Yes, progression's still fast 1-50 so this doesn't fix anything in those terms. For established players, the obvious thing to do would have been to have a grandfathering system where you could turn chunks of your boff skillpoints pool into captain points (say, 50% of those points available to be turned back into player XP, limited to full level chunks). More than one of my toons has several million boff XP, yet I still have to grind out moar points for no real reason. I'm sure I'm nowhere near being the only one in that position.
Well I didn't say that the 1-50 experience did "fix" anything. Its just that the issues are mainly religated to veteran players who massed up those heaps of XP rather than progressing in their original playthrough.
However if the intention was that STO episodes should be played without interuption there's a much easier way to do it than to add some sort of banked expertise conversion tool: just have 51-60 proceed like 1-50. The fact that they didn't go that route shows that they probably didn't want old playtime of any kind substituting for the new grind (thus, if not the simple solution then no to the more complicated one).
However it must be said (for reasonability's sake) there is the chance (however slim) that they balanced the game "correctly", though only in consideration of new players. But if they're ever to address the difference, it should be through the most direct route (consistency through leveling) rather than fiddling with secondary elements to the system.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
If there's anything beyond the obvious (they want us to do more than just grind through the episodes one after another. Whine as you guys will but that's the scale of the problem here. Its just pacing) it may be that the episode progression tracks with a player coming up from 1 rather than from 50. I started a new romulan recently and got access to the delta quadrant during the Cardassian mission series. If I decided to go through the Breen, Borg, and Solanae I'd be set to plow right through the DQ without any special effort (ie. an attempt to do anything besides missions.)
However, it is hard to see this being a competent intention (since scaling the missions as per normal would have the same effect, no special effort, with the one stipulation that it would apply to EVERYONE instead.)
PS. as far as the OP is concerned, yes its nice to read an article about a subject since the format goes into a little more depth than a forum post. But do remember that the only thing separating you from the writer is just that someone else has given him the license to post there.
After hearing many of the complaints about how slow leveling was, I decided to take my first character through the lvl 50-60 grind by finishing up the 'old' content I hadn't finished yet.
Before DR, getting to 50 somewhere in the early Cardassian arc was the norm for me and with this character I started with the mission "Rapier". By the time I finished with the last old mission before the DR intro, I'd ran 24 missions, dozens of queues and hundreds of DOff missions. I got to lvl 54 before even stepping foot in the Delta Quadrant.
And I was back to having to run queues, DOffing like crazy and any other thing that provided XP in order to get to lvl 57 in order to continue the DR storyline. And then I got that 1 mission and had to return to the Alpha Quadrant to do more non-DR stuff in order to get to 58 to get one more DR mission. To head back to the Alpha Quad... I think you see my point.
I would log in, collect my DOff missions, set up new short term DOff missions that I would hope would finish before I would log out for the day, so I could load up on longer DOff missions that would give out more XP while I was offline so I could collect them the next day.
And even with all of that, and considering I don't play 24/7 (though it seems like I do at times) it still took me the better part of 3 weeks to get from 54-60. Getting from 50-54 was only a week because I had missions I could run and didn't have to keep hopping all over creation in order to get XP.
Granted, this was before the XP got adjusted so I really have no idea what the journey is like now, but I will be finding out shortly as I will run another alt through the 50-60 grind soon.
Thankfully, the winter event starts later this week and it will occupy a lot of my time in-game so I can hopefully forget about DR for a while and perhaps approach it with a clearer head. But as things are right now, I ran through the DR content once, and while it wasn't horrid I really don't want to run it again anytime soon. The story is fine, but the way in which it's presented is not.
Hopefully there will be more mission content released for the 50-60 levels which will make the grind, well, less of a grind.
Hello. My name is iamynaught and I am an altaholic.
I think they are too narrow in their focus on content. The amount of times that word was brought up, yet 90% of the content of STO is below average for a AAA game and just about par for an indie game.
If they had increased the level cap and released the missions as episodes (more like the series in a way oddly enough) over time across the range of 50-60 then it would have worked better. Remove the crappy patrol system and integrate that introduction to the different species/characters in a more fluid manner (SOS calls? Side missions etc...) than just repetitive patrols and people would find it more involving.
But hey I'm wasting my time considering the possibilities for how to fix this game. I doubt I could influence the Cryptic Dev's, I doubt they even care very much.
Pity really.
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
That article pretty much summed it up, also with PWE stocks taking at tank, one has to wonder what is going on that is also affecting STO and other Cryptic games.
Lets me honest, STO is in trouble and at this point we will never see another Star Trek game if it fails. It is really to bad that modders cant get their hands on the game as they could turn it around!
There will probably a crazy grind for it and as always per character instead of account wide. This is what they always do.
The Anniversary ship last year was the last ship that required full grind for every ship you wanted for your alts.
The current grind is a absolute acceptable improvement, you have to grind only once for each ship type, after the "long grind" you will get a accountwide discount for that ship and you need to do the run only once for every additional ship.
(The only problem at the moment: The extremely high upgrade costs for Equipment, as well as the XP Treadmill made "twinking" slightly unattractive, so i don't think that the demand for the new ship is nearly as high as it was for the other ships the last two years.)
Beta, LTA, CE, Multiple preorder Versions, all Addon Packs except AoY, nearly all KDF/Rom and ~50% of all Fedships, over 25 LockboxShips, Endurer of Atari's "Year of Hell", but...
+1 to the OP. For Great Truth!! and Justice. and for all the cold and starving Tribbles out there. A year ago, our house was full of them. Now, we only have one tribble left as our connection to the golden age of STO.
I don't know what will happen when this tribble dies. Maybe we will all go to Heaven. Every single one of us!!!!!
Comments
Well I didn't say that the 1-50 experience did "fix" anything. Its just that the issues are mainly religated to veteran players who massed up those heaps of XP rather than progressing in their original playthrough.
However if the intention was that STO episodes should be played without interuption there's a much easier way to do it than to add some sort of banked expertise conversion tool: just have 51-60 proceed like 1-50. The fact that they didn't go that route shows that they probably didn't want old playtime of any kind substituting for the new grind (thus, if not the simple solution then no to the more complicated one).
However it must be said (for reasonability's sake) there is the chance (however slim) that they balanced the game "correctly", though only in consideration of new players. But if they're ever to address the difference, it should be through the most direct route (consistency through leveling) rather than fiddling with secondary elements to the system.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
I dunno, you seem to have gone from a knowledgeable but pleasant dude to rather condescending and rude in the last six months.
no need to be a **** to get a point across man.
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
Lifetime Subscriber since 2012 == 17,200 Accolades = RIP PvP and Vice Squad
Chief of Starfleet Intelligence Service == Praise Cheesus
After hearing many of the complaints about how slow leveling was, I decided to take my first character through the lvl 50-60 grind by finishing up the 'old' content I hadn't finished yet.
Before DR, getting to 50 somewhere in the early Cardassian arc was the norm for me and with this character I started with the mission "Rapier". By the time I finished with the last old mission before the DR intro, I'd ran 24 missions, dozens of queues and hundreds of DOff missions. I got to lvl 54 before even stepping foot in the Delta Quadrant.
And I was back to having to run queues, DOffing like crazy and any other thing that provided XP in order to get to lvl 57 in order to continue the DR storyline. And then I got that 1 mission and had to return to the Alpha Quadrant to do more non-DR stuff in order to get to 58 to get one more DR mission. To head back to the Alpha Quad... I think you see my point.
I would log in, collect my DOff missions, set up new short term DOff missions that I would hope would finish before I would log out for the day, so I could load up on longer DOff missions that would give out more XP while I was offline so I could collect them the next day.
And even with all of that, and considering I don't play 24/7 (though it seems like I do at times) it still took me the better part of 3 weeks to get from 54-60. Getting from 50-54 was only a week because I had missions I could run and didn't have to keep hopping all over creation in order to get XP.
Granted, this was before the XP got adjusted so I really have no idea what the journey is like now, but I will be finding out shortly as I will run another alt through the 50-60 grind soon.
Thankfully, the winter event starts later this week and it will occupy a lot of my time in-game so I can hopefully forget about DR for a while and perhaps approach it with a clearer head. But as things are right now, I ran through the DR content once, and while it wasn't horrid I really don't want to run it again anytime soon. The story is fine, but the way in which it's presented is not.
Hopefully there will be more mission content released for the 50-60 levels which will make the grind, well, less of a grind.
Losing faith in humanity, one person at a time.
If they had increased the level cap and released the missions as episodes (more like the series in a way oddly enough) over time across the range of 50-60 then it would have worked better. Remove the crappy patrol system and integrate that introduction to the different species/characters in a more fluid manner (SOS calls? Side missions etc...) than just repetitive patrols and people would find it more involving.
But hey I'm wasting my time considering the possibilities for how to fix this game. I doubt I could influence the Cryptic Dev's, I doubt they even care very much.
Pity really.
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
There will probably a crazy grind for it and as always per character instead of account wide. This is what they always do.
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Windows 10 Pro
Intel Core i7-5700
RAM 32 GB
2 Titan GTX 980M GDDR5 8 GB
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Lets me honest, STO is in trouble and at this point we will never see another Star Trek game if it fails. It is really to bad that modders cant get their hands on the game as they could turn it around!
The Anniversary ship last year was the last ship that required full grind for every ship you wanted for your alts.
The current grind is a absolute acceptable improvement, you have to grind only once for each ship type, after the "long grind" you will get a accountwide discount for that ship and you need to do the run only once for every additional ship.
(The only problem at the moment: The extremely high upgrade costs for Equipment, as well as the XP Treadmill made "twinking" slightly unattractive, so i don't think that the demand for the new ship is nearly as high as it was for the other ships the last two years.)
I don't know what will happen when this tribble dies. Maybe we will all go to Heaven. Every single one of us!!!!!