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Post DOffing Rebalance; how best to earn Spec Points?
staq16
Member Posts: 1,181 Arc User
So, DOffing - or at least the 12hr mission element of it - is being brought back into line. As a major user (exploiter?) of this mechanism it's a bit of a blow, but did not take the brains of the proverbial archbishop to see coming.
I was going to be all bitter and twisted, but I owe a debt to the originator of this post:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1453141
...which reminded exactly how ugly self-entitled whining about a computer game is. Hey, it's been a good run, I've got alts with 62, 57, 56 and 44 spec points primarily through DOffing, which means they're all running at least one full primary and secondary each.
I still have a feeling that DOffing will be a good long-term way of building up alts without needing to grind patrol missions - it will simply be slow, on the order of 1-2 spec points per week. But for 10-20 mins per day, that's at least not too bad and it gets a lot of other rewards - good Mk XII gear, DOffs, Dil etc. And I can combine it with doing the ironing.
But otherwise... I keep seeing posters saying "Spec points are easy to get!". My question is this, what are you doing and how long does it take to earn a spec point?
- Sector patrols were timegated.
- Battlezone / queue XP rewards seem negligible.
- Missions only reward decently once.
So what are the experts doing to get all those Spec Points?-
I was going to be all bitter and twisted, but I owe a debt to the originator of this post:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1453141
...which reminded exactly how ugly self-entitled whining about a computer game is. Hey, it's been a good run, I've got alts with 62, 57, 56 and 44 spec points primarily through DOffing, which means they're all running at least one full primary and secondary each.
I still have a feeling that DOffing will be a good long-term way of building up alts without needing to grind patrol missions - it will simply be slow, on the order of 1-2 spec points per week. But for 10-20 mins per day, that's at least not too bad and it gets a lot of other rewards - good Mk XII gear, DOffs, Dil etc. And I can combine it with doing the ironing.
But otherwise... I keep seeing posters saying "Spec points are easy to get!". My question is this, what are you doing and how long does it take to earn a spec point?
- Sector patrols were timegated.
- Battlezone / queue XP rewards seem negligible.
- Missions only reward decently once.
So what are the experts doing to get all those Spec Points?-
Post edited by staq16 on
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Comments
Don't lose alot of time between them, each rewards reasonable XP per ship and around 3-3.5k for completion...
Also jump in on any Borg Invasions you see, the ships themselves are worth alot of XP and can easily earn you several thousand XP per initial group (before the command ship)...
For the time being, keep on doffing. Really. I also shiver at the prospect what the word normalizing means out of Gekos mouth because atm it still is the only thing to do when interested in SP gain on multiple alts. On my end it work even without those 1k+ assignments now being removed.
With 9 toons (9th being the DR) I also look at some 50-65 points at least on all my alts (on some even more/the DR has 22). Doffing related activities are at my end reduced to 30-45 mins/day max but split in 2 cycles (early morning with a coup of coffee and late afternoon when cooling down from work) or otherwise id have a hard time playing this game itself. What I do is more like stacking instead of professional doffing.
My sweetspot is the orbit around the fleet mine system where I try to grab as many XP and dil oriented assignments as I can. I also use this hub as easy access point for fleet related stuff directly or indirectly correlated with the doff system.
I can only tell you that this approach works on my end and probably granted me ~80% of all the SP I possess atm.
If Geko intends to take those benefits away from us he may please go ahead and will see the biggest drop in log in number metrics he has ever witnessed in the game he runs.
In my 3 years of STO there is one line that always keeps repeating Sorry Connor, no time for me to play today. Im just here to doff quickly. And yea even on those days I dont have time for STO I always tried to at least log briefly for doffing.
So by all means Geko, patch that reason out. Your otherwise laggy and buggy active game play will certainly profit when you have "normalized" doffing. Lol.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
And everytime we find something to make it a bit faster (IE less than 2 decades for the entire spec trees), Geko gets mad and nerf it.
I swear, this guy must be paid by hour of grind added.
However with the level cap raised and getting them all from 50-60, 14 in total i found the game extremely unfriendly to have that many characters to maintain.
Since PWE purchased Cryptic the game has turned more and more towards micro-transactions and time gated content, its going very much down the line of an Asian MMO grindfest, pay to advance or don't pay and hardly get anywhere
The western world like to get value/entertainment and progression out of the time they spend gaming, seeing things progress rather than slowly tick away behind timers. We don't have the patience to sit behind timers and wait for x to come off cool down so we can continue playing towards z which was a big complaint of the DR story arc you had to grind multiple patrols to hit the next level to continue the story line.
What PWE need to remember is Star Trek has a huge following, the i.p carries this game, they are in the entertainment business and they bought a product that was already at market, don't take a sound, enjoyed game and try to re-create the game for a new audience in Asian at the expense of alienating and losing the existing customer base you have. build upon the pillars that were already here and expand on them. Don't tear them down and try to turn the game into something else for a different market. Because that game model isn't successful in the west.
Entertainment is supposed to be fun once the fun goes we stop playing and i'm starting to feel the 1st time in 4 years of playing this game that my time/progression and enjoyment of this game is dwindling due to the changes that came with Delta Rising and the constant changes and messing around with the game. They've already made changes to some intel powers shortly after command came out, how long before command gets the same treatment now pilot is launched.
Sector patrols are timegated, but there are a LOT of them. Assuming you're not a novice who can barely beat opponents at normal difficulty then you should play them at advanced/elite.
Solo is fine, but teaming up gives you a lot more opponents to smash.
Undine Space Battle Zone and the space battle zone surrounding the voth ground battle zone give decent rewards though they're best suited for dilithium.
Last but not least play queues which shall remain unnamed as private at advanced/elite difficulty.
If i want i can haul in 5-6 specialization points a day and that is without the extra from smart doffing.
Bottom line is to play smart and stay as far away from grinding specific content over and over.
Enjoy the specialisation points as little extras to be enjoyed instead of being a "must have".
They're not "must haves". If you have played enough to earn those points then you don't need them for any PVE content.
Maybe they give an edge in PVP, but considering that even kerrat is deserted nowadays PVP is the last thing in the game to worry about.
Getting from L58 to L60 on my 1/2 Delta Recruits through DOFF & STF upon STF in order to get that final respec token & (what I thought would be, but isn't) extra bank and inventory space till the subscription ran out felt excessive, became no longer fun considering so few are around to team, the rubberbanding-lag that gets me motion-sick, the tray/console abiliities (what I thought were at some point fixed) that fail to activate and need to be babied on every mouse click cycle, on top of rows of failed (trolled) Pug STFs because of those who seem hell-bent on destroying the match for the team (I like a challenge, accept a failure, but a fully capable team shouldn't be trolled by 1, or sometimes 2 in the team by taking out gens early or at the opposite end of the map).
How much more Alt & F2P, and casual play unfriendly will this game get?
Whoever is responsible for that decision seems to not consider that perhaps at some point the state of the game and the general direction it has been heading steadily makes it feel more like a chore to play. It isn't enough the F2P aspect with heavy grind seems to force me into 1 character, on 1 faction, with 1 ship, and 1 ship loadout that's upgraded to Mk14 very rare or ultra rare (which is why I haven't upgraded nothing), and then use that over and over for the same bugged out maps, same lag-fest that isn't even in the recent patch notes of 'known issues,' and on the same maps with NPCs that do the same thing under circumstances that are entirely predictable and that never change. Why Kill PvP and then lock it behind pay2win upgrade system when that's what keeps a game always fresh, new, engaging with others (Multiplayer or Single player?) ?
It's frustrating.
I'm frustrated.:mad:
And lots that make earning spec points seem like a walk in the park. (Like the last time I made the mistake of trying an Aeria game.... by the time I'd gotten to lv20-22 - out of, I think 35-40? - the new "story" quests only got you ~5% through a level. At which point you had a couple repeatable quests, to kill like 50 mobs, that would give you maybe 2% including kills. And those were the only quests to do, so you'd better have liked killing those particular mobs. Or grinding the one dungeon per level bracket, for 3-4%. Oh, and you had to earn/buy keys for each dungeon run.)
In these mmo's, once you get all your spec points...what do you do?
Wouldn't know, I've never "maxed out" a character in any MMO I've played. I'm too much of an alt-a-holic (and not interested enough in the "the real game starts at endgame!" uber-grinding/raiding/farm-the-BIS-gear scene that exists in most MMOs & ARPGs. Yeah, I'll slowly work towards improving my characters, but I'm not in a hurry, and it doesn't have to be the absolute best. /shrug)