I agree completely. I only have 3 Lvl 50s and a few more low levels but they hang out in SFA and will for the foreseeable future. I simply do not have the time to plow through content on more than one character at a time. I don't see the ship traits as an overall problem, you should be at 2-2.5 by the time you hit 60 but the specialization points are another story.
you do know you have to do ship traits for every T5U & T6 ship you have right?
having said that I would like to say im not a fan of taking short cuts with alts in this instance, I prefer to level all my alts together and like rep you would need to level your first alt alone before you could pass on the shortcut to your alts.
I don't see any of the new features as a problem, they will all happen gradually over time as you play the game, the only thing you might need to do is keep an occasional eye on your ship trait level so you can switch ships when they hit max level and every now and then pick a trait from the specialization tree.
you don't have to play any of the new content for any of this to take place, just play your characters as and when you would normally and all these things will happen almost automatically.
some alts that you don't play much will take longer then mains but if you don't play them much anyway what does it matter.
if you are like me and play all your characters about the same they will all reach the same level about the same time.
next thing you will be asking for new alts to go strait max everything without having to play them at all.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
For the record, and I do think the devs should see this: I made the decision to sideline another toon due to this. I don't have the endless time or money to sink into it; I have no choice but to consolidate down to two toons as far as what I actually bother outfitting and leveling. I was getting near that point already but this just sealed it.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
I hear you OP. I've had to ditch a new fed engie and a semi new KDF orion. I'm down to 3 mains now from the 6-8 I used to play, and I don't even feel like logging in to level those up. The new stf's were a disaster, and I don't want to touch them with a 10 ft pole. Just boycott the game until it get fixed because it's really bad right now.
What is important to know is how many are active accounts. There could have been 3.2 million accounts created, of which 3,199,000 are no longer active.
It's not accounts at all. It's captains. As in characters.
While we certainly have had our ups and downs with the new expansion (the content itself has been very good btw...great job there), I believe Cryptic has taken us backwards in one important aspect I thought they had already received the message on.
This new expansion introduced a great deal of additional grind which we can debate on but it is all grind per character. For those of us with alts we kit out and play like our mains, this becomes a huge issue. Cryptic had issues with this in the past that made new content and systems an unnecessary and unenjoyable experience and took steps to resolve it. For example...
The Rep System - Lets face it, time gated projects to achieve an end that simply involve having to play with a bunch of slide bars over and over again is not fun and will never be. Going though it on one character was one thing....but the same grind on each toon over and over quickly became intolerable as more reps were added.
I have about 20 toons i considered "mains", all of those 20 toons i have leveled up in all 5 reputations (before delta) across those toons i have around 10 lockbox ships, all of em were setup mainly for pvp. Half of em are for ground pvp as that requires difference races then space (i.e. romulans for space, cats for ground, my alien-toons from ages-past i just keep around cause im attached to em).
Now with Delta Rising,
- theres gear to upgrade on all toons.
- theres a new reputation to grind on all toons.
- theres 10 levels to go on all toons.
All of that im sort of fine with, although i can see me already spending the next half year working on that; and i consider PvE boring, i prefer to spend my time in PvP against other humans... but what PvP anyway, queues are dead now.
Then theres the specialization system. I kinda consider this the final nail in the coffin for alts (and pvp), because it adds like 30-50 additional levels to grind on each alt, thats simply to time consuming to be possible even for power players.
So obviously cryptic doesn't want us to spend time (and zen) on alts anymore because otherwise they would have made the specialization system account wide.
Love your posting btw varthelm, your very right on this one.. delta rising is a MAJOR step backwards regarding alts... and cryptic should totally reconsider this, because if they force people to give up on alts it will have negative impacts on what will be bought in the shop too.
What I don't understand with the Specialization tree is why they took away our option to select all the rep passives, limiting them to 4 space 4 ground. Only to bring out the option to select ALL specialization points.
I agree that the new systems introduced with Delta Rising are alt-unfriendly. Specializations in particular take a long time to complete. And not only do we have to level each character, each ship must be leveled separately for Starship Mastery as well.
If you looked at Cryptic's database before Delta Rising, there were probably many max-level characters who had everything they needed and weren't spending much. With the release of Delta Rising, each character has new grinds to complete and new things to buy. But that doesn't mean Cryptic will profit from every character. People have limited time and resources. As each character becomes more expensive, people are more likely to focus on only one or two characters. I think as the cost of completing a character becomes clear, many people will decide to abandon their alts and focus on only one character; some may decide to fly only one ship per character. In the long run, with fewer alts and fewer ships, each person may spend less on the game in total.
Comments
you do know you have to do ship traits for every T5U & T6 ship you have right?
having said that I would like to say im not a fan of taking short cuts with alts in this instance, I prefer to level all my alts together and like rep you would need to level your first alt alone before you could pass on the shortcut to your alts.
I don't see any of the new features as a problem, they will all happen gradually over time as you play the game, the only thing you might need to do is keep an occasional eye on your ship trait level so you can switch ships when they hit max level and every now and then pick a trait from the specialization tree.
you don't have to play any of the new content for any of this to take place, just play your characters as and when you would normally and all these things will happen almost automatically.
some alts that you don't play much will take longer then mains but if you don't play them much anyway what does it matter.
if you are like me and play all your characters about the same they will all reach the same level about the same time.
next thing you will be asking for new alts to go strait max everything without having to play them at all.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
It's not accounts at all. It's captains. As in characters.
I have about 20 toons i considered "mains", all of those 20 toons i have leveled up in all 5 reputations (before delta) across those toons i have around 10 lockbox ships, all of em were setup mainly for pvp. Half of em are for ground pvp as that requires difference races then space (i.e. romulans for space, cats for ground, my alien-toons from ages-past i just keep around cause im attached to em).
Now with Delta Rising,
- theres gear to upgrade on all toons.
- theres a new reputation to grind on all toons.
- theres 10 levels to go on all toons.
All of that im sort of fine with, although i can see me already spending the next half year working on that; and i consider PvE boring, i prefer to spend my time in PvP against other humans... but what PvP anyway, queues are dead now.
Then theres the specialization system. I kinda consider this the final nail in the coffin for alts (and pvp), because it adds like 30-50 additional levels to grind on each alt, thats simply to time consuming to be possible even for power players.
So obviously cryptic doesn't want us to spend time (and zen) on alts anymore because otherwise they would have made the specialization system account wide.
Love your posting btw varthelm, your very right on this one.. delta rising is a MAJOR step backwards regarding alts... and cryptic should totally reconsider this, because if they force people to give up on alts it will have negative impacts on what will be bought in the shop too.
Save our alts cryptic!
Also *Waves Save alts sign*
If you looked at Cryptic's database before Delta Rising, there were probably many max-level characters who had everything they needed and weren't spending much. With the release of Delta Rising, each character has new grinds to complete and new things to buy. But that doesn't mean Cryptic will profit from every character. People have limited time and resources. As each character becomes more expensive, people are more likely to focus on only one or two characters. I think as the cost of completing a character becomes clear, many people will decide to abandon their alts and focus on only one character; some may decide to fly only one ship per character. In the long run, with fewer alts and fewer ships, each person may spend less on the game in total.