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Why are players defending spec grinding as ok?
wardcalis
Member Posts: 1,137 Arc User
I don't understand how people can say it isn't necessary to grind skill points. you miss out on having abilities, powers and ship traits from not having an active tree.
So I currently have a command ship with wasted crappy seating because I don't have enough spec points in the command tree to have any command boffs. This is a perfect example of the reason one needs faster access to spec points. not instant but faster.
You should at least be able to have 1 full primary and 1 full secondary before the spec points slow to a crawl. This is especially import for newbs that don't understand how to increase their performance. Most of them will most likely add a couple points to a tree and move on to the next tree when it comes out, never filling any tree and always under-powered because they never complete a full tree.
Having something to do end game and a goal is all well and good but it actually requires there to be something to do. Not just a time sinc to add points to but some type of activity. Thats what content is about. Truth be told there is hardly anything to do at end game. You can REPLAY all the story stuff you did to level, grind STFs for rep and fleet marks, run dailies for Dil or a few other measly tiny pieces of content. On the whole Spec points are not something to do and they do not work as a long term goal because the benefits from having them are very real and much needed to be up to date on your capabilities.
EDIT:
You guys take things to the extremes. It takes about 20 Argala turn-ins to get 1 spec point. Argala is awrading 4x normal xp for time investment according to Geko.
20x4=80 runs
now it takes about 10 minutes to run it for the average player
80x10=800 minutes -- 800/60=13.3 hours
so 13.3 hours is required for the intended play time to get 1 spec point
not counting points gained from 50-60
13.3 hours x 80 spec points = 1,064 hours to fill em all up.
that would require 44.3 days of CONTINUOUS play to do. Meaning non-stop.
This is what is ridiculous and why people are grinding Argala now while it is still possible to get 4x exp for time investment
So I currently have a command ship with wasted crappy seating because I don't have enough spec points in the command tree to have any command boffs. This is a perfect example of the reason one needs faster access to spec points. not instant but faster.
You should at least be able to have 1 full primary and 1 full secondary before the spec points slow to a crawl. This is especially import for newbs that don't understand how to increase their performance. Most of them will most likely add a couple points to a tree and move on to the next tree when it comes out, never filling any tree and always under-powered because they never complete a full tree.
Having something to do end game and a goal is all well and good but it actually requires there to be something to do. Not just a time sinc to add points to but some type of activity. Thats what content is about. Truth be told there is hardly anything to do at end game. You can REPLAY all the story stuff you did to level, grind STFs for rep and fleet marks, run dailies for Dil or a few other measly tiny pieces of content. On the whole Spec points are not something to do and they do not work as a long term goal because the benefits from having them are very real and much needed to be up to date on your capabilities.
EDIT:
You guys take things to the extremes. It takes about 20 Argala turn-ins to get 1 spec point. Argala is awrading 4x normal xp for time investment according to Geko.
20x4=80 runs
now it takes about 10 minutes to run it for the average player
80x10=800 minutes -- 800/60=13.3 hours
so 13.3 hours is required for the intended play time to get 1 spec point
not counting points gained from 50-60
13.3 hours x 80 spec points = 1,064 hours to fill em all up.
that would require 44.3 days of CONTINUOUS play to do. Meaning non-stop.
This is what is ridiculous and why people are grinding Argala now while it is still possible to get 4x exp for time investment
Post edited by wardcalis on
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Comments
Because it isn't. You said so yourself:
Why would I need more powers, traits and abilities for something I can already do with what I have?
It's all optional, and always has been. You choose to grind away that's on you, no-one else.
It absolutely works that way. Just look into the exchange, there you get the qualification thingis to turn a bo into a command officer... It was about 1 million a piece when I bought 1 for every one of my level 60 chars, none of which had even a single spec point in command.
I get 1 Spec Point per week by doffing only! Without even using a XP Booster.
This is not a console game you play through in 30 hours or so. The game is one of the biggest franchises in the world and therefore I have the time of my life.
This, this so much. OP: unless you've played Navyfield, World of Tanks/ World of Warplanes, WarThunder, et al, you really can't whinge. Rather, you don't get to whinge.
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10052253
Why are you not rejoicing?
This says it all
Then you'll probably be posting that there's nothing to do.
Life's a journey not a destination. And I just can't tell what tomorrow brings.
I can. One of my fleet members lives in japan so because of time zones my tomorrow is his today. I can just ask him.
Totally forgot about the latter (Gerren). I think i have an accolade open for that one.
Well yeah, but just because it's worse elsewhere doesn't meant that it isn't still bad here.
"Yeah, they're doing cash grabs, but at least it's not as bad as SWOTOR"
"Yeah, the game is buggy, but at least it's not as bad as dead island"
"Yeah, the programming is bad, but at least it's not windows 8"
To be honest, this game is grindy as @#$% not in how much you grind for a single thing, but how much there is to grind in general. Between the last expansion and this one, it's managed to become considerably worse. We grind for XP now, we grind for multiple kinds of currency including marks, dilithium, ec and Q's, you grind to make your ship level, you grind to upgrade your ship equipment, you grind to even bother learning to upgrade, you grind for specialization, you grind just to grind so that the grinding isn't as much of a grind.
And then, after all of that grinding, you have to do it all over again for each and every alt.
It gets a bit ridiculous.
I really doubt as many people would complain if there were less things that needed grinding, or if they quit nerfing the rewards we need to grind for, for our grinds. Are people just breezing through your content? Make it more interesting, don't punish people for being bored. There are so many ways to deal with the issues people have in game, yet all Cryptic seems to want to do is add more cash sinks, time sinks, and gimmick TRIBBLE to have people sit down just to play more.
In a lot of cases, it's killing this game. You're not slowing the hardcore people who breeze through the game, you're punishing all the people who don't. The Hardcore people will find new ways to breeze through, that's a big part of the fun is making your ship as BA as possible. The less driven people would like that as well, but aren't willing or able to grind for hours a day everyday while spending money or Dilthium from grinding for boosts, or what have you.
Adding more things to grind while lowering the rewards is just making things worse in this game for the casual players.
Just because it's worse else where, doesn't mean that it's not bad here as it is.
Players are offering them for a pretty reasonable price, I think. If you need some Rank III Cmdr level skills, you can probably also find them there, but I haven't checked those prices yet.
Cryptic can't possibly create enough new content to let you max out every stat and gear item by doing each possible activity only once.
So: if you want STO to be more than a play-once 30 hour game you must accept that you will be "grinding." It's unavoidable.
Then: now that you accept that the only way to keep playing is to "grind" the trick is to find grind-things that you enjoy doing.
I turned off the XP bar completely, so as far as I'm concerned spec points just randomly pop up from time to time. The game's still not hard enough for me to go out of my way to grind for them.
"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."
The difference is if players adapt or not or difference between their mental approach of it.
Spoiled, self entitled players are usually the ones who whine about grinding because you dont need all of these stuff to do all end game content. You see the same accounts whinning about grinding in the STO forums.
Players who adapt mentality, gets whenever they get 1 specialization, patient players.
Players who adapt and try to beat the game usually make things faster to get the specialization. Others just have the time to max it out.
first they need to have a mentality , before adapting it. I don't say the game is perfect and balanced , but its on the right track . After all classes will be balanced , to make them usefull in game , and after that the pvp . It will be a great game. I still consider STO a good game to play when you don't have alot of free time. I used to play EVE ... thats a game where you have to pay ... with your life to be in top. I log in like 3 h / day in STO sometimes even less , but i have piloting and intel at full and a few points in command.
I'm just trundling around the galaxy trying to have some fun. Works for me, whatever level I'm on.
I hadn't touched the DR story missions until I had a character at 56. doing the story over a few days, and DOFFing, I got to 59 and a fifth. I'm fine with spec points being a slog to get, but I shouldn't have to repeat content ad-nauseam to get through the story.
You oonly get Access to traits and Kits/abilities with a high number of points invested in the pecs. It can make a major difference for someone who is a casual player and has only a few points and someone who is playing many hours and gets the Spec tree completed in no time.
One Spec point per week woul mean that someone who is level 60 has to wait 80 weeks for all specs. thats almost 2 years. adding vacation time, other reasons for not playing it will add up to 2 years and that just the Specs we already have. That is longer than all 6 Rep systems together.
Keep in mind too that the devs are planning on giving us more options into how we're able to get the skill points necessary to level/gain a specialization points.
If other patrols had increased xp rewards like argala, PvE queues had a bigger return on time investment for doing those, and if all adventure zones had skill point rewards whenever we completed something, would we still be able to call it a grind?
They removed the carrot from the end of the Spec Tree (the dil for leveling beyond) so it rendered getting to the end pointless. The Spec tree's themselves are only truly useful in PvP as they have an effect there. Whereas in PvE anyone with VR MkXII gear and a decent ability to fly their ship can get through all the content. What's Mk 14 needed for? Currently there's no point to it.
Now we are being told that we should grind for not only Intel but Command tree as well. WHY? There's no content that needs it and you already broke PvP...
Time for a talk with the dev's about content balance and difficulty methinks...
"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."