First - have you actually seen the system on Tribble? Have you tried it? I have, and it seems, from the things that you are saying, that you have not, because you don't seem to understand how it works, what the goals of it are, and why it works the way it does. If you can't access Tribble, I understand the desire to "have your voice heard", but honestly if you haven't actually used the system, your feedback ultimately boils down to "I heard it was really expensive, and I don't want to pay that". That's fine, as far as it goes, but you keep reacting to specific details without, I think, really understanding how the system works, which is probably not a good idea.
For example:
You are completely misunderstanding what was being said/suggested here. It's not cheaper to upgrade a Mk II weapon to Mk XIV than it is to go from Mk XII to Mk XIV. Not only would that not make any sense, but it's literally impossible if you've actually used the system, because you have to increase the Mk level of the item one at a time. Thus, to go from Mk II to Mk XIV, you, by definition, have to ALSO go from Mk XII to Mk XIV, with all the attendant costs.
What was being suggested, then, was not a way to get Mk XIV gear cheaper, but rather a way to get Epic rarity gear cheaper, because the upgrades for low mark items are much cheaper, and each one gives you a chance to get the rarity upgrade. Once you get the rarity to Epic, you can level it to Mk XIV knowing that each time you fill the TP bar, you are certain to get the Mk upgrade, so it's a way to potentially control costs for epic rarity gear. It would still me more expensive in terms of Mk upgrades, however.
The long and short of it is, right now this system has some really interesting hooks for people who think about how to best use the system, such as opening up the possibility that people who are just starting crafting might still find a market for the lucky very rare quality (but low mark) gear they craft, by selling it on the exchange to someone who is looking for something with the "right" mods to upgrade to epic.
Stop.
Have you read this thread? I've said that I don't have access to Tribble and have asked for clarification on many things since I don't.
"What was being suggested, then, was not a way to get Mk XIV gear cheaper, but rather a way to get Epic rarity gear cheaper", we were not talking about getting to epic quality when that suggestion came up, so that never occurred to me. And I asked for clarification even on that. Even so, that would mean new players could get to mk XIV gold at lot easier than vets who ground and spent countless hours getting their mk XII gear. So I'm not talking out my [REDACTED] that you are insinuating I am. The only one who has said anything about Epic quality in the past few pages is you. I have no idea where epic quality even came into play until you stepped in. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JU8ciOpp5kbplvwFanr7ast9THnAwC3LywmYHZREMx0/edit#gid=0
That's the basis to my issue with prices, which happens to be fact. So again, I'm not talking out my [REDACTED].
So now I have one person saying its cheaper to upgrade from Mk II to mk XIV and another person saying its not. Seeing how I can't see for myself for no damn good reason, this is why it may appear that I don't know what I'm talking about. But given that the first guy has kept up with the thread, I will trust his judgement, no offense.
"The long and short of it is", that we, not just me, are not O.K. with these prices. That's one thing. Everything else that has been brought up from, uni console bugs, to standard console bugs, etc etc, come under that. Because not many will use the system anyways if the price is too high.
Stop.
Have you read this thread? I've said that I don't have access to Tribble and have asked for clarification on many things since I don't.
"What was being suggested, then, was not a way to get Mk XIV gear cheaper, but rather a way to get Epic rarity gear cheaper", we were not talking about getting to epic quality when that suggestion came up, so that never occurred to me. And I asked for clarification even on that. So I'm not talking out my [REDACTED] that you are insinuating I am. The only one who has said anything about Epic quality in the past few pages is you. I have no idea where epic quality even came into play until you stepped in. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JU8ciOpp5kbplvwFanr7ast9THnAwC3LywmYHZREMx0/edit#gid=0
That's the basis to my issue with prices, which happens to be fact. So again, I'm not talking out my [REDACTED].
So now I have one person saying its cheaper to upgrade from Mk II to mk XIV and another person saying its not. Seeing how I can't see for myself for no damn good reason, this is why it may appear that I don't know what I'm talking about. But given that the first guy has kept up with the thread, I will trust his judgement, no offense.
"The long and short of it is", that we, not just me, are not O.K. with these prices. That's one thing. Everything else that has been brought up from, uni console bugs, to standard console bugs, etc etc, come under that. Because not many will use the system anyways if the price is too high.
Yes, I have read this thread, and have even attempted several times to correct your misconceptions about how things work, what the costs really are, and why they seem to me to be reasonable, at least for the Mk XIV upgrades, which is all you really seem to care about anyway.
I apologize for being polite and trying to skirt around the issue - I'm fully aware that you don't have access to the system, if for no other reason than the level of your misunderstanding about it makes it obvious. What I was attempting to imply is that, given your lack of knowledge about how the system actually works, the only feedback you can possibly give at this point that has any realistic value is "I think this costs too much". That's it. You simply don't know enough about how the system works, and every time someone tries to explain it in more detail you seem to get it more confused, such that the people who actually DO understand the system can't seem to talk about it without you butting in.
Here's a tip - the post you first responded to with outrage at the idea about the upgrades being cheaper for low level gear. Go read that post again. Note that he talks about a rarity upgrade. I'm not the one that missed the boat - I knew instantly what he was talking about, because I have used the system, and I understand clearly the difference between upgrading rarity, and upgrading Mk level. Stop waving around that spreadsheet and pretending that it gives you any insight into the system except, MAYBE, for the idea that you, personally, don't like the costs. That feedback has been given.
They are almost certainly not going to reduce the base costs for the Mk upgrades, nor do I think they should, because, as I noted way back when (and as the spreadsheet you love makes clear), the cost for just the Mk upgrades, for an entire ship, looks to be about 300,000 dilithium, which is less than what I paid for my current gear, and much less than I think a reasonable person would expect to pay if buying all new very rare Mk XIV gear from either the fleet stores or the reputation stores.
Here another thing you seem to not understand - you think the cost of the system should mostly be tied up in getting to Epic, not to getting to Mk XIV, but you don't seem to realize that's actually how the system is already set up. Right now it takes about 17000 dilithium to take a Mk XII weapon to Mk XIV. It's possible that you will get crazy lucky and get your rarity upgrades at the same time, but it's much more likely you will have to spend another 24000 dilithium for each additional try at that upgrade. My estimate is that most people will have to spend around 240000 dilithium beyond the upgrade cost per piece to get to Epic rarity. So, looking at those numbers, do you see why it seems strange to people to hear you talk about how the cost should be on getting Epic, not Mk XIV?
Yes, I have read this thread, and have even attempted several times to correct your misconceptions about how things work, what the costs really are, and why they seem to me to be reasonable, at least for the Mk XIV upgrades, which is all you really seem to care about anyway.
I apologize for being polite and trying to skirt around the issue - I'm fully aware that you don't have access to the system, if for no other reason than the level of your misunderstanding about it makes it obvious. What I was attempting to imply is that, given your lack of knowledge about how the system actually works, the only feedback you can possibly give at this point that has any realistic value is "I think this costs too much". That's it. You simply don't know enough about how the system works, and every time someone tries to explain it in more detail you seem to get it more confused, such that the people who actually DO understand the system can't seem to talk about it without you butting in.
Here's a tip - the post you first responded to with outrage at the idea about the upgrades being cheaper for low level gear. Go read that post again. Note that he talks about a rarity upgrade. I'm not the one that missed the boat - I knew instantly what he was talking about, because I have used the system, and I understand clearly the difference between upgrading rarity, and upgrading Mk level. Stop waving around that spreadsheet and pretending that it gives you any insight into the system except, MAYBE, for the idea that you, personally, don't like the costs. That feedback has been given.
They are almost certainly not going to reduce the base costs for the Mk upgrades, nor do I think they should, because, as I noted way back when (and as the spreadsheet you love makes clear), the cost for just the Mk upgrades, for an entire ship, looks to be about 300,000 dilithium, which is less than what I paid for my current gear, and much less than I think a reasonable person would expect to pay if buying all new very rare Mk XIV gear from either the fleet stores or the reputation stores.
Here another thing you seem to not understand - you think the cost of the system should mostly be tied up in getting to Epic, not to getting to Mk XIV, but you don't seem to realize that's actually how the system is already set up. Right now it takes about 17000 dilithium to take a Mk XII weapon to Mk XIV. It's possible that you will get crazy lucky and get your rarity upgrades at the same time, but it's much more likely you will have to spend another 24000 dilithium for each additional try at that upgrade. My estimate is that most people will have to spend around 240000 dilithium beyond the upgrade cost per piece to get to Epic rarity. So, looking at those numbers, do you see why it seems strange to people to hear you talk about how the cost should be on getting Epic, not Mk XIV?
I haven't missed anything. There is MUCH more to factor in than just the dilithium to upgrade. You have to factor in what resources you spend to get all the superior kits you need in the first place to have even the option to upgrade. And then you have to factor in outside expenses, like ship upgrades. And then, you have to take into account not ONLY what you paid, but the time you put into getting what we have now. Its only 300k if you already have all the means to get the kits, or already have the kits. Not the cost if you don't have the kits which none of us will have upon the drop of the expansion. So, overall, the resource sink is too much.
Fine, you like the prices as is. More power to you. It won't affect you at all to have them dropped. So, on that note, have some passive acceptance over it and stop making conflict by arguing. It doesn't make sense for you to argue your POV because if the price drops you won't be impacted in any way that would be worth arguing over. If anything, more people, like yourself, will be happy. Unless that's not what you want? But I digress.
You have, however, shed some perspective on this and have made me feel a bit more optimistic. But I'm still gonna keep to my guns.
I haven't missed anything. There is MUCH more to factor in than just the dilithium to upgrade. You have to factor in what resources you spend to get all the superior kits you need in the first place to have even the option to upgrade. And then you have to factor in outside expenses, like ship upgrades. And then, you have to take into account not ONLY what you paid, but the time you put into getting what we have now. Its only 300k if you already have all the means to get the kits, or already have the kits. Not the cost if you don't have the kits which none of us will have upon the drop of the expansion. So, overall, the resource sink is too much.
Fine, you like the prices as is. More power to you. It won't affect you at all to have them dropped. So, on that note, have some passive acceptance over it and stop making conflict by arguing. It doesn't make sense for you to argue your POV because if the price drops you won't be impacted in any way that would be worth arguing over. If anything, more people, like yourself, will be happy. Unless that's not what you want? But I digress.
Looking at current holodeck prices, currently a superior kit project, if you buy all the components from the exchange, costs about 800,000 ec to run. Note, though, that some cost much less, owing to a difference in prices for the very rare materials (which, in turn, is due to a wide disparity in how often the different ques are being run, and how many of them offer which material). That said, you should also know that by the time you are a high enough crafting level to actually make the superior kits, your crit chance is high enough that you have (IIRC) over a 75% chance of hitting a crit and getting 3 kits for the price of one. Thus, it seems likely that at the high end, the cost for superior kits will be in the 1 million EC range, and actually they can be profitable at a much lower price - even as low as 400,000 ec, assuming you're getting regular crits. Note that this also creates incentives for people to specialize further - it might be a more profitable strategy for a crafter to level one relatively rare crafting school to 20, to max out crit chance, and then sell superior kits from that school and undercut the competition due to a higher overall crit chance.
In other words, I'm not forgetting those "other costs" at all, I'm thinking clearly about them, and how they may encourage player behaviors that I think are good - such as providing markets for both low Mk/High Quality crafted gear for low level crafters, and also providing opportunities for people who specialize to profit as well. Heck, the system also encourages more players to participate in the overall economy of the game, either by crafting directly, or by buying the kits and gear crafters are making.
This is also the first part of my answer to your "passive acceptance" argument. Your argument is predicated on looking at the system only through the lens of how you perceive it directly affecting you. I'm taking a wider look, and understanding that overall it has the potential to shake up the game in really interesting ways, some of which, yes, are tied to the cost structure of the system, and how that structure encourages specific behaviors.
I also think you still really have no conception of why it is not just "fair" but actively necessary that Cryptic see a tidy return on this expansion - the alternate revenue streams you have referred to in the past (and will almost certainly refer to in the future) don't seem likely to cover the additional development work that went into all this new content. Instead, it seems like that revenue stream is likely largely soaked by the base, day to day costs of running the game. For something like Delta Rising, with it's obvious investments of both time and money, Cryptic needs to see a unique return on that investment, above and beyond the "standard" revenue streams they already have. In the olden days, they likely would have gotten that return by charging ~$20-$30 per player for the expansion pack. Nowadays, they know people expect this kind of content expansion to be "free", so they have to have other ways to make their money. Hence, the upgrade system and its attendant costs. If Delta Rising doesn't make money, there basically won't be a third expansion, and thus there may simply not be a STO either.
Oh, and before you throw "But Tier 6 ships will sell and make money!", bear in mind that, absent the release of Delta Rising, we almost certainly would have had continuing ship releases as we have in the past - thus, it's likely that internally Cryptic thinks of Tier 6 less as a brand new revenue stream, and more of a continuation of the current C-store ship stream. It's not, in other words, making them money they would not have had prior to Delta Rising, but rather REPLACING the revenue they would have otherwise made by continuing to release Tier 5 C-store ships.
In other words - I have used the system, I know what it costs (I even researched the costs for materials on holodeck to double check my impressions), I have thought about those costs and how they are likely to change (or not) depending on how people react to the upgrade system, I have thought about how those costs might affect player behavior, I have thought about the likely affects of those behaviors on the overall health of the game, I have considered Cryptic's motives and needs, and I suspect strongly that there is more to the system than we have seen (such as a way through either the C-store or the new Elite Ques to get items which will significantly reduce the costs to upgrade rarity levels) which will make it even better. Thus, my conclusion is that the current system, as it is, seems like a finely balanced attempt to enliven the STO player economy and make getting "the best" gear into something more than simply buying it from an NPC store. Since I feel like the attempt has a decent chance of succeeding (as long as people take the time to educate themselves on the new system) I support it. Since changing the costs would likely both hurt Cryptic's bottom line AND break the parts of the system designed to spark the player economy, I think your proposal reducing the costs is not just unnecessary, but actively counter-productive to the long (and short, really) term health of the game.
You are perfectly entitled to feel like thinking about the game as a whole is meaningless, or impossible, or what have you. I obviously disagree, but if all you care about is how you perceive the costs to you, personally, that is your right. I would suggest, however, that given that you still don't have access to the system, nor have a clear grasp of how/why it interfaces with the rest of the economy of the game (which, to be fair, I don't really have a certain grasp either - I just think my informed guess is likely to be much closer to the intention than your uninformed one), maybe you should wait until you do, in fact, have some real information with which to base your feedback on.
Looking at current holodeck prices, currently a superior kit project, if you buy all the components from the exchange, costs about 800,000 ec to run. Note, though, that some cost much less, owing to a difference in prices for the very rare materials (which, in turn, is due to a wide disparity in how often the different ques are being run, and how many of them offer which material). That said, you should also know that by the time you are a high enough crafting level to actually make the superior kits, your crit chance is high enough that you have (IIRC) over a 75% chance of hitting a crit and getting 3 kits for the price of one. Thus, it seems likely that at the high end, the cost for superior kits will be in the 1 million EC range, and actually they can be profitable at a much lower price - even as low as 400,000 ec, assuming you're getting regular crits. Note that this also creates incentives for people to specialize further - it might be a more profitable strategy for a crafter to level one relatively rare crafting school to 20, to max out crit chance, and then sell superior kits from that school and undercut the competition due to a higher overall crit chance.
In other words, I'm not forgetting those "other costs" at all, I'm thinking clearly about them, and how they may encourage player behaviors that I think are good - such as providing markets for both low Mk/High Quality crafted gear for low level crafters, and also providing opportunities for people who specialize to profit as well. Heck, the system also encourages more players to participate in the overall economy of the game, either by crafting directly, or by buying the kits and gear crafters are making.
This is also the first part of my answer to your "passive acceptance" argument. Your argument is predicated on looking at the system only through the lens of how you perceive it directly affecting you. I'm taking a wider look, and understanding that overall it has the potential to shake up the game in really interesting ways, some of which, yes, are tied to the cost structure of the system, and how that structure encourages specific behaviors.
I also think you still really have no conception of why it is not just "fair" but actively necessary that Cryptic see a tidy return on this expansion - the alternate revenue streams you have referred to in the past (and will almost certainly refer to in the future) don't seem likely to cover the additional development work that went into all this new content. Instead, it seems like that revenue stream is likely largely soaked by the base, day to day costs of running the game. For something like Delta Rising, with it's obvious investments of both time and money, Cryptic needs to see a unique return on that investment, above and beyond the "standard" revenue streams they already have. In the olden days, they likely would have gotten that return by charging ~$20-$30 per player for the expansion pack. Nowadays, they know people expect this kind of content expansion to be "free", so they have to have other ways to make their money. Hence, the upgrade system and its attendant costs. If Delta Rising doesn't make money, there basically won't be a third expansion, and thus there may simply not be a STO either.
Oh, and before you throw "But Tier 6 ships will sell and make money!", bear in mind that, absent the release of Delta Rising, we almost certainly would have had continuing ship releases as we have in the past - thus, it's likely that internally Cryptic thinks of Tier 6 less as a brand new revenue stream, and more of a continuation of the current C-store ship stream. It's not, in other words, making them money they would not have had prior to Delta Rising, but rather REPLACING the revenue they would have otherwise made by continuing to release Tier 5 C-store ships.
In other words - I have used the system, I know what it costs (I even researched the costs for materials on holodeck to double check my impressions), I have thought about those costs and how they are likely to change (or not) depending on how people react to the upgrade system, I have thought about how those costs might affect player behavior, I have thought about the likely affects of those behaviors on the overall health of the game, I have considered Cryptic's motives and needs, and I suspect strongly that there is more to the system than we have seen (such as a way through either the C-store or the new Elite Ques to get items which will significantly reduce the costs to upgrade rarity levels) which will make it even better. Thus, my conclusion is that the current system, as it is, seems like a finely balanced attempt to enliven the STO player economy and make getting "the best" gear into something more than simply buying it from an NPC store. Since I feel like the attempt has a decent chance of succeeding (as long as people take the time to educate themselves on the new system) I support it. Since changing the costs would likely both hurt Cryptic's bottom line AND break the parts of the system designed to spark the player economy, I think your proposal reducing the costs is not just unnecessary, but actively counter-productive to the long (and short, really) term health of the game.
You are perfectly entitled to feel like thinking about the game as a whole is meaningless, or impossible, or what have you. I obviously disagree, but if all you care about is how you perceive the costs to you, personally, that is your right. I would suggest, however, that given that you still don't have access to the system, nor have a clear grasp of how/why it interfaces with the rest of the economy of the game (which, to be fair, I don't really have a certain grasp either - I just think my informed guess is likely to be much closer to the intention than your uninformed one), maybe you should wait until you do, in fact, have some real information with which to base your feedback on.
So its a matter of your opinion against my opinion. Fact is though, you are, roughly, wrong. A price decrease would actually increase the in-game economy because more people would be willing to work with the system and therefore boost "in-game interaction". True, if people were willing, the in-game economy would be better with the current prices but that's if people will even bother with it. And no, passive acceptance simply means, stop throwing a monkey wrench into something not worth throwing a monkey wrench into. Cryptic/PWE making money is, honestly, not my business. Especially since
That's because we no longer include the forums, or players in general (outside of more controlled interview settings) to see the process, talk about what we're planning on doing, or what's up coming. Instead, by time we are ready to talk about a thing, it pretty much is set in stone.
So its obvious that what they do should not be relevant to us, apparently. I could argue that covering DR doesn't matter since I never asked for it in the first place. But that would be pointless because then I'm de-railing the thread because you bothered to bring it up. I understand that they just want to take our money. They make it perfectly clear.
Cryptic Studios is a leading developer of massively multiplayer online role playing games, with a reputation for delivering profitable, on-time and on-budget titles.
. Now where in there does it say that they like to make players happy? It doesn't. Don't fool yourself into thinking this cash grab of a system is justified. And the funny thing is, you think that you are soo right you are untouchable, in essence. Saying how you have taken everything into account like you actually get it. The only thing you understand is your own POV. Hell, you could say the same thing about me, but that won't accomplish much. Hell, your whole "argument" hasn't accomplished much. Nothing we say or do will accomplish much. And yet you want to argue? You have said your peace. Now go play on tribble and revel in how great and perfect everything is. Life isn't all sunshine and rainbows. We, on the other hand, want to make the game better. Not give the developers a pat on the back and say, "Okay, I'm ready whenever you are" right after being told BOHICA again, and again, and again, and again, and again... I hope you get the picture but you'd probably just argue anyways because you don't really get it. If you like to be submissive to the profit hounds called Cryptic/PWE. Don't try to get me to turn to the dark side, because I just don't go that way and that holds true for many. This is a feedback thread not a "I love you Cryptic, take my money" thread. Feedback is both positive and negative, I realize this. But there is a difference between just simply stating your opinion and putting down criticism just because you like the system so much. You might think "what a hypocrite!" and your right. but it doesn't matter because I'm on the right side of the fence. Hopefully, in time, you will realize this. I'm done!
I've laid out, at least in a limited sense, why I think the system was designed the way it was, AND why I think those design intentions are both good, and likely to succeed. If your starting premise doesn't include the idea that Cryptic has, if not a "need", then at least a "right" to profit from the work they put into this expansion, then your starting premise is flawed. You are correct that it's not your "job" to make Cryptic money - but by telling them that you don't care if they do, all the while criticising them for a system you don't even understand well enough to talk about cogently, you feed into the exact same hyperbolic outrage echo chamber that encourages the devs to write off the forums as a vehicle for getting really valuable feedback.
We get it. You don't want to pay anything for this expansion, and you don't care if that means that Cryptic doesn't get money. Nothing in that starting position encourages Cryptic, or anyone else, really, to take your opinion seriously. You've made your case, and frankly you aren't adding anything to the discussion by repeating your stance ad nauseum. Now, please, let people who actually have real experience give valuable feedback.
For example -
I agree with some of the earlier feedback about the UI - it is a lot of clicking, and definitely managing three windows is unwieldy. I also felt like the time gate was too costly, but that seems to have been made much more manageable in this patch. I also think the rarity upgrade is too much of a crapshoot right now, and has the potential to suck up over a million dilithium per item (granted, it's not a HIGH chance, but given the number of upgrades that will happen, the law of large numbers means it's almost certain to happen to someone). However, again, I'm expecting there to be ways to short cut that Dilithium sink as well, so, we'll see.
Oh, before I forget - your idea that lowering costs will increase player involvement is, I think, flawed in that even if you got more people involved, if the cost is too low, it still doesn't necessarily make Cryptic money. You might be right that there will be people who will refuse to pay the pittance it really is to upgrade the endgame gear they already have, but those people will probably be in the minority. Moreover, at least at launch, and for a good while afterwards, there will be no other way to get Mk XIV. As long as the cost is not prohibitive (and for most people, it is not), then there is likely to be enough buy in to make the system profitable for Cryptic.
Moreover, I am assuming that Cryptic at least tried to use some internal metrics and player spending models to price this system at something like an equilibrium point that maximized the utility in a lot of different directions. If that is true (and that's an "if", I grant), then, because equilibrated systems tend to react to changes by returning to equilibrium, reducing resource costs in one area is likely to increase them in others, for no (or very limited) total net reduction in cost. For example, lets say the cost in dilithium to apply the kits is significantly lowered (or eliminated). Now the demand for the kits increases, which consequently increases the demand for the materials, which in turn raises EC prices across the board, and thus pushes the kits out of the price range of the "middle class" STO player anyway.
This latest patch has significantly helped this system, awesome patch.
What I'd like to see still is a modification to rarity upgrade. The random chance is a bit painful for those that want a specific modifier on their weapon. You have implemented a fixed modifier for certain upgrades when they increase in rarity, such as Reputation Weapons. Is there any chance you could extend this system to affect all other weapons? Many have a ton invested in specific weapons because they aid in what they play, such as [Acc]x3 for PvP, or [CrtD]x3 for PvE. Getting a [Dmg] Modifier as the 4th mod is a bit painful due to how hard the weapons are to get. Having them reward an additional of the same modifier with a rarity increase would be great. I understand the Epic mod is fixed, but as for VR > UR, that mod can make a large difference.
And one other thing, all of the lockbox weapons from the Hirogen Lockbox and on are account bound. Is there any chance that when going through the upgrade process, the pre-Hirogen Lockbox weapons (Phased Tetryon, Polarized Disruptor, Phased Polaron, Nanite Disruptor, Elachi Disruptor, and Voth Antiproton) can be made Account Bound? Most of these are very hard to get weapons, and using them on multiple characters is a pain being that you need a separate set for each character.
This latest patch has significantly helped this system, awesome patch.
What I'd like to see still is a modification to rarity upgrade. The random chance is a bit painful for those that want a specific modifier on their weapon. You have implemented a fixed modifier for certain upgrades when they increase in rarity, such as Reputation Weapons. Is there any chance you could extend this system to affect all other weapons? Many have a ton invested in specific weapons because they aid in what they play, such as [Acc]x3 for PvP, or [CrtD]x3 for PvE. Getting a [Dmg] Modifier as the 4th mod is a bit painful due to how hard the weapons are to get. Having them reward an additional of the same modifier with a rarity increase would be great. I understand the Epic mod is fixed, but as for VR > UR, that mod can make a large difference.
And one other thing, all of the lockbox weapons from the Hirogen Lockbox and on are account bound. Is there any chance that when going through the upgrade process, the pre-Hirogen Lockbox weapons (Phased Tetryon, Polarized Disruptor, Phased Polaron, Nanite Disruptor, Elachi Disruptor, and Voth Antiproton) can be made Account Bound? Most of these are very hard to get weapons, and using them on multiple characters is a pain being that you need a separate set for each character.
The mod thing is going to be an issue in a lot of different ways. Initially, I liked the idea of having an accelerator that would ensure that the rarity upgrade delivered a specific mod, but then realized that unless said accelerator also made the rarity upgrade all but certain, there would still be a high chance that it would be "wasted" on a failed rarity upgrade.
I agree in principle, though, it would be nice to have some additional control there (this is, I think something of an issue throughout the crafting system). On the other hand, if there is a cheap way to virtually ensure rarity upgrades, it might be worthwhile to craft a ton of cheap as hell Mk II purples and upgrade them, fishing for the "right" mods and selling off the rest. I dunno - unless the chance of getting a rarity upgrade is more consistent, even that method seems like a large crapshoot. In the short term, I think for most people the winning play is to upgrade mostly fleet gear, since that only needs one rarity upgrade to "max out", and that last upgrade is always set - at least you know exactly what you are going to get.
The mod thing is going to be an issue in a lot of different ways. Initially, I liked the idea of having an accelerator that would ensure that the rarity upgrade delivered a specific mod, but then realized that unless said accelerator also made the rarity upgrade all but certain, there would still be a high chance that it would be "wasted" on a failed rarity upgrade.
I agree in principle, though, it would be nice to have some additional control there (this is, I think something of an issue throughout the crafting system). On the other hand, if there is a cheap way to virtually ensure rarity upgrades, it might be worthwhile to craft a ton of cheap as hell Mk II purples and upgrade them, fishing for the "right" mods and selling off the rest. I dunno - unless the chance of getting a rarity upgrade is more consistent, even that method seems like a large crapshoot. In the short term, I think for most people the winning play is to upgrade mostly fleet gear, since that only needs one rarity upgrade to "max out", and that last upgrade is always set - at least you know exactly what you are going to get.
Indeed, and with the MK II, the method I've been telling people with those requires that you have 30+ of the MK II weapons you want in order to get a full set with the modifiers you want, which is a bit crazy.
If they give us a way to change modifiers on gear off the bat, then leave this as it is, if not, it needs to be changed. I upgraded a Phased Polaron DHC MK XII [Acc]x2 which is extremely valuable for PvP, and when I upgraded it, it got [Dmg]. Pretty painful.
I've laid out, at least in a limited sense, why I think the system was designed the way it was, AND why I think those design intentions are both good, and likely to succeed. If your starting premise doesn't include the idea that Cryptic has, if not a "need", then at least a "right" to profit from the work they put into this expansion, then your starting premise is flawed. You are correct that it's not your "job" to make Cryptic money - but by telling them that you don't care if they do, all the while criticising them for a system you don't even understand well enough to talk about cogently, you feed into the exact same hyperbolic outrage echo chamber that encourages the devs to write off the forums as a vehicle for getting really valuable feedback.
We get it. You don't want to pay anything for this expansion, and you don't care if that means that Cryptic doesn't get money. Nothing in that starting position encourages Cryptic, or anyone else, really, to take your opinion seriously. You've made your case, and frankly you aren't adding anything to the discussion by repeating your stance ad nauseum. Now, please, let people who actually have real experience give valuable feedback.
For example -
I agree with some of the earlier feedback about the UI - it is a lot of clicking, and definitely managing three windows is unwieldy. I also felt like the time gate was too costly, but that seems to have been made much more manageable in this patch. I also think the rarity upgrade is too much of a crapshoot right now, and has the potential to suck up over a million dilithium per item (granted, it's not a HIGH chance, but given the number of upgrades that will happen, the law of large numbers means it's almost certain to happen to someone). However, again, I'm expecting there to be ways to short cut that Dilithium sink as well, so, we'll see.
Oh, before I forget - your idea that lowering costs will increase player involvement is, I think, flawed in that even if you got more people involved, if the cost is too low, it still doesn't necessarily make Cryptic money. You might be right that there will be people who will refuse to pay the pittance it really is to upgrade the endgame gear they already have, but those people will probably be in the minority. Moreover, at least at launch, and for a good while afterwards, there will be no other way to get Mk XIV. As long as the cost is not prohibitive (and for most people, it is not), then there is likely to be enough buy in to make the system profitable for Cryptic.
Moreover, I am assuming that Cryptic at least tried to use some internal metrics and player spending models to price this system at something like an equilibrium point that maximized the utility in a lot of different directions. If that is true (and that's an "if", I grant), then, because equilibrated systems tend to react to changes by returning to equilibrium, reducing resource costs in one area is likely to increase them in others, for no (or very limited) total net reduction in cost. For example, lets say the cost in dilithium to apply the kits is significantly lowered (or eliminated). Now the demand for the kits increases, which consequently increases the demand for the materials, which in turn raises EC prices across the board, and thus pushes the kits out of the price range of the "middle class" STO player anyway.
I want to say that I appreciate your stance and think you've brought some much needed balance to this feedback thread. You raise points that I had not considered.
I am still miffed about the Jem'Hadar Lobi space set being offered likely for months when Cryptic knew it would be completely obsolete and without any consideration for what is nearly a $40 purchase being devalued to literally almost nothing. The ground set includes a costume. The space set treatment feels like dirty pool to me as does the lack of any desire to rectify the loss of satisfaction/value. It's one thing to discount virtual items after release but IMHO there is an appropriate way to do this, manner of informing your customers, and to rectify the loss of goodwill this can cause when the degree of the price change is this severe.
I think you offer some very fair, cogent, and balanced points however which come from testing. And it is frustrating to see TOO much theorycrafting that isn't rooted in either testing or a reasonable desire to allow Cryptic to make a return on its investment. I want to see them simultaneously make money while pursuing a campaign of relationship marketing in which consumers are given a secure sense of value for their purchases, both secure in absolute value and relative value. Not engage in car dealership or airline ticket price shenanigans, which I'd rather not see in my entertainment purchasing.
I think the crafting system seems very promising.
My one proviso with your statements (and the reason I have begun selling off assets on Holodeck for EC) is that I expect not only with the value of dilithium relative to ZEN rise (which may be offset by guaranteed upgrade items a BIT) but I expect the supply of EC in the game economy to rapidly deplete. This new system has hard sinks, very hard sinks, and I expect rapid EC deflation may actually result in EC gaining value. They've choked off supply by lowering vendor prices on item drops. People may upgrade rather than vendor item drops going forward. There are a great many EC sinks in the upgrade system particularly for the impatient. I expect that a million EC in a month will be considered much costlier than a million EC is today.
About the Acc crazyness. If you have an [Acc]x3 and when you upgrade to UR you get [CrtH] or [CrtD] it's fine because in the end (Gold) you'll get more Acc. Frankly, you're probably better off with either of those.
I want to say that I appreciate your stance and think you've brought some much needed balance to this feedback thread. You raise points that I had not considered.
I am still miffed about the Jem'Hadar Lobi space set being offered likely for months when Cryptic knew it would be completely obsolete and without any consideration for what is nearly a $40 purchase being devalued to literally almost nothing. The ground set includes a costume. The space set treatment feels like dirty pool to me as does the lack of any desire to rectify the loss of satisfaction/value. It's one thing to discount virtual items after release but IMHO there is an appropriate way to do this, manner of informing your customers, and to rectify the loss of goodwill this can cause when the degree of the price change is this severe.
I think you offer some very fair, cogent, and balanced points however which come from testing. And it is frustrating to see TOO much theorycrafting that isn't rooted in either testing or a reasonable desire to allow Cryptic to make a return on its investment. I want to see them simultaneously make money while pursuing a campaign of relationship marketing in which consumers are given a secure sense of value for their purchases, both secure in absolute value and relative value. Not engage in car dealership or airline ticket price shenanigans, which I'd rather not see in my entertainment purchasing.
I think the crafting system seems very promising.
My one proviso with your statements (and the reason I have begun selling off assets on Holodeck for EC) is that I expect not only with the value of dilithium relative to ZEN rise (which may be offset by guaranteed upgrade items a BIT) but I expect the supply of EC in the game economy to rapidly deplete. This new system has hard sinks, very hard sinks, and I expect rapid EC deflation may actually result in EC gaining value. They've choked off supply by lowering vendor prices on item drops. People may upgrade rather than vendor item drops going forward. There are a great many EC sinks in the upgrade system particularly for the impatient. I expect that a million EC in a month will be considered much costlier than a million EC is today.
I see where you are coming from on the Lobi thing - I never bought that set, so I don't really have a horse in that race, but I'm not sure what kind of make-good would really work here - maybe some sort of "upgrade kit" package that you can claim by turning in the Lobi upgraded gear?
As for the EC economy, you may well be right - I think we are all basically theorycrafting as far as what the economy may or may not do. My hope is that Cryptic has better access to metrics than we do, and used that data to at least make a good faith attempt to find the right price point to keep the economy fluid. I'm sure some will scoff at that as a forlorn hope, but as far as I'm concerned, if they DIDN'T do that research, this whole thing is largely doomed anyway, so I may as well be optimistic.
One (slightly) countervailing point about the EC economy is that so far I've seen a fair number of Mk XII drops in the DR stuff, including from the qued events, so some of the loss from the vendor prices going down gets made up there in terms of higher "value" vendor trash dropping. I also think the loss, overall, wasn't AS bad as people think, because weapons seemed to go up a little, and I loot more weapons than deflectors et al. I've not done as much ec farming lately, but when I did it right after the change, it was about a 10-15% drop in my revenue (but I only did like 10ish runs, so maybe I just had a lucky streak. At least two of those runs were over my pre-change average, so, who knows).
The mod thing is going to be an issue in a lot of different ways. Initially, I liked the idea of having an accelerator that would ensure that the rarity upgrade delivered a specific mod, but then realized that unless said accelerator also made the rarity upgrade all but certain, there would still be a high chance that it would be "wasted" on a failed rarity upgrade.
I agree in principle, though, it would be nice to have some additional control there (this is, I think something of an issue throughout the crafting system). On the other hand, if there is a cheap way to virtually ensure rarity upgrades, it might be worthwhile to craft a ton of cheap as hell Mk II purples and upgrade them, fishing for the "right" mods and selling off the rest. I dunno - unless the chance of getting a rarity upgrade is more consistent, even that method seems like a large crapshoot. In the short term, I think for most people the winning play is to upgrade mostly fleet gear, since that only needs one rarity upgrade to "max out", and that last upgrade is always set - at least you know exactly what you are going to get.
I think the sound answer for this would be to tie this to the likely C-Store upgrade item.
I would simply reiterate on the point of pricing that while NW's guaranteed upgrade is 1000 ZEN, there are roughly 7 times as many gear slots used in a given mission in STO than there are in Neverwinter. That is the big area where I worry that the pricing may be too high... And I have always thought that having to gear BOs individually was probably not the best move. I have maintained that the ability to dupe character bound versions of ground gear for flat rates would have been ideal since the only use for duplicate ground gear is for bridge officers.
In a perfect world, I would hope for something like 3-5 guaranteed upgrade items for 1000 ZEN or maybe a single upgrade item for 1000 ZEN that guarantees/overwrites a piece of gear with a specific mod (and makes it character bound in the process to prevent economic distortion).
In NW, 1000 ZEN gets you a single gear upgrade but we have far, far too many more gear slots for the same pricing to really be equivalent. I would hope this is taken into account. Even 3-5 upgrades for 1000 ZEN would be "more expensive" in terms of overall character effect than a single upgrade in NW but I do recognize that Trekkies will pay a premium and suspect the royalty/licensing/fixed costs may be higher here. I am mainly worried that they will adopt NW pricing.
Having over 45 gear slots generally makes upgrading any one of them less valuable. I also worry that the relative value of slot upgrades is being treated as comparable when it isn't. One peculiarity of STO all along is that a stat mod on any weapon affects all other weapons. Therefore there is far more stacking potential of "all epics" between weapons than there is with ground gear in general, where each piece of gear's mods GENERALLY only impact the intended function of that piece of gear. (Your reserve weapon does influence some things such as set bonuses, which always struck me as a potentially broken mechanic for the 2 2 piece sets it allows.) And in general, each BOff you outfit does not stack together the way that weapons on a ship stack with one another.
So I do feel that ground should probably be cheaper and that outfiting BOffs once again seems to be less considered in the design so far.
I see where you are coming from on the Lobi thing - I never bought that set, so I don't really have a horse in that race, but I'm not sure what kind of make-good would really work here - maybe some sort of "upgrade kit" package that you can claim by turning in the Lobi upgraded gear?
If they could somehow upgrade the existing stuff to UV, that would be roughly the token gesture I'd be happy with. A mark upgrade is meaningless but a quality upgrade (or issuing of a veteran BOff like the one from the dilithium conversion, which they said they'd probably issue again down the road, or even just a convention DOff code) would be a nice gesture. I'm not expecting perfect parity but a token acknowledgement would be the sensible thing to do and what any non-governmental employer I've worked for before would probably do. Things can't always be made perfectly right but sometimes all I'm looking for as a customer is:
"I understand why you'd feel that way. Here is some tangible gesture that shows that we value your feelings on this subject."
http://bit.ly/STOUpgradeTable
Now with preliminary ground items including standard/fleet ground items. Rep items are still WIP. And can someone tell me why 32x2 = 65? :V
Thank you for compiling this information. I think the main problem is that the number of tech points to upgrade, and hence the amount of dilithium, increases exponentially with mark. As far as I know, item stats increase only linearly with mark. For example, each mark adds 10% damage strength to a weapon. For another example, look at the wiki page for phaser relays.
I don't really like the Rarity upgrade process at the end. Having a rarity upgrade as a tiny 5% chance that is guaranteed to fail 99.99% of the time isn't fun. Having the rarity upgrade fail 5 or more times in a row is the antithesis of fun.
Right now a rarity upgrade attempt costs 1.5x the cost to upgrade from XIII to XIV. But if--excuse me when--it fails several times in a row the true cost is more like 4-9x the cost of upgrading from XIII to XIV.
So if I have a standard Ultra Rare beam array* Mk XIV that costs 144,000 TP to upgrade from XIII to XIV, then it that means the cost to attempt a rarity increase is 216,000 TP. If the upgrade does fail 5 times before succeeding on the 6th time that's a whopping 1,944,000 TP needed to go from UV to Gold.
Rough numbers say that this is (assuming you crafted the upgrades yourself): 163,400 dilithium to apply the upgrades + 2,280,000 EC to craft the upgrades +
crafting mats & components (and their EC cost if you bought rather than farmed them)
for one rarity upgrade on one weapon**, and that's using only Superior tech upgrades which require level 15 in an R&D school to craft (I'm not going to even try to predict what the going rate for these on the exchange will be for those that don't have level 15 or refuse to participate in R&D but I can guarantee it's not going to be 15,000 EC which means inflate the EC number above by another digit to 22mil. Also note that my above math doesn't take into account TP overflow but the difference would be negligible. And that's not to mention the cost of getting to XIV UR in the first place.
...
*or standard deflector, shield, engine, warp/singularity core. (Including Fleet gear and Lockbox/Reputation store weapons [not reputation set weapons])
**For space reputation gear, multiply these numbers by 1.66
This is also ridiculous, since, as far as I know, stats also increase linearly with rarity. Of course, the upgrade from ultra rare to epic also comes with a modifier, whose value is harder to quanitify, because modifiers differ in effectiveness and, for some items, the modifier is random. But I seriously doubt the difference between ultra rare and epic is worth so much dilithium.
Honestly it's really not fun at all, even if you ignore the staggering cost of a Gold item, to have an upgrade fail repeatedly. Can't we just have a fixed cost on rarity upgrades (frankly 90,000 dilithium should be plenty for a Gold upgrade)? Mark Level upgrades are already a fixed cost; you get a guaranteed Mk level for X amount of TP. Why can't we get a guaranteed Rarity level after finishing XIV for Y amount of TP? What we have right now is a hidden cost system for rarity upgrades. If you only casually glance at the TP price to "attempt" a rarity increase it looks fairly reasonable on its face, "Hey 216,000 TP is about 18,000 dilithium, that's not so bad for Gold quality."
Of course I expect that if we had a guaranteed Rarity level for Y amount of TP then instead of being 1.5x the cost of an XIII to XIV upgrade, they would probably jack the price of a rarity upgrade up to 3x or 4x the cost*** of XIII to XIV and that would scare away the aforementioned 'casual glancers' that don't pay attention to the hidden cost system that will blindly throw more money at the system, because then the true cost of a rarity increase would be laid bare right up front for them to see; info they would normally not calculate.
And of course, none of the above includes any "Skip now" dilithium costs during the R&D or Upgrade process for the impatient ones out there. Of course, the time gating required for crafting literally hundreds of upgrades, plus the time gating on the upgrade process itself is designed to 'encourage' clicking on that Skip button. Who wants to wait weeks for upgrades?
...
***This is effectively how the system works right now already, it's just that the system is designed to obfuscate the fact that the true cost is several times more than an XIII to XIV upgrade. When you take into account the RNG's fail/success ratio it's probably tuned to average out to a rough X cost for a rarity upgrade that is some multiple of the XIII to XIV upgrade.
I actually think obfuscated pricing is part of Cryptic's business model. The primary example of this is lockboxes: you pay for a random item, and they don't even tell you the odds. Another example is the fleet system, where obfuscation comes from two sources: (1) the division of costs between members of the fleet and (2) the spreadsheet work required to calculate the true cost to reach each tier.
Hey, general note for the thread - I just looted a Superior Beam Upgrade kit from a Khazon raider in a random system patrol - if that's not a bug, and the kits are on the loot tables, that would certainly make them even more affordable. I do have 15 in beams crafting on that toon, so I don't know if that's a prereq for looting them or not (I strongly suspect not, since that seems a bit finicky to check every time you potentially loot an upgrade kit).
Hey, general note for the thread - I just looted a Superior Beam Upgrade kit from a Khazon raider in a random system patrol - if that's not a bug, and the kits are on the loot tables, that would certainly make them even more affordable. I do have 15 in beams crafting on that toon, so I don't know if that's a prereq for looting them or not (I strongly suspect not, since that seems a bit finicky to check every time you potentially loot an upgrade kit).
Small update to the upgrade table (see link in signature).
I've added a row under the TP values (row #26) that shows the % chance to get a Critical Rarity increase when upgrading. (Also there's a new tab for tracking stuff that can't be upgraded.)
Excluding the use of the 'Superior Experimental**' upgrade kits that add 2x chance for a Rarity increase, and any accelerators or other potential C-store items that might do the same, the Common items have a 40% base chance to have a Rarity increase when you fill up the TP bar to upgrade their Mark level. Uncommons have 20%, Rares are 10% (seeing a pattern here?), Very Rare is 5%, and Ultra Rare is 2.5%. Every time a Mark increase happens, this % chance gets reset.
Once you reach the Mk limit of XIV, this is also the same amount that will be added for every failed Rarity increase attempt. So if you want to upgrade your Very Rare Mk XIV Doodad into an Ultra Rare Mk XIV Doodad, you have a 5% chance that you'll get that Rarity increase on your first try once you fill up the TP bar. If it fails, then you fill up the TP bar a second time, and it'll add another 5% so now you have a 10% chance for a Rarity increase on your second try. And so on and so forth until you actually get your Rarity increase.
I hope what I just said made sense, I'm not always the best at explaining things.
**really curious about the drop rates for that Salvage item that is required to craft these. If it's not as ridiculously rare as the old Prototype Salvage from before the Rep system then this might be a decent supplement to upgrading costs.
Here's an actual example from tonight: Rare [Solanae Secondary Deflector Mk XII] has a 10% chance to crit a rarity increase. The Mark level went up but the rarity crit failed. Rare [Solanae Secondary Deflector Mk XIII] has a 10% chance to crit a rarity increase. The Mark level went up but the rarity crit failed. Rare [Solanae Secondary Deflector Mk XIV] has a 10% chance to crit a rarity increase. The Mark level is already capped at XIV and the rarity crit failed.
Upon repeat it added another 10% for a total of 20% chance to crit a rarity increase. This crit attempt also failed.
Repeating again added another 10% for a total of 30% chance to crit a rarity increase. This crit attempt succeeded and now the secondary deflector is Very Rare.
Very Rare [Solanae Secondary Deflector Mk XIV [Ins]] has a 5% chance to crit a rarity increase. This crit failed.
Repeat added another 5% for a total of 10% chance to crit a rarity increase. This crit failed.
Repeat added 5% for a total of 15%. This crit succeeded and now the secondary deflector is Ultra Rare.
Ultra Rare [Solanae Secondary Deflector Mk XIV [Aux] [Ins]] has a base crit chance of 2.5%. No surprise here, that crit failed.
Repeat added another 2.5% for 5% total. Amazingly this crit succeeded and I ended up with an Epic [Solanae Secondary Deflector Mk XIV [Aux] [Ins]]
A rough cost estimate (because I didn't write this down as I was doing it) for this particular upgrade path (starting at cell I23 on the sheet; it's classified as a lobi item) is: 223,440 TP
18 superior kits 19,350 dilithium 270,000 EC
to get it to mk XIV.
670,320 additional TP
53 additional superior kits 56,975 additional dilithium 795,000 additional EC
to get it to Very Rare.
766,080 additional TP
60 additional superior kits 64,500 additional dilithium 900,000 additional EC
to get it to Ultra Rare.
574,560 additional TP
45 additional superior kits 48,375 additional dilithium 675,000 additional EC
to get it to Epic.
So to get it from XII Rare to XIV Epic the grand total was (roughly): 2,234,400 TP
176 superior kits 189,200 dilithium 2,640,000 EC
You might be interested in the Jem'Hadar 3-piece that I took all the way to Epic, or the three 40% rolls that failed in a row for a Common item.
Right, with all of that jibber jabber out of the way, I think my personal opinion is that I'd like TP prices for XIV rarity increase attempts to come down by at least 25%. The current modifier for a rarity increase attempt is 1.5x the cost of upgrading from XIII to XIV, and given the number of times that a rarity upgrade attempt is likely to fail that starts to add up.
Hey, general note for the thread - I just looted a Superior Beam Upgrade kit from a Khazon raider in a random system patrol - if that's not a bug, and the kits are on the loot tables, that would certainly make them even more affordable.
I have heard others report similar lootings although I haven't had it happen myself. I hope this is intended becuase the sheer volume of upgrade kits that this system will need could use any supplement it can get.
The relationship between damage strength and mark looks approximately linear to me. So why do upgrade costs increase exponentially with mark?
This is also ridiculous, since, as far as I know, stats also increase linearly with rarity. Of course, the upgrade from ultra rare to epic also comes with a modifier, whose value is harder to quanitify, because modifiers differ in effectiveness and, for some items, the modifier is random. But I seriously doubt the difference between ultra rare and epic is worth so much dilithium.
Didn't one of the interviewed devs in that P1 podcast (#191 I think) say that VR to UR is supposed to be 'twice as good' and UR to Epic is supposed to be 'twice as good' again? They were talking about power creep I think. In any case though, yeah I'm not so sure that the mechanics actually work the way they say they did in the podcast.
I actually think obfuscated pricing is part of Cryptic's business model.
I would extend that to most of the gaming industry these days. It's why you have things like "Microsoft points" for DLC or "Gold" or "Diamonds" in F2P mobile games. You get more clickthroughs when the real price is hidden (which is also part of the reason for why Apple and Amazon got sued for in-app purchases; kids didn't understand that "1500 more diamonds" had an actual dollar amount attached to it [although there's an entirely different debate to be had about whether they even understand a concept like money at a young age which is entirely off topic]).
just to upgrade 1 mk xii bio single beam on tribble to mk xiv cost over 300K refined dilithium and still no where near ultra rare status mkxiv
Uhh.. say what now? Upgrading a Very Rare Mk XII weapon to XIV doesn't cost anywhere remotely close to 300,000 dilithium. (Hint: Even if you're using the Basic kits, which are the least efficient method possible, you're not even going to break 70,000.)
Do you mean that you upgraded it to XIV and then had 4 Ultra Rare rarity increase attempts fail on you, all using the Basic kits? That's the only way I can make a single beam array go all the way up to 300k dilithium.
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
I don't know if the Devs are still taking broken gear upgrade reports here, but as of the 9/23 patch but the Assimilated Engines Mk 12 are still not upgradable.
And the Kinetic Cutting Beam still loses DPS after having been slotted for upgrading.
----
I'm sure these are not the only cases of broken high end items on Tribble either. As concerned as I am about the cost and RNG aspects of the upgrade process, I'm actually more concerned about items like these being broken. For example:
I slot the KCB for upgrading.
I find that my hard earned expensive item is broken.
I am forced to pay MORE dilithium to get back functionality I had.
Even people who are gullible and bad with $$$ will see that as extortion; some of those people may take it as the final straw and leave. They may make this assumption because they don't visit the forums and know it is a bug. And players leaving is bad for everyone.
So as a plea to the Devs, please go over upgrades for high end items with a fine tooth comb. We know you've got a lot of work to do, but bugs like these are downright dangerous.
I'm still waiting for patch notes that actually address the real issues with this system, the time and cost to skip a timer isn't what I call addressing the real crux of it, which is the extortionate cost of the upgrades themselves.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
I'm still waiting for patch notes that actually address the real issues with this system, the time and cost to skip a timer isn't what I call addressing the real crux of it, which is the extortionate cost of the upgrades themselves.
I agree. I doubt it will be addressed though. I'd be even happy if the cost stayed and they'd just increase the refine dil cap or something along those lines. Or, with the release of the new captain specialization tree and the ability to turn in spec points for dil ore. Instead of ore, it would be nice to get refined dil instead.
I don't think you're being negative, so much as I think we just have literally entirely different views on what a reasonable cost for the upgrades is. You are saying you see the values in that spreadsheet as "too expensive", and I see them as almost shockingly cheap. My point of comparison is what I imagine it would have cost to have to buy entirely new Mk XIV fleet/rep gear, instead of upgrading the gear I've already got, and this system is a fantastic deal for the player.
Your mileage may vary, but I think expecting those dilithium costs to come down is probably unrealistic. Objectively, they are well in line with the current cost of Mk XII gear, so if you feel like current gear is too expensive, you likely won't like this system either. If, like me, you don't feel that current gear is too expensive, but you also don't relish the thought of essentially vendor-trashing the items you've already bought to buy entirely new items at a higher price, this seems like a good deal.
Right now, like I said before, objectively the price of the upgrades is very reasonable compared to the current prices for Mk XII rep/fleet gear, and I think reducing those prices quickly becomes unreasonable when you think about it from the company's perspective. You can't compare the prices to "free" and say they are too much - it's much more reasonable to ask "what would I reasonably expect to pay for a brand new piece of Mk XIV gear if I was buying it in one go?", and compare the costs to that.
Yes, I'm saying that's a totally reasonable cost to upgrade, because the only other option that would make any sense, both from the perspective of making Cryptic money, and from the perspective of making Mk XIV feel valuable, would be to force people to buy entirely new Mk XIV gear from scratch, at a much higher cost.
First, I'm extrapolating Mk XIV prices from the current Mk XII pricing, which seems a more reasonable basis for comparing costs than basically starting from the premise that they should be free. All you have to do is ask yourself what you would expect to pay for a Mk XIV item. I assert that you would expect to pay more than what a Mk XII item currently costs, correct? In fact, I think you probably would expect to pay more than what a Mk XII item PLUS the upgrade to Mk XIV currently costs. I certainly would. Thus, the current system is a savings relative to that system. I also think that it represents essentially the ONLY other reasonable expectation players could have. The level cap is going up. Either you are going to upgrade your current gear, or buy entirely new gear. Neither option is (or can be) free, but certainly one is cheaper than the other.
I'm curious why you feel that there is an important functional distinction between the two ideas?
To me, if I have Mk XII gear, and I want Mk XIV gear, I have to buy the Mk XIV gear. There are two ways I could do that - buy Mk XIV gear directly, which would logically cost me all of what I've already paid for my Mk XII gear, plus more, or I could upgrade, and just pay the difference.
We in fact do know that we can't buy Mk XIV gear. We also, I believe, can reasonably conclude that if we could buy such gear, it would be more expensive than the current Mk XII gear is. In fact, it would be MUCH more expensive, right? Thus, the upgrade system gets us the same Mk XIV gear for LESS than what we should have expected to pay for it if we were buying entirely new gear(as long as you use superior kits, and are willing to wait for upgrades to run instead of rushing them), and in fact gets us Mk XIV gear in many cases for less than what we originally paid for our Mk XII gear, thus preserving the value of the dilithium we've already invested.
In short, yes, I think it's reasonable dilithium costs if you consider what the cost trends for items actually are in the game now, and extrapolate those out, and I think it translates to a reasonable "real money" cost as well, if you compare it to the price you would have expected to pay for a paid expansion.
The spreadsheet isn't the issue - I'm not saying the numbers on the spreadsheet aren't real, I'm saying those numbers aren't, to me, unreasonable. The reason I perceive them that way is I compare those numbers to what I would have expected to pay for brand new Mk XIV gear - I feel like I can reasonably ballpark where that cost would be, based on pricing trends, and I find the upgrade cost to be favorable.
They are almost certainly not going to reduce the base costs for the Mk upgrades, nor do I think they should, because, as I noted way back when (and as the spreadsheet you love makes clear), the cost for just the Mk upgrades, for an entire ship, looks to be about 300,000 dilithium, which is less than what I paid for my current gear, and much less than I think a reasonable person would expect to pay if buying all new very rare Mk XIV gear from either the fleet stores or the reputation stores.
You have said several times in this thread that you feel the current pricing is reasonable. I'm not entirely sure I understand your assertion. Are you saying
(1) The cost to upgrade from Mk XII to Mk XIV should be equal to the cost of buying a brand new Mk XIV item.
or
(2) The cost to upgrade from Mk XII to Mk XIV should be equal to the difference in cost between a brand new Mk XIV item and a brand new Mk XII item.
What do you think are reasonable prices for brand new very rare Mk XII and Mk XIV weapons?
Currently, it costs 64000 TP to upgrade a very rare Mk XII weapon to Mk XIII and 128000 TP to upgrade a very rare Mk XIII weapon to Mk XIV. Superior tech upgrades give 12800 TP and cost 1075 dilithium each. Assuming you are using only superior tech upgrades, the total dilithium cost to upgrade a very rare weapon from Mk XII to Mk XIV is
A new very rare Mk XII weapon from the reputation store costs 22500 dilithium (assuming no discounts from the fleet dilithium mine). Do you think that a new very rare Mk XIV weapon should cost
From my perspective, the cost to upgrade from Mk XII to Mk XIV should reflect the difference in stats between Mk XIV and Mk XII. As far as I know, stats increase approximately linearly with mark, so the cost to upgrade from Mk XII to Mk XIV should be about 1/6 the cost of a brand new Mk XII item. In particular, the cost to upgrade a very rare Mk XII weapon to Mk XIV should be approximately
(22500 dilithium)*(2/12) = 3750 dilithium.
Mightybobcnc took the time and effort to create this table:
Keep in mind that the item stat increase has an inflection point at Mk 12, and the increase in stats for Mk 13 & Mk 14 is greater than the percent increase at prior Marks.
Keep in mind that the item stat increase has an inflection point at Mk 12, and the increase in stats for Mk 13 & Mk 14 is greater than the percent increase at prior Marks.
Can you provide more specific numbers? Is the difference between Mk XIV and Mk XIII double the difference between Mk XIII and Mk XII? Because the upgrade costs do, in fact, double.
Comments
Have you read this thread? I've said that I don't have access to Tribble and have asked for clarification on many things since I don't.
"What was being suggested, then, was not a way to get Mk XIV gear cheaper, but rather a way to get Epic rarity gear cheaper", we were not talking about getting to epic quality when that suggestion came up, so that never occurred to me. And I asked for clarification even on that. Even so, that would mean new players could get to mk XIV gold at lot easier than vets who ground and spent countless hours getting their mk XII gear. So I'm not talking out my [REDACTED] that you are insinuating I am. The only one who has said anything about Epic quality in the past few pages is you. I have no idea where epic quality even came into play until you stepped in.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JU8ciOpp5kbplvwFanr7ast9THnAwC3LywmYHZREMx0/edit#gid=0
That's the basis to my issue with prices, which happens to be fact. So again, I'm not talking out my [REDACTED].
So now I have one person saying its cheaper to upgrade from Mk II to mk XIV and another person saying its not. Seeing how I can't see for myself for no damn good reason, this is why it may appear that I don't know what I'm talking about. But given that the first guy has kept up with the thread, I will trust his judgement, no offense.
"The long and short of it is", that we, not just me, are not O.K. with these prices. That's one thing. Everything else that has been brought up from, uni console bugs, to standard console bugs, etc etc, come under that. Because not many will use the system anyways if the price is too high.
Yes, I have read this thread, and have even attempted several times to correct your misconceptions about how things work, what the costs really are, and why they seem to me to be reasonable, at least for the Mk XIV upgrades, which is all you really seem to care about anyway.
I apologize for being polite and trying to skirt around the issue - I'm fully aware that you don't have access to the system, if for no other reason than the level of your misunderstanding about it makes it obvious. What I was attempting to imply is that, given your lack of knowledge about how the system actually works, the only feedback you can possibly give at this point that has any realistic value is "I think this costs too much". That's it. You simply don't know enough about how the system works, and every time someone tries to explain it in more detail you seem to get it more confused, such that the people who actually DO understand the system can't seem to talk about it without you butting in.
Here's a tip - the post you first responded to with outrage at the idea about the upgrades being cheaper for low level gear. Go read that post again. Note that he talks about a rarity upgrade. I'm not the one that missed the boat - I knew instantly what he was talking about, because I have used the system, and I understand clearly the difference between upgrading rarity, and upgrading Mk level. Stop waving around that spreadsheet and pretending that it gives you any insight into the system except, MAYBE, for the idea that you, personally, don't like the costs. That feedback has been given.
They are almost certainly not going to reduce the base costs for the Mk upgrades, nor do I think they should, because, as I noted way back when (and as the spreadsheet you love makes clear), the cost for just the Mk upgrades, for an entire ship, looks to be about 300,000 dilithium, which is less than what I paid for my current gear, and much less than I think a reasonable person would expect to pay if buying all new very rare Mk XIV gear from either the fleet stores or the reputation stores.
Here another thing you seem to not understand - you think the cost of the system should mostly be tied up in getting to Epic, not to getting to Mk XIV, but you don't seem to realize that's actually how the system is already set up. Right now it takes about 17000 dilithium to take a Mk XII weapon to Mk XIV. It's possible that you will get crazy lucky and get your rarity upgrades at the same time, but it's much more likely you will have to spend another 24000 dilithium for each additional try at that upgrade. My estimate is that most people will have to spend around 240000 dilithium beyond the upgrade cost per piece to get to Epic rarity. So, looking at those numbers, do you see why it seems strange to people to hear you talk about how the cost should be on getting Epic, not Mk XIV?
Fine, you like the prices as is. More power to you. It won't affect you at all to have them dropped. So, on that note, have some passive acceptance over it and stop making conflict by arguing. It doesn't make sense for you to argue your POV because if the price drops you won't be impacted in any way that would be worth arguing over. If anything, more people, like yourself, will be happy. Unless that's not what you want? But I digress.
You have, however, shed some perspective on this and have made me feel a bit more optimistic. But I'm still gonna keep to my guns.
Looking at current holodeck prices, currently a superior kit project, if you buy all the components from the exchange, costs about 800,000 ec to run. Note, though, that some cost much less, owing to a difference in prices for the very rare materials (which, in turn, is due to a wide disparity in how often the different ques are being run, and how many of them offer which material). That said, you should also know that by the time you are a high enough crafting level to actually make the superior kits, your crit chance is high enough that you have (IIRC) over a 75% chance of hitting a crit and getting 3 kits for the price of one. Thus, it seems likely that at the high end, the cost for superior kits will be in the 1 million EC range, and actually they can be profitable at a much lower price - even as low as 400,000 ec, assuming you're getting regular crits. Note that this also creates incentives for people to specialize further - it might be a more profitable strategy for a crafter to level one relatively rare crafting school to 20, to max out crit chance, and then sell superior kits from that school and undercut the competition due to a higher overall crit chance.
In other words, I'm not forgetting those "other costs" at all, I'm thinking clearly about them, and how they may encourage player behaviors that I think are good - such as providing markets for both low Mk/High Quality crafted gear for low level crafters, and also providing opportunities for people who specialize to profit as well. Heck, the system also encourages more players to participate in the overall economy of the game, either by crafting directly, or by buying the kits and gear crafters are making.
This is also the first part of my answer to your "passive acceptance" argument. Your argument is predicated on looking at the system only through the lens of how you perceive it directly affecting you. I'm taking a wider look, and understanding that overall it has the potential to shake up the game in really interesting ways, some of which, yes, are tied to the cost structure of the system, and how that structure encourages specific behaviors.
I also think you still really have no conception of why it is not just "fair" but actively necessary that Cryptic see a tidy return on this expansion - the alternate revenue streams you have referred to in the past (and will almost certainly refer to in the future) don't seem likely to cover the additional development work that went into all this new content. Instead, it seems like that revenue stream is likely largely soaked by the base, day to day costs of running the game. For something like Delta Rising, with it's obvious investments of both time and money, Cryptic needs to see a unique return on that investment, above and beyond the "standard" revenue streams they already have. In the olden days, they likely would have gotten that return by charging ~$20-$30 per player for the expansion pack. Nowadays, they know people expect this kind of content expansion to be "free", so they have to have other ways to make their money. Hence, the upgrade system and its attendant costs. If Delta Rising doesn't make money, there basically won't be a third expansion, and thus there may simply not be a STO either.
Oh, and before you throw "But Tier 6 ships will sell and make money!", bear in mind that, absent the release of Delta Rising, we almost certainly would have had continuing ship releases as we have in the past - thus, it's likely that internally Cryptic thinks of Tier 6 less as a brand new revenue stream, and more of a continuation of the current C-store ship stream. It's not, in other words, making them money they would not have had prior to Delta Rising, but rather REPLACING the revenue they would have otherwise made by continuing to release Tier 5 C-store ships.
In other words - I have used the system, I know what it costs (I even researched the costs for materials on holodeck to double check my impressions), I have thought about those costs and how they are likely to change (or not) depending on how people react to the upgrade system, I have thought about how those costs might affect player behavior, I have thought about the likely affects of those behaviors on the overall health of the game, I have considered Cryptic's motives and needs, and I suspect strongly that there is more to the system than we have seen (such as a way through either the C-store or the new Elite Ques to get items which will significantly reduce the costs to upgrade rarity levels) which will make it even better. Thus, my conclusion is that the current system, as it is, seems like a finely balanced attempt to enliven the STO player economy and make getting "the best" gear into something more than simply buying it from an NPC store. Since I feel like the attempt has a decent chance of succeeding (as long as people take the time to educate themselves on the new system) I support it. Since changing the costs would likely both hurt Cryptic's bottom line AND break the parts of the system designed to spark the player economy, I think your proposal reducing the costs is not just unnecessary, but actively counter-productive to the long (and short, really) term health of the game.
You are perfectly entitled to feel like thinking about the game as a whole is meaningless, or impossible, or what have you. I obviously disagree, but if all you care about is how you perceive the costs to you, personally, that is your right. I would suggest, however, that given that you still don't have access to the system, nor have a clear grasp of how/why it interfaces with the rest of the economy of the game (which, to be fair, I don't really have a certain grasp either - I just think my informed guess is likely to be much closer to the intention than your uninformed one), maybe you should wait until you do, in fact, have some real information with which to base your feedback on.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JU8ciOpp5kbplvwFanr7ast9THnAwC3LywmYHZREMx0/edit?usp=sharing
Before, for every .06 TP it took 1s to upgrade. Now, for every .11 TP it takes 1s to upgrade, a very nice improvement.
For example, a rep set item, let's say the Maco Deflector, would take 53h 7m to go from MK XII to MK XIV, now, it will take 9h 44m 17s
Awesome. Awesome to the max.
I've laid out, at least in a limited sense, why I think the system was designed the way it was, AND why I think those design intentions are both good, and likely to succeed. If your starting premise doesn't include the idea that Cryptic has, if not a "need", then at least a "right" to profit from the work they put into this expansion, then your starting premise is flawed. You are correct that it's not your "job" to make Cryptic money - but by telling them that you don't care if they do, all the while criticising them for a system you don't even understand well enough to talk about cogently, you feed into the exact same hyperbolic outrage echo chamber that encourages the devs to write off the forums as a vehicle for getting really valuable feedback.
We get it. You don't want to pay anything for this expansion, and you don't care if that means that Cryptic doesn't get money. Nothing in that starting position encourages Cryptic, or anyone else, really, to take your opinion seriously. You've made your case, and frankly you aren't adding anything to the discussion by repeating your stance ad nauseum. Now, please, let people who actually have real experience give valuable feedback.
For example -
I agree with some of the earlier feedback about the UI - it is a lot of clicking, and definitely managing three windows is unwieldy. I also felt like the time gate was too costly, but that seems to have been made much more manageable in this patch. I also think the rarity upgrade is too much of a crapshoot right now, and has the potential to suck up over a million dilithium per item (granted, it's not a HIGH chance, but given the number of upgrades that will happen, the law of large numbers means it's almost certain to happen to someone). However, again, I'm expecting there to be ways to short cut that Dilithium sink as well, so, we'll see.
Oh, before I forget - your idea that lowering costs will increase player involvement is, I think, flawed in that even if you got more people involved, if the cost is too low, it still doesn't necessarily make Cryptic money. You might be right that there will be people who will refuse to pay the pittance it really is to upgrade the endgame gear they already have, but those people will probably be in the minority. Moreover, at least at launch, and for a good while afterwards, there will be no other way to get Mk XIV. As long as the cost is not prohibitive (and for most people, it is not), then there is likely to be enough buy in to make the system profitable for Cryptic.
Moreover, I am assuming that Cryptic at least tried to use some internal metrics and player spending models to price this system at something like an equilibrium point that maximized the utility in a lot of different directions. If that is true (and that's an "if", I grant), then, because equilibrated systems tend to react to changes by returning to equilibrium, reducing resource costs in one area is likely to increase them in others, for no (or very limited) total net reduction in cost. For example, lets say the cost in dilithium to apply the kits is significantly lowered (or eliminated). Now the demand for the kits increases, which consequently increases the demand for the materials, which in turn raises EC prices across the board, and thus pushes the kits out of the price range of the "middle class" STO player anyway.
What I'd like to see still is a modification to rarity upgrade. The random chance is a bit painful for those that want a specific modifier on their weapon. You have implemented a fixed modifier for certain upgrades when they increase in rarity, such as Reputation Weapons. Is there any chance you could extend this system to affect all other weapons? Many have a ton invested in specific weapons because they aid in what they play, such as [Acc]x3 for PvP, or [CrtD]x3 for PvE. Getting a [Dmg] Modifier as the 4th mod is a bit painful due to how hard the weapons are to get. Having them reward an additional of the same modifier with a rarity increase would be great. I understand the Epic mod is fixed, but as for VR > UR, that mod can make a large difference.
And one other thing, all of the lockbox weapons from the Hirogen Lockbox and on are account bound. Is there any chance that when going through the upgrade process, the pre-Hirogen Lockbox weapons (Phased Tetryon, Polarized Disruptor, Phased Polaron, Nanite Disruptor, Elachi Disruptor, and Voth Antiproton) can be made Account Bound? Most of these are very hard to get weapons, and using them on multiple characters is a pain being that you need a separate set for each character.
The mod thing is going to be an issue in a lot of different ways. Initially, I liked the idea of having an accelerator that would ensure that the rarity upgrade delivered a specific mod, but then realized that unless said accelerator also made the rarity upgrade all but certain, there would still be a high chance that it would be "wasted" on a failed rarity upgrade.
I agree in principle, though, it would be nice to have some additional control there (this is, I think something of an issue throughout the crafting system). On the other hand, if there is a cheap way to virtually ensure rarity upgrades, it might be worthwhile to craft a ton of cheap as hell Mk II purples and upgrade them, fishing for the "right" mods and selling off the rest. I dunno - unless the chance of getting a rarity upgrade is more consistent, even that method seems like a large crapshoot. In the short term, I think for most people the winning play is to upgrade mostly fleet gear, since that only needs one rarity upgrade to "max out", and that last upgrade is always set - at least you know exactly what you are going to get.
Indeed, and with the MK II, the method I've been telling people with those requires that you have 30+ of the MK II weapons you want in order to get a full set with the modifiers you want, which is a bit crazy.
If they give us a way to change modifiers on gear off the bat, then leave this as it is, if not, it needs to be changed. I upgraded a Phased Polaron DHC MK XII [Acc]x2 which is extremely valuable for PvP, and when I upgraded it, it got [Dmg]. Pretty painful.
I want to say that I appreciate your stance and think you've brought some much needed balance to this feedback thread. You raise points that I had not considered.
I am still miffed about the Jem'Hadar Lobi space set being offered likely for months when Cryptic knew it would be completely obsolete and without any consideration for what is nearly a $40 purchase being devalued to literally almost nothing. The ground set includes a costume. The space set treatment feels like dirty pool to me as does the lack of any desire to rectify the loss of satisfaction/value. It's one thing to discount virtual items after release but IMHO there is an appropriate way to do this, manner of informing your customers, and to rectify the loss of goodwill this can cause when the degree of the price change is this severe.
I think you offer some very fair, cogent, and balanced points however which come from testing. And it is frustrating to see TOO much theorycrafting that isn't rooted in either testing or a reasonable desire to allow Cryptic to make a return on its investment. I want to see them simultaneously make money while pursuing a campaign of relationship marketing in which consumers are given a secure sense of value for their purchases, both secure in absolute value and relative value. Not engage in car dealership or airline ticket price shenanigans, which I'd rather not see in my entertainment purchasing.
I think the crafting system seems very promising.
My one proviso with your statements (and the reason I have begun selling off assets on Holodeck for EC) is that I expect not only with the value of dilithium relative to ZEN rise (which may be offset by guaranteed upgrade items a BIT) but I expect the supply of EC in the game economy to rapidly deplete. This new system has hard sinks, very hard sinks, and I expect rapid EC deflation may actually result in EC gaining value. They've choked off supply by lowering vendor prices on item drops. People may upgrade rather than vendor item drops going forward. There are a great many EC sinks in the upgrade system particularly for the impatient. I expect that a million EC in a month will be considered much costlier than a million EC is today.
I see where you are coming from on the Lobi thing - I never bought that set, so I don't really have a horse in that race, but I'm not sure what kind of make-good would really work here - maybe some sort of "upgrade kit" package that you can claim by turning in the Lobi upgraded gear?
As for the EC economy, you may well be right - I think we are all basically theorycrafting as far as what the economy may or may not do. My hope is that Cryptic has better access to metrics than we do, and used that data to at least make a good faith attempt to find the right price point to keep the economy fluid. I'm sure some will scoff at that as a forlorn hope, but as far as I'm concerned, if they DIDN'T do that research, this whole thing is largely doomed anyway, so I may as well be optimistic.
One (slightly) countervailing point about the EC economy is that so far I've seen a fair number of Mk XII drops in the DR stuff, including from the qued events, so some of the loss from the vendor prices going down gets made up there in terms of higher "value" vendor trash dropping. I also think the loss, overall, wasn't AS bad as people think, because weapons seemed to go up a little, and I loot more weapons than deflectors et al. I've not done as much ec farming lately, but when I did it right after the change, it was about a 10-15% drop in my revenue (but I only did like 10ish runs, so maybe I just had a lucky streak. At least two of those runs were over my pre-change average, so, who knows).
I think the sound answer for this would be to tie this to the likely C-Store upgrade item.
I would simply reiterate on the point of pricing that while NW's guaranteed upgrade is 1000 ZEN, there are roughly 7 times as many gear slots used in a given mission in STO than there are in Neverwinter. That is the big area where I worry that the pricing may be too high... And I have always thought that having to gear BOs individually was probably not the best move. I have maintained that the ability to dupe character bound versions of ground gear for flat rates would have been ideal since the only use for duplicate ground gear is for bridge officers.
In a perfect world, I would hope for something like 3-5 guaranteed upgrade items for 1000 ZEN or maybe a single upgrade item for 1000 ZEN that guarantees/overwrites a piece of gear with a specific mod (and makes it character bound in the process to prevent economic distortion).
In NW, 1000 ZEN gets you a single gear upgrade but we have far, far too many more gear slots for the same pricing to really be equivalent. I would hope this is taken into account. Even 3-5 upgrades for 1000 ZEN would be "more expensive" in terms of overall character effect than a single upgrade in NW but I do recognize that Trekkies will pay a premium and suspect the royalty/licensing/fixed costs may be higher here. I am mainly worried that they will adopt NW pricing.
Having over 45 gear slots generally makes upgrading any one of them less valuable. I also worry that the relative value of slot upgrades is being treated as comparable when it isn't. One peculiarity of STO all along is that a stat mod on any weapon affects all other weapons. Therefore there is far more stacking potential of "all epics" between weapons than there is with ground gear in general, where each piece of gear's mods GENERALLY only impact the intended function of that piece of gear. (Your reserve weapon does influence some things such as set bonuses, which always struck me as a potentially broken mechanic for the 2 2 piece sets it allows.) And in general, each BOff you outfit does not stack together the way that weapons on a ship stack with one another.
So I do feel that ground should probably be cheaper and that outfiting BOffs once again seems to be less considered in the design so far.
If they could somehow upgrade the existing stuff to UV, that would be roughly the token gesture I'd be happy with. A mark upgrade is meaningless but a quality upgrade (or issuing of a veteran BOff like the one from the dilithium conversion, which they said they'd probably issue again down the road, or even just a convention DOff code) would be a nice gesture. I'm not expecting perfect parity but a token acknowledgement would be the sensible thing to do and what any non-governmental employer I've worked for before would probably do. Things can't always be made perfectly right but sometimes all I'm looking for as a customer is:
"I understand why you'd feel that way. Here is some tangible gesture that shows that we value your feelings on this subject."
Thank you for compiling this information. I think the main problem is that the number of tech points to upgrade, and hence the amount of dilithium, increases exponentially with mark. As far as I know, item stats increase only linearly with mark. For example, each mark adds 10% damage strength to a weapon. For another example, look at the wiki page for phaser relays.
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Console_-_Tactical_-_Phaser_Relay
The relationship between damage strength and mark looks approximately linear to me. So why do upgrade costs increase exponentially with mark?
This is also ridiculous, since, as far as I know, stats also increase linearly with rarity. Of course, the upgrade from ultra rare to epic also comes with a modifier, whose value is harder to quanitify, because modifiers differ in effectiveness and, for some items, the modifier is random. But I seriously doubt the difference between ultra rare and epic is worth so much dilithium.
I actually think obfuscated pricing is part of Cryptic's business model. The primary example of this is lockboxes: you pay for a random item, and they don't even tell you the odds. Another example is the fleet system, where obfuscation comes from two sources: (1) the division of costs between members of the fleet and (2) the spreadsheet work required to calculate the true cost to reach each tier.
Listen to Priority One Episode 179 from 00:38:55 to 00:41:40.
http://priorityonepodcast.com/po179/
Al Rivera said that they plan on eventually allowing us to replace the modifiers on items. Whether that will happen remains to be seen.
Well that's nice. Thanks for the info!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Want cheap commodities? Yeah you do. Commodity Cheat Sheet (includes food and data samples)
Want to make the game better? Might I suggest this form
I've added a row under the TP values (row #26) that shows the % chance to get a Critical Rarity increase when upgrading. (Also there's a new tab for tracking stuff that can't be upgraded.)
Excluding the use of the 'Superior Experimental**' upgrade kits that add 2x chance for a Rarity increase, and any accelerators or other potential C-store items that might do the same, the Common items have a 40% base chance to have a Rarity increase when you fill up the TP bar to upgrade their Mark level. Uncommons have 20%, Rares are 10% (seeing a pattern here?), Very Rare is 5%, and Ultra Rare is 2.5%. Every time a Mark increase happens, this % chance gets reset.
Once you reach the Mk limit of XIV, this is also the same amount that will be added for every failed Rarity increase attempt. So if you want to upgrade your Very Rare Mk XIV Doodad into an Ultra Rare Mk XIV Doodad, you have a 5% chance that you'll get that Rarity increase on your first try once you fill up the TP bar. If it fails, then you fill up the TP bar a second time, and it'll add another 5% so now you have a 10% chance for a Rarity increase on your second try. And so on and so forth until you actually get your Rarity increase.
I hope what I just said made sense, I'm not always the best at explaining things.
**really curious about the drop rates for that Salvage item that is required to craft these. If it's not as ridiculously rare as the old Prototype Salvage from before the Rep system then this might be a decent supplement to upgrading costs.
Here's an actual example from tonight:
Rare [Solanae Secondary Deflector Mk XII] has a 10% chance to crit a rarity increase. The Mark level went up but the rarity crit failed.
Rare [Solanae Secondary Deflector Mk XIII] has a 10% chance to crit a rarity increase. The Mark level went up but the rarity crit failed.
Rare [Solanae Secondary Deflector Mk XIV] has a 10% chance to crit a rarity increase. The Mark level is already capped at XIV and the rarity crit failed.
Upon repeat it added another 10% for a total of 20% chance to crit a rarity increase. This crit attempt also failed.
Repeating again added another 10% for a total of 30% chance to crit a rarity increase. This crit attempt succeeded and now the secondary deflector is Very Rare.
Very Rare [Solanae Secondary Deflector Mk XIV [Ins]] has a 5% chance to crit a rarity increase. This crit failed.
Repeat added another 5% for a total of 10% chance to crit a rarity increase. This crit failed.
Repeat added 5% for a total of 15%. This crit succeeded and now the secondary deflector is Ultra Rare.
Ultra Rare [Solanae Secondary Deflector Mk XIV [Aux] [Ins]] has a base crit chance of 2.5%. No surprise here, that crit failed.
Repeat added another 2.5% for 5% total. Amazingly this crit succeeded and I ended up with an Epic [Solanae Secondary Deflector Mk XIV [Aux] [Ins]]
A rough cost estimate (because I didn't write this down as I was doing it) for this particular upgrade path (starting at cell I23 on the sheet; it's classified as a lobi item) is:
223,440 TP
18 superior kits
19,350 dilithium
270,000 EC
to get it to mk XIV.
670,320 additional TP
53 additional superior kits
56,975 additional dilithium
795,000 additional EC
to get it to Very Rare.
766,080 additional TP
60 additional superior kits
64,500 additional dilithium
900,000 additional EC
to get it to Ultra Rare.
574,560 additional TP
45 additional superior kits
48,375 additional dilithium
675,000 additional EC
to get it to Epic.
So to get it from XII Rare to XIV Epic the grand total was (roughly):
2,234,400 TP
176 superior kits
189,200 dilithium
2,640,000 EC
Here's a pastebin of some of my notes from tonight:
http://pastebin.com/AdjXgj5f
You might be interested in the Jem'Hadar 3-piece that I took all the way to Epic, or the three 40% rolls that failed in a row for a Common item.
Right, with all of that jibber jabber out of the way, I think my personal opinion is that I'd like TP prices for XIV rarity increase attempts to come down by at least 25%. The current modifier for a rarity increase attempt is 1.5x the cost of upgrading from XIII to XIV, and given the number of times that a rarity upgrade attempt is likely to fail that starts to add up.
I have heard others report similar lootings although I haven't had it happen myself. I hope this is intended becuase the sheer volume of upgrade kits that this system will need could use any supplement it can get.
Didn't one of the interviewed devs in that P1 podcast (#191 I think) say that VR to UR is supposed to be 'twice as good' and UR to Epic is supposed to be 'twice as good' again? They were talking about power creep I think. In any case though, yeah I'm not so sure that the mechanics actually work the way they say they did in the podcast.
I would extend that to most of the gaming industry these days. It's why you have things like "Microsoft points" for DLC or "Gold" or "Diamonds" in F2P mobile games. You get more clickthroughs when the real price is hidden (which is also part of the reason for why Apple and Amazon got sued for in-app purchases; kids didn't understand that "1500 more diamonds" had an actual dollar amount attached to it [although there's an entirely different debate to be had about whether they even understand a concept like money at a young age which is entirely off topic]).
Uhh.. say what now? Upgrading a Very Rare Mk XII weapon to XIV doesn't cost anywhere remotely close to 300,000 dilithium. (Hint: Even if you're using the Basic kits, which are the least efficient method possible, you're not even going to break 70,000.)
Do you mean that you upgraded it to XIV and then had 4 Ultra Rare rarity increase attempts fail on you, all using the Basic kits? That's the only way I can make a single beam array go all the way up to 300k dilithium.
Joined January 2009
And the Kinetic Cutting Beam still loses DPS after having been slotted for upgrading.
----
I'm sure these are not the only cases of broken high end items on Tribble either. As concerned as I am about the cost and RNG aspects of the upgrade process, I'm actually more concerned about items like these being broken. For example:
I slot the KCB for upgrading.
I find that my hard earned expensive item is broken.
I am forced to pay MORE dilithium to get back functionality I had.
Even people who are gullible and bad with $$$ will see that as extortion; some of those people may take it as the final straw and leave. They may make this assumption because they don't visit the forums and know it is a bug. And players leaving is bad for everyone.
So as a plea to the Devs, please go over upgrades for high end items with a fine tooth comb. We know you've got a lot of work to do, but bugs like these are downright dangerous.
I agree. I doubt it will be addressed though. I'd be even happy if the cost stayed and they'd just increase the refine dil cap or something along those lines. Or, with the release of the new captain specialization tree and the ability to turn in spec points for dil ore. Instead of ore, it would be nice to get refined dil instead.
The time to complete the upgrading of an item has been reduced by approximately 80%.
Time to complete, not really a big deal.
The cost to finish an upgrade immediately has been reduced to approximately 25% of the item's total upgrade cost.
So basically, unless I missed something no reduction to actual production cost.
You have said several times in this thread that you feel the current pricing is reasonable. I'm not entirely sure I understand your assertion. Are you saying
(1) The cost to upgrade from Mk XII to Mk XIV should be equal to the cost of buying a brand new Mk XIV item.
or
(2) The cost to upgrade from Mk XII to Mk XIV should be equal to the difference in cost between a brand new Mk XIV item and a brand new Mk XII item.
What do you think are reasonable prices for brand new very rare Mk XII and Mk XIV weapons?
Currently, it costs 64000 TP to upgrade a very rare Mk XII weapon to Mk XIII and 128000 TP to upgrade a very rare Mk XIII weapon to Mk XIV. Superior tech upgrades give 12800 TP and cost 1075 dilithium each. Assuming you are using only superior tech upgrades, the total dilithium cost to upgrade a very rare weapon from Mk XII to Mk XIV is
(64000 TP + 128000 TP)*(1075 dilithium / 12800 TP) = 16125 dilithium.
A new very rare Mk XII weapon from the reputation store costs 22500 dilithium (assuming no discounts from the fleet dilithium mine). Do you think that a new very rare Mk XIV weapon should cost
22500 dilithium + 16125 dilithium = 38625 dilithium?
From my perspective, the cost to upgrade from Mk XII to Mk XIV should reflect the difference in stats between Mk XIV and Mk XII. As far as I know, stats increase approximately linearly with mark, so the cost to upgrade from Mk XII to Mk XIV should be about 1/6 the cost of a brand new Mk XII item. In particular, the cost to upgrade a very rare Mk XII weapon to Mk XIV should be approximately
(22500 dilithium)*(2/12) = 3750 dilithium.
Mightybobcnc took the time and effort to create this table:
http://bit.ly/STOUpgradeTable
As you can see, upgrade costs increase approximately exponentially with mark. Do you agree with Cryptic's exponential pricing scheme?
Can you provide more specific numbers? Is the difference between Mk XIV and Mk XIII double the difference between Mk XIII and Mk XII? Because the upgrade costs do, in fact, double.