Ground and Space Doff from same Department

zeratk · October 2013

Seriously you have to unbound this blockade between ground and space DOff on Active Duty from the same department/profession.

Witnessing this a lot with Engineering DOffs. For example i can't equip an Fabrication Engineer on Ground, if i have one on Active Duty for space, and vice versa. Same problem with other DOffs.

zeratk · June 2014

mightybobcnc · June 2014

Cryptic knows about this issue and they'd like to fix it if they can find the time to do it. Maybe we'll get lucky with expansion 2.

zeratk · June 2014

mightybobcnc wrote: »

Cryptic knows about this issue and they'd like to fix it if they can find the time to do it. Maybe we'll get lucky with expansion 2.

ETA somewhere along the way is the common rant, for at least everything they stoop to comment on. :rolleyes:

zeratk · June 2014

Everytime i do a ground or space pvp, pve, or whatever i have to reslot all my Doffs until i get slotted all i wanted, cuz everytime some block each other from the same department. Ground Doff blocks Space, one on Space blocks one on Ground. *sigh* This is so ... annoying.

Feeling like getting trolled from Cryptic once again.

borticuscryptic · July 2014

Cryptic knows about this issue and they'd like to fix it if they can find the time to do it.

This isn't an issue that's awaiting a fix. The current functionality is working as intended.

Everytime i do a ground or space pvp, pve, or whatever i have to reslot all my Doffs until i get slotted all i wanted, cuz everytime some block each other from the same department.

This is the nature of choice.

You can either have the exact functionality you want for each region (as determined solely by your choices in the matter), or you can have the ease of use that comes from utilizing an Active Roster that doesn't have any overlapping restrictions.

When a new Doff comes out that uses the same Specialization as another existing one, chances are that choice was not made at random by the Designer that created it. We understand the nature of choice. So if we release a new Technician Doff, we know that he will directly compete with the A2Batt doffs that already exist. And a new Fabrication Doff has to stand up as a valid choice vs. the existing ones that summon additional Turrets during ground combat.

We're not trolling you. We're trying to create interesting choices.

bareel · July 2014

borticuscryptic wrote: »

This isn't an issue that's awaiting a fix. The current functionality is working as intended.

This is the nature of choice.

You can either have the exact functionality you want for each region (as determined solely by your choices in the matter), or you can have the ease of use that comes from utilizing an Active Roster that doesn't have any overlapping restrictions.

When a new Doff comes out that uses the same Specialization as another existing one, chances are that choice was not made at random by the Designer that created it. We understand the nature of choice. So if we release a new Technician Doff, we know that he will directly compete with the A2Batt doffs that already exist. And a new Fabrication Doff has to stand up as a valid choice vs. the existing ones that summon additional Turrets during ground combat.

We're not trolling you. We're trying to create interesting choices.

That is not a choice.

The reason the current setup is bad is the same reason you guys use for why you don't want to release traits that function outside of combat.

It might be a limitation of the engine, I can accept that. But to claim it is intentional that the players would be forced to change their doff selections each time they change combat areas does not make any sense. And no, it is not the same as space/ground captain traits as they can only be changed in specific regions and you may not have the capability to do that depending upon the content you are currently engaged in. Which is still quite a stretch mind you when space/ground reputation traits are split, space/ground skill points are semi split, but captain traits do not have such a split, yeah.

Consistency in your design implementations might cause less confusion is all I'm saying.

illcadia · July 2014

borticuscryptic wrote: »

We're not trolling you. We're trying to create interesting choices.

But you are trolling us, since we can just slot out one doff for another whenever we have a spare moment, so you aren't actually achieving your intended design goals. You're just intentionally creating more busywork for players.

zeuxidemus001 · July 2014

borticuscryptic wrote: »

This isn't an issue that's awaiting a fix. The current functionality is working as intended.

This is the nature of choice.

You can either have the exact functionality you want for each region (as determined solely by your choices in the matter), or you can have the ease of use that comes from utilizing an Active Roster that doesn't have any overlapping restrictions.

When a new Doff comes out that uses the same Specialization as another existing one, chances are that choice was not made at random by the Designer that created it. We understand the nature of choice. So if we release a new Technician Doff, we know that he will directly compete with the A2Batt doffs that already exist. And a new Fabrication Doff has to stand up as a valid choice vs. the existing ones that summon additional Turrets during ground combat.

We're not trolling you. We're trying to create interesting choices.

Eh you just end up pissing ppl off when you have like for example a RSP fabrication officer for space and then a support drone fabrication doff for ground. Two different regions so you have to micro manage them every time you want to do space or ground. I guess the direction with the build loadouts stopped there as far as micro management.

Now I could see if you wanted to like use the mine fields ones all together like that it would be too OP but the ones for different regions shouldn't cancel each other out imo. Plus I specifically submitted bug reports in the past about an exploit with SDO's where you can use purple ones for ground on the space roster making a pretty much invincible tact but someone dropped the ball on that one I guess. Also its an armory officer who does turrets not fabrication lol.

reximuz · July 2014

borticuscryptic wrote: »

This is the nature of choice.

You can either have the exact functionality you want for each region (as determined solely by your choices in the matter), or you can have the ease of use that comes from utilizing an Active Roster that doesn't have any overlapping restrictions.

When a new Doff comes out that uses the same Specialization as another existing one, chances are that choice was not made at random by the Designer that created it. We understand the nature of choice. So if we release a new Technician Doff, we know that he will directly compete with the A2Batt doffs that already exist. And a new Fabrication Doff has to stand up as a valid choice vs. the existing ones that summon additional Turrets during ground combat.

We're not trolling you. We're trying to create interesting choices.

Sorry, the choice isn't interesting when you have to choose between loadouts for two mutually exclusive areas of the game, its annoying and tedious, and serves little purpose but to annoy your players, and probably also forces the ones who don't want to deal with swapping stuff around constantly to specialize into one side of the game while ignoring the other.

Ground and Space are wholly separated play spaces, if you force a choice between them one (probably ground) is going to lose out. This is partly why the Skill Tree was revamped from the system that was in place at launch, because before we were forced to spend points in ground almost everyone spent them all in space. I think its probably a safe bet that even under the new skill point tree where there is a Cap on how much you can spend on space, that the vast majority of players cap out space and spend the minimum needed in ground.

Doffs and Activated traits are really no different (or in the case of activated traits, won't be different in the long run) you are going to force a choice between Space and Ground, and Space will likely win out for the majority

You guys are talking about revision 3 of the skill point trees and still haven't learned this lesson, you might was well not bother wasting your time on it.

If you want choices to be interesting then each region has to have its own non-conflicting choices. Picking between two space powers is interesting, picking between two ground powers is interesting, picking between two powers you can't use at the same time anyhow isn't interesting, it comes down to where you spend most of your time. If you love ground and spend almost no time in space combat, then you slot the ground power, or vice versa.

There is no real choice, as the choice is be good at the thing I do a lot or be good at the the thing I do rarely. It would be like offering someone who lives in Nebraska the choice between having the power to command Corn with their mind, or the power to control Whales (Hint, there is a whole lot more Corn than there are Whales in Nebraska, in fact there is probably a whole lot more Corn than pretty much anything in Nebraska.)

tk79 · July 2014

borticuscryptic wrote: »

This is the nature of choice.

You can either have the exact functionality you want for each region (as determined solely by your choices in the matter), or you can have the ease of use that comes from utilizing an Active Roster that doesn't have any overlapping restrictions.

When a new Doff comes out that uses the same Specialization as another existing one, chances are that choice was not made at random by the Designer that created it. We understand the nature of choice. So if we release a new Technician Doff, we know that he will directly compete with the A2Batt doffs that already exist. And a new Fabrication Doff has to stand up as a valid choice vs. the existing ones that summon additional Turrets during ground combat.

We're not trolling you. We're trying to create interesting choices.

This is not about choices. This is about Quality of Life.

You don't need to break your design goal to make the player experience better. Apply the restriction inside their own exclusive scopes (space, or ground). Keyword is exclusive.

The design goal is kept, and players will be happy.

It seems only logical to me.

thefastone21 · July 2014

tk79 wrote: »

This is not about choices. This is about Quality of Life.

You don't need to break your design goal to make the player experience better. Apply the restriction inside their own exclusive scopes (space, or ground). Keyword is exclusive.

The design goal is kept, and players will be happy.

It seems only logical to me.

It's always about choices... for ground... you can ignore all the science and engie doffs in favor of the melee crit doffs. Who needs a tri-colbalt mortar when you can 1 hit kill someone with your heel of your boot?

tk79 · July 2014

thefastone21 wrote: »

It's always about choices... for ground... you can ignore all the science and engie doffs in favor of the melee crit doffs. Who needs a tri-colbalt mortar when you can destroy a shuttle with your heel of your boot?

Fixed it for you.

pwstolemyname · July 2014

borticuscryptic wrote: »

This isn't an issue that's awaiting a fix. The current functionality is working as intended.

This is the nature of choice.

You can either have the exact functionality you want for each region (as determined solely by your choices in the matter), or you can have the ease of use that comes from utilizing an Active Roster that doesn't have any overlapping restrictions.

When a new Doff comes out that uses the same Specialization as another existing one, chances are that choice was not made at random by the Designer that created it. We understand the nature of choice. So if we release a new Technician Doff, we know that he will directly compete with the A2Batt doffs that already exist. And a new Fabrication Doff has to stand up as a valid choice vs. the existing ones that summon additional Turrets during ground combat.

We're not trolling you. We're trying to create interesting choices.

Cirtainly this is a choice, but its a very bad one. Opportunity cost is a good choice.

Do I want a warp core engineer who gives me more power or a warp core engineer who cleanses debuffs? That's a good choice.

Do I want to bother to reslot my doffs every time I beam up or down, that's a bad choice. Its not fun and its qualitatively different from the former choice.

Loadouts, broken as they are, have already shown that cryptic understand players don't like this kind of choice. After all they devoted a lot of development time to removing it for us... wish some one would actually fix the loadout system btw.

So no Bort, passing this off as a design decision doesn't fly. If it really is working as intended then its hypocrisy... or to invent a word, hypocryptical.

Its quite transparent that this simply isn't something the money men can be bothered to assign time to. Which I am fine with, there are more important things... like the loadouts, or raising the limit on boff slots.

iusasset · July 2014

Honestly, given the divorce between ground and space content in this game, I don't think the ground/space binary affords particularly meaningful choices. There's just not a whole lot of content that includes BOTH space and ground action - it's almost always one or the other. So why even force players to choose between space and ground skills, traits, or doffs?

This extends to BOFFs, too - ground traits are pointless for space content, and vice-versa. Why would a player slot an away team BOFF with only 3 ground traits? Why slot a station BOFF with 4 ground traits? Again, it'd be different if we had more mission or old-style STF content with ground & space action present in the same run, but since we don't, there's no reason NOT to optimize your build for either space OR ground, rather than trying to shoehorn both into one. This is a very UNINTERESTING choice.

In short, either cryptic should create more content that makes ground/space choices ACTUALLY meaningful (by punishing players who build solely for one or the other), OR cryptic should finally split space/ground fully, like with the Rep traits - fully separate trait/doff/boff/skill spec/slotting.

admrenlarreck · July 2014

borticuscryptic wrote: »

This isn't an issue that's awaiting a fix. The current functionality is working as intended.

This is the nature of choice.

You can either have the exact functionality you want for each region (as determined solely by your choices in the matter), or you can have the ease of use that comes from utilizing an Active Roster that doesn't have any overlapping restrictions.

When a new Doff comes out that uses the same Specialization as another existing one, chances are that choice was not made at random by the Designer that created it. We understand the nature of choice. So if we release a new Technician Doff, we know that he will directly compete with the A2Batt doffs that already exist. And a new Fabrication Doff has to stand up as a valid choice vs. the existing ones that summon additional Turrets during ground combat.

We're not trolling you. We're trying to create interesting choices.

In your examples you used, Space, Two technician doffs and ground, two fabrication doffs. That is fine, the problem comes down to the fact that this is NOT what the topic is about. The topic is about having a doff that affects Space only, and a doff that effects Ground only, both of which is from the same department..

Space and ground in STO are two completely different aspects of the game. So shouldn't doffs from space not effect ground? The only way for this to make sense would be that each and every doff has two abilities one for space and one for ground. If that was the case then how you explained it would make sense. In the game, however, this is not the case. The two areas do not overlap, so neither should the DOFFs from the separate areas.

As for your comment about interesting choices. Pretty much the choice you give us is..

Which do want to play and be better at space or ground? We wont give you both.

For me. I chose space simply because there's more of that than anything.
And the way doffs are locked like they are makes me avoid ground if all possible.

mightybobcnc · July 2014

borticuscryptic wrote: »

This isn't an issue that's awaiting a fix. The current functionality is working as intended.

I could swear that months ago in other threads about the same subject a dev said that they would like to fix this issue if they could find the time to do it (even if that was just their personal opinion and not an official policy thing). I know Cryptic has been made aware of this issue because this isn't the first thread about it (nor will it be the last) and Branflakes passed the feedback along (again) as recently as January:

pwebranflakes wrote: »

This is not a bug, as the stack is by specialization. I will pass along the feedback that you'd like to see it separated by region.

Cheers,

Brandon =/\=

I thought it was right around that time (January or February) that aforementioned dev said they would like to split active roster specialization into space/ground if they could find the time to do it. I can't find a post to this effect. What I can find is this post you made at the end of 2012:

borticuscryptic wrote: »

Doing so would require a massive amount of data modification, algorithmic fix-ups, and hands-on modifications to every Duty Officer in the game, the reward tables that hand them out (doff packs, missions, etc), and every Assignment in the game.

All for a change which would be, in the end, a fairly minor quality-of-life issue.

Not to say it'd never happen. Just saying it's a much larger fix than just changing a flag or something.

There was enough time between your post then and when I made my, ah, "claim" earlier in this thread for me to have mis-remembered the "they'd like to if they can find the time" bit.

borticuscryptic wrote: »

This is the nature of choice.

You can either have the exact functionality you want for each region (as determined solely by your choices in the matter), or you can have the ease of use that comes from utilizing an Active Roster that doesn't have any overlapping restrictions.

When a new Doff comes out that uses the same Specialization as another existing one, chances are that choice was not made at random by the Designer that created it. We understand the nature of choice. So if we release a new Technician Doff, we know that he will directly compete with the A2Batt doffs that already exist. And a new Fabrication Doff has to stand up as a valid choice vs. the existing ones that summon additional Turrets during ground combat.

We're not trolling you. We're trying to create interesting choices.

2012-Borticus refutes 2014-Borticus by correctly acknowledging that this is a QoL issue that has absolutely nothing to do with Opportunity Cost because it affects wholly-separated regions (ground/space) where there is no overlap in active roster abilities that you must choose between. I mean really.. STO is essentially two games in one. Arbitrary limits imposed in one region due to attributes that only affect the other are illogical, but at least we can see why it wouldn't be a trivial fix from 2012-Borticus' post.

trelane87 · July 2014

borticuscryptic wrote: »

So if we release a new Technician Doff, we know that he will directly compete with the A2Batt doffs that already exist.

How well did that work out? I'll just leave these Exchange figures below:

Aux buff while cloaked Technician: 2,475,000 EC
Electrical Damage to Tachyon Harmonic vs. Non-Living Enemies: 2,800,000 EC
Aux to Battery Technician: 12,450,000 EC

I don't even see the point of the Hirogen Technician... there aren't very many 'Non-Living' enemies in the game, definitely not enough to justify wasting a ground doff slot on a 'chance' to cause dmg. Whoever came up with it obviously has never played the game before :rolleyes:

Ground and Space Doff from same Department

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