Well then I guess you and I have different values.
Oh, it's not that I don't want people to appreciate my work. I like that quite a lot. It's that my primary goal is to make something I like to play. People asked why I don't use the Lyrans, and repurposed their ships as Orion vessels... well I don't LIKE the Lyrans. And I needed a shipset to use for Orions and that one was there.
I don't know if I'm the only one who feels this way or if this has been hashed out to death already. I've taken a long break from the game...
But a simple place for Cryptic to start is with all this T5U-10-11-whatever stuff. To put it plainly, the people who sunk lots of money into paying the Dev's Salaries with Lock Box and Lobi Ships have been wronged.
No matter if you opened lots of boxes or sold a lot of keys you paid big time for these ships which should be upgradable to FULL T6 status period. Cryptic would not even have jobs if it weren't for the players who spend the money on these. They should be top of the line, anything less is a disservice to your customers.
Because they have different goals. Modders goals are to provide the community with the best possible experience, it is a showcase of their abilities as well as being something very important in their lives, their goal is one of player satisfaction as a result of their talents.
The hired professionals, well the clue is in the description, hired, it's all about maximising profit for the business, the goal of every business is to make money now and in the future and that's it.
Unfortunately what many businesses don't fully understand is that by taking a balanced approach to the modders goal they will indeed satisfy the business goal, shame that but there you go, the world is full of short sighted business leaders with companies that almost always go bust.
Agreed. Not a modder myself, but all communities I'v been in that allow it (VALVe being the most prominent one, covering Half-Life series, Portal, etc) show an incredible dedication on the part of the modders. Like you say, I'm sure Cryptic Devs would be the very same way, if they had complete autonomy, and no time-constraints whatsoever, but they have deadlines to make, and cannot always give it the full TLC they may want.
I don't know if I'm the only one who feels this way or if this has been hashed out to death already. I've taken a long break from the game...
But a simple place for Cryptic to start is with all this T5U-10-11-whatever stuff. To put it plainly, the people who sunk lots of money into paying the Dev's Salaries with Lock Box and Lobi Ships have been wronged.
No matter if you opened lots of boxes or sold a lot of keys you paid big time for these ships which should be upgradable to FULL T6 status period. Cryptic would not even have jobs if it weren't for the players who spend the money on these. They should be top of the line, anything less is a disservice to your customers.
At the VERY least, it should have been that an upgrade token equals a half step, regardless of what ship it's applied to. In other words, if the ship is a normal T5, you get T5U. If the ship has a free T5U upgrade, a token should kick it up to full T6. Obsoleting the lockbox/Lobi ships was indeed a very poor move.
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.
"Upgrading" gear in STO is the only expansion in history of gaming that came with 0 animations and 0 models.
Essentially all copy-pasted text and that's the difference.
If someone has to add all new gear to all classes in some mmo or new powers or whatever it requires actual work.
You have to add animations and models or what you'd call content.
Dil Vaporizing's "upgrading" had no animations and it had no models, it didn't have new content.
Essentially you were dumb enough to re-buy 4 year-old animations for 5 million dil per ship - which is the cost of 10x c-store t6 ships for thin air, the emperor's new clothes copy-pasted text
So no, this is not normal for mmos, this is the first time anyone has ever copy-pasted with 0 animations and 0 models and called it content
"Upgrading" gear in STO is the only expansion in history of gaming that came with 0 animations and 0 models.
Essentially all copy-pasted text and that's the difference.
If someone has to add all new gear to all classes in some mmo or new powers or whatever it requires actual work.
Have you seen the new Intel powers? You know that the ground powers are available to you even if you don't have one of the new ships? And of course, some of the abilities can be applied to other ships. Surgical Strikes for example looks pretty interesting when you hit other targets.
Have you seen the specialization abilities? Many of the conditional passives (like getting hit in the rear arc granting bonus defense) all come with new animations that work on all ships.) The active powers obviously anyway. (Barrel Roll FTW).
And of course I know at least one other game where upgrading your gear doesn't come with fancy animations. In SW:TOR, you simply install new components in your gear to boost your armor rating or weapon rating or whatever. And it still costs money or grind to get this stuff. (And installing comes with its own cost.) Heck, one of the most important feature to be added for many people was likely Adaptive Gear that acts like the best type of armor your character can carry, so you can pick your favorite look and stick with it, never being forced to upgrade to different looks.
Why do even bother to reply to a vestereng post. He/She/It forgets everything anyone ever brought up to counter his arguments so he can keep talking about the same stuff as always.
Mustrum "Still haven't learned my xkcd.com/386/" Ridcully
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Have you seen the new Intel powers? You know that the ground powers are available to you even if you don't have one of the new ships? And of course, some of the abilities can be applied to other ships. Surgical Strikes for example looks pretty interesting when you hit other targets.
Have you seen the specialization abilities? Many of the conditional passives (like getting hit in the rear arc granting bonus defense) all come with new animations that work on all ships.) The active powers obviously anyway. (Barrel Roll FTW).
The new Intel powers are awesome! And I love em!
Seriously, Intel powers are quite a refreshing new way of doing things. DR, in that regard, is definitely a success.
And no, they're not just copy & paste (sorry, vestereng, but I sometimes think your own answers are kinda copy & paste). And they *do* come with animations! (Why, the Eclipse Trait, at least)
Upgrading system is all copy-paste with no animations and no models.
Emperor's new clothes I called it because it's essentially just numbers moved aroundi notepad done in 10 minutes.
This was obviously done for reasons of budget coding in where you didn't have to add content to the game but could just make people re-grind all the stuff they already paid for - for 5 million dil for anyone dumb enough.
That was one side of the expansion - Dil Vaporizing, along with super grinding them 800 patrols, artifically time gating you and stalling you through fake content.
The other thing about Dil vaporizing were the new ships.
And those were also fake.
The cross road decision being, since we are now operating with fake star trek ships we need some way of selling them.
So, you block all animations and exclusively add them to the fake star trek ships as gecko said "because we want to sell those ships" which is all but completely understandable.
The comparision to LoR is right there, quite obvious and even the developers called Dil Vaporizing "content light" and "not JUST copy-pasting" - that's how obvious it is
Upgrading system is all copy-paste with no animations and no models.
Moving from "Common Issue" equipment to Mark XII gear, there were never ever any new animations or new models for gear. Why would this time be different? Why would STO be different from other MMOs in this regard?
Gear tier increases are a simple way to restart the gear grind. There are always people that hunt for the best gear - but at some point, they have it, and they have less reason to play, since they have achieved their goals. So at some point, there is a level cap / gear cap increase, and people have to do it all over again. Of course, there are always disgruntled voices about the prospect of having to do it all over again, but that mostly just means people will do it.
Yes, it's obviously a cheap method. But not doing it just because of that doesn't work - you can't replace the need for the best gear with the need for a new mission, for example. They are different desires. And worse - the pace at which missions can be made is much slower than the pace they can be played with. So if you only rely on the latter, it won't work well, but if you can bring a mix of incentives, to draw people always back to the game...
I'll try to keep it calm as best as I can but I gotta say at this point, personally, some heads should be rolling corporately.
Whoever is in charge of development, specifically progression, should not have a job at this point! They should have been replaced with their most recent fiasco where they blamed players for their design flaws and then further made a situation worse by making it even MORE difficult to progress in game with any kind of sane timetable! That's #1!
#2 these players who keep poo pooing the idea that somehow there's anything at all bad going on here need to get their math checked! It now takes 3.5 years to completely fill out a specialation bar for one character. It takes 400k dilithium to make your own Tier XIV gear because o the RNG element in the end. And it takes millions of EC to buy gear in the EX when you don't feel like waiting forever to build your crafting up to max with the only free crafting daily you can do (which is the one for 6k points). I logged in for 2.5 months trying to get mine to max. I only got one slot to max and guess what I discovered, that there's an RNG element to crafting now too! You're not even guaranteed a purple when you do all that work!
#3 Until these jokers here in the forums learn what real value means and stop telling everyone that everything is fine and help the community out, I personally plan on blocking and ignoring every single one of them because they clearly have no grasp of the situation nor do they feel obligated to help their community out by doing the right thing and stopping the apologies for a company that needs no help in ignoring the problems. They need to step back and look at the bigger picture and stop spending money on the monster that's taken over this game, the Chinese Billing model that requires you give your life's blood in order to progress.
As soon as these apologists realize what they've done and turn coat so they can help the rest of the community out, and PWE removes those in charge for this debacle, then maybe then they'll get me back as a player.
I'm someone who's been playing since Beta been a lifetime member since before launch, and I'm not logging in or playing until they fix these issues because it's the right thing to do.
Agreed. Not a modder myself, but all communities I'v been in that allow it (VALVe being the most prominent one, covering Half-Life series, Portal, etc) show an incredible dedication on the part of the modders. Like you say, I'm sure Cryptic Devs would be the very same way, if they had complete autonomy, and no time-constraints whatsoever, but they have deadlines to make, and cannot always give it the full TLC they may want.
Yeah, modding often leads to a massive time sink for relatively small things. Which a real game studio would have to skip due to deadlines. I've spent years tinkering with mods for some games.
The real problem is that this game went so long without a level cap increase. Had this been going on regularly since launch, with no nerf to XP gain, then the progression gap so many people are experiencing would never have been felt. But no. Stagnation set in and players established themselves firmly upon what the game had been to that point, so when changed did come, it literally uprooted them and turned their virtual world upside down.
If you ask me, Delta Rising was to Star Trek Online what the NGE was to Star Wars Galaxies, though maybe to a lesser (or more protracted) extent. Cryptic has, in my opinion, thrown the baby our with the bath water. It's going to take them a lot more effort now to regain trust in the eyes of many of their customers. Far more effort than it would have taken had they simply built upon what they had rather than redefining the way players progress and essentially dictating how and where to do it. Just like the NGE in Star Wars Galaxies, Cryptic has done to this game what nobody asked for:
They have nerfed the game TO hell and have turned it into the grindfest FROM hell. I don't recall anyone ever asking for this to happen.
I think you don't understand the real problem honestly.
Some people will always be upset at a level cap increase, obsoleting gear and equipment, it happens, but every MMO does it. The problem here is how it was implemented, it was just a giant money grab, nothing more.
-The game has been here for how many years now? There hasn't been a proper XP/level system in that entire time, each level was manually given a number of XP to complete, they figured out how many episodes you needed to play to level and manually set level values.
This is a major problem, not only is this like MMO design 101, the fact the game is this old, the fact they've "redone" the beginning episodes already, the fact they raised the level cap and only fixed this problem in a patch sometime after that. It all points to gross ignorance and incompetence of the person in charge, that person shouldn't have a job in this field.
-They launched a level cap with not even 1/4 of the content needed to reach it, and no legitimate systems in place to properly earn XP if players require it.
-After countless TRIBBLE with rewards/time they still don't have it even remotely close to consistent or satisfying. Not to mention there are almost no rewards )other than dilithium) in missions people really want either. If someone were to audit the devs work, I will bet you will not find a design document with proper combat statistics, rewards, time inputs, etc so they can actually design anything. The entire game seems to just be made up as they go.
-The gear upgrade system was launched without seemingly any understanding of the cost from the devs, the time put in, and they end results. They just recently changed values for weapons. Other than majorly oversized buy it now with dilithium buttons, the whole system seems like a half baked idea, its shallow, boring and only highlights how badly the rewards/time system in the game is, which further aggravates players.
We can go on and on about how badly this expansion was designed and implemented. From the lack of quality control, to the devs not even knowing what happens in Advanced/Elite queues, to the spiraling out of control DPS race, the unenjoyable monetization scheme.
The problem isn't the players being used to level 50, its much worse than that unfortunately.
Actually...your mistaken. There was a rather vocal group of people who complained that there was no upward progression. That there was nothing left to strive for. Hey, guess what, now there are YEARS worth of stuff for you to strive for if you don't wanna spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Just like how there was/is a vocal group of people who want even MOAR DPS then is required now and the casuals be damned. The problem is that these people were SEVERLY in the minority and should have been utterly ignored...but they yelled loud and long enough for cryptic to actually listen it seems. And for those of you who were in this group and decry, but this is not what we asked for...well becareful what you wish for then. Your making a wish to an efreeti...I mean evil incarnate...I mean a corporation.
So Cryptic is using the Hegelian Dialectic. Creating a problem for which the solution profits themselves. They certainly aren't increasing the DPS of XIV weapons to help us. The are creating greater inequality in gear in order to force players to participate in their outrageous gear upgrade dilithium grind. Imposing frustration on players who they calculate will buy zen in order to convert it to dilithium.
They should have catered for everyone. Take Epic gear for example; that could/should have been accessed through a PvP Rep System. Elite PvE content shouldn't ever need Epic Gear, and should be completable with XII Very Rare with some ease.
Most of my existing gear, on my mains is XII Ultra Rare, considering how much that has cost me already, I have little ambition to upgrade further, yet I need to in order to power through the Elite queues. I have a choice to either grind like crazy (which isn't fun at all) or to spend stupid amounts of real money on zen, to then convert into Dilithium.
Elite PvE content shouldn't ever need Epic Gear...
It doesn't. Some players may need it, but that doesn't mean the content needs it. The inclusion of such gear allows those that otherwise couldn't have done it to have a shot at doing it, but that's far from it being a need for the content.
It doesn't. Some players may need it, but that doesn't mean the content needs it. The inclusion of such gear allows those that otherwise couldn't have done it to have a shot at doing it, but that's far from it being a need for the content.
I know that, I was just making an example.
Still, [I would imagine] people might struggle with Mk XII purple gear on the elite STFs? I've ran Advance STF's with XII gear (both very rare and ultra rare) and I can get through them fairly well in a Cruiser. If I jump to my Science Toons though, I suffer terribly. Granted SCI isn't the best use for most STFs, but I'd hate to think what a struggle Korfez would be in a cruiser with mere purple XII gear.
Still, [I would imagine] people might struggle with Mk XII purple gear on the elite STFs? I've ran Advance STF's with XII gear (both very rare and ultra rare) and I can get through them fairly well in a Cruiser. If I jump to my Science Toons though, I suffer terribly. Granted SCI isn't the best use for most STFs, but I'd hate to think what a struggle Korfez would be in a cruiser with mere purple XII gear.
Advanced is meant to be Advanced.
Elite is meant to be Elite.
They're not meant for everybody.
I can accept that. Some others can accept that while some others can't accept that.
If things weren't challenging...then why would they be called Advanced or Elite?
Advanced is meant to be Advanced.
Elite is meant to be Elite.
They're not meant for everybody.
I can accept that. Some others can accept that while some others can't accept that.
If things weren't challenging...then why would they be called Advanced or Elite?
I think you're missing my point. In order to play (and win) some of the queues, people are going to need to upgrade their gear to the higher marks, and better quality. I speak from personal experience when I say that such the upgrades are costly.
Think about people looking for a Delta Set; they need 5x Ancient Power Cells per piece, and these can only be obtained from a short supply of missions, either of Advanced or Elite. Advanced queues reward a single Power Cell, I think Elite rewards two or three?
Even when joining a team on the elite public STF channel you can't guarantee a success, and it's best to run these STFs with the better gear - which of course means that upgrades are needed.
Add to that, if someone is looking for a DPS build, then naturally, they're going to be looking for [CritD] & [Pen] (and [Rapid] if they're using cannons). If people have specific weapons and get an update that throws in a random [Acc] or [Dmg] that's a costly setback.
Moving from "Common Issue" equipment to Mark XII gear
Did common to mark XII cost you 5 million, or were they free drops - back with un-nerfed vendor trash you could even earn EC.
Were common to mark XII released in an expansion as a new tier system?
Normally, when you release something, you well, release something.
The copy-paste text "upgrades" don't qualify as something and that's the whole point in that they don't have animations or models so they don't actually exist, they aren't anything, they are nothing.
When the weapons were made, the original weapon animations then those represent a value in developer resources.
Then you came in and paid money for those animations.
Upgrading is selling you the same animations you already bought for 5 million dil per ship and so the upgrading system doesn't represent any developer work or value at all.
When rep system or fleet gear was released with say new weapon skins or new animations, for example the v-ger torpedo or the elite ground weapons then that was fair.
They put in work, you pay. 1+1=2
Upgrading system they didn't add anything, they did not create new content.
And the same thing applies to rebuying all your ships for 700 zen by the way but what is that compared to 5 million dil or 48,000 zen PER SHIP for animations you already bought
A somewhat simplistic look at gear gated progression in a typical MMO would go something akin to the following:
Level up, run missions, collect mission gear or crafted gear to be able to run Dungeon A. Run Dungeon A to get gear to be able to run Dungeon B. Run Dungeon B to get gear to be able to run Dungeon C. Run Dungeon C to get gear to be able to run Raid A. Run Raid A to get gear to be able to run Raid B. Run Raid B to get gear to be able to run Raid C. Continue running Raid C to see how fast you can do it...until the next set of dungeons, difficulties, raids, or level cap increase comes along.
STO is not gear gated. There is no run X to be able to run Y to be able to run Z because of the gear acquired. There isn't any content progression in that sense...there's no unlocking endgame content, it's all there. Look at the various Rep gear folks talk about...you run the content a zillion times to get it for what? To be able to run the same content faster? It doesn't unlock the ability to do some other content that the gear was required for...it doesn't have that A->B->C->A->B->C progression going for it.
STO's endgame rewards aren't there for being able to run the endgame, they're there for running it faster. STO skips right to the Raid C and then bam into farm status.
Take a look at some of those DPS League builds out there, eh? Spire Core, 2pc Nukara, Rom Engines...where's the gear from running STFs or anything like that? They're not running them because they have to - they're running them because they're fun for them, they've got their own thing going creating their own challenge of doing more DPS, doing them faster, etc, etc, etc...right?
Just because Joe Casual needs everything that they've got to pull off a 10th of their DPS...doesn't mean that the content requires all of that.
You could take any of those DPS guys and put them in a garbage build, and they'd massively outperform me running one of their builds. They're better at the game than me. I can accept that. I don't get why some folks can't accept that...that they've got to find something, anything, everything but themselves to blame for their performance.
Yeah, overgearing will allow me to perform better than I could otherwise...but it's still overgearing to accomplish what the better player could do with normal gear or even subpar gear.
I can accept that...just don't get why others can't. There is oft so much discussion about those guys being elitists, when the ego problems are usually not those guys having huge egos but those complaining having such fragile egos.
I only got one slot to max and guess what I discovered, that there's an RNG element to crafting now too! You're not even guaranteed a purple when you do all that work!
firstly its not a take a piece of crud system and make it epic system. Its a system to make good gear that you used at level 50 want to keep and use at level 60 usable at level 60.
Its not a crafting system its an "upgrade system" if you are using garbage gear you will upgrade from garbage to garbage guaranteed.
If your using it to upgrade purple gear a couple of levels from 50-60 it works well. People dont understand the system but it has been explained that you cannot take bad gear and suddenly make it good using this system it was not designed for that. It will award stats according to the type of gear you started with so if you got a white drop from a trash mob in a zone that you solo'd your going to waste your time it will never ever be anything else but slightly upgraded trash that might become purple along the way..
So dont upgrade gear that is not purple that you didnt work hard to get and you will find that the dilithium outlay isn't that bad. It can be a bit high but I dont consider it unreasonable. If your not willing to dish out the dilithium to create an epic and takes your chances then dont do it. Epic gear is for bragging rights only it has very little stat increase.
I am upgrading things like rep gear obtained from unlocking the rep that took quite a lot of time and effort to simply be able to obtain and so far I have not had much issue with the system. Weapons are more expensive then say shields but in all cases I have been able to keep the gear I like that I worked hard to get and make it more powerful then it was when I obtained it.
Comments
My character Tsin'xing
But a simple place for Cryptic to start is with all this T5U-10-11-whatever stuff. To put it plainly, the people who sunk lots of money into paying the Dev's Salaries with Lock Box and Lobi Ships have been wronged.
No matter if you opened lots of boxes or sold a lot of keys you paid big time for these ships which should be upgradable to FULL T6 status period. Cryptic would not even have jobs if it weren't for the players who spend the money on these. They should be top of the line, anything less is a disservice to your customers.
Agreed. Not a modder myself, but all communities I'v been in that allow it (VALVe being the most prominent one, covering Half-Life series, Portal, etc) show an incredible dedication on the part of the modders. Like you say, I'm sure Cryptic Devs would be the very same way, if they had complete autonomy, and no time-constraints whatsoever, but they have deadlines to make, and cannot always give it the full TLC they may want.
At the VERY least, it should have been that an upgrade token equals a half step, regardless of what ship it's applied to. In other words, if the ship is a normal T5, you get T5U. If the ship has a free T5U upgrade, a token should kick it up to full T6. Obsoleting the lockbox/Lobi ships was indeed a very poor move.
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Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Essentially all copy-pasted text and that's the difference.
If someone has to add all new gear to all classes in some mmo or new powers or whatever it requires actual work.
You have to add animations and models or what you'd call content.
Dil Vaporizing's "upgrading" had no animations and it had no models, it didn't have new content.
Essentially you were dumb enough to re-buy 4 year-old animations for 5 million dil per ship - which is the cost of 10x c-store t6 ships for thin air, the emperor's new clothes copy-pasted text
So no, this is not normal for mmos, this is the first time anyone has ever copy-pasted with 0 animations and 0 models and called it content
Have you seen the specialization abilities? Many of the conditional passives (like getting hit in the rear arc granting bonus defense) all come with new animations that work on all ships.) The active powers obviously anyway. (Barrel Roll FTW).
And of course I know at least one other game where upgrading your gear doesn't come with fancy animations. In SW:TOR, you simply install new components in your gear to boost your armor rating or weapon rating or whatever. And it still costs money or grind to get this stuff. (And installing comes with its own cost.) Heck, one of the most important feature to be added for many people was likely Adaptive Gear that acts like the best type of armor your character can carry, so you can pick your favorite look and stick with it, never being forced to upgrade to different looks.
Why do even bother to reply to a vestereng post. He/She/It forgets everything anyone ever brought up to counter his arguments so he can keep talking about the same stuff as always.
Mustrum "Still haven't learned my xkcd.com/386/" Ridcully
The new Intel powers are awesome! And I love em!
Seriously, Intel powers are quite a refreshing new way of doing things. DR, in that regard, is definitely a success.
And no, they're not just copy & paste (sorry, vestereng, but I sometimes think your own answers are kinda copy & paste). And they *do* come with animations! (Why, the Eclipse Trait, at least)
Emperor's new clothes I called it because it's essentially just numbers moved aroundi notepad done in 10 minutes.
This was obviously done for reasons of budget coding in where you didn't have to add content to the game but could just make people re-grind all the stuff they already paid for - for 5 million dil for anyone dumb enough.
That was one side of the expansion - Dil Vaporizing, along with super grinding them 800 patrols, artifically time gating you and stalling you through fake content.
The other thing about Dil vaporizing were the new ships.
And those were also fake.
The cross road decision being, since we are now operating with fake star trek ships we need some way of selling them.
So, you block all animations and exclusively add them to the fake star trek ships as gecko said "because we want to sell those ships" which is all but completely understandable.
The comparision to LoR is right there, quite obvious and even the developers called Dil Vaporizing "content light" and "not JUST copy-pasting" - that's how obvious it is
Gear tier increases are a simple way to restart the gear grind. There are always people that hunt for the best gear - but at some point, they have it, and they have less reason to play, since they have achieved their goals. So at some point, there is a level cap / gear cap increase, and people have to do it all over again. Of course, there are always disgruntled voices about the prospect of having to do it all over again, but that mostly just means people will do it.
Yes, it's obviously a cheap method. But not doing it just because of that doesn't work - you can't replace the need for the best gear with the need for a new mission, for example. They are different desires. And worse - the pace at which missions can be made is much slower than the pace they can be played with. So if you only rely on the latter, it won't work well, but if you can bring a mix of incentives, to draw people always back to the game...
And an extra pip!
Whoever is in charge of development, specifically progression, should not have a job at this point! They should have been replaced with their most recent fiasco where they blamed players for their design flaws and then further made a situation worse by making it even MORE difficult to progress in game with any kind of sane timetable! That's #1!
#2 these players who keep poo pooing the idea that somehow there's anything at all bad going on here need to get their math checked! It now takes 3.5 years to completely fill out a specialation bar for one character. It takes 400k dilithium to make your own Tier XIV gear because o the RNG element in the end. And it takes millions of EC to buy gear in the EX when you don't feel like waiting forever to build your crafting up to max with the only free crafting daily you can do (which is the one for 6k points). I logged in for 2.5 months trying to get mine to max. I only got one slot to max and guess what I discovered, that there's an RNG element to crafting now too! You're not even guaranteed a purple when you do all that work!
#3 Until these jokers here in the forums learn what real value means and stop telling everyone that everything is fine and help the community out, I personally plan on blocking and ignoring every single one of them because they clearly have no grasp of the situation nor do they feel obligated to help their community out by doing the right thing and stopping the apologies for a company that needs no help in ignoring the problems. They need to step back and look at the bigger picture and stop spending money on the monster that's taken over this game, the Chinese Billing model that requires you give your life's blood in order to progress.
As soon as these apologists realize what they've done and turn coat so they can help the rest of the community out, and PWE removes those in charge for this debacle, then maybe then they'll get me back as a player.
I'm someone who's been playing since Beta been a lifetime member since before launch, and I'm not logging in or playing until they fix these issues because it's the right thing to do.
My character Tsin'xing
I think you don't understand the real problem honestly.
Some people will always be upset at a level cap increase, obsoleting gear and equipment, it happens, but every MMO does it. The problem here is how it was implemented, it was just a giant money grab, nothing more.
-The game has been here for how many years now? There hasn't been a proper XP/level system in that entire time, each level was manually given a number of XP to complete, they figured out how many episodes you needed to play to level and manually set level values.
This is a major problem, not only is this like MMO design 101, the fact the game is this old, the fact they've "redone" the beginning episodes already, the fact they raised the level cap and only fixed this problem in a patch sometime after that. It all points to gross ignorance and incompetence of the person in charge, that person shouldn't have a job in this field.
-They launched a level cap with not even 1/4 of the content needed to reach it, and no legitimate systems in place to properly earn XP if players require it.
-After countless TRIBBLE with rewards/time they still don't have it even remotely close to consistent or satisfying. Not to mention there are almost no rewards )other than dilithium) in missions people really want either. If someone were to audit the devs work, I will bet you will not find a design document with proper combat statistics, rewards, time inputs, etc so they can actually design anything. The entire game seems to just be made up as they go.
-The gear upgrade system was launched without seemingly any understanding of the cost from the devs, the time put in, and they end results. They just recently changed values for weapons. Other than majorly oversized buy it now with dilithium buttons, the whole system seems like a half baked idea, its shallow, boring and only highlights how badly the rewards/time system in the game is, which further aggravates players.
We can go on and on about how badly this expansion was designed and implemented. From the lack of quality control, to the devs not even knowing what happens in Advanced/Elite queues, to the spiraling out of control DPS race, the unenjoyable monetization scheme.
The problem isn't the players being used to level 50, its much worse than that unfortunately.
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So Cryptic is using the Hegelian Dialectic. Creating a problem for which the solution profits themselves. They certainly aren't increasing the DPS of XIV weapons to help us. The are creating greater inequality in gear in order to force players to participate in their outrageous gear upgrade dilithium grind. Imposing frustration on players who they calculate will buy zen in order to convert it to dilithium.
Most of my existing gear, on my mains is XII Ultra Rare, considering how much that has cost me already, I have little ambition to upgrade further, yet I need to in order to power through the Elite queues. I have a choice to either grind like crazy (which isn't fun at all) or to spend stupid amounts of real money on zen, to then convert into Dilithium.
It's insulting for the casual playerbase.
It doesn't. Some players may need it, but that doesn't mean the content needs it. The inclusion of such gear allows those that otherwise couldn't have done it to have a shot at doing it, but that's far from it being a need for the content.
Still, [I would imagine] people might struggle with Mk XII purple gear on the elite STFs? I've ran Advance STF's with XII gear (both very rare and ultra rare) and I can get through them fairly well in a Cruiser. If I jump to my Science Toons though, I suffer terribly. Granted SCI isn't the best use for most STFs, but I'd hate to think what a struggle Korfez would be in a cruiser with mere purple XII gear.
Advanced is meant to be Advanced.
Elite is meant to be Elite.
They're not meant for everybody.
I can accept that. Some others can accept that while some others can't accept that.
If things weren't challenging...then why would they be called Advanced or Elite?
Norma: Casual
Advanced: Advanced, Maybe Overgeared Casual
Elite: Elite, Maybe Overgeared Advanced
I'm Overgeared Casual...and I can accept that.
Think about people looking for a Delta Set; they need 5x Ancient Power Cells per piece, and these can only be obtained from a short supply of missions, either of Advanced or Elite. Advanced queues reward a single Power Cell, I think Elite rewards two or three?
Even when joining a team on the elite public STF channel you can't guarantee a success, and it's best to run these STFs with the better gear - which of course means that upgrades are needed.
Add to that, if someone is looking for a DPS build, then naturally, they're going to be looking for [CritD] & [Pen] (and [Rapid] if they're using cannons). If people have specific weapons and get an update that throws in a random [Acc] or [Dmg] that's a costly setback.
Did common to mark XII cost you 5 million, or were they free drops - back with un-nerfed vendor trash you could even earn EC.
Were common to mark XII released in an expansion as a new tier system?
Normally, when you release something, you well, release something.
The copy-paste text "upgrades" don't qualify as something and that's the whole point in that they don't have animations or models so they don't actually exist, they aren't anything, they are nothing.
When the weapons were made, the original weapon animations then those represent a value in developer resources.
Then you came in and paid money for those animations.
Upgrading is selling you the same animations you already bought for 5 million dil per ship and so the upgrading system doesn't represent any developer work or value at all.
When rep system or fleet gear was released with say new weapon skins or new animations, for example the v-ger torpedo or the elite ground weapons then that was fair.
They put in work, you pay. 1+1=2
Upgrading system they didn't add anything, they did not create new content.
And the same thing applies to rebuying all your ships for 700 zen by the way but what is that compared to 5 million dil or 48,000 zen PER SHIP for animations you already bought
Level up, run missions, collect mission gear or crafted gear to be able to run Dungeon A. Run Dungeon A to get gear to be able to run Dungeon B. Run Dungeon B to get gear to be able to run Dungeon C. Run Dungeon C to get gear to be able to run Raid A. Run Raid A to get gear to be able to run Raid B. Run Raid B to get gear to be able to run Raid C. Continue running Raid C to see how fast you can do it...until the next set of dungeons, difficulties, raids, or level cap increase comes along.
STO is not gear gated. There is no run X to be able to run Y to be able to run Z because of the gear acquired. There isn't any content progression in that sense...there's no unlocking endgame content, it's all there. Look at the various Rep gear folks talk about...you run the content a zillion times to get it for what? To be able to run the same content faster? It doesn't unlock the ability to do some other content that the gear was required for...it doesn't have that A->B->C->A->B->C progression going for it.
STO's endgame rewards aren't there for being able to run the endgame, they're there for running it faster. STO skips right to the Raid C and then bam into farm status.
Take a look at some of those DPS League builds out there, eh? Spire Core, 2pc Nukara, Rom Engines...where's the gear from running STFs or anything like that? They're not running them because they have to - they're running them because they're fun for them, they've got their own thing going creating their own challenge of doing more DPS, doing them faster, etc, etc, etc...right?
Just because Joe Casual needs everything that they've got to pull off a 10th of their DPS...doesn't mean that the content requires all of that.
You could take any of those DPS guys and put them in a garbage build, and they'd massively outperform me running one of their builds. They're better at the game than me. I can accept that. I don't get why some folks can't accept that...that they've got to find something, anything, everything but themselves to blame for their performance.
Yeah, overgearing will allow me to perform better than I could otherwise...but it's still overgearing to accomplish what the better player could do with normal gear or even subpar gear.
I can accept that...just don't get why others can't. There is oft so much discussion about those guys being elitists, when the ego problems are usually not those guys having huge egos but those complaining having such fragile egos.
firstly its not a take a piece of crud system and make it epic system. Its a system to make good gear that you used at level 50 want to keep and use at level 60 usable at level 60.
Its not a crafting system its an "upgrade system" if you are using garbage gear you will upgrade from garbage to garbage guaranteed.
If your using it to upgrade purple gear a couple of levels from 50-60 it works well. People dont understand the system but it has been explained that you cannot take bad gear and suddenly make it good using this system it was not designed for that. It will award stats according to the type of gear you started with so if you got a white drop from a trash mob in a zone that you solo'd your going to waste your time it will never ever be anything else but slightly upgraded trash that might become purple along the way..
So dont upgrade gear that is not purple that you didnt work hard to get and you will find that the dilithium outlay isn't that bad. It can be a bit high but I dont consider it unreasonable. If your not willing to dish out the dilithium to create an epic and takes your chances then dont do it. Epic gear is for bragging rights only it has very little stat increase.
I am upgrading things like rep gear obtained from unlocking the rep that took quite a lot of time and effort to simply be able to obtain and so far I have not had much issue with the system. Weapons are more expensive then say shields but in all cases I have been able to keep the gear I like that I worked hard to get and make it more powerful then it was when I obtained it.