@Bort, I said in the patch notes thread but will repeat it here.
The ground Skill-Based Stats are showing space skills. There's a small discrepancy in the tooltip of a weapon in your inventory vs it being equipped in regards to damage. After some parses, the number in the bag is closer to true than the number from your inventory.
Thank you for clarifying, I do think it's a nice distinction to have. On another note would you mind checking the procs and proc chances on the Tholian Thermionic torpedo and the Elachi Subspace Torpedo? I'm not sure the Tholian torp is being affected by flowcaps and both of them have such a low proc chance for a torpedo that it's difficult to use them effectively. I'll take a look at Tricobalts tomorrow.
Thanks!
Like Bort said, disables and drains are different. The Tholian torp is a drain, but the Elachi one is a disable. I did not know about the Tholian one since I've never owned any Tholian ships. Double the drain time of the Neutronic, and I'm guessing awesome drain, but just a 15% chance kills it for me.
(1) Scientific Readiness new % update isn't showing on the skill selection screen. Still showing old values (5%, 8.5%, and 10%), however the new percentage values are applying to science bridge officer skills. I did notice though that at 20% there seemed to be less taken off than should be.
Example: At -20% a 30sec skill goes to 25sec instead of 24 secs.
(Edit) Ignore this one, apparently it affects cool down rate and not cool down time. So 5 sec in the example is correct.
(2) Control expertise is now affecting the repel effect of GW. Although the tooltip in the power tray doesn't reflect this, so it is hard to know whether the effect is more or less than it should be. But it still doesn't seem to be as strong compared Holodeck despite me effectively having more points in it.
(3) Would be nice to have a better description for the shield mastery skills: Shield Absorption (SA) and Shield Reflection (SR). For instance how long they are supposed to last for, I couldn't work this out. The SA seems like a HoT.
(4) I now seem to be taking damage shield from my Quantum Phase Torp (shield damage effect) and my Kemocite. I can confirm the kemocite damage in my parser but not the Quantum torp. But my shields get hammered after firing a TS3 and I'm at close range, and I see the same black text floater damage message on my ship. This does not happen every time, so I suspect that it has something to do with the Shield mastery Skill (possibly the Shield Reflect skill) since it is the first time I've tested these skills out. Not had time to confirm if this is causing it yet.
(Edit) Update on (4): Just tested this a bit more without any of the Shield Mastery Skills, and the damage-to-self is still present using the Quantum Torp and Kemocite. So this isn't being caused by those skills. I can't pin down what is proc'ing it as it doesn't happen every time. But it will happen several times in a elite patrol.
(4) I now seem to be taking damage shield from my Quantum Phase Torp (shield damage effect) and my Kemocite. I can confirm the kemocite damage in my parser but not the Quantum torp. But my shields get hammered after firing a TS3 and I'm at close range, and I see the same black text floater damage message on my ship. This does not happen every time, so I suspect that it has something to do with the Shield mastery Skill (possibly the Shield Reflect skill) since it is the first time I've tested these skills out. Not had time to confirm if this is causing it yet.
ive just copied my sci char to tribble. with 510 partgen all exotic dmg abilities (tbr, integrity collapse, resobeam) got nerfed around 50%. am pretty upset with this nerf as it renders sci as a dmg dealer useless.
ive just copied my sci char to tribble. with 510 partgen all exotic dmg abilities (tbr, integrity collapse, resobeam) got nerfed around 50%. am pretty upset with this nerf as it renders sci as a dmg dealer useless.
I've seen a net increase, but I don't use the above skills. However I had a similar experience, before I realised that a respec also removes all your space traits including particle manipulator.
ive just copied my sci char to tribble. with 510 partgen all exotic dmg abilities (tbr, integrity collapse, resobeam) got nerfed around 50%. am pretty upset with this nerf as it renders sci as a dmg dealer useless.
I've seen a net increase, but I don't use the above skills. However I had a similar experience, before I realised that a respec also removes all your space traits including particle manipulator.
all space traits were active and i got 1(!) point more in partgen skill due to getting 100 points instead of 99 out of the skill tree. all other dmg abilities got nerfed 40-50%...
ok now some more details on that, all values are base and without any buffs activated:
holodeck partgen: 506
structural integrity collapse III: 1312
tractor beam repulsors II: 3391
resonance beam III: 3911
isokinetic cannon: 18137
gravity well III: 2224
Subsystem disables and subsystem offlines are now separate entities and subsystem offlines (like Viral Matrix) are now boosted by Drain expertise.
There is no such thing as "Subsystem Disable." It is either one or the other:
Subsystem Offline
- Reduces the available power in the targeted subsystem to zero. Powers which rely on that subsystem cannot be activated.
- Improved / Resisted by Drain Expertise
Disable
- All powers (or a defined sub-set, if the power says so) cannot be activated.
- Improved / Resisted by Control Expertise
Does this mean Control Expertise does something for Agony Phasers? Because I can't find any information about how I can/should set up my skills/gear to benefit that entire family of weapons on holodeck.
The phaser proc was affected by subspace decompiler at launch but that was changed because it was extremely powerful in PVP. I'm hoping he can find a way to work that back in now.
I'll repeat this again in case it was missed in the last thread but we really need to have the name of each skill above or below the icon (and ideally each icon look different) to be able to tell what power does what. before it was really easy to know where to put our points but unless we are expected to commit this to memory its going to be a pain to have to hover over each skill before deciding. this is especially annoying on full respecs.
Agreed; I made this picture for reference: http://marhawkman.deviantart.com/art/skilltreeS-594395326
I think part of why there are no symbols is because the old one didn't have them either. But I would love it if they added symbols. Even if they just reuse the symbols they made for other things.
ive just copied my sci char to tribble. with 510 partgen all exotic dmg abilities (tbr, integrity collapse, resobeam) got nerfed around 50%. am pretty upset with this nerf as it renders sci as a dmg dealer useless.
I've seen a net increase, but I don't use the above skills. However I had a similar experience, before I realised that a respec also removes all your space traits including particle manipulator.
all space traits were active and i got 1(!) point more in partgen skill due to getting 100 points instead of 99 out of the skill tree. all other dmg abilities got nerfed 40-50%...
ok now some more details on that, all values are base and without any buffs activated:
holodeck partgen: 506
structural integrity collapse III: 1312
tractor beam repulsors II: 3391
resonance beam III: 3911
isokinetic cannon: 18137
gravity well III: 2224
obviously the fleet combat performance buff is not active on tribble, so isokinetic cannon should be the same.
Wow that sucks. I use GW and subspace vortex and the changes gave positive results. Personally I hate using TBR and RB, the first requires getting and stay within 5km of the target, and the other requires that you to slow or stop completely to get full effectiveness. All this under constant fire.
Yeesh... you can't honestly mean to tell me that doesn't look like a chaotic and crowded mess? I'll talk to our UI Designer about maybe finding a way to get text labels to work, but I doubt it'd end up looking much better than what you have here. I highly doubt we'll end up incorporating anything like that.
New icons are on the way, though. They're still fairly generic (by design) but may help distinguish skills from one another at a glance.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Yeesh... you can't honestly mean to tell me that doesn't look like a chaotic and crowded mess? I'll talk to our UI Designer about maybe finding a way to get text labels to work, but I doubt it'd end up looking much better than what you have here. I highly doubt we'll end up incorporating anything like that.
New icons are on the way, though. They're still fairly generic (by design) but may help distinguish skills from one another at a glance.
Heh, it was just a quick thing I threw together. I didn't really try to make it look nice since I knew I will be making another one after you guys change it. I literally did nothing more than copy/pasting labels on the skill tree. I just wanted to have a visual aid that gives me an overview as part of trying to figure out how to adapt my current builds.
Maybe put in abbreviated labels? Like +5 Aux, +50 Drain, or +50 Shield Pen?
Maybe put in abbreviated labels? Like +5 Aux, +50 Drain, or +50 Shield Pen?
Abbreviations just expand the vocabulary that a new player must understand. Not a good way to make a first impression of a system.
Leaving it without text labels actually causes a small increase in player involvement/investment, as they have to explore the system first-hand in order to see what it's about. This hopefully instills a sense of earned knowledge, which the player will then want to use by engaging with the system.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Yeesh... you can't honestly mean to tell me that doesn't look like a chaotic and crowded mess? I'll talk to our UI Designer about maybe finding a way to get text labels to work, but I doubt it'd end up looking much better than what you have here. I highly doubt we'll end up incorporating anything like that.
New icons are on the way, though. They're still fairly generic (by design) but may help distinguish skills from one another at a glance.
Yeah, that mockup is really bad looking. If anything, I'd take a look back at the current UI. You've got rectangular boxes with the name of the skill in them instead of icons. I could see that working with the current style of skill tree, and providing far more information than the current generic icons do. I'm going to get all nostalgic when I see that old UI--this system is much better, but that presentation of the old one is just so well done.
I'm trying to look at this objectively. I'm not coming at you from a "you changed it and it sucks" standpoint. I want change here, and the way the skills are organized into groups and branches now means we need change. But the current icons, they're harming the skills UI. They present no information besides Tactical/Science/Engineering. You have to click on them to see what you're getting. The old UI may just be text labels in boxes, but that makes it readable, it can be adapted to the current UI and provide us with more information at a glance. I'll wait to pass judgment until I see the new icons, though. Right now, I definitely lean towards making the names of the skills the "icons" here.
I don't believe text labels within the skill borders would be more readable. I would suggest a deliniated columnar verticle area with a pair of columns to the right with the score name and the score in column and row. Reduce the width of the skills portion slightly. Should be clearer for new users and a better tool to evaluate data.
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
There is probably no space for exhaustive text labels in there. I could see a header for every column and tier, but that would be difficult without adding additional vocabulary, as Borticus put it.
Maybe better icons will have to do.
Unlock Progression
What I would also appreciate is if the bars at the bottom had more visible markers for each point step. That would make it easier to count how many points yous till need to unlock an ability - that can be important if you try to optimize the unlocks.
That's at least what I noticed when I reskilled a character.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
The old ground weapon skill says its boosts all ground weapons Energy, Kinetic & Melee. The new ground skill says its only boosts energy weapons and melee so none of the 4 Kinetic ground weapons I use get boosted according to the text. I believe this is just a text error.
It’s a bit confusing in the blog when you say “In the end, the answer ended up being a combination of Skill/Mechanic Consolidation” but you do the opposite and split up the key skills I use for example Hull Repair got split into two new skills so 6 skill points to do what I used to get from 1 skill. My Engineer is based around Hull repair and Hull healing. It feels like the main skills I use got split up without any noticeable consolidation that has much if any impact for my builds.
Like others I have found Shield regeneration is much higher on tribble even though I have zero skills in this. But hull regeneration is a lot lower and I am fully speced into the hull skills and hull gear. With all my gear being focused around hull not shields this is a pretty bad change for me. At the moment it looks like I am best to remove all my secondary weapon space skills, focus on one weapon type and put those saved points into the now split up hull skills. I will be mixing weapon types a lot less in this new skill tree
It doesn’t seem fair how energy weapon captains get a skill that modifiers how their weapons function (Long Range Targeting) but there are no skills that modifier projectiles or mines. Couldn’t Long Range Targeting do something for projectiles/Mines or could we get a skill that does something for projectiles & Mines? Personally I think it would be great to see more skills that modify how both types of weapons work or other equipment works. These types of skills are meaningful choices to me that allow us to build different styles of character. More skills along this style that modifier equipment mean more character types, more reason to play extra different captains. At the moment most captains end up similar just on a sliding scale of DPS/Tank. These are the type of skills that make us different from each other. More skills like this stops late game captains being similar.
I still don’t like the passive choices for energy and projectiles in the tactical tree as there is no meaningful choice. Single weapon users end up with a choice of add a small amount of DPS or add a tiny bit more DPS so there is no meaningful choice just pick the one that adds more DPS. This then leaves other choice which is frustrating as the choice is nothing or nothing. For mixed weapon users there is still no meaningful choice it’s just pick which ever two options add more DPS. There are so many small changes that could make these two interesting meaningful choices both for single and mixed weapon captains. The current choice do not make sense to me and do not seem to fit into the design principles we have been told about.
Thank you for fixing the Ultimate powers so they don’t just trigger on energy weapons. That makes them far more useful.
There is probably no space for exhaustive text labels in there.
Showing my internet age here, but O RLY? There's a good chunk of empty space to the sides of each branch, plenty of room to expand the boxes to include text. Just compare it to the old one. I'm all for avoiding information overload, but I'd rather we didn't suffer from information underload as a result. Ditch the icons, put boxes with skill names in their place, and you're practically done. You could pretty it up with LCARs-styled borders if you wanted, so long as it doesn't impact the readability of the trees--I'm definitely a minimalist when it comes to things like that.
Honestly, this was a problem with the Specialization trees, too, but I never bothered saying anything back then. It didn't matter as much, since you could get everything, there wasn't much need to know at a glance what you had/hadn't taken. But now there is, and I'm not really happy with what we're getting. It feels like a regression. I mean, I've memorized these new skills already, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect that of players.
Mark I think the same way you do. I think that the labels are helpful on that graphic. I also see why it couldn't be quite that big with the limited space, but I see where you were going with that.
Maybe put in abbreviated labels? Like +5 Aux, +50 Drain, or +50 Shield Pen?
Abbreviations just expand the vocabulary that a new player must understand. Not a good way to make a first impression of a system.
Leaving it without text labels actually causes a small increase in player involvement/investment, as they have to explore the system first-hand in order to see what it's about. This hopefully instills a sense of earned knowledge, which the player will then want to use by engaging with the system.
No, making people search for basic information is poor interface design and having to constantly mouse over everything to keep track of where things are is extremely tedious. Please don't let the one bad example posted here poison the entire idea.
It doesn't need to have all the boxes labeled or any of the "+50" stuff. It just needs a simple title at the top of each branch for the sake of clarity.
I'm sure you have people who could make adjustments so the labels fit and look good.
"Let me guess, my theories appall you, my heresies outrage you, I never answer letters and you don't like my tie" - The Doctor
"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!" -Agatha Heterodyne
GAHAAHAH!!! It wasn't even an example! I didn't make it to demonstrate what I thought it SHOULD look like. I made it so that I had a reference chart.
But since people keep going there.... hmmm....
Sorry, I don't mean to be picking on you. It just irritates me that Borticus grabbed that as basically a strawman argument for why we shouldn't have text labels. A UI should not be a mystery box you have to solve.
"Let me guess, my theories appall you, my heresies outrage you, I never answer letters and you don't like my tie" - The Doctor
"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!" -Agatha Heterodyne
The phaser proc was affected by subspace decompiler at launch but that was changed because it was extremely powerful in PVP. I'm hoping he can find a way to work that back in now.
Well it seems like the normal "1 system offline" phaser proc will be affected by/resisted with Drain Expertise. Hopefully the Agony Phasers will get duration increased/decreased by Control Expertise. Otherwise it seems damn strange a weapon that regularly disables has no offensive use for Control Expertise... the skill that improves disables.
Comments
The ground Skill-Based Stats are showing space skills. There's a small discrepancy in the tooltip of a weapon in your inventory vs it being equipped in regards to damage. After some parses, the number in the bag is closer to true than the number from your inventory.
Like Bort said, disables and drains are different. The Tholian torp is a drain, but the Elachi one is a disable. I did not know about the Tholian one since I've never owned any Tholian ships. Double the drain time of the Neutronic, and I'm guessing awesome drain, but just a 15% chance kills it for me.
(1) Scientific Readiness new % update isn't showing on the skill selection screen. Still showing old values (5%, 8.5%, and 10%), however the new percentage values are applying to science bridge officer skills. I did notice though that at 20% there seemed to be less taken off than should be.
Example: At -20% a 30sec skill goes to 25sec instead of 24 secs.
(Edit) Ignore this one, apparently it affects cool down rate and not cool down time. So 5 sec in the example is correct.
(2) Control expertise is now affecting the repel effect of GW. Although the tooltip in the power tray doesn't reflect this, so it is hard to know whether the effect is more or less than it should be. But it still doesn't seem to be as strong compared Holodeck despite me effectively having more points in it.
(3) Would be nice to have a better description for the shield mastery skills: Shield Absorption (SA) and Shield Reflection (SR). For instance how long they are supposed to last for, I couldn't work this out. The SA seems like a HoT.
(4) I now seem to be taking damage shield from my Quantum Phase Torp (shield damage effect) and my Kemocite. I can confirm the kemocite damage in my parser but not the Quantum torp. But my shields get hammered after firing a TS3 and I'm at close range, and I see the same black text floater damage message on my ship. This does not happen every time, so I suspect that it has something to do with the Shield mastery Skill (possibly the Shield Reflect skill) since it is the first time I've tested these skills out. Not had time to confirm if this is causing it yet.
(Edit) Update on (4): Just tested this a bit more without any of the Shield Mastery Skills, and the damage-to-self is still present using the Quantum Torp and Kemocite. So this isn't being caused by those skills. I can't pin down what is proc'ing it as it doesn't happen every time. But it will happen several times in a elite patrol.
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
That is one nasty bug right there.
Thanks. That explains it.
I've seen a net increase, but I don't use the above skills. However I had a similar experience, before I realised that a respec also removes all your space traits including particle manipulator.
all space traits were active and i got 1(!) point more in partgen skill due to getting 100 points instead of 99 out of the skill tree. all other dmg abilities got nerfed 40-50%...
ok now some more details on that, all values are base and without any buffs activated:
holodeck partgen: 506
structural integrity collapse III: 1312
tractor beam repulsors II: 3391
resonance beam III: 3911
isokinetic cannon: 18137
gravity well III: 2224
on tribble:
tribble partgen: 507
structural integrity collapse III: 851
tractor beam repulsors II: 2203
resonance beam III: 2112
isokinetic cannon: 17424
gravity well III: 2820
obviously the fleet combat performance buff is not active on tribble, so isokinetic cannon should be the same.
Does this mean Control Expertise does something for Agony Phasers? Because I can't find any information about how I can/should set up my skills/gear to benefit that entire family of weapons on holodeck.
I think part of why there are no symbols is because the old one didn't have them either. But I would love it if they added symbols. Even if they just reuse the symbols they made for other things.
My character Tsin'xing
Wow that sucks. I use GW and subspace vortex and the changes gave positive results. Personally I hate using TBR and RB, the first requires getting and stay within 5km of the target, and the other requires that you to slow or stop completely to get full effectiveness. All this under constant fire.
Yeesh... you can't honestly mean to tell me that doesn't look like a chaotic and crowded mess? I'll talk to our UI Designer about maybe finding a way to get text labels to work, but I doubt it'd end up looking much better than what you have here. I highly doubt we'll end up incorporating anything like that.
New icons are on the way, though. They're still fairly generic (by design) but may help distinguish skills from one another at a glance.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Maybe put in abbreviated labels? Like +5 Aux, +50 Drain, or +50 Shield Pen?
My character Tsin'xing
Abbreviations just expand the vocabulary that a new player must understand. Not a good way to make a first impression of a system.
Leaving it without text labels actually causes a small increase in player involvement/investment, as they have to explore the system first-hand in order to see what it's about. This hopefully instills a sense of earned knowledge, which the player will then want to use by engaging with the system.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Yeah, that mockup is really bad looking. If anything, I'd take a look back at the current UI. You've got rectangular boxes with the name of the skill in them instead of icons. I could see that working with the current style of skill tree, and providing far more information than the current generic icons do. I'm going to get all nostalgic when I see that old UI--this system is much better, but that presentation of the old one is just so well done.
I'm trying to look at this objectively. I'm not coming at you from a "you changed it and it sucks" standpoint. I want change here, and the way the skills are organized into groups and branches now means we need change. But the current icons, they're harming the skills UI. They present no information besides Tactical/Science/Engineering. You have to click on them to see what you're getting. The old UI may just be text labels in boxes, but that makes it readable, it can be adapted to the current UI and provide us with more information at a glance. I'll wait to pass judgment until I see the new icons, though. Right now, I definitely lean towards making the names of the skills the "icons" here.
My character Tsin'xing
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
Expatriot Might Characters in EXILE
Maybe better icons will have to do.
Unlock Progression
What I would also appreciate is if the bars at the bottom had more visible markers for each point step. That would make it easier to count how many points yous till need to unlock an ability - that can be important if you try to optimize the unlocks.
That's at least what I noticed when I reskilled a character.
It’s a bit confusing in the blog when you say “In the end, the answer ended up being a combination of Skill/Mechanic Consolidation” but you do the opposite and split up the key skills I use for example Hull Repair got split into two new skills so 6 skill points to do what I used to get from 1 skill. My Engineer is based around Hull repair and Hull healing. It feels like the main skills I use got split up without any noticeable consolidation that has much if any impact for my builds.
Like others I have found Shield regeneration is much higher on tribble even though I have zero skills in this. But hull regeneration is a lot lower and I am fully speced into the hull skills and hull gear. With all my gear being focused around hull not shields this is a pretty bad change for me. At the moment it looks like I am best to remove all my secondary weapon space skills, focus on one weapon type and put those saved points into the now split up hull skills. I will be mixing weapon types a lot less in this new skill tree
It doesn’t seem fair how energy weapon captains get a skill that modifiers how their weapons function (Long Range Targeting) but there are no skills that modifier projectiles or mines. Couldn’t Long Range Targeting do something for projectiles/Mines or could we get a skill that does something for projectiles & Mines? Personally I think it would be great to see more skills that modify how both types of weapons work or other equipment works. These types of skills are meaningful choices to me that allow us to build different styles of character. More skills along this style that modifier equipment mean more character types, more reason to play extra different captains. At the moment most captains end up similar just on a sliding scale of DPS/Tank. These are the type of skills that make us different from each other. More skills like this stops late game captains being similar.
I still don’t like the passive choices for energy and projectiles in the tactical tree as there is no meaningful choice. Single weapon users end up with a choice of add a small amount of DPS or add a tiny bit more DPS so there is no meaningful choice just pick the one that adds more DPS. This then leaves other choice which is frustrating as the choice is nothing or nothing. For mixed weapon users there is still no meaningful choice it’s just pick which ever two options add more DPS. There are so many small changes that could make these two interesting meaningful choices both for single and mixed weapon captains. The current choice do not make sense to me and do not seem to fit into the design principles we have been told about.
Thank you for fixing the Ultimate powers so they don’t just trigger on energy weapons. That makes them far more useful.
Showing my internet age here, but O RLY? There's a good chunk of empty space to the sides of each branch, plenty of room to expand the boxes to include text. Just compare it to the old one. I'm all for avoiding information overload, but I'd rather we didn't suffer from information underload as a result. Ditch the icons, put boxes with skill names in their place, and you're practically done. You could pretty it up with LCARs-styled borders if you wanted, so long as it doesn't impact the readability of the trees--I'm definitely a minimalist when it comes to things like that.
Honestly, this was a problem with the Specialization trees, too, but I never bothered saying anything back then. It didn't matter as much, since you could get everything, there wasn't much need to know at a glance what you had/hadn't taken. But now there is, and I'm not really happy with what we're getting. It feels like a regression. I mean, I've memorized these new skills already, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect that of players.
My character Tsin'xing
No, making people search for basic information is poor interface design and having to constantly mouse over everything to keep track of where things are is extremely tedious. Please don't let the one bad example posted here poison the entire idea.
It doesn't need to have all the boxes labeled or any of the "+50" stuff. It just needs a simple title at the top of each branch for the sake of clarity.
I'm sure you have people who could make adjustments so the labels fit and look good.
"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!" - Agatha Heterodyne
But since people keep going there.... hmmm....
My character Tsin'xing
Sorry, I don't mean to be picking on you. It just irritates me that Borticus grabbed that as basically a strawman argument for why we shouldn't have text labels. A UI should not be a mystery box you have to solve.
"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!" - Agatha Heterodyne
Well it seems like the normal "1 system offline" phaser proc will be affected by/resisted with Drain Expertise. Hopefully the Agony Phasers will get duration increased/decreased by Control Expertise. Otherwise it seems damn strange a weapon that regularly disables has no offensive use for Control Expertise... the skill that improves disables.
Explain THAT to a "new player"