Once a day, you can trade in a bunch of uncommon R&D mats in exchange for 2.5K school XP, 1,200 dil, 15K EC, a random VR mat and some rare mats in the R&D holding.
Where and what mission or doff assignment is that?
I have experienced all crafting systems in STO. So far, this one seems to be least attractive to me. I made I new toon like 3 weeks ago and this are my observations from a perspective of player who returned to the game after few years break.
- you level 100x faster than your R&D skills, which makes crafting of low tier items pointless for purpose of using them as you level up
- you need to your R&D skills to 15 before you can do something useful, which means like 40 days of sloting projects (boring),
- crafting is just another RNG slot machine, because the odds of getting the mods you want is pretty slim, especially when they added more modifiers which makes it even more difficult
- which makes crafting XII items pointless, because the "best" and cheapest way is to craft mk II and upgrade them.
- special projects require special doffs, which means you need room for more doffs
I must say I'm pretty disappointed with this system. Some ideas are neat, but the RNG factor is huge downside for me. I want to craft something I need, not craft something and HOPE I get something I need. I will rather buy that on exchange.
"Cryptic Studio’s Jack Emmert (2010): Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
I'm with you there. I don't gamble and the upgrade system is gambling when it comes to rarity upgrades.
Same. I only upgrade to Mk XIV, and while I'm happy to take any lucky rarity upgrades that come my way in the process, I'm not going to pursue them, at least not with upgrading in its current state.
You could always sell mats you don't need so you have cash to buy the mats you do need.
You can make over a hundred mats a day if you combine the methods I said above. They aren't hard to get. The rare ones maybe, but they're rare. The rare particle traces were hard to get in the previous crafting system, and were also random drops. To that end, randomness has always been part of the crafting in STO.
I do have issues with the R&D system. Mat availability isn't one of them.
The previous crafting system I barely did anything with because of the difficulty of getting mats and the dil costs. Currently, I level the schools but don't really 'make' things because of the rarity of some of the mats, and the difficulty of getting them. So I can say that the system is getting better but needs to tweaked a little more to be completely usable. And one of the things that needs to be tweaked is the ways and methods to get the mats you want.
Also don't forget kids, for WOW (and most of Blizzard's games) you need pay IRL cash for the privilege of accessing that said game. Every Cryptic games including STO is F2P, eg. you download and play without paying a dime!
Of course the monetization will be different!
But if they want to keep with their stated goal that you can do it all without playing, they need to change this so that I don't have to pay.
Once a day, you can trade in a bunch of uncommon R&D mats in exchange for 2.5K school XP, 1,200 dil, 15K EC, a random VR mat and some rare mats in the R&D holding.
My Fleet R&D holding doesn't have that active yet.
I'm with you there. I don't gamble and the upgrade system is gambling when it comes to rarity upgrades.
Same. I only upgrade to Mk XIV, and while I'm happy to take any lucky rarity upgrades that come my way in the process, I'm not going to pursue them, at least not with upgrading in its current state.
I upgrade to Mark XIV VR and then stop. If I get UR or better, then yay for me. Otherwise, I just settle with that.
The RNG aspect of the crafting is one of the worst possible things they have done with this system. The RNG of the upgrade is really counter-intuitive to crafting. They really need to look at this part of the crafting systems as well as the mats acquisition. If they revamped these two things then I feel that they will have a true crafting system in STO.
I DOff, run elite STFs and don't suffer from 'gimme shiny, gimme now'.
I have never had a problem with availability of material, although I am vastly over provided in some areas, I accept.
The recent comsumables and additions to the crafting recipe list, in my opinion, show the devs recognise some materials are more common than necessary and they seem to be providing a use for them.
Once a day, you can trade in a bunch of uncommon R&D mats in exchange for 2.5K school XP, 1,200 dil, 15K EC, a random VR mat and some rare mats in the R&D holding.
My Fleet R&D holding doesn't have that active yet.
I'm with you there. I don't gamble and the upgrade system is gambling when it comes to rarity upgrades.
Same. I only upgrade to Mk XIV, and while I'm happy to take any lucky rarity upgrades that come my way in the process, I'm not going to pursue them, at least not with upgrading in its current state.
I upgrade to Mark XIV VR and then stop. If I get UR or better, then yay for me. Otherwise, I just settle with that.
The RNG aspect of the crafting is one of the worst possible things they have done with this system. The RNG of the upgrade is really counter-intuitive to crafting. They really need to look at this part of the crafting systems as well as the mats acquisition. If they revamped these two things then I feel that they will have a true crafting system in STO.
Well, how would they do that though? Costs seem to be balanced with the assumption that most things you craft will be TRIBBLE. IF you could choose the rarity and mods the costs would likely skyrocket.
Anyways, I used to craft stuff in STO Crafting ver2.0. It was ok.,. but it had severe limits due to the number of recipes that you could choose from. Also... the gear all had preset mods that were not necessarily good. Oh and you could never craft low or mid level items at purple, low level items were always green. Getting mats was easy if you liked grinding exploration clusters. But that was the only easy way. Also the mats had level tiers and the mats for making top quality stuff were only for max level players.
Then F2P hit and dil was added to the game. This added Unreplicatables which you had to buy for dil. It didn't change much really, except making crafting more expensive. But it also made crafting less desirable. Especially since the same quality of gear, but with random mods could be had by grinding queues.
I forget when exactly, but somewhere in there Mk12 gear got added, and you couldn't craft that. Thus crafted gear was doomed to be inferior to random loot from Borg STFs..... yeah, that greatly diminished the value of crafting.
Now... aside from the random mods, the current crafting system is IMO able to do anything ver2.x did. While it was theoretically possible to max your crafting skill in ver2 in a day... that ate a LOT of mats, and took hours. Trying to start crafting at level 45 was a bad idea simply because you couldn't craft anything but green quality junk. And you had to mass-produce it to level your crafting schools.
The main thing I would add to the current system is a special upgrade pack that changes mods. Obviously these wouldn't be free and would need to be crafted, but... It'd be a lot less work than rebuilding the way the system works. Also it'd let you change mods on NON-crafted gear as well. Which is something the system needs IMO.
Once a day, you can trade in a bunch of uncommon R&D mats in exchange for 2.5K school XP, 1,200 dil, 15K EC, a random VR mat and some rare mats in the R&D holding.
My Fleet R&D holding doesn't have that active yet.
I'm with you there. I don't gamble and the upgrade system is gambling when it comes to rarity upgrades.
Same. I only upgrade to Mk XIV, and while I'm happy to take any lucky rarity upgrades that come my way in the process, I'm not going to pursue them, at least not with upgrading in its current state.
I upgrade to Mark XIV VR and then stop. If I get UR or better, then yay for me. Otherwise, I just settle with that.
The RNG aspect of the crafting is one of the worst possible things they have done with this system. The RNG of the upgrade is really counter-intuitive to crafting. They really need to look at this part of the crafting systems as well as the mats acquisition. If they revamped these two things then I feel that they will have a true crafting system in STO.
Well, how would they do that though? Costs seem to be balanced with the assumption that most things you craft will be TRIBBLE. IF you could choose the rarity and mods the costs would likely skyrocket.
Anyways, I used to craft stuff in STO Crafting ver2.0. It was ok.,. but it had severe limits due to the number of recipes that you could choose from. Also... the gear all had preset mods that were not necessarily good. Oh and you could never craft low or mid level items at purple, low level items were always green. Getting mats was easy if you liked grinding exploration clusters. But that was the only easy way. Also the mats had level tiers and the mats for making top quality stuff were only for max level players.
Then F2P hit and dil was added to the game. This added Unreplicatables which you had to buy for dil. It didn't change much really, except making crafting more expensive. But it also made crafting less desirable. Especially since the same quality of gear, but with random mods could be had by grinding queues.
I forget when exactly, but somewhere in there Mk12 gear got added, and you couldn't craft that. Thus crafted gear was doomed to be inferior to random loot from Borg STFs..... yeah, that greatly diminished the value of crafting.
Now... aside from the random mods, the current crafting system is IMO able to do anything ver2.x did. While it was theoretically possible to max your crafting skill in ver2 in a day... that ate a LOT of mats, and took hours. Trying to start crafting at level 45 was a bad idea simply because you couldn't craft anything but green quality junk. And you had to mass-produce it to level your crafting schools.
The main thing I would add to the current system is a special upgrade pack that changes mods. Obviously these wouldn't be free and would need to be crafted, but... It'd be a lot less work than rebuilding the way the system works. Also it'd let you change mods on NON-crafted gear as well. Which is something the system needs IMO.
The mods can be controlled by the recipe. Put certain combination of mats into it and out comes the device you wanted. And by doing that they can control the cost by controlling which mats and how many of them are needed. And it would not be different from the recipes that they have for the special Items. There just would be more of them. As for the cost skyrocketing, if the they need more mats to make the specific things I want, that is fine as long as there are more than one way to get the specific mats. And I don't mean random chances from boxes or DOff's or the purchasing of stuff off the exchange. There has to be a way that people can reliably get any mat they want without having to wait for STF's that may never pop.
In theory.... but let's look at how it works in practice.
1: quality is semi-random. Thus you don't know how many mods you will actually get.
2: how would you setup the UI to have buttons for picking mods without making the interface hideously cluttered? I can think of ideas that could possibly work, but the devs would have to rebuild the interface to use it. Which may or may not be more work than it's worth.
In theory.... but let's look at how it works in practice.
1: quality is semi-random. Thus you don't know how many mods you will actually get.
2: how would you setup the UI to have buttons for picking mods without making the interface hideously cluttered? I can think of ideas that could possibly work, but the devs would have to rebuild the interface to use it. Which may or may not be more work than it's worth.
Drop down boxes for each mod slot. You pick the quality by picking how many mods you slot. And then you figure out how many mats are used by each mod and then multiply by the number of mods you get. And you get a simple to calculate expenses model. This method can also make requirements on the number and type of DOff's are need to be assigned to the recipe as you pick the mods and define the quality.
This still allows for the upgrade system as random gear can be upgraded. And then you can also upgrade your crafted gear if you don't have enough mats or DOff's. This could be random, as it is now. Or you could have it controlled in a similar method as above.
The above idea is open to alterations, it just a starting point.
Well, how would they do that though? Costs seem to be balanced with the assumption that most things you craft will be TRIBBLE. IF you could choose the rarity and mods the costs would likely skyrocket.
Easy, actually. Crafting an item with random attributes would be at the base cost we're already familiar with. For every specific modifier you want to lock in, the materials cost would go up. The cost would ideally increase even further for every duplicate modifier you wanted to stack. So:
- Weapon with all random modifiers: x1.0
- Weapon with one [CrtH] modifier: x2.0
- Weapon with [CrtH], [CrtD], and [Dmg]: x6.0
- Weapon with [CrtD] x3: x24.0
Note: The multipliers listed are not actual suggestions for increases. They're just meant to convey the general idea of "the more you customize, the more you pay to make sure your R&D workers get the job done correctly."
Yeah like I said, that's probably take more time to code. Also, it'd be a bit redundant if you can change the mods after crafting for the same cost.
And really.... the main thing is that people would probably use it to mass-produce CritDx3 gear....
And why not create the system where they can mass produce those at exorbient materials cost? It will force them to play the game to get all that stuff.
Well, my suggestion would give you a way to "fix" the mods on episode gear like Dominion Polaron or Plasma Disruptors. Sure, if all you want is a regular CritD*3 weapon, it's the same, but if you want a special weapon it's different.
Well, my suggestion would give you a way to "fix" the mods on episode gear like Dominion Polaron or Plasma Disruptors. Sure, if all you want is a regular CritD*3 weapon, it's the same, but if you want a special weapon it's different.
Another way to consider is that you only get the recipe for a weapon specific mod set up once you have one. SO if you find one in a drop, or you get a special weapon, you can "reverse engineer" it (other words use it as the mat) to get the recipe. Then you can build that specific thing every time. So you can keep the current system and add this way of being able to reliable build the weapon you want once you 'lucked' into the mod format that you are looking for. Keeps the rng system as is and then adds the ability to replicate it without the rng waste. Sort of a compromise of both worlds.
Comments
Where and what mission or doff assignment is that?
- you level 100x faster than your R&D skills, which makes crafting of low tier items pointless for purpose of using them as you level up
- you need to your R&D skills to 15 before you can do something useful, which means like 40 days of sloting projects (boring),
- crafting is just another RNG slot machine, because the odds of getting the mods you want is pretty slim, especially when they added more modifiers which makes it even more difficult
- which makes crafting XII items pointless, because the "best" and cheapest way is to craft mk II and upgrade them.
- special projects require special doffs, which means you need room for more doffs
I must say I'm pretty disappointed with this system. Some ideas are neat, but the RNG factor is huge downside for me. I want to craft something I need, not craft something and HOPE I get something I need. I will rather buy that on exchange.
The previous crafting system I barely did anything with because of the difficulty of getting mats and the dil costs. Currently, I level the schools but don't really 'make' things because of the rarity of some of the mats, and the difficulty of getting them. So I can say that the system is getting better but needs to tweaked a little more to be completely usable. And one of the things that needs to be tweaked is the ways and methods to get the mats you want.
KDF: Dahar Master Kan (Borg Klingon Tactical)::Dahar Master Torc (Alien Science)::Dahar Master Sisteric (Gorn Engineer)
RR-Fed: Citizen Sirroc (Romulan Science)::Fleet Admiral Grell (Alien Engineer)
RR-KDF: Fleet Admiral Zemo (Reman Tactical)::Fleet Admiral Xinatek (Reman Science)::Fleet Admiral Bel (Alien Engineer)
TOS-Fed: Fleet Admiral Katem (Andorian Tactical)::Lieutenant Commander Straad (Vulcan Engineer)
Dom-Fed: Dan'Tar (Jem'Hadar Science)
Dom-KDF: Kamtana'Solan (Jem'Hadar Science)
CoHost of Tribbles in Ecstasy (Zombee)
But if they want to keep with their stated goal that you can do it all without playing, they need to change this so that I don't have to pay.
KDF: Dahar Master Kan (Borg Klingon Tactical)::Dahar Master Torc (Alien Science)::Dahar Master Sisteric (Gorn Engineer)
RR-Fed: Citizen Sirroc (Romulan Science)::Fleet Admiral Grell (Alien Engineer)
RR-KDF: Fleet Admiral Zemo (Reman Tactical)::Fleet Admiral Xinatek (Reman Science)::Fleet Admiral Bel (Alien Engineer)
TOS-Fed: Fleet Admiral Katem (Andorian Tactical)::Lieutenant Commander Straad (Vulcan Engineer)
Dom-Fed: Dan'Tar (Jem'Hadar Science)
Dom-KDF: Kamtana'Solan (Jem'Hadar Science)
CoHost of Tribbles in Ecstasy (Zombee)
My Fleet R&D holding doesn't have that active yet.
I upgrade to Mark XIV VR and then stop. If I get UR or better, then yay for me. Otherwise, I just settle with that.
The RNG aspect of the crafting is one of the worst possible things they have done with this system. The RNG of the upgrade is really counter-intuitive to crafting. They really need to look at this part of the crafting systems as well as the mats acquisition. If they revamped these two things then I feel that they will have a true crafting system in STO.
KDF: Dahar Master Kan (Borg Klingon Tactical)::Dahar Master Torc (Alien Science)::Dahar Master Sisteric (Gorn Engineer)
RR-Fed: Citizen Sirroc (Romulan Science)::Fleet Admiral Grell (Alien Engineer)
RR-KDF: Fleet Admiral Zemo (Reman Tactical)::Fleet Admiral Xinatek (Reman Science)::Fleet Admiral Bel (Alien Engineer)
TOS-Fed: Fleet Admiral Katem (Andorian Tactical)::Lieutenant Commander Straad (Vulcan Engineer)
Dom-Fed: Dan'Tar (Jem'Hadar Science)
Dom-KDF: Kamtana'Solan (Jem'Hadar Science)
CoHost of Tribbles in Ecstasy (Zombee)
I have never had a problem with availability of material, although I am vastly over provided in some areas, I accept.
The recent comsumables and additions to the crafting recipe list, in my opinion, show the devs recognise some materials are more common than necessary and they seem to be providing a use for them.
Anyways, I used to craft stuff in STO Crafting ver2.0. It was ok.,. but it had severe limits due to the number of recipes that you could choose from. Also... the gear all had preset mods that were not necessarily good. Oh and you could never craft low or mid level items at purple, low level items were always green. Getting mats was easy if you liked grinding exploration clusters. But that was the only easy way. Also the mats had level tiers and the mats for making top quality stuff were only for max level players.
Then F2P hit and dil was added to the game. This added Unreplicatables which you had to buy for dil. It didn't change much really, except making crafting more expensive. But it also made crafting less desirable. Especially since the same quality of gear, but with random mods could be had by grinding queues.
I forget when exactly, but somewhere in there Mk12 gear got added, and you couldn't craft that. Thus crafted gear was doomed to be inferior to random loot from Borg STFs..... yeah, that greatly diminished the value of crafting.
Now... aside from the random mods, the current crafting system is IMO able to do anything ver2.x did. While it was theoretically possible to max your crafting skill in ver2 in a day... that ate a LOT of mats, and took hours. Trying to start crafting at level 45 was a bad idea simply because you couldn't craft anything but green quality junk. And you had to mass-produce it to level your crafting schools.
The main thing I would add to the current system is a special upgrade pack that changes mods. Obviously these wouldn't be free and would need to be crafted, but... It'd be a lot less work than rebuilding the way the system works. Also it'd let you change mods on NON-crafted gear as well.
My character Tsin'xing
The mods can be controlled by the recipe. Put certain combination of mats into it and out comes the device you wanted. And by doing that they can control the cost by controlling which mats and how many of them are needed. And it would not be different from the recipes that they have for the special Items. There just would be more of them. As for the cost skyrocketing, if the they need more mats to make the specific things I want, that is fine as long as there are more than one way to get the specific mats. And I don't mean random chances from boxes or DOff's or the purchasing of stuff off the exchange. There has to be a way that people can reliably get any mat they want without having to wait for STF's that may never pop.
KDF: Dahar Master Kan (Borg Klingon Tactical)::Dahar Master Torc (Alien Science)::Dahar Master Sisteric (Gorn Engineer)
RR-Fed: Citizen Sirroc (Romulan Science)::Fleet Admiral Grell (Alien Engineer)
RR-KDF: Fleet Admiral Zemo (Reman Tactical)::Fleet Admiral Xinatek (Reman Science)::Fleet Admiral Bel (Alien Engineer)
TOS-Fed: Fleet Admiral Katem (Andorian Tactical)::Lieutenant Commander Straad (Vulcan Engineer)
Dom-Fed: Dan'Tar (Jem'Hadar Science)
Dom-KDF: Kamtana'Solan (Jem'Hadar Science)
CoHost of Tribbles in Ecstasy (Zombee)
1: quality is semi-random. Thus you don't know how many mods you will actually get.
2: how would you setup the UI to have buttons for picking mods without making the interface hideously cluttered? I can think of ideas that could possibly work, but the devs would have to rebuild the interface to use it. Which may or may not be more work than it's worth.
My character Tsin'xing
Drop down boxes for each mod slot. You pick the quality by picking how many mods you slot. And then you figure out how many mats are used by each mod and then multiply by the number of mods you get. And you get a simple to calculate expenses model. This method can also make requirements on the number and type of DOff's are need to be assigned to the recipe as you pick the mods and define the quality.
This still allows for the upgrade system as random gear can be upgraded. And then you can also upgrade your crafted gear if you don't have enough mats or DOff's. This could be random, as it is now. Or you could have it controlled in a similar method as above.
The above idea is open to alterations, it just a starting point.
KDF: Dahar Master Kan (Borg Klingon Tactical)::Dahar Master Torc (Alien Science)::Dahar Master Sisteric (Gorn Engineer)
RR-Fed: Citizen Sirroc (Romulan Science)::Fleet Admiral Grell (Alien Engineer)
RR-KDF: Fleet Admiral Zemo (Reman Tactical)::Fleet Admiral Xinatek (Reman Science)::Fleet Admiral Bel (Alien Engineer)
TOS-Fed: Fleet Admiral Katem (Andorian Tactical)::Lieutenant Commander Straad (Vulcan Engineer)
Dom-Fed: Dan'Tar (Jem'Hadar Science)
Dom-KDF: Kamtana'Solan (Jem'Hadar Science)
CoHost of Tribbles in Ecstasy (Zombee)
And really.... the main thing is that people would probably use it to mass-produce CritDx3 gear....
My character Tsin'xing
- Weapon with all random modifiers: x1.0
- Weapon with one [CrtH] modifier: x2.0
- Weapon with [CrtH], [CrtD], and [Dmg]: x6.0
- Weapon with [CrtD] x3: x24.0
Note: The multipliers listed are not actual suggestions for increases. They're just meant to convey the general idea of "the more you customize, the more you pay to make sure your R&D workers get the job done correctly."
And why not create the system where they can mass produce those at exorbient materials cost? It will force them to play the game to get all that stuff.
KDF: Dahar Master Kan (Borg Klingon Tactical)::Dahar Master Torc (Alien Science)::Dahar Master Sisteric (Gorn Engineer)
RR-Fed: Citizen Sirroc (Romulan Science)::Fleet Admiral Grell (Alien Engineer)
RR-KDF: Fleet Admiral Zemo (Reman Tactical)::Fleet Admiral Xinatek (Reman Science)::Fleet Admiral Bel (Alien Engineer)
TOS-Fed: Fleet Admiral Katem (Andorian Tactical)::Lieutenant Commander Straad (Vulcan Engineer)
Dom-Fed: Dan'Tar (Jem'Hadar Science)
Dom-KDF: Kamtana'Solan (Jem'Hadar Science)
CoHost of Tribbles in Ecstasy (Zombee)
My character Tsin'xing
Another way to consider is that you only get the recipe for a weapon specific mod set up once you have one. SO if you find one in a drop, or you get a special weapon, you can "reverse engineer" it (other words use it as the mat) to get the recipe. Then you can build that specific thing every time. So you can keep the current system and add this way of being able to reliable build the weapon you want once you 'lucked' into the mod format that you are looking for. Keeps the rng system as is and then adds the ability to replicate it without the rng waste. Sort of a compromise of both worlds.
KDF: Dahar Master Kan (Borg Klingon Tactical)::Dahar Master Torc (Alien Science)::Dahar Master Sisteric (Gorn Engineer)
RR-Fed: Citizen Sirroc (Romulan Science)::Fleet Admiral Grell (Alien Engineer)
RR-KDF: Fleet Admiral Zemo (Reman Tactical)::Fleet Admiral Xinatek (Reman Science)::Fleet Admiral Bel (Alien Engineer)
TOS-Fed: Fleet Admiral Katem (Andorian Tactical)::Lieutenant Commander Straad (Vulcan Engineer)
Dom-Fed: Dan'Tar (Jem'Hadar Science)
Dom-KDF: Kamtana'Solan (Jem'Hadar Science)
CoHost of Tribbles in Ecstasy (Zombee)
My character Tsin'xing