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State of Starship Mastery
gorngonzolla
Member Posts: 172 Cryptic Developer
One of the many types of rewards we have been keeping a close eye on is skill point gain through Starship Mastery. In a previous patch we reduced the amount of Skill Points required by a fair amount. However, we're not entirely happy with the time to get a Tier 6 or T5-U starship to maximum Starship Mastery level. One of our goals with this feature was to encourage players to spend time in a starship, engage in a handful of hours of ship combat and ultimately figure out the ins and outs of the starship and then (if applicable) unlock the Tier 5 Starship Trait. This trait could then be slotted into one of your four Starship Trait slots, so you had the option to move onto another starship and progress through its Starship Mastery levels. Unfortunately, the time to reach Tier 5 is much longer than we had anticipated for the average player.
In the end, progressing through Starship Mastery should be fun and rewarding and shouldn't feel like a grind. Starship Mastery isn't there yet, but we'll keep making adjustments until it reaches this goal. Going forward we will explore alternate avenues for awarding amounts of Starship Mastery Skill Points as well as reducing the amount of Skill Points required. In the upcoming patch on 11/6 you'll see a significant reduction to Starship Mastery skill point requirements. This means many of you flying T5-U or T6 ships will likely gain a level.
While I think the changes you'll be seeing soon are great and are a big step in the right direction, I will be keeping a close eye on both your feedback and how these changes feel in a live environment.
Best Regards,
Phil "Gorngonzolla" Zeleski
Cryptic Studios
Lead Systems Designer
In the end, progressing through Starship Mastery should be fun and rewarding and shouldn't feel like a grind. Starship Mastery isn't there yet, but we'll keep making adjustments until it reaches this goal. Going forward we will explore alternate avenues for awarding amounts of Starship Mastery Skill Points as well as reducing the amount of Skill Points required. In the upcoming patch on 11/6 you'll see a significant reduction to Starship Mastery skill point requirements. This means many of you flying T5-U or T6 ships will likely gain a level.
While I think the changes you'll be seeing soon are great and are a big step in the right direction, I will be keeping a close eye on both your feedback and how these changes feel in a live environment.
Best Regards,
Phil "Gorngonzolla" Zeleski
Cryptic Studios
Lead Systems Designer
Post edited by gorngonzolla on
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Have you given any thoughts to making ship traits account unlocks? That would isntantly boost the value of cross-faction ships and lockbox ships - even if you can use the ship only on a particular character or faction, you could slot on any character once unlocked.
Or maybe some kind of "sponsorship" system?
Some Doff missions from the Doff System are about Starship Training, Repairing, Improving,... and some of them reward temporary Buffs to the Ship Systems.
Maybe all those Ship specific Doff missions could reward a small amount of Starship Mastery Points too?
I have several characters where it was common for me to swap between ships on whim. I haven't played those characters outside of going to Vugluta for dilithium mining during the recent dilithium weekend since Delta Rising launched with one exception and even that character isn't getting a lot of love.
The amount of time it takes to get to tier 5 is very fast, you'll only make it to level 55 or less.
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Phil, thanks for the info and the heads up and for your work in looking into this.
Please see a thread I made earlier this week on the subject: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1283541
TLDR - Traits should be account based and faction-less unlocks - this will be more fun for the playerbase AND make you more money in ship/lockbox sales - win-win!
...#LLAP...
I'd personally look into duty officer assignments and r&d projets as alternate pathways to starship mastery, linked to the particular type of ship you fly.
Science and Medical doff missions and r&d related projects (like science console and shields) gain starship mastery points if you're flying a science vessel.
Engineering and Operations doff missions and r&d related projects (like engines and engineering consoles) gain Cruiser mastery points.
Tactical and Security doff missions and r&d related projects (like beam weapons and cannons) increase Escort mastery.
For Carriers it could be hybridized like a mix of tactical and science, or throwing in other doff mission types like development (since certain missions are about evaluating officer performance), and carriers typically have large crew numbers.
Raiders could get mastery xp from marauding and espionage, likewise for Intelligence ships.
+1
They could even add XP to it if they were account bound.
Folks are leveling starship mastery slower cause you guys nerf'd the xp gain rate from killing mobs.
The current system requires someone with multiple characters to be forced to go through that 'new' experience repeatedly. Often times, those characters will not be properly specced, or even not have the appropriate gear for such a ship. With as unpleasant as gearing has become post upgrade system, this creates a very unenjoyable experience that must be repeated for each character.
These are people who generally do a lot of experimentation, and make a lot of ship purchases as it is. Making the mastery traits account-wide, even if faction restricted, doesn't detract from the original goal to get players to try new ships(these are the people who do that anyways).
This leaves the question of Lockbox Mastery Traits.. which.. would be understandable if they're still character exclusive unlocks.
This please.
Additionally the handful of starship related doff missions would be a good idea in addition to the XP reward at the end of a queue space mission would also be appropriate.
Of course I'm probably missing something because I'm a casual player. (not sarcasm)
Most obviously, players who play support ships should get mastery points on an equal gain to DPS-centric ships and their ability to kill things quickly, by playing support roles (such as healing team mates or playing crowd control).
That is what starship mastery should consist of. Rewards based on the type of starship you fly, not how many NPCs die in a mission and how quickly you complete said mission.
If missions are going to be longer, then there should be more emphasis on the journey through the mission, rather than the end reward of said mission.
This means science vessels and cruisers should be beneficial to the team, as well as the individual players in regards to rewards, including starship mastery gain.
If you're in an escort and you save a cruiser or science vessel from certain death via pew pewing the bad guy, you get more mastery points, for example.
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I think that the idea is that you as player (not just your character) actually gain experience with the ship as you level those points. You don't learn to fly your ship when you're just DOFFing. So I would be a bit sceptical that this is a good idea. (It could unfortunately also be a good argument against starship trait unlocks - playing an engineer in a cruiser or playing a tactical in a cruiser may lead to different play styles. Still... The trait unlock would be nice...
It is not late to make DR a hit just make ship mastery cross faction AND account unlock.
I refuse to be content https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwI0u9L4R8U
therefore the "small" reward.
At least I would try to get all lockbox ships then. I'm not holding my breath though.
Well as a KDF captain that mastered both T6 ships laughably quickly I have no idea what to say to this.
Yay for Fed captains that play with their wallet I guess?
On a more serious note, cross-faction account wide unlocks or something similar would be handy. Supposedly there will be more KDF and RR ship traits eventually but right now the four slots but only two things to slot in them is pretty weak.
To the dev who is speaking to this...thanks. I just need this point cleared up by someone so Incan offer an intelligent response.
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Hopefully just the grind.
:eek::eek::
ahm.. it was nice to have you know. When is your last day in the studio before you will be sent on a very long holiday by your bosses?
Account Bound Mastery Suggestion:
As to making the 5th Mastery Account-unlock, I support this insofar as still having to work for it. Instead of just leveling it once and then it's unlock for all characters, I suggest to encourage players to keep using the ship instead of just dropping it and forgetting it.
For example: I level my Guardian to Rank 5. However, instead of letting the bar stop there, let a second bar appear below it. The XP required to fill it will either be the same as it currently is getting from 3 to 4. For every completion of that bar, a player gains an account-bound item; for this example, we'll call it: "Holodeck Bridge Training: Guardian - Desperate Repairs". The in-game idea is that as a master of your ship, you earn the right to record your performance to share with one officer, in this case, your alts. However, to prevent early abuse, the alt in question needs to be level 50 minimum.
This way, all objectives would be met. Players can have access to as many starship traits as they're willing to work on, this will encourage repeated use of any T6s every so often, and Cryptic can sell more T6s or Delta Operations Packs. The only losers here would be the lazy.
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I like the cut of your jib.
Less grind is always welcome, but of all the many grinds added with the expansion, In my experience Ship Mastery is by far the least grindy grind.
I never had to go work for it, between the need to grind levels to play the story missions and the need to grind dil for the upgrade system, mastering all the avalible ships just kinda happened.