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Crafting first impression
stephane2258
Member Posts: 115 Arc User
This will be a good thing, because what was the crafting become, especially after season 7 when it start costing dilitium... It was just useless. So first comment on the new system.
1 - Character that reach maximum crafting level still have to start from scratch, from what I see.
2 - The cooldown for basic component is just annoying. At the very least, we should be able to queue more than one.
3 - The 18 holographics officers take much too much space in the duty officer rooster. I will not by more duty officer slots for my 11 characters to be able to do crafting!
4 - Do we at some point have more control on what we produced? I can accept that the quality of the item have a random factor. But the first thing I crafted was a dual cannon MK IV, for which I cannot specify an energy type and I got Antiproton.
5 - At least one good point is that there is at least some unique items that are interesting.
6 - The dedicated cargo space is really welcome!
7 - I will give it a try, but my first impression is not that good.
1 - Character that reach maximum crafting level still have to start from scratch, from what I see.
2 - The cooldown for basic component is just annoying. At the very least, we should be able to queue more than one.
3 - The 18 holographics officers take much too much space in the duty officer rooster. I will not by more duty officer slots for my 11 characters to be able to do crafting!
4 - Do we at some point have more control on what we produced? I can accept that the quality of the item have a random factor. But the first thing I crafted was a dual cannon MK IV, for which I cannot specify an energy type and I got Antiproton.
5 - At least one good point is that there is at least some unique items that are interesting.
6 - The dedicated cargo space is really welcome!
7 - I will give it a try, but my first impression is not that good.
Post edited by stephane2258 on
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Yes. Very much so.
Because of his background story, because I made him an Engineer, I role played him as a crafting guru. He mastered everything the game had in crafting. The cost and farming were a pain in the neck, and farming to get the Aegis set was worse. However, I built the set and built my own weapons, and enjoyed being able to say I made it myself as an engineer who crafted.
Crafting was originally made useless by two major changes in the game: 1) the Fleet equipment so outclassed it that no one had a reason other than role play to craft anymore, and 2) the dilithium costs were imposed with the intent that players be coerced into spending money to buy it through Zen.
Now everything I accomplished is gone. My stats are destroyed. My crafting investment destroyed. My duty officer slots needed for other things are limited if I choose to grind my way through crafting, and I do mean grind - not have fun. Further, the role play for my engineer is completely destroyed. Now, as an engineer, I cannot engineer anything.
Yes, this crafting system is broken, because it has broken the very essence of character crafting and the very nature of how certain professions would actually interact with development of new tech. After all, Capt. Janeway was often directly involved in the development of their tech. After TOS, all the Capt,s displayed the abilities of managing technical expertise and development because of their knowledge in science and engineering. While they did at times assign development to Bridge Officers, they remained hands on. This is no longer the case in STO. It has broken from canon, destroyed our already existing abilities, and eliminated more role play from the game.
Characters with max crafting ability should have kept max crafting ability. Characters with some development in crafting should have had that prorated across in the new system. More importantly, if crafting was going to be made worthwhile and useful the ability to craft Advanced and Elite equipment should have been implemented. (Perhaps by creating tokens similar to Dilithium Mine Provisions which a character could purchase only when their fleet was of the appropriate tier.) I am not saying that they shouldn't have to spend the same amount of dilithium and fleet credits to gain said equipment, but rather that the crafting change did nothing for creating a better crafting system because it provided nothing in game for players to bother crafting.
:mad:
Ask the players for ideas and stop coming up with TRIBBLE.
The old system was just a horrible way of buying stuff with other stuff that took a while to gather.
The new system is a horrible way of buying stuff with other stuff that took a while to gather too.
The only thing they have done is increase the time sinc, take a way the old stuff we gathered to make us gather anew and make it so that we only some times get what we paid for.
In my book that makes this a crafting nurf, not a revamp.
I have the box still because my roster was full. I'm doing crafting without them. I may need them to do the level 15 gear but right now I can do everything with my current guys.
The crafting system is the one thing which was good from the patch, but they messed up the doff UI to do it.
You can turn in your old crafting materials for the new stuff. I have over 1000 of each type except ultra rare and rares.
You play STF's you get resources in return. several elements rolled into one. You have the marks Resource box and fun. Don't forget the fun.
I'll say again the Craft system much better best thing from the patch everything else can go on the scrap heap I.E Doff UI
Edit:- Without making a new post to comment to more of the negative feedback to the craft system. Yes games are grindy they always have been always will be get used to it , the sooner you do the better. For a matter of sake life is grindy. You wake up go to work or school repeat everyday for an ultimate goal. You save money up for holidays you repeat this in real life. Games are a hobby for side fun. The sooner you stop grasping that games are too grindy for your taste the better for your self enjoyment.
But the patch did bring a lot of negativity with it I can understand your reluctance. The Doff UI as previously stated is horrible . It is not user friendly. It distracts from the fun. But hopefully they will improve it. Crafting and doffing are behind the scenes activities whilst you play the game or go to work. This appeals to workers ! But again improve the UI
None of my lower level toones, characters, avatars, or whatever you want to call them, can do rare, or very rare assignments for some reason. So I can't get those R&D mats that are available for completing them when I could previously.
The changes to Duty Officer assignments and R&D alone have totally changed the economics of game currency.
I've played this game on a daily basis for a little over a year now. I've decided that my best course of action at this time is to probably take a few months off, come back for season 10, and see what changes. I just don't see what else I can do at this point.
Thanks for reading...
Those are in no shape or form needed anyway if you already have a balanced pool of doffs. Normal common doffs...i dismissed them all.
personaly i do the 20h missions each day, on each char i have...think this means that it takes 30 days to get to lvl 15 without wasting any valuable resources for leveling.
I can live with that, not too much effort involved to reach max level...though it will obviously take longer.
STO =/= Star Trek. Don't let the game name fool you
Ain't Nobody Got Time for That
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Not entirely true. While it is true that you can use your existing doff-roster for almost all items, the special gear, like the ground weapon school's TR-116B sniper rifle or the cannon school's DHC with the [Arc] modifier need a doff who is specialized in this R&D department. You can't pick a "regular" doff for those.
Basically they just renamed a few items, - particles & schematics into common/uncommon/rare raw materials/components and unreplicatable materials into very rare raw materials/components - put a time-gate onto the whole thing and killed off the last bit of immersion by removing Memory Alpha.
What do we as players get out of the process?
a new way to dump dilithium, a time-gate on crafting, an uncomfortable UI and a handful of old, revamped items. There are no new sets, no interesting way to level, still not useful for new players (too much time and rescources needed to keep up with the speed of levelling)
That's always been my biggest beef with the game. I can even look past the MMO-tropes that have to go into the game (money, loot, etc). But the fact that violence seems to be the only answer, that you're always having to fight, and that there's no reward at all for diplomacy, exploration, or experimentation (past tiny things for duty officers) makes it very "not Star Trek."
I mean, when your summer event, where you're just wasting time on Risa, is the most accurate thing in the game... something has gone tragically wrong.
To be fair, that has been true of almost every Trek game in any medium. The oldest one still around - running since the 1970s - is Star Fleet Battles which, as the name suggests, is a pure wargame. The only exceptions have been the various tabletop RPGs which depended on a living, breathing GM to function. Even Activision's Birth of the Federation - which did reward trade, diplomacy and exploration - tended to degenerate into a bloodbath eventually.
My character Tsin'xing
Well for now I have to say that the new crafting system is quite a mess but fortunately not beyond hope. In fact it has the potential to be a very good crafting system if some issues are addressed in the near future. Some of the following points have actually been brought up elsewhere but that's no surprise because they are rather obvious.
1. The learning curve in the crafting system. A player who still levels up might use crafting to equip his ships, I actually did that in the old system and thought that it was way better than waiting for useful drops. Whenever I got a new ship I just did an exploration tour or two (they could actually be fun if you only did them every once in a while) and then headed to memory alpha. A new player might still do that in the new system but it seems to me that there is a horrible mismatch between the pace in which one progresses in the crafting system and the pace in which a toon is leveled up so even a new player might simply outgrow the crafting system. That doesn't necessarily mean that the overall time to reach maxlevel in a certain crafting school has to be reduced but the curve should be adjusted in a way that a player who crafted enough Mk VI gear to outfit a ship of appropriate tier should have progressed far enough to craft Mk VIII equipment with a good chance of getting blue quality at least. Once he crafted enough Mk VIII gear to outfit his new ship he should have progressed far enough to do craft Mk X stuff in decent quality. Since higher tier ships require more equipment the curve would still get steeper with every crafting level. Beyond the level where you can craft standard equipment reasonably well it could even become much steeper. Fixing this would require to rework the curve or the way chances on blue and purple items at certain skill levels are calculated (probably both). Another solution would of course be to reduce the speed in which a new toon levels up (let's face it, right now you hit the level cap ridiculously fast) but that's a different story.
2. There is nothing reasonable to do in the crafting system for a level 50 player with low crafting skill. The fastest way to level a crafting skill is to actually craft and that's a good thing but all that can be crafted at low crafting level is low level equipment that no one needs. Yes you could try to sell it to low level players but as already stated they outgrow their gear so fast that there is no reason for them to spend EC on optimizing it. As a result, using materials to craft stuff that no one needs feels like a huge waste and doesn't yield much motivation to get involved with the crafting system at all so most players will be inclined to just use the slower research project option and be done with it. The fix to that is actually very simple, allow to craft consumables. Space and ground consumables are useful to low and maxlevel players alike. So why not just give the option to use some common materials to craft a battery ? Or at, let's say, crafting level 5, factor in some uncommon materials to craft advanced batteries that for example boost shield and engine power at the same time (or any other combination). As far as I know such items are already in this game so there wouldn't be anything new to add, just a new way to obtain them. That way even maxlevel players could craft something without feeling like basically throwing a lot of resources into the trashcan.
3. Dilithium costs are too high. Like I stated earlier, crafting was my preferred way of outfitting new ships when I was still leveling up. The main reason that made me stop were the masses of dilithium I would have had to spend on unreplicateable materials. I'm not even strictly against added dilithium costs in crafting but it should be reasonable. If it would have been 10 dilithium for common unreplicateable materials and 100 for uncommon or if only very few uncommon unreplicateable materials would have been needed I would have continued crafting, not because the crafted equipment would have been outstanding in any way but because it would have been a good way to equip my ship with something that would do just fine until I get to replace it with something better. The reason crafting stopped being useful once you hit maxlevel was not so much the quality of the crafted items, it was the dilithium cost that was way to high for what you would actually get. Unfortunately the new crafting system made exactly the same mistake. Beyond Mk X you have to pay dilithium to craft something and not just a little. 500 for the cheap very rare components and 4000 for the expensive ones, all that on top of hard to come by very rare materials, and how many of those components do you need to craft even a single beam array or console ? Yeah, reduce the dilithium cost by a factor 10 and we can talk, otherwise you would need a very good reason to use the crafting system for anything below the special items like omnidirectional beam arrays.
4. Very rare materials are a little too rare. I never played STFs not even the normal ones because so far I've never been interested to try. When I read that the very rare crafting materials would only be obtainable by playing ESTFs I thought Ok perhaps I'll give it a try. My current build could be just good enough so maybe I practice in normal STFs for a few weeks and then move on to the ESTFs. Who knows it might even be fun... That plan went out the airlock when I realized that it just wouldn't work that way. You don't gain very rare materials from ESTFs you gain a ticket for a lottery in which you might win these materials (or not). Especially after reading that some played like 30 or 40 ESTFs without getting even one very rare material this just seems like a huge waste of time if you actually intend to craft and not just play the ESTFs anyway and view the materials as added bonus. Once again the fix is very simple, just change the advanced R&D boxes you obtain from ESTFs to contain one guaranteed very rare material (more if you get lucky). That way crafters would have something they can calculate with instead of having to play an undetermined number of ESTFs in order to craft even one item.
5. Currently the crafting system is more a lottery than anything else. In most MMOs a lot of players seem to have the misconception that crafted items would have to be superior to those obtainable as drops to make crafting worthwhile. That's nonsense. The strong point of crafting (at least in a good crafting system) is not getting superior equipment it's getting exactly the equipment you want. Want to equip your ship with a Field Stabilizing Warp Core [W->E] [ACap] [EPS] [SSR] for whatever reason ? Crafting could do it. Want to equip your ship with 5 or 6 antiproton beam arrays with maxed out crit chance ? Once again crafting is your friend provided you take the time to gather all the resources you need. Unfortunately the current crafting system doesn't work that way. You gather the resources, you specify the type of item you want to create and the rest is up to luck. Given the effort it takes to make even one attempt that's outrageous. How often are you supposed to try before you get something that even remotely resembles what you wanted ? 5 times ? 10 times ? 100 times ? If you can't specify the modifiers you want i.e. customize the item to your needs then why bother in the first place ? You could just as well stick to drops. If there absolutely has to be a random factor in crafting it should affect quality alone but even then if you craft something appropriate for your level of skill your chances of getting exactly what you wanted should be at least 90% with the rest giving you something that is still pretty close (missing one of the specified modifiers). If you try to craft something ambitious for your level of skill that would be a different story of course. On a side note, the number or even the kind of modifiers you choose could very well influence the materials needed and the chances of success at a given skill level. Choosing exactly what you want to craft and then gather the materials and craft it was something I really liked about the old crafting system (if only there would have been more options to choose from...) and it's a shame that the new system is, at least in that one aspect, actually inferior to its predecessor.
There would have been more to say about the overall time it takes to reach maxlevel or level 15, the balance between crafting and just using the research projects once a day or the missing ability to assign a specific DOFF to do a chain of crafting tasks being carried out in a particular R&D slot one after another but I don't really want to go down that road for now.
Bottom line is, the crafting system is pretty messed up right now and on a good way to become just as ignored by the majority of players as the last one but it can (and might) still be saved.