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Unspent Spec Point Decay
leviathan99
Member Posts: 7,747 Arc User
You know how the first marks package each day awards bonus rep?
What if:
- They added XP to the daily bonus marks bundles so that first completion grants roughly double XP for each rep?
- Added a reward for your first story mission playthrough or replay each day, containing an amount of XP that is half your level, times 100. (Ie. 5k at 10, 30k at 60.)
This is just a general quality of life thing.
Now, I think their fear is in part that people will have saved up spec points for the next specialization and they want people to feel the need to come back, login, and play when a new spec comes out rather than having saved up spec points.
What's interesting for me however is how Delta Recruits had a separate pool of "voucher" dilithium for fleet and rep projects that could be spent like regular dilithium but only in an assigned place.
I think in the long run, what's needed is some form of spec point decay where unspent spec points get converted into unrefined dilithium at the end of each week.
This gets us back to the original design which treated maxed specializations as a dilithium source. It opens up devs to be freer with XP and to get rid of the specialization point cap because they can be sure that a new specialization will take time to complete if people cannot save up for it.
Obviously, you run the risk of people accumulating TOO MUCH dilithium so I'd handle the weekly unspent spec point conversion in a special way.
Basically, the conversion would take place on a curve so that vastly more spec points have diminishing returns on dilithium.
But I'd model it in part on the High Warlord/Grand Marshall PvP system from vanilla WoW and in part on STO's original dilithium conversion so that players with excess spec points get tokens for a very special cosmetic overachiever store.
This store would include:
- Veteran BOffs (based on the ones from the original dilithium conversion)
- FE Featured Rewards
- Party Horns
- Emotes
- Fleet Credit Bundles
- A crafting supply box with a chance to drop Omega Particles
- Bound lockbox keys
- The S1 Worf Costume Bundle with Baldric
- The Khan costume for people who missed that promo
- The Kobali costume for people who missed that
- Possibly some pre-order items
- Lobi and lockbox items as they become obsolete in Bind-on-Pickup packages, such as the original T5 Jem'Hadar Attack Ship
One other thing I might look to get in here are the various species combadges and special badges/pips for things like exotic ranks from the show, the Commodore title, and the Parallels Combadge. I'd set these up in little bundles with a badge/baldric/pips and an accompanying title. Things like "Bajoran Militia Colonel".
These would have minimal impact on the dilithium economy but would be an incentive/thank you for the people who get hit with diminishing returns on the weekly decay/conversion of unspent spec points into dilithium.
I think overall this would free devs to be MUCH more free with XP and would turn big bonus XP events into special reward weeks. Two weeks before a new specialization launches, for example, they could have something like a 4x XP event knowing that it will allow people to catch up on specialization unlocks without anyone building up a stockpile to get ahead... and that people who ARE maxed out on spec points will be motivated by dilithium, up to a point. And people who have vast stockpiles of dilithium will be motivated by the cosmetic unlocks.
What if:
- They added XP to the daily bonus marks bundles so that first completion grants roughly double XP for each rep?
- Added a reward for your first story mission playthrough or replay each day, containing an amount of XP that is half your level, times 100. (Ie. 5k at 10, 30k at 60.)
This is just a general quality of life thing.
Now, I think their fear is in part that people will have saved up spec points for the next specialization and they want people to feel the need to come back, login, and play when a new spec comes out rather than having saved up spec points.
What's interesting for me however is how Delta Recruits had a separate pool of "voucher" dilithium for fleet and rep projects that could be spent like regular dilithium but only in an assigned place.
I think in the long run, what's needed is some form of spec point decay where unspent spec points get converted into unrefined dilithium at the end of each week.
This gets us back to the original design which treated maxed specializations as a dilithium source. It opens up devs to be freer with XP and to get rid of the specialization point cap because they can be sure that a new specialization will take time to complete if people cannot save up for it.
Obviously, you run the risk of people accumulating TOO MUCH dilithium so I'd handle the weekly unspent spec point conversion in a special way.
Basically, the conversion would take place on a curve so that vastly more spec points have diminishing returns on dilithium.
But I'd model it in part on the High Warlord/Grand Marshall PvP system from vanilla WoW and in part on STO's original dilithium conversion so that players with excess spec points get tokens for a very special cosmetic overachiever store.
This store would include:
- Veteran BOffs (based on the ones from the original dilithium conversion)
- FE Featured Rewards
- Party Horns
- Emotes
- Fleet Credit Bundles
- A crafting supply box with a chance to drop Omega Particles
- Bound lockbox keys
- The S1 Worf Costume Bundle with Baldric
- The Khan costume for people who missed that promo
- The Kobali costume for people who missed that
- Possibly some pre-order items
- Lobi and lockbox items as they become obsolete in Bind-on-Pickup packages, such as the original T5 Jem'Hadar Attack Ship
One other thing I might look to get in here are the various species combadges and special badges/pips for things like exotic ranks from the show, the Commodore title, and the Parallels Combadge. I'd set these up in little bundles with a badge/baldric/pips and an accompanying title. Things like "Bajoran Militia Colonel".
These would have minimal impact on the dilithium economy but would be an incentive/thank you for the people who get hit with diminishing returns on the weekly decay/conversion of unspent spec points into dilithium.
I think overall this would free devs to be MUCH more free with XP and would turn big bonus XP events into special reward weeks. Two weeks before a new specialization launches, for example, they could have something like a 4x XP event knowing that it will allow people to catch up on specialization unlocks without anyone building up a stockpile to get ahead... and that people who ARE maxed out on spec points will be motivated by dilithium, up to a point. And people who have vast stockpiles of dilithium will be motivated by the cosmetic unlocks.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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That'd be one way to do the impossible and get me to like spec points even less than I currently do.
HW/GM is the worst thing to model it on. If you weren't sharing your login and part of the cabal and in their favor you'd never get your "turn" at it no matter how much you ground out the battle grounds.
I logged my Delta Recruit in with Arc and got it.
Plus, with the way they crank out specializations... I'll likely never see a surplus.
This is only a problem for the elite-of-the-elite. I just don't see how this would benefit the playerbase as a whole, without looking like you're rewarding a small number of players with free stuff. Just re-institute the DIL exchange idea, if that's the case.
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Log in through Arc and get Khan's STII:TWOK outfit.
Not everyone, for sure. I don't have them.
However, my read is that devs are being stingy with XP for fear that people MIGHT get them.
I think it would better serve the vast majority of players to be much freer with XP and have the points expire in some form if unspent than be stingy with XP over the fear of what happens if people MIGHT hoard the points in isolated cases.
Everything else I describe from there is just a contingency to deal with people who, for whatever reason, can't spend or don't spend the points they get before they expire.
Okay, I hear what you're saying.
I'd be cool with an expiration limit on spec points... just sitting on them is a silly idea (I know people likely do it, but why?), and if you've unlocked all the Spec Trees? Good on you! You get 4 Starship Traits!
They (the devs) need to figure out a better way to handle this issue... they're trigger-shy to try and remedy this problem, yet doing nothing makes me want to spend less time in-game. If it's time they're worried about, then making the most time-related currency tied to an expiration timer seems logical.
STO Resources: <Ship Comparison - All Tiers + Small Craft + Hangar Pets> <Damage Resistance>
<R&D + Upgrade Costs> <Duty Officer Finder> <Suliban Doff Reqs> <Fleet Costs> <Rep Costs>
<Keybind Tour the Galaxy> <Fleet / Armada Management> <Currency Exchange> <Other STO Links>
I thought the devs removed the points-to-DIL thing during the... *cough*... Tau Dewa ordeal?
I'll just let Lilly Allen do the talking for me:
http://youtu.be/9hyrQzhU08w
To combat the hording, a mechanism would need to put into place to reduce or eliminate hording.
I am by no means a high DPSer, elite PVe player, or PVP user. I have yet to spend any spec points on a majority of my toons. (I tired it out once on one toon, didn't like it and stopped). I think I am sitting on 30-35 spec points per toon, which I have earned just by playing the game.
My question is this:
Why should I put into a postion of use or lose something I have earned? Do to the high cost of obtaining each one, shouldn't I be able to decide how they are used or not used?
Except then what happens if people skip specializations they don't like or hold out knowing the next one will be more powerful (and it probably will be, by design).
Or, for example, if I level a new alt, it's a no-brainer to take Command first since Command provides an XP boost.
Whereas, ideally, devs want you to shoot for all of them and not skip any of them. That yields more playtime.
I think the concern is that people will not spend on the current specs and have a surplus for the next (probably deliberately better) spec.
Which means when they roll out a new spec, they won't get the playtime/metrics boost they want out of it. They want the specs to encourage continuous play and new specs to drive new playtime. They don't want people to skip specs or suddenly have the hot new specialization the day it comes out. This is why they capped how many you can accumulate and made XP such a chore.
I'm saying that they've built a dam at the wrong place in the river.
- Eliminate the cap on how many spec points you can accumulate.
- Increase XP.
- Require people to either spend the specialization SKILL points they earn each week or those points get converted into something else.
This means everybody can catch up (particularly with better base XP and even better bonus events) but that nobody is ahead when a new spec rolls out.
A month before a new specialization comes out, for example, they could launch 4x or 5x specialization points event. Everybody gets caught up. Those who are maxed out get their surplus spec skill points converted into currency and cosmetics. But since the spec skill points would decay, everybody is starting from scratch on the new specialization, which yields the desired effect of a new specialization creating new playtime.
This would be a suggestion which would directly influence my main character which will probably get the last 2-3 specialisation points to completely fill out the tree later this week (Depends on how much time the RL project I'm working on is going to take).
Despite that i probably haul in points faster than the average player i view the specialisation points as little extras. With this in mind i like the XP bonus on first time dailies for rep marks.
What i dislike a LOT is that the extra reward for all intent and purpose turns the Specialisation points into a mandatory grind.
So add the bonus XP to dailies, but remove all the other stuff except for the small dilithium gain. That way the casual players gain specialisation points a bit faster the little surprises don't become a mandatory grind.