There is no reason a VR upgrade should cost this much

rarianrakista · April 2015

I understand UR and Epic costing obscene amounts of dil and upgrade comps but spending half a years worth of dilithium upgrading three weapons to VR is effing ridiculous. At this point it is an obvious zen to dilithium cash grab.

I came back for Delta Rising, I may not come back till the R and D system is fixed and fair.

darkjeff · April 2015

What little information you've provided only gives the sense that you don't know what you're doing.

virusdancer · April 2015

A wee bit more meat and a wee bit less gravy might make this a wee bit more constructive...

Rare what to Very Rare what? Might be a place to start.

But if it's just the typical rabid rant given to hysterical hyperbole...never mind.

rarianrakista · April 2015

Upgraded three rare mission-reward weapons to VR for aesthetic reasons and it took more effort, time, and money to do that than to run raids and craft in three other MMOs combined. STO crafting too much effort for little reward. If I took the Zen I spent for dilithium and R&D Packs combined I could've bought a T6 ship.

If you think spending 5-10 dollars of dilithium and millions upon millions of EC to upgrade a rare -- any rare -- to VR is good game mechanics for crafting, I'll sell you my old **** account and you can spend 2 years trying to get a single item to drop to craft end game gear with. A rare to VR upgrade should be easy, you can get VR gear from anywhere better than rare gear.

This is reminding me too much of Korean MMO levels of having to either grind the game like a job or buy the item outright. At this rate, without buying more than the Zen my LTS gives, it would take a semi-casual player like me years to upgrade a single toon to even UR, let alone epic while I can fully kit out a toon in most MMOs in less than 6 months without spending anything more than 10-20 hours a week playing, and paying for a sub. I will not treat STO, which has no end game challenge whatsoever as anything but a casual game but at the same time there isn't much to do but craft.

So if crafting is not casual, as it seems to be just a huge Zen to Dilithium/R&D packages pipeline for anyone that can't treat any game as a job I guess I will just keep coming back for the Season openings and leave when they are done.

I love crafting, and I don't even mind some RNG; but this is too much cash grab/time sink for me.

jam3s1701 · April 2015

rarianrakista wrote: »

Upgraded three rare mission-reward weapons to VR for aesthetic reasons and it took more effort, time, and money to do that than to run raids and craft in three other MMOs combined. STO crafting too much effort for little reward. If I took the Zen I spent for dilithium and R&D Packs combined I could've bought a T6 ship.

If you think spending 5-10 dollars of dilithium and millions upon millions of EC to upgrade a rare -- any rare -- to VR is good game mechanics for crafting, I'll sell you my old **** account and you can spend 2 years trying to get a single item to drop to craft end game gear with. A rare to VR upgrade should be easy, you can get VR gear from anywhere better than rare gear.

This is reminding me too much of Korean MMO levels of having to either grind the game like a job or buy the item outright. At this rate, without buying more than the Zen my LTS gives, it would take a semi-casual player like me years to upgrade a single toon to even UR, let alone epic while I can fully kit out a toon in most MMOs in less than 6 months without spending anything more than 10-20 hours a week playing, and paying for a sub. I will not treat STO, which has no end game challenge whatsoever as anything but a casual game but at the same time there isn't much to do but craft.

So if crafting is not casual, as it seems to be just a huge Zen to Dilithium/R&D packages pipeline for anyone that can't treat any game as a job I guess I will just keep coming back for the Season openings and leave when they are done.

I love crafting, and I don't even mind some RNG; but this is too much cash grab/time sink for me.

BIG question what upgrade tokens are you using? As this will effect how much you spend on upgrading am item also its chances of moving rarities.

amezuki · April 2015

westmetals wrote: »

Three things

All of this.

When I started my Delta recruit, I spent about 20 minutes on my main crafting a full set of VR MkII starter gear, and let crafting run for a while to grind out one Improved tech upgrade per item. Not even Superior--an Improved upgrade will only use a handful of "rare" mats and will still carry a MkII through multiple upgrade cycles. The VR MkII gear all used common mats.

The result? A full set of VR gear with upgrades already paid for all the way through Tier 4, a few of which were lucky enough to proc an UR upgrade along the way.

Less than a single day's worth of dilithium was used to apply the upgrades.

All of the mats used could be acquired in a day or two from normal play and doffing "scan for ____" assignments.

Yes, it does suck trying to take a blue item that is already MkXII and get it to VR. Upgrading rarity is difficult and expensive. If it wasn't, everyone would be rolling in full sets of gold gear.

tigeraries · April 2015

Omega upgrades

no dil cost and has quality upgrade chance...

next time they run it... skip all the other TRIBBLE and just farm the omega particles 24/7.

jam3s1701 · April 2015

amezuki wrote: »

All of this.

When I started my Delta recruit, I spent about 20 minutes on my main crafting a full set of VR MkII starter gear, and let crafting run for a while to grind out one Improved tech upgrade per item. Not even Superior--an Improved upgrade will only use a handful of "rare" mats and will still carry a MkII through multiple upgrade cycles. The VR MkII gear all used common mats.

The result? A full set of VR gear with upgrades already paid for all the way through Tier 4, a few of which were lucky enough to proc an UR upgrade along the way.

Less than a single day's worth of dilithium was used to apply the upgrades.

All of the mats used could be acquired in a day or two from normal play and doffing "scan for ____" assignments.

Yes, it does suck trying to take a blue item that is already MkXII and get it to VR. Upgrading rarity is difficult and expensive. If it wasn't, everyone would be rolling in full sets of gold gear.

Easiest way to get rarity upgrade on high end gear is to run low upgrades (yes yes expensive) to increase its chances don't ask me why it works but it does then when you get the purple or violet upgrade you use superior upgrades to finish.

spectreofwar604 · April 2015

westmetals wrote: »

I recently rearmed an entire Fleet Defiant with mk XIV purple weapons (well, one is blue, and two actually upgraded to ultra). It cost me about 250-300k dil (which I was able to generate via normal gameplay in about 2-3 weeks). I started with six purple mk II's and one (reward item) mk XII blue, and used exclusively Superior upgrades. This was done without purchasing anything with Zen... the dilithium and other supplies were all generated in-game..

3. As someone mentioned, which upgrades you are using makes a big difference. The "Superior" type is the most dilithium efficient - even without crits or boosters, they give about 4x the upgrade progress compared to Basic upgrades, when compared based on the dilithium cost to activate. (With boosters, this can be increased to 8x.) The intermediate and experimental upgrades are roughly halfway in between these two extremes.

I really have to step in and question how 300K dilithium is obtained in 2-3 weeks and have this NOT feel like a job. If you're doing nothing but playing numerous alts, "playing" at about the same hourly rate that you work without a day off, then your methodology might make it easy by technicality, but it's still ridiculous and outright stupid to expect people to be okay with it.

Whatever the OP is doing, efficient or not, what you are describing above is more of a grindy hell than any other MMO I've been in - and that's just for the bloody crafting.

Also, per your point #3: that's also an awful lot of EC, which again requires you to put in a ridiculous amount of time to gain per upgrade and then boosters. I'd say the OP's original gripes are valid, this stuff costs far too much.

sardocian · April 2015

spectreofwar604 wrote: »

Also, per your point #3: that's also an awful lot of EC, which again requires you to put in a ridiculous amount of time to gain per upgrade and then boosters. I'd say the OP's original gripes are valid, this stuff costs far too much.

It doesn't really cost that much EC (15k), just play the elite queues and you'll collect what's needed from normal gameplay (mats + EC).

That's what I do at least... usually I collect enough EC/materials/dilithium to attempt to upgrade 1 item to gold in a few weeks... getting to Very Rare should take less than a week per item.

shandypandy · April 2015

rarianrakista wrote: »

Upgraded three rare mission-reward weapons to VR for aesthetic reasons and it took more effort, time, and money to do that than to run raids and craft in three other MMOs combined. STO crafting too much effort for little reward. If I took the Zen I spent for dilithium and R&D Packs combined I could've bought a T6 ship.

If you think spending 5-10 dollars of dilithium and millions upon millions of EC to upgrade a rare -- any rare -- to VR is good game mechanics for crafting, I'll sell you my old **** account and you can spend 2 years trying to get a single item to drop to craft end game gear with. A rare to VR upgrade should be easy, you can get VR gear from anywhere better than rare gear.

This is reminding me too much of Korean MMO levels of having to either grind the game like a job or buy the item outright. At this rate, without buying more than the Zen my LTS gives, it would take a semi-casual player like me years to upgrade a single toon to even UR, let alone epic while I can fully kit out a toon in most MMOs in less than 6 months without spending anything more than 10-20 hours a week playing, and paying for a sub. I will not treat STO, which has no end game challenge whatsoever as anything but a casual game but at the same time there isn't much to do but craft.

So if crafting is not casual, as it seems to be just a huge Zen to Dilithium/R&D packages pipeline for anyone that can't treat any game as a job I guess I will just keep coming back for the Season openings and leave when they are done.

I love crafting, and I don't even mind some RNG; but this is too much cash grab/time sink for me.

It can't be more plain that a rarity upgrade is chance based. The dil costs of using the kits is made plain.

If you want to splooge money/dil/ec so an icon changes from blue to purple, it's obviously your look-out, isn't it.

There is no reason a VR upgrade should cost this much

Comments