This problem exists since launch, now 4 years later we have seen a revamp of the skilltree, which was a step in the right direction, but didn't address the issue.
Quite frankly, they should have sticked to the old skilltree...but should have removed the skill cap.
Meaning that aslong as you earn XP (after max level) you should have been able to invest them in the skilltree...
balance issue?
not really, even if you had maxed out all skills, you are only allwas able to carry a finite number of abilities which correspond only to certain skills in your skilltree.
while having maxed out ALL science skills an escort may only have 2 science boff seats. Which means that from all the science skills you'd be actually only using 2 or 3. graviton generators, particle generators, shield emitters. (TSS and TBR maybe in this case)
it basicaly balances itself out, depending on the ship you use and its BOFF seats.
anyway, there has been a few interviews with captain gecko (i think) in which he confirmed another revamp of the skilltree. I even think it was stated that it will be designed to allow multiple variations to make "ship hopping" more viable.
Pretty much every week that I tuned in while watching any of the shows...they were always in the same ship. If it was a different ship, it was because it was a different crew in a different show. Tada...multiple toons, each flying a single ship.
Same. I consider the ship my character's fly the 5th member of the band. :V
thats kinda like asking why dont we all buy the same cars and wear the same clothes ???...i dont have to answer that right ??? ...you do know the answer?
Or only wear one pair of shoes. You might think that in terms of being a covering for the feet a pair of sneakers will satisfy your needs but while you might be able to technically wear those through all situations in life you'll find that other types of shoes may be better in certani situations. And while you might think "well a different style would be most optimally used by a different type of person with different shaped feet and a different personality that makes the most use of this wierd atire" you and your feet are adaptable enough that even if you aren't a boot kind of guy/girl, wearing them will sometimes be more advantageous than sticking to your favorite pair (because the situational advantage is greater than the slight bit of sub-optimality of those not-favorite shoes).
For example, my KDF toon has a Tactical Bortasqu AND an Undine Dromias cruiser. Build wise the Dromias is most suitable to the stats and equipment I have BUT for certain PVE's a hyper-regenerating beam boat is not going to perform as well as a 5 tac console artillery cannon regardless of how well I've honed the Dromias to excell at its particular niche. That niche is inherantly less competitive in a Bortasqu friendly situation. So, I use the other ship even if my skills are a bit off because that allows me to be generally more competitive across a wider range of missions.
I get to play more stuff well because I have two (plus) ships. It results in a larger, more enjoyable, game and I strongly advocate that any mono-ship captain branch out a little bit.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Based on captain skills, it is pointless to get more than one ship.
So for example, my main guy is a science captain. He flies a Vesta. I have no torps on the ship, so i specced my captain skill points with 0 skills into projectile weapons.
Now, i would love to splash out, spend some $$$, buy some c-store or lockbox ships, and give them a whirl.
So at the moment, my 2 options are;
a) Buy a ship, and play it EXACTLY the same as i play my vesta. Nothing changed, no torps.
So, whats the point of even getting another ship that will be exactly the same?
There isn't, which is why i haven't bought anymore ships.
b) Respec my captains skills, every single time, i want to play with the new ship. Or change back to my old ship. Which is 500 zen a go.
Seems pretty crazy. After playing for a week i would spend more zen changing ships that the ship cost!!!
Now that option is obviously Cryptics preferred method, wanting me to spend lots of zen respeccing.
Instead i just wont spend 5k zen on a new ship. Meaning cryptic LOSE money, instead of making it.
Doesn't make sense to me. It really doesn't.
My suggestion is this;
Have captain skills PER ship. So if you change ship, your skills change as well.
That way, I, personally, would buy a LOT more ships, if i could actually use them.
I play a Tac Escort Captain primarily. No projectile weapons besides the NSB that came with the Tempest. Just the other day I brought my Discovery Class Starship out of mothballs. Slapped some refracted tetryon beam arrays on her and went to town on the Tholians. While I wasnt able to burn their ships down as fast as I would behind some DHCs it was fun to change it up. The playstyle was significantly different from what I would of done in my Escort. Id have made 'bombing' runs in my Escort. But with the Science ship I had to circle the enemy ships and only make runs at it when I wanted to line up the Transphasic Torps.
Now I know a lot of people would say, youre wasting a slot on those Torpedoes. But in PvE. It really doesnt matter. Some people might like to burn through the missions as quick as possible. And most of the time I count myself amongst them. But everyone and awhile I dont mind slowing it down and having a slugfest with some Mob.
Much depends on your personal play style. I personally have 19 large ships and 4 small ships assigned to my Science Officer. Certainly if I followed the mathematical numbers I could do better in one spacecraft verse another. But, Im not really here for that, I'm here for the immersion. This I one reason why I think this game failed to keep all of those customer they had at initial of the game. I am personally against the removal of "Exploration" aspect of the game. In fact that is what should be at the very heart of this game and in my opinion do to the lack of it led to the loss of many customers when STO first came out. Exploration is what is going to make people stay and pay. Imagine for a few minutes a three dimensional map as vast as the 'EVE Online" universe where each person could go forth to explore and investigate. It could be created in such a manner is which our different starships really have a value and role to play. The warp classification of your engines and trans-warp drive would really have value and play a factor in your travels. A place where scanning of a solar system and mapping the stars is important. Some systems would have gas giants others have races. I should not have to rely on the public to develop stories and missions. But in such a universe as I am proposing these Foundry authors could select and "populate" many of these systems. Imagine as you are traveling between these systems you could be attacked my a hostile race. A universe where the different Empires and the Federation would on occasion go to war for the control of a system. Where space stations play a more important role as we expand. A MMO where every two years or so, the universe "solar systems" would be reset and more solar systems and unique "Finds" would be added and then rearranged except for the current known part we have in game today. In may opinion this game needs to be more alive. If this trend doesn't change I'm afraid the developers are going to lose a lot of people. Some them will be people like me, people who pay a subscription and/or regularly purchase items from the C-Store.
I have to side with most others in here...... your problem is you've made a min-max build. More generalized captain specing. I min/maxed on one toon for a bit, and respeced to more generalized. Min/maxing really is not worth it.... it's actual weak doing that..... I may max in some spot, but really the difference between 6-9 is not much, very much diminishing returns..... those last three points in a skill spec cost a lot of point for little return... points that can really boost other areas.
Personally, I like to switch it up once in a while. Games get boring when you do the exact same thing over and over. That's why most players have multiple ships for each character. There's also the matter of the c-store ships. Once you buy one, it gets unlocked for free throughout your account. And you can have several different captains on one account. So, I can save up dilithium, buy some zen, buy a c-store ship for one captain, and use it with any of my others once they reach that level.
There's also the fact that each ship is different, and allows for different playstyle with the same captain. For instance, my primary is my eng. I mostly use a fleet exploration cruiser with him, but lately I've been trying out the Odyssey ships and the assault cruiser ships, to see how well it performs, and to get out of pure tanking once in a while and inflicting bigger hurt on my opponents.
Of course, that's not to say ships of the same category can't be different as well. You say you're a sci captain in a Vesta. Have you ever tried the intrepid or the d'kyr? I tried both on my sci character. Both ships are sci based, yet both play rather differently if you check it out. Don't think that there's only one way to use a certain character or ship type. Save up your dilithium., get some zen, and try out something new. Stick your sci captain in an odyssey or a galaxy and see what happens.
I get the OP's meaning I feel the same way myself actually. I have been eye balling the fleet version of the ship I always fly from time to time. Thinking it would be nice to have extra hull points, extra console slot ect, but would actually it be worth it? I can fly any PvE and hold my own now with the ship I have now. PvP? Well as that is now the HUGE unbalancing ruins what otherwise would be a enjoyable time for me. No matter what ship I had, I'd still get exploded with a single volley from a BOP, Add the fact it's really the same missions over and over and over again on the same maps over and over and over again. Sure I could just play with a different ship to force a change in my playing style yada yada yada, but that too would be same old same old after a while. I guess it makes sense to me just stay with what I have until the game really gives me a reason I need for myself to reinvent the wheel sort to speak.
I hope STO will expand it's own imaginations on giving the players some true excitment with the coming expansion. Make things more dynamic instead of just plain static. That would make a huge big first step in the right direction in my opinion, and maybe help make players like myself want to invest in better ships, to venture out and to take on the vast unknowns.
Cryptic would sell alot more ships if they let the skill tree work the same way as the trait tree. When your out of battle they should let you change your skills to whatever you wanted. That way if you wanted to switch ships to acomadate your playstyle you could. As it is now, you're kinda locked into one type of ship, escort, cruiser or science vessel. If Cryptic let you switch your skills on the fly same as traits it would encourage people to have more than 1 type of ship on thier character. Therefore encouraging people to buy more than 1 ship type for their character. Why haven't they done this already. They can't be selling tokens to respect anyways. Everyone knows thats a bad deal.
they can fly their over optimised little one trick pony all they want, but dont whine about it later when their one trick pony cant do other tricks.
quite simply, its not efficient if its not doing what they want, so thats a baseless claim to make. what would be efficient is tradeing off diminishing returns for more gains elsewhere, rather than just full or empty stats.
this isnt about efficiencyt, JUST about minmaxers not wanting to minimise anything as they max everything. then having the nerve to whine about it when their zero dampers, zero subsystem repairs build cant deal with holds or disables etc.
So people who don't play like you want them to should be penalized.
Comments
Quite frankly, they should have sticked to the old skilltree...but should have removed the skill cap.
Meaning that aslong as you earn XP (after max level) you should have been able to invest them in the skilltree...
balance issue?
not really, even if you had maxed out all skills, you are only allwas able to carry a finite number of abilities which correspond only to certain skills in your skilltree.
while having maxed out ALL science skills an escort may only have 2 science boff seats. Which means that from all the science skills you'd be actually only using 2 or 3. graviton generators, particle generators, shield emitters. (TSS and TBR maybe in this case)
it basicaly balances itself out, depending on the ship you use and its BOFF seats.
anyway, there has been a few interviews with captain gecko (i think) in which he confirmed another revamp of the skilltree. I even think it was stated that it will be designed to allow multiple variations to make "ship hopping" more viable.
Or only wear one pair of shoes. You might think that in terms of being a covering for the feet a pair of sneakers will satisfy your needs but while you might be able to technically wear those through all situations in life you'll find that other types of shoes may be better in certani situations. And while you might think "well a different style would be most optimally used by a different type of person with different shaped feet and a different personality that makes the most use of this wierd atire" you and your feet are adaptable enough that even if you aren't a boot kind of guy/girl, wearing them will sometimes be more advantageous than sticking to your favorite pair (because the situational advantage is greater than the slight bit of sub-optimality of those not-favorite shoes).
For example, my KDF toon has a Tactical Bortasqu AND an Undine Dromias cruiser. Build wise the Dromias is most suitable to the stats and equipment I have BUT for certain PVE's a hyper-regenerating beam boat is not going to perform as well as a 5 tac console artillery cannon regardless of how well I've honed the Dromias to excell at its particular niche. That niche is inherantly less competitive in a Bortasqu friendly situation. So, I use the other ship even if my skills are a bit off because that allows me to be generally more competitive across a wider range of missions.
I get to play more stuff well because I have two (plus) ships. It results in a larger, more enjoyable, game and I strongly advocate that any mono-ship captain branch out a little bit.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
I play a Tac Escort Captain primarily. No projectile weapons besides the NSB that came with the Tempest. Just the other day I brought my Discovery Class Starship out of mothballs. Slapped some refracted tetryon beam arrays on her and went to town on the Tholians. While I wasnt able to burn their ships down as fast as I would behind some DHCs it was fun to change it up. The playstyle was significantly different from what I would of done in my Escort. Id have made 'bombing' runs in my Escort. But with the Science ship I had to circle the enemy ships and only make runs at it when I wanted to line up the Transphasic Torps.
Now I know a lot of people would say, youre wasting a slot on those Torpedoes. But in PvE. It really doesnt matter. Some people might like to burn through the missions as quick as possible. And most of the time I count myself amongst them. But everyone and awhile I dont mind slowing it down and having a slugfest with some Mob.
This is all that needs to be said right here.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
There's also the fact that each ship is different, and allows for different playstyle with the same captain. For instance, my primary is my eng. I mostly use a fleet exploration cruiser with him, but lately I've been trying out the Odyssey ships and the assault cruiser ships, to see how well it performs, and to get out of pure tanking once in a while and inflicting bigger hurt on my opponents.
Of course, that's not to say ships of the same category can't be different as well. You say you're a sci captain in a Vesta. Have you ever tried the intrepid or the d'kyr? I tried both on my sci character. Both ships are sci based, yet both play rather differently if you check it out. Don't think that there's only one way to use a certain character or ship type. Save up your dilithium., get some zen, and try out something new. Stick your sci captain in an odyssey or a galaxy and see what happens.
I hope STO will expand it's own imaginations on giving the players some true excitment with the coming expansion. Make things more dynamic instead of just plain static. That would make a huge big first step in the right direction in my opinion, and maybe help make players like myself want to invest in better ships, to venture out and to take on the vast unknowns.
How dare someone want the most efficient build possible...the very nerve of them.
So, do you fly a rainbow ship too?
So people who don't play like you want them to should be penalized.
I'd bet good money you're likely sponging off of all those "minmaxers" when you queue up for anything.
They always do. (Lord knows I do. huehuehuehuehue)