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Ways to Make Skill Point and Specializaton more alt-friendly
mustrumridcully0
Member Posts: 12,963 Arc User
There are plenty of concerns from players that the "specialization grind" take too long, especially once you consider alt characters.
The most obvious choice to deal with that is increase skill point payouts or lower skill point requirements. Maybe that will happen, but I suspect Cryptic has a certain idea for how long it should take for your single character. But I am not so sure they want it to take the same time on every of your characters. We have precedents for this with the reputation system with the sponsorship token,and for the Event ships with the alt-discount.
So I think the focus of the changes we can hope to expect will be the alt-friendliness.
What would be ways to do it?
Sponsorships for Specialization
There is probably a variety of ways how to do it. One way I could think of:
At some point, you can gain a specialization booster. You can spend that token on another character to double your skill point gains for a certain amount of time (maybe there is a account accolade that tracks the highest specialization level, and as long as you're below that, you benefit from the bonus).
Rest Skill Points
This is a mechanic found in other games. While you are not logged into the game, you earn special "rest XP". When you gain XP while playing, you also subtract an equal amount of XP from the Rest XP and add it to your current XP.
The XP you could gain by absence would be capped, so that you would still want to play regularly.
The advance of something like rest XP is that it directly even encourages alts. If you want to grind on a main, you will eventually not gain as much skill points as if you change. OF course, if you can't play that long anyway, you lose nothing.
Daily Bonus Skill Points
Kinda the same as Rest Skill Points, but instead with a simple daily refresher instead of being directly tied to inactivity. This system works great for the Daily Mark Bonuses. It rewards daily log ins (which is obviously something Cryptic tries to generate a lot of) and play time, and it is very easily controlled.
What other methods could there be?
The most obvious choice to deal with that is increase skill point payouts or lower skill point requirements. Maybe that will happen, but I suspect Cryptic has a certain idea for how long it should take for your single character. But I am not so sure they want it to take the same time on every of your characters. We have precedents for this with the reputation system with the sponsorship token,and for the Event ships with the alt-discount.
So I think the focus of the changes we can hope to expect will be the alt-friendliness.
What would be ways to do it?
Sponsorships for Specialization
There is probably a variety of ways how to do it. One way I could think of:
At some point, you can gain a specialization booster. You can spend that token on another character to double your skill point gains for a certain amount of time (maybe there is a account accolade that tracks the highest specialization level, and as long as you're below that, you benefit from the bonus).
Rest Skill Points
This is a mechanic found in other games. While you are not logged into the game, you earn special "rest XP". When you gain XP while playing, you also subtract an equal amount of XP from the Rest XP and add it to your current XP.
The XP you could gain by absence would be capped, so that you would still want to play regularly.
The advance of something like rest XP is that it directly even encourages alts. If you want to grind on a main, you will eventually not gain as much skill points as if you change. OF course, if you can't play that long anyway, you lose nothing.
Daily Bonus Skill Points
Kinda the same as Rest Skill Points, but instead with a simple daily refresher instead of being directly tied to inactivity. This system works great for the Daily Mark Bonuses. It rewards daily log ins (which is obviously something Cryptic tries to generate a lot of) and play time, and it is very easily controlled.
What other methods could there be?
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
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ijs
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Save your time and money by NOT rolling alts anymore. Alts were only for the period of time when the game had a big lag in content creation and was easy on the wallet.
That time has ended. Alts are no longer viable.
On my main, I'm now at Level 60 - with 2 additional spec points. I personally have no problem with the spec tree taking a long time to fill up.
But...unless something is done, that will never happen on my alt characters. If my alts aren't competitve I'm less likely to outfit them with new ships (as I have in the past) or upgrade their gear.
Something similar to Rep "sponsorship" would be much appreciated.
^^ Cryptic, hear ye him!
In Defera, I stumbled upon an 'XP bonus zone' (Borg patrol, which had a no-show on the mothership, but I digress). They should make more of those too.
OK sorry. The long side of it is this: back in tha day there were long periods when there was just no new content or just very little content. The solution to this for very many people was to create new characters of different jobs or factions.
Now that time is mostly gone. I'm talking Season 7 and back my dear. I love you for reminding us about the dry spots between level 50 and 60 now. That is important but the difference in making a few levels can be compared to a lack in any new content at all for months at a time. Sometimes up to four or more months between any new content releases.
This time period is when we used to get special Episode Releases...when Dan Stahl was the head coach for Cryptic.
^^ This. So very this!
I liked it when I could drop a sponsorship token or two on a fresh 50 and be kitted out in 20 days without an insane amount of Dil being spent.
The cost of going to XIII, never mind XIV, after getting the XII gear on top of the silly stack of specializations only makes the Dil cost seem all the worse.
There's death by a thousand cuts and then there's death by a thousand 120mm high explosive rounds.
Agree.
If you don't have time to play your alts you shouldn't be getting skill points on them.
Skill point awards are the problem, NOT the alts lack of assistance getting them.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
So, any more ideas to the one I had?
I have far too many captains and enjoy playing all of them to varying degrees. In the last 2 months it has been unenjoyable and impossible to level these captains simultaneously. At present I have thirteen characters ranging from 54 to 58 and have found the content wall and my shared upgrade strategy to be quite ineffective. I'm resigned to "trailblazing" with one fed and one kdf character and would be relieved to hear of a system comparable to the sponsorship system to provide some relief. I managed to luck into a fiscal solution for upgrading woes but sometimes I just want to start even more new characters so I can just play the story driven content or foundry missions from a fresh perspective and put off the monotony for a while and hope the pendulum swings a little further back toward center before I address it.
I wonder if anyone is even bothering to buy those boosters. They seem completely useless comapred to what you need and what they cost.
We'll see.
I can't believe that the skill point boosters are really in alignment with the current leveling speed. Even if they gave infinite amount of skill points, it's still only a 20 % boost. The low skill point limit seems nonsense, and an artififact of pre Delta RIsing. The only counter argument for this is that they were changed shortly before DR. So I dunno. Maybe there are poor (or rather rich?) people burning through Zen and Dilithium to get that 20 % boost....
lock box ships on 10 Fleet ships on the other 6
Rewards gutted out of the space STFs
The time to keep the alts up to speed increased to a numbing amount
Now
I got 3 space toons who will level and who will receive new ships upgraded equipment
I got 3 ground toons who will level and receive upgraded equipment
That's 13 characters who wont need new ships or upgraded equipment and 10 who wont do ground
That's a lot of dilithium and ships /equipment that wont fuel the economy
I know I am not alone either
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
I love Star Trek and I still love the game. But seeing as you can't load a 20 hour mission for a specialization level up, why bother. Another side effect of this is less players in the queues because players are not jumping from character to character. They stay on one character, and chances are they are parked at ARGALA.
I think a Daily login bonus would be helpful, but I can't see them implementing that for non-subs. Feels more like a Gold level benefit, to me. And I'm saying that as somebody's who's currently Silver and buying Zen a la carte on an occasional basis. Tho I wouldn't turn down a daily login bonus if they gave me one.
I'm looking at the Intel spec tree and how deep it goes compared to my progress on my main. A sponsorship token isn't going to do me any good, because I'm not going to see that maxed out for a long, long time.
The best way to improve the alt-friendliness of leveling in STO is to increase the base earn rate on the skill points. It's that simple. But if they're not going to do that, then maybe a per-character bonus for earning XP after level 60. You'd still have to grind the alt up to level 60, but after that it could get a little easier.
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being only able to play a couple of hours most days and sometimes less I have chosen to only play three characters as this is about right to manage and keep in line with the progression time I want to maintain, I just cant see the point in having more alts that hardly ever get played anyway and then fretting when something like specialization comes up over levelling them up.
if like most player they hardly do very much with alts anyway having max specialization will have very little effect if any on how you use them most of the time anyway.
if I was in the position of having lots of characters I would at this point choose two or three to level up on specialization and let the remainder level up albeit more slowly on doff missions alone.
if cryptic choose to implement some alt friendly short cut fine but some how I just cant see it happening, players just need to adapt as best as possible.
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.
Derrick - Fed Eng
In addition to your possibilities...
Specific to Specializations
Shift Specialization unlocks to the account level, but double the skill point requirements to unlock each Specialization Point based on the current over-level cost. Selecting and changing an Active Primary and Secondary Specialization remains locked out until level 50+.
Grant Specialization Points starting with level 16. Captains currently having less than [Character Level - 15] Specialization Points would receive an increase to their total, while those with more would retain their current progression.
Separate Primary and Secondary Specialization Points. Grant Primary Specialization Points starting with level 31. Captains currently having less than [Character Level - 30] Primary Specialization Points would receive an increase to their total, while those with 30 would retain their current progression. Grant Secondary Specialization Points starting with level 46. Captains currently having less than [Character Level - 45] Secondary Specialization Points would receive an increase to their total, while those with more would retain their current progression. Current over-level progression would grant additional Secondary Specialization Points until the current maximum of 30, as Primary Specialization Points would already be at the present maximum of 30. Assuming additional Specializations are added at a later date, further over-level progression would grant one Primary and one Secondary Specialization Point up to the maximum of each available.
Grant the ability to start earning Specialization Points starting at level 15, but do not grant them automatically. Cost to earn each Specialization Point would still be equivalent to leveling from 15->16, 16->17, 17->18, etc. including over-level progression. Progression for those already active in the Specializations would be placed at the appropriate point along the new progression scale equivalent to how many Specialization Points they had already unlocked.
In General
Include the maximum Active Specialization Points (30 Primary and 15 Secondary) within character level to improve balance (both PvE and PvP). Shoving a range of 1-36 additional Active Specialization Points into character level 60 makes it hard to balance NPC's and interferes with matchmaking, since character level is the variable used for those purposes.
Make Episodes worthwhile, and make progress in general rewarding. Increasing Delta Quadrant Patrol rewards alone does nothing to address the greater problem with progression, which is extremely slow. Extremely slow is not exciting. Doing the same thing because it was the only thing to receive an increase is not exciting. It is not the Expansion itself that made Delta Rising inferior to Legacy of Romulus... it was the mechanics and methodology of those mechanics that made Delta Rising what it is: not wonderful overall, and terrible for anyone that likes playing multiple characters and/or multiple builds.