed to buy off the exchange?
Second, you are going to overflow the Exchange with garbage crafted drops, while Very Rares will be sold by greedy players for far excessive amounts. Where average / casual players won't stand a chance to afford.
I think they meant ques like ISE and such. If you can't find an ISE team in 5 minutes, than the servers are down.
1. You take out exploration so we can all sit around in Drosana waiting for a queue to pop baisically taking out the boldly go and change it to stand around and wait for either your queue to pop or someone to use a dance ball. That is why I come and play a game, to stand around and do the same repeatable missions over and over again. Please tell me who thinks that is actually fun.
2. You add basically another grind to the game. Except the previous grinds you put your time in, and got a known reward for it. This time you put your time in, pay an huge price, and most likely get taken for a ride and get something that you had the same random chance to get for free by just doing missions.
3. Oh, and you do not reward players who spent the time to level up your previous systems and farm for mats, but penalize them for all the time they spent already. Nice.
So basically you set up a white board, listened to the community, wrote down all the fedback you were given, and then chose to create a system that universally contained everything that people said they dislike about your game, and leave nothing in that anyone finds even slightly enjoyable.
You know whnen you say that you are listening and taking our input under concideration, you are supposed to actually create systems that people may enjoy and find usef I l, not systems that contain everything people hate.
People that don't do something aren't going to be rewarded for not doing it...and the problem is what?
They are the only end game STO has alongside the two battlezones.
Perhaps a DOFF Chain that unlocked a repeatable with the chance at them?
1) once this officially releases, my max level crafting is getting reset and I have to start from scratch.
royal TRIBBLE up #1...why not just reset our character levels and progression while your at it? make us all start over from the beginning of the game at level 1 in our Mirandas.
2) your use of the word "regularly" when we are crafting, means we are spending obscene amounts of dilithium for a randomized quality of item (which mind you costs us players either, insane amounts of time most of don't have, or REAL MONEY)
royal TRIBBLE up #2....any % chance under 100% is unacceptable. I am not using gathered materials and dilithium...which you obviously are pushing us to spend the real money currency to obtain...on an item of random quality.
3) you've now turned the crafting process from something that takes seconds, into something that takes hours...AND requires duty officers (which mind you also requires spending of real cash to purchase more of)
royal TRIBBLE up #3 This isn't even worth commenting on. I wouldn't mind it so much if there was a way to reliably obtain those said duty officers without spending money.
4) According to people posting here, the conversion amount from old materials to new materials is so bad, it might as well not even exist, meaning...to re iterate bullet 1... I am starting from scratch...meaning there is zero"reward" as you put it for those of us who have spent a lot of time and money into the old crafting system.
royal TRIBBLE up #4, am I supposed to be pleased at the middle finger you just gave all of us players who put time and money into the old crafting system?
I think I've made my point with just these 4 points. Cryptic, until you design this new crafting system into something that's actually a player friendly, enjoyable, and USABLE alternate means of obtaining high quality end game gear...you know for those us who aren't swimming in our excess time, not to mention CASH instead of the most obviously greedy money sink I have ever seen in my life...I'm not spending so much as another cent on this game.
Mind you, bear one more thing in mind before you just assume I'm already not forking up money and take a look under my name Cryptic to see what kind of subscription my account is.
It's one of those things that might get tricky. Cause although they've added all sorts of new ways to get the Common/Uncommon/Rare - they've locked the Very Rare (and thus Mk XI/Mk XII) behind that chance from an Elite queued event. They've also mentioned Crafting Packs, which basically sound like Crafting Lock Boxes, eh?
Lots of folks have been focused on the Dil costs - and - I don't think they've quite looked at how difficult it is going to be to get those VR mats.
I was a bit snarky in my initial reply, and I apologize for that - I was just thinking about how easy it is to hit up CCE for a chance at VR mats...and that it sounded a little too much like a certain group of posters out there that...yeah, never mind - but that's what flooded into that.
But they're going to have to look at the overall cost/effort involved in getting to the point where the Dil costs come into play...and...if it sucks just to try to get the mats, the Dil cost won't matter cause folks will never get that far. Cryptic definitely needs to balance that angle...
It's too grindy!
Here's why I say this, and not that I have a problem with the grind. (although I kinda do, but that's a whole 'nother rant)
So far I can only craft Mark II items. Fine (except, I won't be using them any time soon as a VA50). Getting from Level 0 to Level 1 takes 30 xp. Easily done crafting components. I forgot to write down the difference from Level 1 to 2, but I'm currently working on Level 3 which takes 10,000 experience.
Here's my problem with that. Each Mark II item gives me 50 experience. So, by my back of the envelope math, that means I have to craft 200 items to level up. In the engineering category, that there's five options. That means I've crafted 40 EACH if I decide to diversify.
1) What am I going to do with 40 warp cores (or impulse engines, etc). I'm sure I could diversify it farther (plasma-infused, etc). But seriously, what? I only need one. My fleeties only need one (each). That's an obscene number of items.
2) That's going to flood the market, particularly low level items as people level up crafting. Or, it's going to inflate the energy credit market even more as people sell them off.
3) That's just level 2 to level 3. I can't even make higher Mark things (that I actually care about) until I get my crafting to level 5. So, I'll have a ton of consoles that I don't want/need.
Now, I admit, this crafting system is probably aimed at the new player who doesn't need to craft higher level stuff, and if you craft along the way it may work out better. However, given my experience with the DOff system, I doubt it.
Proposed solutions:
Lower the bar. That's right make it easier to increase levels. Getting from 0-5 just to make Mark IV (and possibly higher) items is a long slog.
Put consumables back in the crafting system. Right now my only options for gaining xp are components, which I only need so many of, or consoles I don't need. Give me something I can use to encourage me to craft until I can build something I actually want/need.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Want cheap commodities? Yeah you do. Commodity Cheat Sheet (includes food and data samples)
Want to make the game better? Might I suggest this form
And what you're replacing it with is another attempt to Force us to buy High Quality Doffs... Really very bad! Wow! I can barely keep up with the Doffs system as it stands. Now It may permanently put me off even playing STO.
But my ONE Question is: Will we eventually be able to create top level gear? And make it reliably... It doesn't matter if I can only make a Mk XII purple Beam Array 1 time in ~10 attempts. NO ONE will use a system like that!
Doing this to the crafting system makes no sense to me. Sure the Lock Box game is like playing roulette. And most of the time it frustrating. Only giving you items that are fit for dumping off on the Exchange. Doing this to crafting just makes you folks seem like a bunch of trolls.
However, Since you are going to do this... Please make the conversion systems something other than tedious! What I'm talking about it the exchange system for old samples. From what I hear we will forced to convert them "one by one"... Do you have any Idea how many I have? If you force me to do it one at a time I'll never do it! It would simply take far too long.
The other thing I'm concerned about is what happens to the old Schematics? I've saved up a number of the ones that I use most frequently so I can make items for lower level Fleet members. What happens to them?
Also I have this more general question about the "Update"... If you want us to develop our Doff pool for crafting then why should I keep common Doffs around. And will the Fleet Development systems change? Right Now I get by with Uncommon Doffs for the most part. I have a Very Rare ones for Space and Ground duties. But the whole system needs to change if they are also going to be used for crafting. Something tells me that you haven't really thought this through very well.
I don't want to go too off topic in this thread, but the elite fleet phasers are absolutely gorgeous if you haven't seen them. The stun pistol is by-far the best weapon model in the game. The rifles are properly scaled and beautiful looking. There is currently no combination better than seeing a Starfleet officer wearing the Odyssey uniform and using one of these phasers in a ground mission. They're the 2410 phasers, in my eyes.
(The KDF elite disruptor compression pistol was a massive disappointment by comparison -- I'd rather have one of the standard models.)
I agree that most of the standard Mk XI and Mk XII weapons look too big. Elite fleet phasers are appropriately sized, but it would be nice to be able to reskin some of the standard weapons (or the MACO Phaser Battle Rifle, for that matter) to something less bulky. I wouldn't get my hopes up that such a feature will come with Season 9.5 though.
1: Add more goodies. Non-unique ARC dhcs/dcs, quad dcs/dhcs, beam turrets, maybe cannon arrays, tailgun dcs. Wide angle torpedoes. More type flavours, the better.
2: As long as Dilithium is involved, eliminate the randomness.
3: If you eliminate randomness, make Doffs give other bonuses. Like less materials used, faster completion times.
4: Catalysts could still have uses. Like perhaps a chance to craft a second item, increase xp gain, refund materials, etc. Creativity is the only boundary here.
5: The higher levels are way to grindy. Somehow please try to make this more akin to the reputation systems.
Maybe a long, expensive project that gives a lot of xp?
Something that would allow us to max crafting in around 2 months of work.
CaptainGeko stated that because of the difference in the coding, they couldn't transfer what we've already done into the new system. That's why we get reset.
The dilithium numbers right now are mainly arbitrary in order for them to test the system. There's still time to tweak it.
so far, the only duty officers you need to use are ones that are not consumed. They don't have any that are consumed for crafting, yet.
1. Dilithium/Random garbage - I am becoming seriously worried about the people at Cryptic I think they have a gambling problem they are projecting onto us. I really suggest Gambler's Anonymous.
2. Interface is clunky and gives less information it is not intuitive or helpful it is more of a hindrance.
3. The grind is beyond miserable the reward points need to be within reason. This here is nearly reason enough to ignore the new system.
4. Given the state of the duty officer system with the new interface I am concerned this will break something that isn't broken.
When the volunteer community moderator is able to test and have doubts about the system then that should speak volumes about how questionable this new system is., I followed his advice and tried it myself.
Random chance or dilithium PICK ONE.
Given what has been stated in interviews our feedback will likely be ignored.
Then make a system that is coded TO accept transfers. It's not that hard in the grand scheme of things, when you still have the old code. It's not that they can't. They decided to go a totally different direction and attach crafting to a different system (with a different code) instead of tying the new crafting system to the old crafting system and simply updating it. Sure we may not have gotten DOffs out of it (darn my luck) but nothing else they're doing required them to tie it into the DOff system.
here is the answer for the questions http://priorityonepodcast.com/po179/
The geometry of ground weapons is inextricably tied to the FX art of firing them. It would take a massive amount of FX and Character Art time to split these out, but customized weapons would be awesome. Maybe someday, but not soon.
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
Encouraging to hear! That would be incredibly cool.
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
How do they tell the difference between the folks that did it in 15 minutes and the folks that may have spent quite a bit of time on it way back in the day?
Thanks, excellent feedback - I'll double check the resource distributions.
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
Really, all I want is a Mk XII phaser rifle that looks like a Mk I phaser rifle. No ugly glowy bits (the elite fleet weapons make a good substitute).