Anyway, the layout in how skills are applied is industry standard system. You train one thing, then it branches off and you can then train more things. Pretty straight forward, a boat load of RPGs do this.
The cost for respecing on the other hand...well, I've never seen anything like it before, at least not this type of cost. I've seen them be free or cost in game currency, but never with premium currency, even for F2P games.
To be honest, it makes little sense.
Retired. I'm now in search for that perfect space anomaly.
The problem arise if you don't play Tac, like me. I like playing sci captains, with a focus on the relevant skills and as things stand that just became a hell of a lot harder where a wrong click actually is devastating. But as has been noted elsewhere, they obviously don't want us to play anything but dps obsessed Tac monsters.
Not exactly making me feel welcome in the game. Not that I did prior to these changes, but they just made it clear that I should bugger off, because this game is not meant for people like me.
I play everything, but I focus on Science characters. 3 Fed, 2 Klingon, 1 Romulan.
It'S a lot easier to make a good science captain now, simply because there are less skills you actually "need" to spec into. Drain Expertise, Control Expertise and Exotic Particle Generators are the must-have skills to make your science skills good. You probably want to max those out. And if in doubt, just skill everything in science (other than perhaps Shield Regeneration and Shield Mastery, those seem more "nice-to-have" or underpowered skills to me.)
It is not like you can misclick and suddenly you have -50 % exotic damage and +25 % science cooldown durations. The worst scenarios are basically like "Ooops, I didn't pick the +Aux Power engineering skill, that would have been neat." or "I was going for the Science Ultimate but put 3 points in Critical Hit Chance instead of Critical Hit Severity!").
It is science, but it's not rocket science or a delicate open heart surgery.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Really need a neutral option. When it was first announced I hated it (REALLY hated it), but since then most of my concerns have either been addressed or at least explained (Vanilla WoW appearance, lack of power-cart functionality, etc).
Overall I'll call it an improvement, but I still would have much preferred to see pet buffs in a dedicated pet spec, rather than in the skill tree. I will always be of the opinion that that is where they truly belong.
I like it, but the respecs ought to be free, or at least cost less.. 100 instead of 500 ZEN for example.
Or must have an option to switch between two or more builds.
this would be a very good idea. personally I use a lot of different ships with all my toons, and the possibility of having at least 2 different builds per toon would be awesome
Skill system is ok for specific builds i.e. a tac captain in a ship with lots of tac boffs (escort/battle cruiser).
Can't then really put the same tac captain in a ship that's mostly sci for example (i.e. commander and lt.commander sci boffs).
The old system you could make quite a good hybrid build that was good to middling at everything.
Getting the feeling that you need to specialize more with this skill system, and with not being able to buy repec's with ec/dil, I just dont know.....
I hate the new skill system with a passion. I had spent ages getting my main ship to a decent standard and now cannot even get close to the same power it was producing before. I have not changed anything other than using the new skill tree. When once I was seeing crit hits of 70,000+, now I am lucky to see one over 30,000. I have now used 4 respec tokens and cannot reproduce what I once had. If someone wants to point me in the right direction - feel free. I will take any advice or criticism or any TRIBBLE that will get me back to where I was two days ago. FFS - why didn't they leave it alone.
I hate the new skill system with a passion. I had spent ages getting my main ship to a decent standard and now cannot even get close to the same power it was producing before. I have not changed anything other than using the new skill tree. When once I was seeing crit hits of 70,000+, now I am lucky to see one over 30,000. I have now used 4 respec tokens and cannot reproduce what I once had. If someone wants to point me in the right direction - feel free. I will take any advice or criticism or any TRIBBLE that will get me back to where I was two days ago. FFS - why didn't they leave it alone.
Yeah, we're going to need more data than that. what weapon skill? what was your spending?
I hate the new skill system with a passion. I had spent ages getting my main ship to a decent standard and now cannot even get close to the same power it was producing before. I have not changed anything other than using the new skill tree. When once I was seeing crit hits of 70,000+, now I am lucky to see one over 30,000. I have now used 4 respec tokens and cannot reproduce what I once had. If someone wants to point me in the right direction - feel free. I will take any advice or criticism or any TRIBBLE that will get me back to where I was two days ago. FFS - why didn't they leave it alone.
Sorry you're having so much of a problem. If you like, please post some more information in the Builds and Powers section and I'm sure we can help you with your skills.
Just make a thread over there, let us know your profession, faction, what ship you're flying and a general run down of your gear. If you're looking for a straight DPS layout that also has some survival skills, please feel free to check out my basic tactical laoyout here.
I'm sure that either myself or someone else here on the forum can help you out.
Just curious what your answers will be if you have to say just yes or no.
I do not like it because I am no longer free to spec into skills needed for original builds. It limits making specific non-career choices of skills.
For example, I am a rom tac. If my previous build were primarily a hybrid of engineer and tac skills, and I wanted to put points into sensors to be able to snoop, I could do that on T4 of the old skill tree.
In the new version, I must achieve a certain level of sci points before I am given an unlock for perception, but ya see, I don't want that many sci skills on my build to be able to choose that option.
^^ look at it, Cryptic... you just endorsed less dynamic builds.
Pretty much. It is becoming dumbed down to the point that WoW is at. They used to have a very dynamic skill tree. Now they are down to 8 or 9 talent choices. There are 0 unique builds anymore. STO is headed that direction.
I voted yes. Overall I like it. And think it's got potential. That being said, the major complaint about not having a way to undo point selections until you confirm that is the full path you want to do while doing it, should be corrected and dealt with. That's frustrating. On my main, who I did test on Tribble extensively, I've already used my two retrains, and I knew what I wanted!
But overall, I like the changes. New skills are interesting to me.
The new system is Cryptic's way of admitting that they never had a balanced algorithm for captain skills as they interact with ship loadout and BOff skills. Since they could not make the more nuanced old system work properly, they just dumbed it down to a few options, each of which affects a wider range of effects than before.
I have now respec'd 4 of my 6 alt's, and even though they span the 3 career types, there is now very little difference between their skill trees. Most of the first-tier skills at each rank are pretty much indispensible, so the main differentiation between characters is the player's commitment to deliberately skewing their skill set to one career type. I follow the "starship-as-weapon" ethos, so every captain will necessarily use most of the engineering options, leaving insufficient points to make either science or tactical really max out to the bonus skills at the bottom of the tree.
Before the revamp, I was able to select skills in small enough doses to make each character actually feel different in action, even within the same discipline (2 science captains, for instance). Now, there is no room for that luxury, because of the risk of compromising the character's survivability...
Expendables Fleet: Andrew - Bajoran Fed Engineer Ken'taura - Rom/Fed Scientist Gwyllim - Human Fed Delta Tac Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
I'd be inclined to like the new system just for the reduction in Trek-style technobabble alone (seriously, "Flow Capacitors"? "Subspace Decompiler"? Meaningless jargon that told you nothing about what the skill points actually did; we're well rid of that rubbish, at least.)
However. On balance, it's easier to use, more transparent for newcomers to the game, and it appears to have brought most of us some mild boosts. It is, admittedly, less favourable to fine-tuning than the old system, but I can live with that. And, yes, it would have been nice if we could assign our points and review them before committing; still, I managed to respec ten toons without making any egregious errors, so I don't think it can be that hard to handle.
My approach, by the way, was to max out the career skills for each of my toons, and then use the remaining points to pick up things I considered essential... so far it seems to have worked out OK, and I don't think my tac toons (who are almost all in cruisers anyway) are exactly glass cannons. Yes, an engineering-based build is much more of a tank, but both tac and science builds seem eminently survivable, at least against common-or-garden PVE adversaries. If anything, it seems to me that it's easier to get a balanced build set up now - the three career paths having the same number of options, which they didn't under the old system.
In general, I think it's been a change for the better. And, importantly, I've been enjoying the process, trying stuff out and seeing what my new builds can do. It's a game, it's supposed to be fun - if I'm having fun, somebody's doing something right.
In general, yes, I do like the new system. My only complaint is that the "powercart" element was removed, thus making skill selection a tedious process. I do hope that it is added in the future.
-AoP- Warrior's Blood (KDF Armada) / -AoP- Qu' raD qulbo'Degh / -AoP- ProjectPhoenix Join Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010
I voted yes, obviously. I have been very happy with the final outcome. I do have to ask though, for those seeing large increases on dps... Are you using the new Strategist speciaization? It seems to me that has added to my ability to vap, when Threatening Stance is inactive.
I have to admit I was one of those who thought this was change simply for change. Or, more likely, a way to monetize yet another part of the game. I was comfortable with the old system. I had played it long enough and tinkered enough I had my chars' skill sets exactly where I wanted them. Now, I have to do so all over again. I think the new system has been "dumbed down" a little more than was needed. I also think it will now be impossible to create anything other than the most minor variations between two builds.
Still, my concerns the new system would rob me of some things which I had worked hard to achieve have not been borne out. I have not yet played with it enough to be certain I know what I am doing. But what I have done so far seems to be moving in the right direction. I suppose as long as there are Respec Tokens for sale in the Z Store, the Skill Revamp has accomplished all it was intended to.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
No as I don’t like how it’s been dumbed down and over simplified and all the nerfs. Unique builds are mostly gone, choosing to have a defense in an area without taking the damage in that area is now impossible for example I can no longer defend against drain without taking boosts in drain which I don’t want. Spending more skill points for weaker stats isn’t nice and the general flexibility of the skill tree is gone. Overall a less fun system to use and a general downgrade.
Love it. I have toons of all three careers and all are greatly improved. My builds were all focused quite sharply and all are performing much better than before.
I really like the change because of several reasons.
The most importent reason is, it's more accessible. A friend of mine started playing just two weeks before the change and he was totally puzzled about the old skill system. Even my wife, who plays STO for five yeas, had every time questions about the old skill system. The new skill system helps alot, to better understand what your spend points will do. Therefore it's a good thing for players who don't want to spend ages to get a build to work.
A lot of friends stoped playing because the old system was not accssible enough. It feels more rewarding to distribute points in the new system, so maybe I can convice some of them to get back to STO
The second reason is, that the new systems feels more flexible. I have a lot of alts, but I play mainly four of them. My biggest issue I had in the past was, that I'm always trying to get the most out of some odd builds. I love ships which nobody flies and I'm always trying to build them unusual. All of these builds benefit alot due to the new skill system. And the best of all is, that my Tac, Eng, Sci hybrid build got the most out of this change. The survivability got a bit better and I had an overall increase of 50% in dps with mainly exotic damage. God I love my DD
A lot of people talk about an increase in performance. It is not the real reason we have this change. Or was it the case the old system was holding people back? Never saw it mentioned in blogs; we see an overall underperformance of a majority of the playerbase. It is because of the skill system which seems to difficult to comprehend for most players.
I find it hard to belief that is the case. As far as I have experimented with the new system, I do experience a better performance. I say experience. I have no hard data to compare and to analyze. I can say this about my new builds. I go for versatile builds, a mix of offensive and defensive, energy, kinetic and exotic, all damage types get some points. So the sort of Jack-of-all-trades. Further, I do not spend all my points. I keep 7-8 points in reserve. Yet, I am not dissatisfied with my performance. Could it be we had a general (silent) buff?
I think it's just easier to focus on those skills that benefit your build. With the old system I had to spend a lot of skill points to get my builds to work. Now that some of the skills have been consolidated, I have some spare skill points to spend on other stuff, that wasn't possible whithin the old system.
Yes, the new system undoubtable led to a buff (but not a silent one).
Reason as far as I can see are 4 facts:
- Abilities you previously “had to” insert points to were removed and set to 100% of their formal performance giving you more free points to…
- put more emphasis on stuff that has the potential to give more than before. Good example is weapon related critical chance. In the old system full spec gave 2,5% (I think) while the new system offers up to 7% or to…
- entirely new attributes like armor penetration, hanger pets performance and even...
- massive team interactions like focused frenzy where you skill and 4 (or even 9) other players profit from that while you profit from them.
I’m very curious how cryptic handles it in the next few weeks. Tolerate it since all of it was openly communicated with a lot of tribble testers giving feedback? Or rather do it the classic cryptic way by admitting embarrassing failure with a nerf hammer?
Personally I hope for the former. Considering we talk about the basic skill tree everybody gets right from start we don’t talk about power creep here but rather bout making the whole game more accessible to the average player (team)… oh and the empty queue list right along with it.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I hate the new skill system with a passion. I had spent ages getting my main ship to a decent standard and now cannot even get close to the same power it was producing before. I have not changed anything other than using the new skill tree. When once I was seeing crit hits of 70,000+, now I am lucky to see one over 30,000. I have now used 4 respec tokens and cannot reproduce what I once had. If someone wants to point me in the right direction - feel free. I will take any advice or criticism or any TRIBBLE that will get me back to where I was two days ago. FFS - why didn't they leave it alone.
Sorry you're having so much of a problem. If you like, please post some more information in the Builds and Powers section and I'm sure we can help you with your skills.
Just make a thread over there, let us know your profession, faction, what ship you're flying and a general run down of your gear. If you're looking for a straight DPS layout that also has some survival skills, please feel free to check out my basic tactical laoyout here.
I'm sure that either myself or someone else here on the forum can help you out.
Seaofsorrows - thanks for your help and did as you said. Seems that the engineering skills and science skills need some playing around with. The Tac setup was very similar to mine but I needed to alter the science and engineering. Voila - not just back where I was before the revamp but now better - just recorded my first ever 115486 critical hit. Obviously need to investigate those Science and engineering skills further - luckily have saved some respec tokens.
Again - thanks for the help - much appreciated
It appears my plan to just not spend my skill points (until they return to allowing one select and modify all your points with a single commit at the end) is workable, at least for non-queued content.
A bit slower, but the game is so easy and skills such a small part of it- that one can do fine without spending a single point.
I hate the new skill system with a passion. I had spent ages getting my main ship to a decent standard and now cannot even get close to the same power it was producing before. I have not changed anything other than using the new skill tree. When once I was seeing crit hits of 70,000+, now I am lucky to see one over 30,000. I have now used 4 respec tokens and cannot reproduce what I once had. If someone wants to point me in the right direction - feel free. I will take any advice or criticism or any TRIBBLE that will get me back to where I was two days ago. FFS - why didn't they leave it alone.
Sorry you're having so much of a problem. If you like, please post some more information in the Builds and Powers section and I'm sure we can help you with your skills.
Just make a thread over there, let us know your profession, faction, what ship you're flying and a general run down of your gear. If you're looking for a straight DPS layout that also has some survival skills, please feel free to check out my basic tactical laoyout here.
I'm sure that either myself or someone else here on the forum can help you out.
Seaofsorrows - thanks for your help and did as you said. Seems that the engineering skills and science skills need some playing around with. The Tac setup was very similar to mine but I needed to alter the science and engineering. Voila - not just back where I was before the revamp but now better - just recorded my first ever 115486 critical hit. Obviously need to investigate those Science and engineering skills further - luckily have saved some respec tokens.
Again - thanks for the help - much appreciated
It'S a lot easier to make a good science captain now, simply because there are less skills you actually "need" to spec into. Drain Expertise, Control Expertise and Exotic Particle Generators are the must-have skills to make your science skills good. You probably want to max those out. And if in doubt, just skill everything in science (other than perhaps Shield Regeneration and Shield Mastery, those seem more "nice-to-have" or underpowered skills to me.)
Which was what I did, because like you I assume that would work, yet I've not been able to play anything without constantly dying. My survivability is now nil. Even the FE caused me to die about 50 times before finishing. So either I'm hit by major bugs or something isn't working.
Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end of it.
Comments
Anyway, the layout in how skills are applied is industry standard system. You train one thing, then it branches off and you can then train more things. Pretty straight forward, a boat load of RPGs do this.
The cost for respecing on the other hand...well, I've never seen anything like it before, at least not this type of cost. I've seen them be free or cost in game currency, but never with premium currency, even for F2P games.
To be honest, it makes little sense.
I play everything, but I focus on Science characters. 3 Fed, 2 Klingon, 1 Romulan.
It'S a lot easier to make a good science captain now, simply because there are less skills you actually "need" to spec into. Drain Expertise, Control Expertise and Exotic Particle Generators are the must-have skills to make your science skills good. You probably want to max those out. And if in doubt, just skill everything in science (other than perhaps Shield Regeneration and Shield Mastery, those seem more "nice-to-have" or underpowered skills to me.)
It is not like you can misclick and suddenly you have -50 % exotic damage and +25 % science cooldown durations. The worst scenarios are basically like "Ooops, I didn't pick the +Aux Power engineering skill, that would have been neat." or "I was going for the Science Ultimate but put 3 points in Critical Hit Chance instead of Critical Hit Severity!").
It is science, but it's not rocket science or a delicate open heart surgery.
Really need a neutral option. When it was first announced I hated it (REALLY hated it), but since then most of my concerns have either been addressed or at least explained (Vanilla WoW appearance, lack of power-cart functionality, etc).
Overall I'll call it an improvement, but I still would have much preferred to see pet buffs in a dedicated pet spec, rather than in the skill tree. I will always be of the opinion that that is where they truly belong.
this would be a very good idea. personally I use a lot of different ships with all my toons, and the possibility of having at least 2 different builds per toon would be awesome
Can't then really put the same tac captain in a ship that's mostly sci for example (i.e. commander and lt.commander sci boffs).
The old system you could make quite a good hybrid build that was good to middling at everything.
Getting the feeling that you need to specialize more with this skill system, and with not being able to buy repec's with ec/dil, I just dont know.....
My character Tsin'xing
Heya @mavericku2007,
Sorry you're having so much of a problem. If you like, please post some more information in the Builds and Powers section and I'm sure we can help you with your skills.
Just make a thread over there, let us know your profession, faction, what ship you're flying and a general run down of your gear. If you're looking for a straight DPS layout that also has some survival skills, please feel free to check out my basic tactical laoyout here.
I'm sure that either myself or someone else here on the forum can help you out.
Pretty much. It is becoming dumbed down to the point that WoW is at. They used to have a very dynamic skill tree. Now they are down to 8 or 9 talent choices. There are 0 unique builds anymore. STO is headed that direction.
But overall, I like the changes. New skills are interesting to me.
I have now respec'd 4 of my 6 alt's, and even though they span the 3 career types, there is now very little difference between their skill trees. Most of the first-tier skills at each rank are pretty much indispensible, so the main differentiation between characters is the player's commitment to deliberately skewing their skill set to one career type. I follow the "starship-as-weapon" ethos, so every captain will necessarily use most of the engineering options, leaving insufficient points to make either science or tactical really max out to the bonus skills at the bottom of the tree.
Before the revamp, I was able to select skills in small enough doses to make each character actually feel different in action, even within the same discipline (2 science captains, for instance). Now, there is no room for that luxury, because of the risk of compromising the character's survivability...
Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci
Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac
Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
However. On balance, it's easier to use, more transparent for newcomers to the game, and it appears to have brought most of us some mild boosts. It is, admittedly, less favourable to fine-tuning than the old system, but I can live with that. And, yes, it would have been nice if we could assign our points and review them before committing; still, I managed to respec ten toons without making any egregious errors, so I don't think it can be that hard to handle.
My approach, by the way, was to max out the career skills for each of my toons, and then use the remaining points to pick up things I considered essential... so far it seems to have worked out OK, and I don't think my tac toons (who are almost all in cruisers anyway) are exactly glass cannons. Yes, an engineering-based build is much more of a tank, but both tac and science builds seem eminently survivable, at least against common-or-garden PVE adversaries. If anything, it seems to me that it's easier to get a balanced build set up now - the three career paths having the same number of options, which they didn't under the old system.
In general, I think it's been a change for the better. And, importantly, I've been enjoying the process, trying stuff out and seeing what my new builds can do. It's a game, it's supposed to be fun - if I'm having fun, somebody's doing something right.
Join Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010
I have been very happy with the final outcome.
I do have to ask though, for those seeing large increases on dps... Are you using the new Strategist speciaization? It seems to me that has added to my ability to vap, when Threatening Stance is inactive.
Next up revamp stealth please. LOL
Still, my concerns the new system would rob me of some things which I had worked hard to achieve have not been borne out. I have not yet played with it enough to be certain I know what I am doing. But what I have done so far seems to be moving in the right direction. I suppose as long as there are Respec Tokens for sale in the Z Store, the Skill Revamp has accomplished all it was intended to.
Change Is Bad, Always.
I don't like that I have to spend each point as I go, so if I make a mistake, or want to tool around with setups...too bad.
This should not have been released until that option was available imo.
The most importent reason is, it's more accessible. A friend of mine started playing just two weeks before the change and he was totally puzzled about the old skill system. Even my wife, who plays STO for five yeas, had every time questions about the old skill system. The new skill system helps alot, to better understand what your spend points will do. Therefore it's a good thing for players who don't want to spend ages to get a build to work.
A lot of friends stoped playing because the old system was not accssible enough. It feels more rewarding to distribute points in the new system, so maybe I can convice some of them to get back to STO
The second reason is, that the new systems feels more flexible. I have a lot of alts, but I play mainly four of them. My biggest issue I had in the past was, that I'm always trying to get the most out of some odd builds. I love ships which nobody flies and I'm always trying to build them unusual. All of these builds benefit alot due to the new skill system. And the best of all is, that my Tac, Eng, Sci hybrid build got the most out of this change. The survivability got a bit better and I had an overall increase of 50% in dps with mainly exotic damage. God I love my DD
So yeah, I really like the change!
I find it hard to belief that is the case. As far as I have experimented with the new system, I do experience a better performance. I say experience. I have no hard data to compare and to analyze. I can say this about my new builds. I go for versatile builds, a mix of offensive and defensive, energy, kinetic and exotic, all damage types get some points. So the sort of Jack-of-all-trades. Further, I do not spend all my points. I keep 7-8 points in reserve. Yet, I am not dissatisfied with my performance. Could it be we had a general (silent) buff?
I think it's just easier to focus on those skills that benefit your build. With the old system I had to spend a lot of skill points to get my builds to work. Now that some of the skills have been consolidated, I have some spare skill points to spend on other stuff, that wasn't possible whithin the old system.
Yes, the new system undoubtable led to a buff (but not a silent one).
Reason as far as I can see are 4 facts:
- Abilities you previously “had to” insert points to were removed and set to 100% of their formal performance giving you more free points to…
- put more emphasis on stuff that has the potential to give more than before. Good example is weapon related critical chance. In the old system full spec gave 2,5% (I think) while the new system offers up to 7% or to…
- entirely new attributes like armor penetration, hanger pets performance and even...
- massive team interactions like focused frenzy where you skill and 4 (or even 9) other players profit from that while you profit from them.
I’m very curious how cryptic handles it in the next few weeks. Tolerate it since all of it was openly communicated with a lot of tribble testers giving feedback? Or rather do it the classic cryptic way by admitting embarrassing failure with a nerf hammer?
Personally I hope for the former. Considering we talk about the basic skill tree everybody gets right from start we don’t talk about power creep here but rather bout making the whole game more accessible to the average player (team)… oh and the empty queue list right along with it.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Seaofsorrows - thanks for your help and did as you said. Seems that the engineering skills and science skills need some playing around with. The Tac setup was very similar to mine but I needed to alter the science and engineering. Voila - not just back where I was before the revamp but now better - just recorded my first ever 115486 critical hit. Obviously need to investigate those Science and engineering skills further - luckily have saved some respec tokens.
Again - thanks for the help - much appreciated
A bit slower, but the game is so easy and skills such a small part of it- that one can do fine without spending a single point.
You're very welcome, I'm glad it helped.
See ya out there!
Which was what I did, because like you I assume that would work, yet I've not been able to play anything without constantly dying. My survivability is now nil. Even the FE caused me to die about 50 times before finishing. So either I'm hit by major bugs or something isn't working.