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Pick our mods - when?
dave18193
Member Posts: 416 Arc User
I remember a long time ago that a means of being able to select our mods upon successful craft/upgrade was in the works and was "coming soon". I havent heard anything on this for a long time - has the idea been shelved?
Itd make things so much easier if we could. I'd upgrade my conductive rcs and exotic particle field exciter in a heartbeat if I could guarantee they would get +ShHP, PartGen, or Turn.
Instead I choose to keep my dil, since I could sink 20,000 + into rarity upgrade and end up with a mod that isnt relevant to my build, such as +Grav, or worse a just plain useless one like +Stealth.
A mod selection system would also make crafting much more useful and appealing to the average player. As it stands, the chances of getting the 3 mods we want on a given weapon craft are puny - how many more players would part with their dilithium if they could guarantee [CrtD]x3 DHCs, for example?
My second issue with the upgrade system is increasing rarity at MKXIV. Its painful.
Instead of paying with blood sweat and tears for every % increase, a better way IMO would be to guarantee an increase in rarity every time you hit max. So effectively, it it was purple at 14 if you took it to max it would definitely be UR, do it again for epic.
Yes theyd make less money off hardcore minmaxers - but I believe much more money would come in from the less diehard crowd who are put off by the current system, and by others who currently only focus on one charcter. It would encourage spending on alts IMO.
Any thoughts/news anyone? Has cryptic said anything new on the subject since?
Itd make things so much easier if we could. I'd upgrade my conductive rcs and exotic particle field exciter in a heartbeat if I could guarantee they would get +ShHP, PartGen, or Turn.
Instead I choose to keep my dil, since I could sink 20,000 + into rarity upgrade and end up with a mod that isnt relevant to my build, such as +Grav, or worse a just plain useless one like +Stealth.
A mod selection system would also make crafting much more useful and appealing to the average player. As it stands, the chances of getting the 3 mods we want on a given weapon craft are puny - how many more players would part with their dilithium if they could guarantee [CrtD]x3 DHCs, for example?
My second issue with the upgrade system is increasing rarity at MKXIV. Its painful.
Instead of paying with blood sweat and tears for every % increase, a better way IMO would be to guarantee an increase in rarity every time you hit max. So effectively, it it was purple at 14 if you took it to max it would definitely be UR, do it again for epic.
Yes theyd make less money off hardcore minmaxers - but I believe much more money would come in from the less diehard crowd who are put off by the current system, and by others who currently only focus on one charcter. It would encourage spending on alts IMO.
Any thoughts/news anyone? Has cryptic said anything new on the subject since?
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Post edited by dave18193 on
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+1 THIS!!!
Ideally I would like to pick which mods I get on a crafted/upgraded piece of equipment, or perhaps pick from a small randomly chosen set of mods, but the big problem is the massive investment/gamble required to upgrade gear to Ultra Rare or Epic, for this reason I stop upgrading my gear at MK XIV Very Rare.
I haven't even bothered to upgrade my space weapons yet, I have all their mods the same I'd hate to have a Frankenstein build after upgrading them...:(
Sure, it shouldn't be free--make specific mods require specific R/VR mats or subcombines, increase the number of required mats, add a dil cost, whatever--people will pay for guaranteed results. The degree of randomness in the current system makes it a tedious chore, not a challenge.
What we have now is not a crafting system, it is a slot machine.
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He stated that they had not worked out "how" the idea of choosing mods was going to be implemented yet. So I would take "soon" with a VERY SMALL grain of salt. If they haven't figured out how to implement it, they haven't even started the coding process. I would say Season 10.5 at the earliest or 11.5, if we're lucky.
Personally, I would love for this to come out sooner than later, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
I dont know why they dont just utilize a drop down for each mod to be selected. I think dpsloss88 is right - they believe that they can milk more money from players by keeping it random.
But it seems to me that theyd get a lot more by creating a user friendly system without the ridiculous costs. Many players spending a fair amount, beats out a few spending a huge amount.
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Have you given any thought to what the overall game would look like if you could craft and/or upgrade to exactly what you desired? Would anyone create a weapon that wasn't one of two combinations ([CrtD]x3 [Pen] or [CrtD]x4)? How would that impact the scaling of the opposition? The larger problem is that there is little reason to use other modifiers. Once they retool the modifiers to be more useful/appealing then it will be advisable to allow users to choose modifiers. As it stands a character can be molded to cover the necessary levels of accuracy and crit chance via spec choices, traits and bridge officers.
Yes, the rarity increase after Mk XIV is a bit painful for things like reputation gear. For other things like tactical consoles it takes relatively little to roll the dice. The problem is that you have to pour a significant amount of resources into the item just to get another roll of the dice. The compounded rarity chance is nice (and the incentive to continue spending). What I think they should do is gradually scale the required technology points down after each attempt (reduce the total required by say 10%). So if you need 300,000 technology points to roll the dice on a Delta Deflector the first time, the second time it takes only 270,000, the third time takes 243,000, etc. It makes the next opportunity a bit less painful. It might also be worthwhile to revisit the technology point costs associated with each item type and the certainty tax applied to reputation gear (fixed/known mods).
Unless you get lucky, you usually have to get up into the mid 20% chance range before you can 'cheaply' just fill the technology point bar to get another roll of the dice with any expectation of success. So that is a complete bar of Experimental Superior Upgrades paired with quality boosts multiple times just to get a reasonable shot at a rarity bump.
The other thing to weigh is should it be easier to increase rarity? Should everyone be running around in complete sets of epic gear with optimal modifiers? It is extremely easy right now to obtain some epic gear if you are willing to craft and spend a little on an Omega Upgrade paired with a quality booster. I would suspect that the median gearing of the user base at level 60 is somewhere near Mk XIII-XIV very rare.
I dunno though. True, there would be less mod variety. But why would that be a bad thing?
Having selectable mods would encourage more people to craft and upgrade. This would encourage people to use their alts - in turn leading to more variety, not less.
It would also mean a return to chopping and changing builds. Right now, I have no desire to change my build ever again - Ive already sunk a good half million dil into this one and I have no desire to repeat the process, be it on my main or an alt.
I see your second point (on the ease of upgrading), but I dont neccessarily agree. It isnt extremely easy to upgrade, for example, a beam once it hits MK14. I sank about 25,000 dil into getting one beam to 14UR - Ive yet to get an epic beam.
Omega upgrades themselves cost an easy 3 mil to make, with another mil on a qual accelerator. It you sink even 5 of those per item, by the time youve done four beams you could have bought a lockbox ship and have change. This is far out of reach to most of the playerbase.
While I dont believe getting to MK14 Epic should be easy, it certainly shouldnt be this crushingly expensive. If the cost was fixed - say 10 purples to get to UR, 15 more for epic - we'd at least be able to make solid decisions on an item by item basis, even if that cost was high. We'd know what we were getting and how much we'd be paying for it.
Having a random upgrade chance, followed by a random UR mod just seems silly to me.
Ultimately, a system with fixed prices and selectable mods would reduce frustration - which has to be a good thing since this is a game (fun good, rage bad).
While theyd make less (slightly) off the minmax players, theyd more than recoup it by encouraging upgrades on alts - not to mention encouraging countless more people who currently completely avoid the whole random mess of the current system.
Of course, a better way would be to do what you and ursusmorologous suggested - balance the mods. Some builds still call for specific mods, but at least it wouldnt be as dissapointing as getting a useless mod - like getting stuck with a STUPID DMG MOD (that was rage there. sank an exp beam tech into 3 MK2 beams and got that each time. wasnt happy).
I wish theyd do both. Balance the mods, and give us selectable mods with fixed costs. Apparently other mmo's manage it (or so Im told)
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Ok, let's take a look at weapons. All weapons would be [Ac/Dm] [CrtD]x4 or [Ac/Dm] [CrtD]x3 [Pen]. That's +10% Accuracy, +x% Damage, +60-80% Critical Severity and possibly ignoring some damage resistance. That would be on every single weapon on every single ship for every player in the entire game. That sets a new baseline for damage output (the bell curve shifts way over to one side) which means the developers would have to scale the opposition to compensate, otherwise the playerbase would just roll all over everything. Anyone not using that template would be disadvantaged.
I think more people would use their alts if the XP for Specialization points wasn't so daunting (coupled with the leveling slog 50-60). Crafting & Upgrading with selectable mods would not make people craft more. You would make one set per character and be done with it forever (until the next FotM rolled out). Many mission rewards would be substandard and only worthy of vendoring. Only a select few reputation rewards would be worthwhile. There would be little reason to purchase a Fleet/Spire Core as you could just craft the absolute ideal.
Dilithium expenditure is the pivot point for the STO profit model (zen). If people do not invest Dil to get a good Spire Core or spend Dil on the next batch of Superior upgrades, where is STO making money (beyond lockbox keys and ship packs)? They would probably have to alter the dilithium costs on the upgrades and somehow link dilithium to choosing your modifiers.
Not all modifiers are random (reputation gear and some mission rewards have fixed mods). The random modifiers coupled with random upgrade chance is not great for player motivation, but it works within the profit generation framework that PWE uses.
If you want an epic beam, craft Mk II's and apply an Experimental Superior Upgrade coupled with a 1.5x quality boost. It might take a minimal amount of effort and time to gather the materials, but it is dirt simple. You won't get epic with all of them in one shot, but you will also have multiple shots along the way to Mk XIV to hit UR/epic. The materials are a bucket full of common mats to craft the Mk II beam itself. The upgrade is a handful of rare materials and a single very rare material and two UR mats (that you can get from running the simplest of simple Undine Infiltration Elite). The quality boost itself is ~300K EC on the exchange. If you can't do that or are unwilling there is no reason for complaints. This is totally attainable by the majority of the playerbase.
If you are using Omega Upgrades on Mk XIV items, you are missing out on maximizing their potential. If UR/Epic is what you want, use them on Mk II items. They are really handy on setting up an initial spike in the rarity chance at Mk XIV, but it is not very rewarding if you are unsuccessful on the first couple attempts.
I have three Crescent DHCs at Mk XIV. I managed to get one of them to Ultra Rare. I will probably never see them get to epic and I am okay with that. I also have a Hargh'Peng at Mk XIV that I will take to epic with absolutely no exceptions. Find what is important to you in the game and focus on that. Not everything has to be min/maxed to the gills with your hair on fire while riding a shark that is shooting lasers at the idiots.
I must admit, I didnt consider the effects on the damage curve. It would make advanced queues much easier, and take the edge off elites. Maybe the costs should be kept high.
However, If the costs were kept high, (but not astronomical), the epics would still be reserved for the most dedicated and spend friendly players, with many more keeping VR or UR on most items.
It might just be me, but I dont agree with the idea that a fixed system would mean less money for pwe. True, theyd get less off the uber upgrader players. But theyd make many times more by having a user friendly system which encourages more people to craft. Pretty much every player ive chatted to, and most posts ive seen, has criticized the current system for its RNG dependance. If they took that away, youd have a great many new players using the system, and spending dil on it.
And as to the episode rewards being vendor trash, that wouldnt be anything new. Most of them are trash now in terms of end game builds. Some items, like the obelisk core, would still have their place. The rest would be for exactly what it is now - leveling up a toon.
I think randomness is still the biggest problem. Random chance of upgrade, random mod. Benefits no one. Personally id rather see high, but fixed costs.
A compromise could be to unlock selectable mods once you hit 15 (or even 20) in the appropriate R and D school, and/or putting a dil/ec "tax" on selecting mods. This would prevent ultra low priced epic gear flooding the exchange and making early content too easy.
Even if they kept the cost the same - by utlizing an average of how much it takes now - but implemented a mod selection system with fixed prices it would be so much less frustrating.
More broadly, i think you're right about spec points being the biggest obstacle to making alts - one which should be resolved by reducing the exorbitant price per spec pont, or implementing an account wide spec unlock system IMO. But to me the crafting and upgrade systems are a close second in alts unfriendliness, and represents a major problem in the current design of the game.
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Chicken and egg argument. Current "belief" seems to be that, outside of maybe [Dmg], all mods are "supposedly equally useful/beneficial".
Therefore, the odds of an entire mod rescale occurring are fairly low. However, with a "craft your own" system, the metrics from said system will scream "[CrtD]x4 (or x3+ [Pen])" and they'll begin to question why the other mods aren't being selected and then worked on...
Everyone qq'ed for the "Random loot tables of the original STFs". They put it into getting epic via crafting - then the original qq of "it takes too much to get the drop if you're on the wrong side of the RNG" comes forth. Classic no-win scenerio...
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I have been grinding for 2 weeks to get enough of z particle and salvage things to craft almost 30 experimental upgrades. Than I used 28 of them to get my tr-116b sto ultra rare with 2 dmg mods.
Now I need to do that one more time to get it to epic. Then I will go to my zenfone cochrane shotgun and do that one.:P