Agreed. But considering the source, and their track record with being unable to properly manage and balance ship design and instead fall victim to powercreep ... I think it's a decent guess that Geko actually believes a level cap raise will remove powercreep issues.
He may be banking a level cap raise on saving everything, and this may be a source of future frustration.
Leopards, spots, all that.
IIRC one of the devs said in an interview that ships have to be a little better than previous ones in order to sell well. For Cryptic that's the real problem, any solution that removes power creep completely is bad for them, thus they have to find something else. Power creep = $$$.
The goal here is to bring everyone to about equal footing so power creep can begin anew.
The game needs the resest, but they need to figure out how it can survive the outrage when T6 ships inevitably come.
As an idea, they could offer upgrade packs for current ships for say 500-1k zen to base T6 level, then the power creep can begin anew from there. IMO if the price is set right people will not just swallow it but many will even be happy for the oppurtunity at upgrading their favorite ships. After an initial outrage of course :P
Thinking about it, surely this is what we're being set up for?
1) Geko said in the interview that "power creep" is soon going to not be a problem (and he laughed while he said it). This suggests a level cap raise;
2) Iconians have been set up as the biggest bads any known faction in space has yet faced, particularly in a certain recent storyline episode, they've also been pretty much behind a lot of the troubles we've been dealing with in the storylines;
3) You'll need bigger bads for a level cap raise, especially to have STFs which, on Elite, will challenge even those who are 20k dps and above now. Borg, Voth, even the Undine just ain't going to cut it any more, they are weak sauce and Omega/MACO/Counter-Command, etc., etc. has learnt how to deal with them;
4) This also suggests it's not going to be about out-damaging, but the enemy will use AI, and it will require actual teamwork to beat them. More like endgame Raids in other MMOs.
5) Rewards from this ultra-high-end content will be commensurate: mk XIII-XIV gear, and a crapton of new ships, ultra badass variants of the ships we know, and possibly even captured Iconian tech. Plus high end crafted gear yet to be introduced.
Seems obvious.
Thoughts, ideas?
1. doubt it for the power creep, it may have already been on the table and it has been wanted for years since before the power creep became an issue. however raising the level doesnt change the power creep problem it simply adds more trouble on top of the old stuff in the long run.
2. as far as i am aware the iconians wont feature for a while because the reveal of the iconians was a plotpoint rather then facing against them all the time. still a lot more story to come eventually the iconians will have their day, but i doubt season 10 is it.
3. difficulty raise? doubt it.
4. not sure what they plan on yet, need more details first.
5. i also doubt a level cap raise would promote more ship designs and such, just imagine the nerd rage about t5 lockbox ships! :P
yep, i thought about it and it will likely dig into the iconian plot on the delta quadrant and that surrounding the planet quarra if i were to guess, it was mentioned in SoI.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
The Iconians are behind the stuff happening in the DQ just like they are behind the stuff happening in the AQ and BQ.
yes, but in all likely hood, we are gonna be exploring, and meeting all the races of the dq before they go ahead and have us tango with the iconians.. plus, I don't think cryptic even knows how they are going to "do" the iconians.. meaning, how do we get to them, how do we beat a race of pretty much gods.. do the iconians make their stand, or just wisk away into the background like they have done in the past..
but in all likelihood, we will not be dealing with them directly in the expansion.. maybe a cameo here and there, butyeah, well be playing with the krenim and other species first..
yes, but in all likely hood, we are gonna be exploring, and meeting all the races of the dq before they go ahead and have us tango with the iconians.. plus, I don't think cryptic even knows how they are going to "do" the iconians.. meaning, how do we get to them, how do we beat a race of pretty much gods.. do the iconians make their stand, or just wisk away into the background like they have done in the past..
but in all likelihood, we will not be dealing with them directly in the expansion.. maybe a cameo here and there, butyeah, well be playing with the krenim and other species first..
easy one, iconians follow their arrogance and thats what prompted their reveal. by having agents of chaos who are the face of the iconian plot in typical comic book villain explaining their plans to the hero or leaving some sort of clue, the iconian plans get ruined they get more annoyed and eventually it will lead to another confrontation, that the apparent complicated nature of the work is too much for a lowly being to understand and ends up understanding far more then the iconians plan on. bruised ego much, huh :rolleyes:.
so as you state let the agents of chaos leave the breadcrumbs behind for the heroes to follow and eventually the iconians will come licking themselves as typical as any ordinary cat.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
IIRC one of the devs said in an interview that ships have to be a little better than previous ones in order to sell well. For Cryptic that's the real problem, any solution that removes power creep completely is bad for them, thus they have to find something else. Power creep = $$$.
Ships have to be OP to sell hand-over-fist. But older ships become obsolete and stop selling, and the only way they could revive the old ship sales is to collectively raise the old ships to competitive level, IE switch all fixed ensign stations to uni ensign, put DHC hard-points on sci ships, stuff like that. As we have seen from Galaxy "revamp" they are doing no such thing. Patrol Escort was a remake, not an upgrade, for more short-term profit at the expense of knifing the old buyers. Short-term profit-chasing at the expense of long-term sales is pretty good way to run a business straight into the ground. If they did it en-masse with level cap increase, making all existing ships obsolete, that would be the end of it. Nobody is going to buy Vesta 3-pack v2 after getting screwed out of it on Vesta 3-pack v1.
The game needs the resest, but they need to figure out how it can survive the outrage when T6 ships inevitably come.
As an idea, they could offer upgrade packs for current ships for say 500-1k zen to base T6 level, then the power creep can begin anew from there. IMO if the price is set right people will not just swallow it but many will even be happy for the oppurtunity at upgrading their favorite ships. After an initial outrage of course :P
Well they could rebalance everything, and do things like c-store trade-in ship tokens if you have a c-store ship. Then if you dont like the new ship role, go trade it in.
2. as far as i am aware the iconians wont feature for a while because the reveal of the iconians was a plotpoint rather then facing against them all the time. still a lot more story to come eventually the iconians will have their day, but i doubt season 10 is it.
The way I'm thinking of it is, big fish and bigger fish (like that underwater bit in the Star Wars movie ). Space is vast, with limitless possibilities. The Iconians are the biggest fish yet, but what if they're being plot-pushed by even bigger fish we haven't even seen yet?
Cryptic need the power creep to sell stuff, that's fairly obvious.
But they also need something to "absorb" that power creep.
The only solution is bigger and badder aliens and level cap raises. Now, while level cap raises do TRIBBLE off some people who have worked for their stuff up till now, most MMO players know the score, and that it's part of the functioning of MMOs. Cryptic have held off for a loooong time compared to most MMOs. It's about that time.
In essence, because of the fact that the game is set in space, there's no necessary theoretical limit to how high power creep vs. bigger and badder aliens can go. Cryptic can pull anything out of their TRIBBLE at any point that could utterly nullify whatever power level people have at any given time.
So far the Iconians have been storyline drivers, but the carrot on stick approach can only work for so long, it has to be resolved at some point. It seems pretty clear to me that the last Iconian reveal presages some sort of resolution to that whole line of story.
Lore hounds: I bet you you can think of one or two potential canon baddies even bigger than Iconians off the top of your head. I can think of one: a sort of "civil war" (TRIBBLE schizophrenia ) in the Q continuum. That could be waaaaaaay off in the future, but it could still happen.
Plus, what Cryptic do is now canon, isn't it? So they have the helm in a sense, they can invent stuff so long as they pass it by authorization.
Forget the Borg. They've been done to death and back.
Anyway, I have very mixed feelings about the Iconians. On one hand I'd love to see more of them. On the other hand, I don't want them to be another run-of-the-mill enemy for us.
To elaborate: (and this is in my opinion only), IF they do something with the Iconians, it should be BIG. Storywise, it should be game-changer. Frankly, it should involve our factions, at least initailly, loosing. No 'Enterprise saves the day', no heroics. No quick solutions.
It should involve something occurring that prompts the Iconians to reappear. The Iconians, furious that we didn't heed their warning (see the last FE), attack a major target - the Sphere perhaps, since it's significant to our three factions.
Our factions respond....... a prolonged battle ensues with the Iconians having a significant upper hand; the battle eventually turns in THEIR favour; the three flagships and the player's ship are the only ones left fighting.
However, the Iconians then issue another warning and disappear, leaving us to pick up the pieces, realising how unprepared we were for such a threat.
This game needs something like that - Trek didn't always do 'the good guys always win no matter what' stories, DS9 in particular had several episodes involving Starfleet/the KDF limping away from battles having sufferred heavy losses. Enterprise did the same sort of thing with 'Azati Prime' - It's not something STO has tried before, and I feel it should.
However, as others have said, the Iconians are the foundation on which STO stories are based and I can't see the Devs doing anything to upset that any time soon, so I guess we'll have to make do with cameo appearances from them.
Agree in general with your post, this would be kind of nifty.
But re. your last paragraph: stories have beginnings, middles and ends, they don't go on forever. We've gotten comfortable with "doh it was the Iconians after all", but that doesn't mean Cryptic haven't got several years worth of fresh story planned beyond the Iconians.
As I've said, I really feel that last reveal was pointing to "Ok folks, we've seen 'em pulling the strings, now get ready to meet the real deal."
No they need reason to buy something other than moar DPS
You only have one reason to buy anything here, so you think there is only reason to buy anything period. You're wrong.
Yeah, but STO doesn't have a very big development team atm, whatever they do, they have to do with the crew they've got.
It's been a constant complaint that "damage is king" in MMOs for years and years. I haven't seen hardly any MMOs that haven't had a power creep problem, or one in which dps rooolz in the endgame. Sandboxes like EVE are an exception, and one might argue that WoW is an exception too. To this latter, I would I agree - and that might indeed hint at why WoW is so perennial, but it also hints at the real problem:-
It's just really, really, REALLY hard designing systems any more complex than "damage is king", so developers tend not to do it, and the ones that do are unusual. Now Cryptic gets a ragging, but IMHO it isn't that bad a company. As a PWE game, it could be far, far worse than it is (and yeah, it may end up that way). I think Cryptic must have fought quite hard against turning it into a generic Asian grinder with spaceship skins. It might seem like it is now, but believe me, it could be a LOT worse.
So, Cryptic are good, maybe even good enough to do the trick; but to steer STO on a non-"damage is king" road now, it's just too late, the team isn't big enough, and it would be unrealistic to expect. Nobody's going to invest in such a big change in STO at this stage.
So I think it's always going to devolve to a dps race, so I think my logic stands: moar dps needs bigger baddies to absorb it.
Thinking about it, surely this is what we're being set up for?
1) Geko said in the interview that "power creep" is soon going to not be a problem (and he laughed while he said it). This suggests a level cap raise;
2) Iconians have been set up as the biggest bads any known faction in space has yet faced, particularly in a certain recent storyline episode, they've also been pretty much behind a lot of the troubles we've been dealing with in the storylines;
3) You'll need bigger bads for a level cap raise, especially to have STFs which, on Elite, will challenge even those who are 20k dps and above now. Borg, Voth, even the Undine just ain't going to cut it any more, they are weak sauce and Omega/MACO/Counter-Command, etc., etc. has learnt how to deal with them;
4) This also suggests it's not going to be about out-damaging, but the enemy will use AI, and it will require actual teamwork to beat them. More like endgame Raids in other MMOs.
5) Rewards from this ultra-high-end content will be commensurate: mk XIII-XIV gear, and a crapton of new ships, ultra badass variants of the ships we know, and possibly even captured Iconian tech. Plus high end crafted gear yet to be introduced.
Seems obvious.
Thoughts, ideas?
First, don't put too much into what the guy says.
1) Nope. It's far easier to nerf our ships/gear and buff npc's. They revamped crafting, then removed a substantial amount of content. PvP could get the axe because the whine of OP is born there and it's basically dead anyway.
2) The Iconians are their Ace up their sleeve. Cryptic will slow milk that cow drop by drop because after they're dealt with...what's next? Dinosaurs with laser beams on their heads?
3) See 1.
4) Anything remotely cerebral is avoided in STO. PEW PEW sells, fyi, and that's all that matters to them.
5) Are you suggesting they fix power creep by adding more powerful ships/gear to the game?
It seems obvious you put too much faith in Cryptic's abilities.
They would rather modify than create.
NO to ARC RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev
Geko said in the interview that "power creep" is soon going to not be a problem (and he laughed while he said it).
Good. The Borg especially have been made into a joke by all the power creep. No one should be able to solo a cube IMHO. I don't care how awesome your ship and build are.
IIRC one of the devs said in an interview that ships have to be a little better than previous ones in order to sell well. For Cryptic that's the real problem, any solution that removes power creep completely is bad for them, thus they have to find something else. Power creep = $$$.
The goal here is to bring everyone to about equal footing so power creep can begin anew.
The game needs the resest, but they need to figure out how it can survive the outrage when T6 ships inevitably come.
As an idea, they could offer upgrade packs for current ships for say 500-1k zen to base T6 level, then the power creep can begin anew from there. IMO if the price is set right people will not just swallow it but many will even be happy for the oppurtunity at upgrading their favorite ships. After an initial outrage of course :P
Ships have to be OP to sell hand-over-fist. But older ships become obsolete and stop selling, and the only way they could revive the old ship sales is to collectively raise the old ships to competitive level, IE switch all fixed ensign stations to uni ensign, put DHC hard-points on sci ships, stuff like that. As we have seen from Galaxy "revamp" they are doing no such thing. Patrol Escort was a remake, not an upgrade, for more short-term profit at the expense of knifing the old buyers. Short-term profit-chasing at the expense of long-term sales is pretty good way to run a business straight into the ground. If they did it en-masse with level cap increase, making all existing ships obsolete, that would be the end of it. Nobody is going to buy Vesta 3-pack v2 after getting screwed out of it on Vesta 3-pack v1.
Well they could rebalance everything, and do things like c-store trade-in ship tokens if you have a c-store ship. Then if you dont like the new ship role, go trade it in.
Just my 2 cents, and hope nobody has mentioned it, I'd bet crafting will be the "free" method of upgrading ships/equipment to the next level.
I forward this proposal as I am pretty sure I heard/read a dev interview (Geko / P1 ) mention something about the crafting system could be used for ship upgrades.
The upgrade packs (Zen) could then be the "now" option for upgrades.
Either way they win, as only some will be patient enough to wait the year to get their crafting high enough for upgrades. Many will drop dil to speed up the process, and once near or at the required level, may buy catalysts to increase the odds or select the mods they want.
Like I said, either way they win.
P.S. These level upgrades will be bound to character, so no buying them off the exchange.... Sorry, but you gotta grind for it.
1) Nope. It's far easier to nerf our ships/gear and buff npc's. They revamped crafting, then removed a substantial amount of content. PvP could get the axe because the whine of OP is born there and it's basically dead anyway.
OP is all evident all through the STFs if you have combat parser. In my personal experience, in most STF PUGs, there's at least one person over 10k (usually around 12-15k), and some PUGs have 2 or 3 12-15k people, and a smattering of 20ks. Considering I can get around 8-10k on a DHC escort with all green stuff without even trying, just building intelligently with standard consoles, that should tell you something.
Again, if you see the league tables for combat parser, the highest atm is around 80k, and there are lots of people at that level. I should think around 30-40k is "average" for the high dps crowd.
There was a time when 5k was considered as "starting level" high dps - I think the high dps crowd gave that up as a "level" at all, long ago, they now start at 10k before you can even join the "club". My own meagre Sci torp boat can do 10k (although that's a carefully thought out build).
So, having said that, here's the other point: the promise of high dps is what sells ships. When people pay, they pay for power.
So they are never going to nerf to that extent. People who think they will often hearken back to ED in CoH, but that was a subscription game at the time, with nothing hanging on being able to sell items to customers. Not even Cryptic would have the balls to do an across-the-board nerf at this stage. If they do, then everyone who's ever dissed them will have to eat their words, because it would show a company with unusually big balls, as these things go.
But if they're not going to nerf, they're going to have to raise cap, I don't see any other possibility.
It's just really, really, REALLY hard designing systems any more complex than "damage is king", so developers tend not to do it, and the ones that do are unusual.
What's hard about designing to disable instead of destroy? We are 99% of the way there now. Sci ships can disable, Tac ships can disable, Engi ships become repair vessels that send over Engi Teams to do repairs.
And there are alternate gameplay versus combat. With crafting system opening alternate channels we have opportunity for things like cargo ships and research ships and miining ships, which are reflected in parts of the original STO design work just never implemented after STO went into arcade shooter mode.
Also you have all the species and their ships, how about making Nausicaan ships for Nausicaan species, Orion ships for Orion species, Vulcan ships for Vulcan species, etc.
The point is, if you give people reason(s) to buy more than one ship, then you make money on repeat business. The argument that we can only ever have powercreep to keep selling the same mechanic over and over is nonsensical, and its ultimately harmful because you cant betray the same customers over and over.
It is clear, that some powercreep is necessary due to marketability of a new stuff. It is in every game.
But i asking, if not so much. Fleet equipment , new traits , reputation perks, boffs, valdore console, everything is about 50% more powerfull than before. Surprisingly with the ships would not say that there has been any increase , only once did one or two ships stronger ( jhas and Galor ) , now the other ships caught or slightly beat them ( reptilian and scimitar )
One solution I have seen. Improve AI. F.e. my sci ship has 5k dps , despite this i can defeat 30k dps scimitar in pvp. How is this possible? Because abilities.
The Borg (or other) are not stupid and are able to adapt. So they looked at the skill planner and see what builds have 20k+ dps players. They looked at the record where dps players made stf in (under) two minutes. They devised a defense. For example, a Borg cube in the first episode with the Borg find out what it is Antimatter spread? So why does not it , when most dpsers used FAW and go as close as possible to the target (see fun crammed scimitars on cubes) . Or cancel threat generation. Why is npc so stupid and fire on the most armored target? Why not directed at whoever has the most dps ? Surely that is a threat , not the one who has the most armor. Might also npcs not still appear in the same places , because otherwise the first thing they do is step on a transphasic mine and die.
And of course again and again , the missions where only goal is to do the most damage to something in the time limit. This is the reason , why damage (powercreeped) is more important than player's skills.
The easiest way for them to limit power creep is to implement more significant diminishing returns and bumping up mob DPS and survivability. With the dminishing returns, that coulsd also mean making the rarely used consoles viable again forcing the player to decide from all types not just Locators/reps/1x neutronium/1x flow cap or emitter.
They could also limit the use of universal consoles by making a specific console slot(s) for them. Thre isn't one player out there that is rep complete that the only number of consoles that rivals their number of universal console are Tac Console.
Just my 2 cents, and hope nobody has mentioned it, I'd bet crafting will be the "free" method of upgrading ships/equipment to the next level.
I forward this proposal as I am pretty sure I heard/read a dev interview (Geko / P1 ) mention something about the crafting system could be used for ship upgrades.
The upgrade packs (Zen) could then be the "now" option for upgrades.
Either way they win, as only some will be patient enough to wait the year to get their crafting high enough for upgrades. Many will drop dil to speed up the process, and once near or at the required level, may buy catalysts to increase the odds or select the mods they want.
Assuming that you do it daily, you'll max out a couple of schools of crafting after a year or so. If crafting is the way to T6 ships, better hope that your characters chose the right schools. Specialized in ground gear? Sucks to be you. Guess that you'll be waiting a year.
Good. The Borg especially have been made into a joke by all the power creep. No one should be able to solo a cube IMHO. I don't care how awesome your ship and build are.
When I said the first bit there, it was just a general statement. I hadn't listened to the part of the interview where it was discussed yet. I was waiting for some folks to drop out timestamps. There was no way I was going to listen/to watch that TRIBBLE. I tried...but I left due to their technical difficulties and that they actually included that instead of editing it out.
But anyway, with the timestamp in hand - headed off to listen. And after listening to the wee bit, I decided to go back and listen to everything from the point the question was actually asked and Geko replied...
Which did talk about Geko seeing "power creep" as the disparity between a fresh and an old level 50. That's fine - that's one angle on it...the obvious angle on it, etc, etc, etc.
He talked about a potential solution to that being content - talking about Elite, harder content - etc, etc, etc.
So the "solution" to "power creep" is keeping the fresh 50s and old 50s separate. Out of sight and out of mind, eh?
So how would they do that? Have to unlock Elite? Some sort of internal scoring mechanic that would unlock access?
Sure, sure...things are always subject to change and it doesn't mean they don't have any other ideas floating around - but uh - he pretty much said what he said, no? Not sure why there's so much talk about other things when he said what he said if folks will go back and listen to his reply after Mav asks the question...rather than just the tagline version of it, eh?
And that's, imho, where all the wild speculation about all sorts of things would be...heh.
Did he explicitly state the goal was the removal of power creep? My memory could be fuzzy but I believe the question was about the power disparity between fresh 50s and veteran 50s. And the answer was it would not be a problem soon. Which does hint at the standard level cap increase progression reset style expansion.
Which is hilarious and terrifying. I personally have not upgraded any of the gear on my toons for awhile and have absolutely no intention to do so until after expansion 2 because of the instant obsolete possibility.
And that leads to the final truly to me amusing part. The variance has far less to do with fresh VS vet equipment and much more to do with bad builds VS good builds. Don't get me wrong a truly min/max build can do some impressive things but if you have a good build even with mk X or mx XII greens you will still pull your weight. By contrast a bad build will still be terrible no matter how good it's gear.
So hopefully we are going to see an honest effort at the game teaching the players how to make effective builds along with a complete rebalance of the various boff abilities, gear, and other things to reduce the chances of a player making a terribad build.:rolleyes:
Agreed. But considering the source, and their track record with being unable to properly manage and balance ship design and instead fall victim to powercreep ... I think it's a decent guess that Geko actually believes a level cap raise will remove powercreep issues.
He may be banking a level cap raise on saving everything, and this may be a source of future frustration.
1) Geko said in the interview that "power creep" is soon going to not be a problem (and he laughed while he said it).
Based on Geko's attitude about the player base (at least those of us here in the forums) he might of just been laughing about how stupid we are for continuing to put money into this game.
:cool:
I love Trek and I'll keep playing this game (and continuing to contribute financially) as long as the game continues ... but that STOked episode left me with the distinct impression Geko (and possibly other members of the dev team) don't care AT ALL about the player community outside of our willingness to put our hours and dollars into STO.
:mad:
In the immortal words of Captain Sisko: "It may not be what you believe, but that doesn't make it wrong."
Don't believe the lies in this forum. I am NOT an ARC user. I play STO on Steam or not at all.
Comments
If they actually made this I could see 3 things happening.
1. It imediatly goes on the exchange at the price of 2 JHAS
2. It is part of an alien artifact you can only craft at level 20 in all schools with a x% chance of success.
3. It is a doff and the devs decide at last minute it was meant for another faction rendering your character bound item usless.
Sure there are, add a massive 20 player borg related mission would be nifty, as the Hive is a joke being the hardest atm borg space STF.
Being surrounded by hundreds of borg vessels, could spell for some fun.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
IIRC one of the devs said in an interview that ships have to be a little better than previous ones in order to sell well. For Cryptic that's the real problem, any solution that removes power creep completely is bad for them, thus they have to find something else. Power creep = $$$.
The goal here is to bring everyone to about equal footing so power creep can begin anew.
The game needs the resest, but they need to figure out how it can survive the outrage when T6 ships inevitably come.
As an idea, they could offer upgrade packs for current ships for say 500-1k zen to base T6 level, then the power creep can begin anew from there. IMO if the price is set right people will not just swallow it but many will even be happy for the oppurtunity at upgrading their favorite ships. After an initial outrage of course :P
1. doubt it for the power creep, it may have already been on the table and it has been wanted for years since before the power creep became an issue. however raising the level doesnt change the power creep problem it simply adds more trouble on top of the old stuff in the long run.
2. as far as i am aware the iconians wont feature for a while because the reveal of the iconians was a plotpoint rather then facing against them all the time. still a lot more story to come eventually the iconians will have their day, but i doubt season 10 is it.
3. difficulty raise? doubt it.
4. not sure what they plan on yet, need more details first.
5. i also doubt a level cap raise would promote more ship designs and such, just imagine the nerd rage about t5 lockbox ships! :P
yep, i thought about it and it will likely dig into the iconian plot on the delta quadrant and that surrounding the planet quarra if i were to guess, it was mentioned in SoI.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
yes, but in all likely hood, we are gonna be exploring, and meeting all the races of the dq before they go ahead and have us tango with the iconians.. plus, I don't think cryptic even knows how they are going to "do" the iconians.. meaning, how do we get to them, how do we beat a race of pretty much gods.. do the iconians make their stand, or just wisk away into the background like they have done in the past..
but in all likelihood, we will not be dealing with them directly in the expansion.. maybe a cameo here and there, butyeah, well be playing with the krenim and other species first..
easy one, iconians follow their arrogance and thats what prompted their reveal. by having agents of chaos who are the face of the iconian plot in typical comic book villain explaining their plans to the hero or leaving some sort of clue, the iconian plans get ruined they get more annoyed and eventually it will lead to another confrontation, that the apparent complicated nature of the work is too much for a lowly being to understand and ends up understanding far more then the iconians plan on. bruised ego much, huh :rolleyes:.
so as you state let the agents of chaos leave the breadcrumbs behind for the heroes to follow and eventually the iconians will come licking themselves as typical as any ordinary cat.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Well they could rebalance everything, and do things like c-store trade-in ship tokens if you have a c-store ship. Then if you dont like the new ship role, go trade it in.
The way I'm thinking of it is, big fish and bigger fish (like that underwater bit in the Star Wars movie
Cryptic need the power creep to sell stuff, that's fairly obvious.
But they also need something to "absorb" that power creep.
The only solution is bigger and badder aliens and level cap raises. Now, while level cap raises do TRIBBLE off some people who have worked for their stuff up till now, most MMO players know the score, and that it's part of the functioning of MMOs. Cryptic have held off for a loooong time compared to most MMOs. It's about that time.
In essence, because of the fact that the game is set in space, there's no necessary theoretical limit to how high power creep vs. bigger and badder aliens can go. Cryptic can pull anything out of their TRIBBLE at any point that could utterly nullify whatever power level people have at any given time.
So far the Iconians have been storyline drivers, but the carrot on stick approach can only work for so long, it has to be resolved at some point. It seems pretty clear to me that the last Iconian reveal presages some sort of resolution to that whole line of story.
Lore hounds: I bet you you can think of one or two potential canon baddies even bigger than Iconians off the top of your head. I can think of one: a sort of "civil war" (TRIBBLE schizophrenia
Plus, what Cryptic do is now canon, isn't it? So they have the helm in a sense, they can invent stuff so long as they pass it by authorization.
You only have one reason to buy anything here, so you think there is only reason to buy anything period. You're wrong.
Agree in general with your post, this would be kind of nifty.
But re. your last paragraph: stories have beginnings, middles and ends, they don't go on forever. We've gotten comfortable with "doh it was the Iconians after all", but that doesn't mean Cryptic haven't got several years worth of fresh story planned beyond the Iconians.
As I've said, I really feel that last reveal was pointing to "Ok folks, we've seen 'em pulling the strings, now get ready to meet the real deal."
Yeah, but STO doesn't have a very big development team atm, whatever they do, they have to do with the crew they've got.
It's been a constant complaint that "damage is king" in MMOs for years and years. I haven't seen hardly any MMOs that haven't had a power creep problem, or one in which dps rooolz in the endgame. Sandboxes like EVE are an exception, and one might argue that WoW is an exception too. To this latter, I would I agree - and that might indeed hint at why WoW is so perennial, but it also hints at the real problem:-
It's just really, really, REALLY hard designing systems any more complex than "damage is king", so developers tend not to do it, and the ones that do are unusual. Now Cryptic gets a ragging, but IMHO it isn't that bad a company. As a PWE game, it could be far, far worse than it is (and yeah, it may end up that way). I think Cryptic must have fought quite hard against turning it into a generic Asian grinder with spaceship skins. It might seem like it is now, but believe me, it could be a LOT worse.
So, Cryptic are good, maybe even good enough to do the trick; but to steer STO on a non-"damage is king" road now, it's just too late, the team isn't big enough, and it would be unrealistic to expect. Nobody's going to invest in such a big change in STO at this stage.
So I think it's always going to devolve to a dps race, so I think my logic stands: moar dps needs bigger baddies to absorb it.
First, don't put too much into what the guy says.
1) Nope. It's far easier to nerf our ships/gear and buff npc's. They revamped crafting, then removed a substantial amount of content. PvP could get the axe because the whine of OP is born there and it's basically dead anyway.
2) The Iconians are their Ace up their sleeve. Cryptic will slow milk that cow drop by drop because after they're dealt with...what's next? Dinosaurs with laser beams on their heads?
3) See 1.
4) Anything remotely cerebral is avoided in STO. PEW PEW sells, fyi, and that's all that matters to them.
5) Are you suggesting they fix power creep by adding more powerful ships/gear to the game?
It seems obvious you put too much faith in Cryptic's abilities.
They would rather modify than create.
RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev
this 100% x1billion
Good. The Borg especially have been made into a joke by all the power creep. No one should be able to solo a cube IMHO. I don't care how awesome your ship and build are.
Just my 2 cents, and hope nobody has mentioned it, I'd bet crafting will be the "free" method of upgrading ships/equipment to the next level.
I forward this proposal as I am pretty sure I heard/read a dev interview (Geko / P1
The upgrade packs (Zen) could then be the "now" option for upgrades.
Either way they win, as only some will be patient enough to wait the year to get their crafting high enough for upgrades. Many will drop dil to speed up the process, and once near or at the required level, may buy catalysts to increase the odds or select the mods they want.
Like I said, either way they win.
P.S. These level upgrades will be bound to character, so no buying them off the exchange.... Sorry, but you gotta grind for it.
OP is all evident all through the STFs if you have combat parser. In my personal experience, in most STF PUGs, there's at least one person over 10k (usually around 12-15k), and some PUGs have 2 or 3 12-15k people, and a smattering of 20ks. Considering I can get around 8-10k on a DHC escort with all green stuff without even trying, just building intelligently with standard consoles, that should tell you something.
Again, if you see the league tables for combat parser, the highest atm is around 80k, and there are lots of people at that level. I should think around 30-40k is "average" for the high dps crowd.
There was a time when 5k was considered as "starting level" high dps - I think the high dps crowd gave that up as a "level" at all, long ago, they now start at 10k before you can even join the "club". My own meagre Sci torp boat can do 10k (although that's a carefully thought out build).
So, having said that, here's the other point: the promise of high dps is what sells ships. When people pay, they pay for power.
So they are never going to nerf to that extent. People who think they will often hearken back to ED in CoH, but that was a subscription game at the time, with nothing hanging on being able to sell items to customers. Not even Cryptic would have the balls to do an across-the-board nerf at this stage. If they do, then everyone who's ever dissed them will have to eat their words, because it would show a company with unusually big balls, as these things go.
But if they're not going to nerf, they're going to have to raise cap, I don't see any other possibility.
And there are alternate gameplay versus combat. With crafting system opening alternate channels we have opportunity for things like cargo ships and research ships and miining ships, which are reflected in parts of the original STO design work just never implemented after STO went into arcade shooter mode.
Also you have all the species and their ships, how about making Nausicaan ships for Nausicaan species, Orion ships for Orion species, Vulcan ships for Vulcan species, etc.
The point is, if you give people reason(s) to buy more than one ship, then you make money on repeat business. The argument that we can only ever have powercreep to keep selling the same mechanic over and over is nonsensical, and its ultimately harmful because you cant betray the same customers over and over.
But i asking, if not so much. Fleet equipment , new traits , reputation perks, boffs, valdore console, everything is about 50% more powerfull than before. Surprisingly with the ships would not say that there has been any increase , only once did one or two ships stronger ( jhas and Galor ) , now the other ships caught or slightly beat them ( reptilian and scimitar )
One solution I have seen. Improve AI. F.e. my sci ship has 5k dps , despite this i can defeat 30k dps scimitar in pvp. How is this possible? Because abilities.
The Borg (or other) are not stupid and are able to adapt. So they looked at the skill planner and see what builds have 20k+ dps players. They looked at the record where dps players made stf in (under) two minutes. They devised a defense. For example, a Borg cube in the first episode with the Borg find out what it is Antimatter spread? So why does not it , when most dpsers used FAW and go as close as possible to the target (see fun crammed scimitars on cubes) . Or cancel threat generation. Why is npc so stupid and fire on the most armored target? Why not directed at whoever has the most dps ? Surely that is a threat , not the one who has the most armor. Might also npcs not still appear in the same places , because otherwise the first thing they do is step on a transphasic mine and die.
And of course again and again , the missions where only goal is to do the most damage to something in the time limit. This is the reason , why damage (powercreeped) is more important than player's skills.
They could also limit the use of universal consoles by making a specific console slot(s) for them. Thre isn't one player out there that is rep complete that the only number of consoles that rivals their number of universal console are Tac Console.
Assuming that you do it daily, you'll max out a couple of schools of crafting after a year or so. If crafting is the way to T6 ships, better hope that your characters chose the right schools. Specialized in ground gear? Sucks to be you. Guess that you'll be waiting a year.
I agree.
But anyway, with the timestamp in hand - headed off to listen. And after listening to the wee bit, I decided to go back and listen to everything from the point the question was actually asked and Geko replied...
Which did talk about Geko seeing "power creep" as the disparity between a fresh and an old level 50. That's fine - that's one angle on it...the obvious angle on it, etc, etc, etc.
He talked about a potential solution to that being content - talking about Elite, harder content - etc, etc, etc.
So the "solution" to "power creep" is keeping the fresh 50s and old 50s separate. Out of sight and out of mind, eh?
So how would they do that? Have to unlock Elite? Some sort of internal scoring mechanic that would unlock access?
Sure, sure...things are always subject to change and it doesn't mean they don't have any other ideas floating around - but uh - he pretty much said what he said, no? Not sure why there's so much talk about other things when he said what he said if folks will go back and listen to his reply after Mav asks the question...rather than just the tagline version of it, eh?
And that's, imho, where all the wild speculation about all sorts of things would be...heh.
Based on Geko's attitude about the player base (at least those of us here in the forums) he might of just been laughing about how stupid we are for continuing to put money into this game.
:cool:
I love Trek and I'll keep playing this game (and continuing to contribute financially) as long as the game continues ... but that STOked episode left me with the distinct impression Geko (and possibly other members of the dev team) don't care AT ALL about the player community outside of our willingness to put our hours and dollars into STO.
:mad:
Don't believe the lies in this forum. I am NOT an ARC user. I play STO on Steam or not at all.