For a PvP fix to happen in this game, it needs to have two things. 1) It MUST be simple. It has to be quick and easy for the devs so that they don't waste a lot of resources on it. Anything that involves a lot of dev time will be a no go. That is why dual stats is not going to happen. 2) It MUST make the company some money. If your idea does not do those two thing, it is a bad idea because it isn't helping the matter. In fact it is just making things worse as the devs keep seeing you all PvP players as unreasonable little twats who don't spend money and want them to spend thousands of hours for them (yes dual stating EVERYTHING is that much dev time). So if you idea does not pass those two BASIC tests...don't even bother.
Also, limiting people's gear options may counteract power creep.... but power creep is $$$, thus for proper monetization you cannot exclude power creep.
Thus any PvP revamp would have to find a way to embrace the power creep in order to be successful.
I commend your efforts but theres not a chance of changing minds. The current Lead Dev has no love or interest for that aspect of game play.
While that might be true, as of yet no one has come up with a good way to monetize a PvP revamp. Give Cryptic a way to improve PvP and make a lot of money doing it and I'm sure a few minds will get changed very quickly.
To monetize PvP. Bah that's easy. If the make a PvE version and a PvP version of the same ship. Then the PvP version of that ship being bought in the Z-store is monetizing PvP.
As far as Geko hating PvP. Well you can actually blame the KDF for that one. Back in 2013 when they were close to releasing the Excelsior, it was all Geko would talk about. How strong it was. How it was going to be the biggest, baddest ship in the galaxy. Then, the day after its release, it was popped like a zit in a PvP match against a KDF player. Geko got all butthurt over it, and this is the story of the beginning of the end for PvP.
I commend your efforts but theres not a chance of changing minds. The current Lead Dev has no love or interest for that aspect of game play.
While that might be true, as of yet no one has come up with a good way to monetize a PvP revamp. Give Cryptic a way to improve PvP and make a lot of money doing it and I'm sure a few minds will get changed very quickly.
To monetize PvP. Bah that's easy. If the make a PvE version and a PvP version of the same ship. Then the PvP version of that ship being bought in the Z-store is monetizing PvP.
As far as Geko hating PvP. Well you can actually blame the KDF for that one. Back in 2013 when they were close to releasing the Excelsior, it was all Geko would talk about. How strong it was. How it was going to be the biggest, baddest ship in the galaxy. Then, the day after its release, it was popped like a zit in a PvP match against a KDF player. Geko got all butthurt over it, and this is the story of the beginning of the end for PvP.
Trennan, that was 2011, I think not 2013, since 2013 saw my divorce finalized and I'd been playing STO fora year and a few months by that point, but Geko's Excelsior was popped before I'd even registered, making the timeframe 2010 to early 2012. iirc, that was the situation that led to his infamous '14 year old min/maxers living in their mother's basement' quote.
Right, my bad. Didn't think I was around back then. Guess I was, that was right in the middle of my fight with the Army of an injury. I've been here since the game went F2P, and that was Jan of 2012. I do remember people talking about it in Zone on DS9. I haven't laughed like that in years.
For a PvP fix to happen in this game, it needs to have two things. 1) It MUST be simple. It has to be quick and easy for the devs so that they don't waste a lot of resources on it. Anything that involves a lot of dev time will be a no go. That is why dual stats is not going to happen. 2) It MUST make the company some money. If your idea does not do those two thing, it is a bad idea because it isn't helping the matter. In fact it is just making things worse as the devs keep seeing you all PvP players as unreasonable little twats who don't spend money and want them to spend thousands of hours for them (yes dual stating EVERYTHING is that much dev time). So if you idea does not pass those two BASIC tests...don't even bother.
My idea has both. It's simple, from 350+ ships, hundreds of weapons, traits, duty officers, specialization points, etc. to just 16 classes, limited gear and traits and no specialization trees.
Traits and gear are very easy to make, they are just numbers, classes are numbers as well. The hardest part is making the individual ships behave like classes and the console/seatings loadout system. The loadout system is not 100% necessary so it might be skipped. In the end it can be reduced to PvP exclusive gear, no lockbox traits and a class system, it's impossible to make it simpler.
It also has a monetization aspect based on the most successful PvP games out there, Overwatch, TF2 and CS:GO and that system does not make it pay2win and it's also an incentive to play PvP with no direct effect on PvE since they are all cosmetics and flair items.
For a PvP fix to happen in this game, it needs to have two things. 1) It MUST be simple. It has to be quick and easy for the devs so that they don't waste a lot of resources on it. Anything that involves a lot of dev time will be a no go. That is why dual stats is not going to happen. 2) It MUST make the company some money. If your idea does not do those two thing, it is a bad idea because it isn't helping the matter. In fact it is just making things worse as the devs keep seeing you all PvP players as unreasonable little twats who don't spend money and want them to spend thousands of hours for them (yes dual stating EVERYTHING is that much dev time). So if you idea does not pass those two BASIC tests...don't even bother.
My idea has both. It's simple, from 350+ ships, hundreds of weapons, traits, duty officers, specialization points, etc. to just 16 classes, limited gear and traits and no specialization trees.
Traits and gear are very easy to make, they are just numbers, classes are numbers as well. The hardest part is making the individual ships behave like classes and the console/seatings loadout system. The loadout system is not 100% necessary so it might be skipped. In the end it can be reduced to PvP exclusive gear, no lockbox traits and a class system, it's impossible to make it simpler.
It also has a monetization aspect based on the most successful PvP games out there, Overwatch, TF2 and CS:GO and that system does not make it pay2win and it's also an incentive to play PvP with no direct effect on PvE since they are all cosmetics and flair items.
No...you failed BOTH counts. Think something a normal dev team can do in 200 hours...then half that effort...because it's cryptic and that is the level of simple you need.
And other PvP games are irrelivant to THIS game. Stop comparing this to other games...much less other games in utterly different genres no less. What you proposed makes them no money.
Thanks for saying it can't be done without making a real argument. PvP can't get any simpler unless you make everyone pilot the basic shuttles. I don't know where did you get the arbitrary number, but I'm willing to bet they can make a basic class system and a bunch of simple items in 100 hours.
And about monetization, many games follow that lockbox path, STO included and it works, because it's independent from the genre of the game, it works on MMOs, it works on MOBAs, it works on FPS, it works on RTS and it's one of the most solid money making techniques.
And about monetization, many games follow that lockbox path, STO included and it works, because it's independent from the genre of the game, it works on MMOs, it works on MOBAs, it works on FPS, it works on RTS and it's one of the most solid money making techniques.
Yeah, BUT, do they try to Sell power at the same time they disable it? no. Which is the core flaw in your idea. Disabling people's stuff for PvP matches works against monetization. Monetizing PvP means giving people reasons to want to buy stuff to be better in PvP.
And about monetization, many games follow that lockbox path, STO included and it works, because it's independent from the genre of the game, it works on MMOs, it works on MOBAs, it works on FPS, it works on RTS and it's one of the most solid money making techniques.
Yeah, BUT, do they try to Sell power at the same time they disable it? no. Which is the core flaw in your idea. Disabling people's stuff for PvP matches works against monetization. Monetizing PvP means giving people reasons to want to buy stuff to be better in PvP.
On PvP people don't want power creep. They can sell power creep for PvE and cosmetics for PvP, that's what most companies do.
Disabling people's stuff for PvP is not against monetization. They are selling that stuff for PvE, having PvP won't mean that people suddenly will stop purchasing powercreep. Right now there is no PvP and they keep selling ships.
Besides if you want different ship classes other than cruiser/escort/science ship you'll have to buy them anyway or wait for a free ship event. That means more people buying keys to open lockboxes to sell ships. Even the lower tiered ones will get a nice price, as long as they are not of one of the previous 3 categories. People will also buy those outdated low zen ships they are always giving away because no one purchases them, since in my PvP idea all ships would be on equal ground. That's another reason for people to purchase not only several types of ships, but older models as well, plus ship slots. 16 classes means you can't have 1 of each with your basic shipyard size.
Also, don't understimate the power of cosmetic items and bragging rights. Those cosmetics can be used on PvE too but can only be obtained by playing PvP and the most impressive ones by opening lockboxes with a key. You earn lockboxes by winning and the better you are the higher quality your lockbox is. As I said you could also get cosmetic variants of already existing ships, that means they can still sell their powercreep for PvE even with PvP lockboxes.
There is also the tease system. By allowing you to open a lockbox without a key for a minor reward and showing them the rewards they would have gotten if they had used a key you are making people more likely to purchase keys.
And about monetization, many games follow that lockbox path, STO included and it works, because it's independent from the genre of the game, it works on MMOs, it works on MOBAs, it works on FPS, it works on RTS and it's one of the most solid money making techniques.
Yeah, BUT, do they try to Sell power at the same time they disable it? no. Which is the core flaw in your idea. Disabling people's stuff for PvP matches works against monetization. Monetizing PvP means giving people reasons to want to buy stuff to be better in PvP.
At first, yes some things would need to be disabled. Mainly fleet, lobi, lock box and ship console. I pitched this idea in another thread.
But I'm also not going against it. This is temporary, until they can get a PvP version of them in game. My idea starts with just the level promotion ships. Yes, going back to the originals. With at most VR Mk XII PvP gear, purchasable from a PvP vendor.
Now the main thing with this idea, is to limit the player starting out. This will be the "figure it out" phase. What needs tweaking for PvP. But the thing here, it's just using what's already in-game. Take a piece of PvE gear and look at it. The stats you see on it are the same stats you would find on PvP gear. The only thing that changes between the two are the [Mods]. There are PvP [Mods] that are already in game.
The hard part is skills and abilities. These need to be adjusted for PvP. This is where I pitched the Second Skill Tree and Specializations. We know that Cryptic can separate one code from another. This is evident by the difference in power settings between sector space and combat space, as well as the deference between ground and space. The same applies to the separation of the specializations. So we know for a fact, the devs can do this. With this mirror skill tree and specializations, which is just a copy of what we have now, separated from one another, they can then tweak and adjust the second skill tree for PvP. This separates PvE and PvP as well.
The thing here is, people are looking for a fix, NOW! That's what most are going for. My idea is an over time one. You need a place to start, then a place to move to. One step at a time. So for this, my idea returns it back to almost the bare-bones of the original setup, it just has specializations in with it.
The biggest development cost on this would be in the Second skill tree and specializations. Once that's done, then it's just a matter of debugging, balancing and maintaining them.
Then from here it's just a matter of moving forward one step at a time. This is where Cryptic can pick up on monetizing PvP. Because moving forward would be releasing PvP versions of ships, consoles, doffs, kits and kit modules. Just like they do with PvE, in the Z-store. Then when they release a new a ship or piece of gear, they can release a PvP version of it as well.
This would be the cheapest way to work on PvP, as it uses the resources that are already in-game.
You'd better make sure you type fast because there's no telling how long you'll be there before the respawn button appears. Why? because those are PvPers and they have decided they want to be able to use Torp Spread to obliterate entire swarms of NooBs all at once.
Your idea is like gentlemen dueling with pistols. Not all PvPers LIKE that idea.
The basic idea of making people buy a separate set of gear for PvP.... lol no.
You'd better make sure you type fast because there's no telling how long you'll be there before the respawn button appears. Why? because those are PvPers and they have decided they want to be able to use Torp Spread to obliterate entire swarms of NooBs all at once.
Your idea is like gentlemen dueling with pistols. Not all PvPers LIKE that idea.
The basic idea of making people buy a separate set of gear for PvP.... lol no.
What you are saying is precisely why PvP is dead and just a few dozen players play it.
Most people don't want power creep, most people want balanced PvP and that's how PvP games manage to stay afloat.
Do you think the popular PvP games would still be alive if they allowed paying customers to one-hit-kill entire groups of non-paying players with a single click? Some PvP games might allow an slight advantage, like World of Tanks with their premium tanks, but that advantage is still no match for skill. Here I could be the most skilled player in-game, it won't matter unless I have a premium ship with the best gear.
You'd better make sure you type fast because there's no telling how long you'll be there before the respawn button appears. Why? because those are PvPers and they have decided they want to be able to use Torp Spread to obliterate entire swarms of NooBs all at once.
Your idea is like gentlemen dueling with pistols. Not all PvPers LIKE that idea.
The basic idea of making people buy a separate set of gear for PvP.... lol no.
that's precisely why PvP is dead and just a few dozen players play it.
Most people don't want power creep, most people want balanced PvP and that's how PvP games manage to stay afloat.
Do you think the popular PvP games would still be alive if they allowed paying customers to one-hit-kill entire groups of non-paying players with a single click? Some PvP games might allow an slight advantage, like World of Tanks with their premium tanks, but that advantage is still no match for skill. Here I could be the most skilled player in-game, it won't matter unless I have a premium ship with the best gear.
Given what I've personally done in-game... I don't really believe that flying a Sheshar is THAT big of an advantage over flying, for example, a Rezreth.
For your statement to be true, it would require a substantial number of the guys who gank folks for fun in Ker'rat to be noobs who actually suck at PvP.... Except that the actual NooBs are the ones getting ganked most of the time.
But stuff like skill macros that auto-activate damage buffs? That is a huge advantage over people who don't use them.
This game's player base is incredibly casual, most of whom have zero interest in PvP. Every element of STO's space gameplay is now insane through powercreep. Finally, the devs have tried in the past to make additions to PvP and failed.
They tried to add a ground map. A ready made map. They found they couldn't get it to work and gave up.
They also tried to add a new space war zone. It was up for testing on tribble for a bit, but it never really worked so it wasn't implemented.
The only revamp PVP will see is if it involves changing a few variables.
Frankly, what's more likely to happen is they just don't bother to include the PvP queue on the next UI revamp.
I see zero issue with making profit off of PvP with existing items sold for PvE without power creep if such items are automatically converted and balanced to PvP spec when applied to team/enemy players. They can still retain a very small advantage, but not so significant that it would make more difference than skill, team coordination, etc. They already come with different visuals which other games rely on almost exclusively for profit.
Keeping the game popular by attracting more players and making sure they are having fun is necessary to keep it profitable and the lights on, and if PvP can do that, it already justifies the extra developer time.
I see zero issue with making profit off of PvP with existing items sold for PvE without power creep if such items are automatically converted and balanced to PvP spec when applied to team/enemy players. They can still retain a very small advantage, but not so significant that it would make more difference than skill, team coordination, etc. They already come with different visuals which other games rely on almost exclusively for profit.
Keeping the game popular by attracting more players and making sure they are having fun is necessary to keep it profitable and the lights on, and if PvP can do that, it already justifies the extra developer time.
Well since we're talking about "Attracting players"... Why do people do things in MMOs? LOOOT!!! So what would the loot for PvP be? all this talk about attracting casual players is futile if the only reward for pvp is "fun". (see I can make sweeping generalizations too!)
Honestly I think an event similar to the CC event is about the only way to get enough people to actually TRY. the reward for participation needs to be something you can't get elsewhere. Maybe omega particles? The Omega upgrade event was rather popular.
I see zero issue with making profit off of PvP with existing items sold for PvE without power creep if such items are automatically converted and balanced to PvP spec when applied to team/enemy players. They can still retain a very small advantage, but not so significant that it would make more difference than skill, team coordination, etc. They already come with different visuals which other games rely on almost exclusively for profit.
Keeping the game popular by attracting more players and making sure they are having fun is necessary to keep it profitable and the lights on, and if PvP can do that, it already justifies the extra developer time.
Well since we're talking about "Attracting players"... Why do people do things in MMOs? LOOOT!!! So what would the loot for PvP be? all this talk about attracting casual players is futile if the only reward for pvp is "fun". (see I can make sweeping generalizations too!)
Honestly I think an event similar to the CC event is about the only way to get enough people to actually TRY. the reward for participation needs to be something you can't get elsewhere. Maybe omega particles? The Omega upgrade event was rather popular.
I actually tried to come up with a "killer app" for PvP with regards to awards-relevance. Unfortunately, this is not going to happen, but you point out something critical with your post-it has to have some extrinsic reward in addition to being balanced out enough that casuals can actually play it, and not have a **** experience.
In fact, I was looking at it as a way to try and fix the problem from the backend-aka, giving up on trying to force a mechanical balance that can't happen, and focus instead on a rewards-based system to bring in players and encourage the sort of players that, hypothetically, we should want in PvP.
Honestly the old daily had it right in some ways. the daily didn't care if you won or lost. It only cared about whether you completed the match. Getting blown up repeatedly isn't so bad when you get an actual reward for it. (granted this reward was only dil, but it's something people wanted)
The downside was that a lot of the time people weren't really playing to win. Sometimes people would do "offense only"(no healing or tanking allowed) teaming so that the kill quota would be reached sooner rather than later. That was actually rather fun.... mainly because it didn't matter if I won or lost. If I had to actually win it'd have been miserable.
For a PvP fix to happen in this game, it needs to have two things. 1) It MUST be simple. It has to be quick and easy for the devs so that they don't waste a lot of resources on it. Anything that involves a lot of dev time will be a no go. That is why dual stats is not going to happen. 2) It MUST make the company some money. If your idea does not do those two thing, it is a bad idea because it isn't helping the matter. In fact it is just making things worse as the devs keep seeing you all PvP players as unreasonable little twats who don't spend money and want them to spend thousands of hours for them (yes dual stating EVERYTHING is that much dev time). So if you idea does not pass those two BASIC tests...don't even bother.
My idea has both. It's simple, from 350+ ships, hundreds of weapons, traits, duty officers, specialization points, etc. to just 16 classes, limited gear and traits and no specialization trees.
Traits and gear are very easy to make, they are just numbers, classes are numbers as well. The hardest part is making the individual ships behave like classes and the console/seatings loadout system. The loadout system is not 100% necessary so it might be skipped. In the end it can be reduced to PvP exclusive gear, no lockbox traits and a class system, it's impossible to make it simpler.
It also has a monetization aspect based on the most successful PvP games out there, Overwatch, TF2 and CS:GO and that system does not make it pay2win and it's also an incentive to play PvP with no direct effect on PvE since they are all cosmetics and flair items.
No...you failed BOTH counts. Think something a normal dev team can do in 200 hours...then half that effort...because it's cryptic and that is the level of simple you need.
And other PvP games are irrelivant to THIS game. Stop comparing this to other games...much less other games in utterly different genres no less. What you proposed makes them no money.
Thanks for saying it can't be done without making a real argument. PvP can't get any simpler unless you make everyone pilot the basic shuttles. I don't know where did you get the arbitrary number, but I'm willing to bet they can make a basic class system and a bunch of simple items in 100 hours.
And about monetization, many games follow that lockbox path, STO included and it works, because it's independent from the genre of the game, it works on MMOs, it works on MOBAs, it works on FPS, it works on RTS and it's one of the most solid money making techniques.
No...all the stuff you mentioned could not be done by the crack team at blizzard with a GOOD engine that they are intimately familiar with in that time frame. Add maybe another 400 hours...and maybe. And that is with people who know what they are doing with an engine that isn't a complete mess of 6 years of ad hoc add ons with NOBODY who actually knows what the hell it does still working there. You don't know what software dev time is like if you think EVERYTHING you mentioned in your orginal post can ANYWHERE near be done in 100 hours. Figuring out the stats for what everthing should be for everything you mentioned will take longer the 100 hours.
And where in that dev time of it's quick and easy did you expect them to reclass ALL 350+ ships into on of those 16 types and develope the framework to attack the class for PvP with each of the different ship types again? I mean you are talking about a fundimental change in how the game works. Remember point 1? Like I said, stop asking for stupid **** that does not meet the two requirements I mentioned...and yes they are requirements. Meet neither and it's not only a waste of bandwith...but just making the whole matters worse as the devs keep seeing you all as unreasonable twats who have no idea what the hell they are talking about and should CONTINUE to be ignored. Quite frankly, considering how much you all seem to fight against the ONE idea that actually meets BOTH requirements and keep coming up with these completely unreasonables ones...I am not in disagreement with the devs that you all are little twats who have no idea what the hell you are talking about and should be continued to ignored. So please...continue on with these insane ideas...I personally don't care if PvP dies.
All ships already have a class. You can check the wiki if you want to know which ship has which class. All they need to do is figure out the standard stats for a class and make a ship of a class have that stats and that's already pretty much done since ship classes have a range of stats, you will never find a destroyer with 1.3 shield modifier or 60k hp or a 5/2 weapon setup for example. So my idea doesn't alter the core of the game at all.
And about monetization, it's abased on several successful business models and it's almost the same one STO uses now but without selling PvP power creep. They can still use PvP to sell power creep to PvE players with PvP lockbox exclusive ships and stuff.
You really need to calm down and actually research stuff before posting or your body fluid will end up dissolving you. So if Mr.Negative has a better idea that's also simpler, alters the game even less and involves earning more money and less work I would like to hear it.
I can't get that idea out of my head. I have no idea how to go about it, but the idea lingers...
How much would it cost? How many man-hours and at what pay rate, with what tech resources would be necessary to make even Coldnapalm's proposal work?
I don't think that ANY proposals that involve making PVP gear will be viable. They're pretty much guaranteed to be too much work to be worth it.
Could you make a system that condenses things into only 16 ship classes to be fun enough to be viable? Sure... But you might as well make it a separate game since it won't play the same as STO.
Also a preset loadout system would need to have razor sharp balancing to be as good as you want it to be. That's a lot of man hours for testing and balance tweaking.
Realistically though, people seem to pretty universally hate all the times we use premade loadouts in STO. Thus expecting people to flock to PvP because it has those? um yeah, no. SOME people would like it, but I don't think most would.
Also needing to buy PvP ships separately from PvE ships is an even worse idea. How much do you actually think people would be willing to pay in order to be able to use their Khopesh in PvP? As much as people whine about having to "rebuy" ships to get T5 and fleet variants? heh...
Also, in an environment where the mythical "perfect balance" has been achieved, ANYTHING that gives even a slight advantage will be flocked to by those who "play to win".
Honestly this is why I think a PvP rep system would be a better idea. It's not as much dev work and it avoids all the pitfalls inherent in any system where you ban half the stuff people want to use.
Comments
Thus any PvP revamp would have to find a way to embrace the power creep in order to be successful.
My character Tsin'xing
To monetize PvP. Bah that's easy. If the make a PvE version and a PvP version of the same ship. Then the PvP version of that ship being bought in the Z-store is monetizing PvP.
As far as Geko hating PvP. Well you can actually blame the KDF for that one. Back in 2013 when they were close to releasing the Excelsior, it was all Geko would talk about. How strong it was. How it was going to be the biggest, baddest ship in the galaxy. Then, the day after its release, it was popped like a zit in a PvP match against a KDF player. Geko got all butthurt over it, and this is the story of the beginning of the end for PvP.
Right, my bad. Didn't think I was around back then. Guess I was, that was right in the middle of my fight with the Army of an injury. I've been here since the game went F2P, and that was Jan of 2012. I do remember people talking about it in Zone on DS9. I haven't laughed like that in years.
My idea has both. It's simple, from 350+ ships, hundreds of weapons, traits, duty officers, specialization points, etc. to just 16 classes, limited gear and traits and no specialization trees.
Traits and gear are very easy to make, they are just numbers, classes are numbers as well. The hardest part is making the individual ships behave like classes and the console/seatings loadout system. The loadout system is not 100% necessary so it might be skipped. In the end it can be reduced to PvP exclusive gear, no lockbox traits and a class system, it's impossible to make it simpler.
It also has a monetization aspect based on the most successful PvP games out there, Overwatch, TF2 and CS:GO and that system does not make it pay2win and it's also an incentive to play PvP with no direct effect on PvE since they are all cosmetics and flair items.
Thanks for saying it can't be done without making a real argument. PvP can't get any simpler unless you make everyone pilot the basic shuttles. I don't know where did you get the arbitrary number, but I'm willing to bet they can make a basic class system and a bunch of simple items in 100 hours.
And about monetization, many games follow that lockbox path, STO included and it works, because it's independent from the genre of the game, it works on MMOs, it works on MOBAs, it works on FPS, it works on RTS and it's one of the most solid money making techniques.
My character Tsin'xing
On PvP people don't want power creep. They can sell power creep for PvE and cosmetics for PvP, that's what most companies do.
Disabling people's stuff for PvP is not against monetization. They are selling that stuff for PvE, having PvP won't mean that people suddenly will stop purchasing powercreep. Right now there is no PvP and they keep selling ships.
Besides if you want different ship classes other than cruiser/escort/science ship you'll have to buy them anyway or wait for a free ship event. That means more people buying keys to open lockboxes to sell ships. Even the lower tiered ones will get a nice price, as long as they are not of one of the previous 3 categories. People will also buy those outdated low zen ships they are always giving away because no one purchases them, since in my PvP idea all ships would be on equal ground. That's another reason for people to purchase not only several types of ships, but older models as well, plus ship slots. 16 classes means you can't have 1 of each with your basic shipyard size.
Also, don't understimate the power of cosmetic items and bragging rights. Those cosmetics can be used on PvE too but can only be obtained by playing PvP and the most impressive ones by opening lockboxes with a key. You earn lockboxes by winning and the better you are the higher quality your lockbox is. As I said you could also get cosmetic variants of already existing ships, that means they can still sell their powercreep for PvE even with PvP lockboxes.
There is also the tease system. By allowing you to open a lockbox without a key for a minor reward and showing them the rewards they would have gotten if they had used a key you are making people more likely to purchase keys.
At first, yes some things would need to be disabled. Mainly fleet, lobi, lock box and ship console. I pitched this idea in another thread.
But I'm also not going against it. This is temporary, until they can get a PvP version of them in game. My idea starts with just the level promotion ships. Yes, going back to the originals. With at most VR Mk XII PvP gear, purchasable from a PvP vendor.
Now the main thing with this idea, is to limit the player starting out. This will be the "figure it out" phase. What needs tweaking for PvP. But the thing here, it's just using what's already in-game. Take a piece of PvE gear and look at it. The stats you see on it are the same stats you would find on PvP gear. The only thing that changes between the two are the [Mods]. There are PvP [Mods] that are already in game.
The hard part is skills and abilities. These need to be adjusted for PvP. This is where I pitched the Second Skill Tree and Specializations. We know that Cryptic can separate one code from another. This is evident by the difference in power settings between sector space and combat space, as well as the deference between ground and space. The same applies to the separation of the specializations. So we know for a fact, the devs can do this. With this mirror skill tree and specializations, which is just a copy of what we have now, separated from one another, they can then tweak and adjust the second skill tree for PvP. This separates PvE and PvP as well.
The thing here is, people are looking for a fix, NOW! That's what most are going for. My idea is an over time one. You need a place to start, then a place to move to. One step at a time. So for this, my idea returns it back to almost the bare-bones of the original setup, it just has specializations in with it.
The biggest development cost on this would be in the Second skill tree and specializations. Once that's done, then it's just a matter of debugging, balancing and maintaining them.
Then from here it's just a matter of moving forward one step at a time. This is where Cryptic can pick up on monetizing PvP. Because moving forward would be releasing PvP versions of ships, consoles, doffs, kits and kit modules. Just like they do with PvE, in the Z-store. Then when they release a new a ship or piece of gear, they can release a PvP version of it as well.
This would be the cheapest way to work on PvP, as it uses the resources that are already in-game.
You'd better make sure you type fast because there's no telling how long you'll be there before the respawn button appears. Why? because those are PvPers and they have decided they want to be able to use Torp Spread to obliterate entire swarms of NooBs all at once.
Your idea is like gentlemen dueling with pistols. Not all PvPers LIKE that idea.
The basic idea of making people buy a separate set of gear for PvP.... lol no.
My character Tsin'xing
So you're fine with buying T6 power creeper for PvE, but you aren't fine with having to buy a T6 ship that is balanced for PvP?
What you are saying is precisely why PvP is dead and just a few dozen players play it.
Most people don't want power creep, most people want balanced PvP and that's how PvP games manage to stay afloat.
Do you think the popular PvP games would still be alive if they allowed paying customers to one-hit-kill entire groups of non-paying players with a single click? Some PvP games might allow an slight advantage, like World of Tanks with their premium tanks, but that advantage is still no match for skill. Here I could be the most skilled player in-game, it won't matter unless I have a premium ship with the best gear.
For your statement to be true, it would require a substantial number of the guys who gank folks for fun in Ker'rat to be noobs who actually suck at PvP.... Except that the actual NooBs are the ones getting ganked most of the time.
But stuff like skill macros that auto-activate damage buffs? That is a huge advantage over people who don't use them.
My character Tsin'xing
This game's player base is incredibly casual, most of whom have zero interest in PvP. Every element of STO's space gameplay is now insane through powercreep. Finally, the devs have tried in the past to make additions to PvP and failed.
They tried to add a ground map. A ready made map. They found they couldn't get it to work and gave up.
They also tried to add a new space war zone. It was up for testing on tribble for a bit, but it never really worked so it wasn't implemented.
The only revamp PVP will see is if it involves changing a few variables.
Frankly, what's more likely to happen is they just don't bother to include the PvP queue on the next UI revamp.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Keeping the game popular by attracting more players and making sure they are having fun is necessary to keep it profitable and the lights on, and if PvP can do that, it already justifies the extra developer time.
Honestly I think an event similar to the CC event is about the only way to get enough people to actually TRY. the reward for participation needs to be something you can't get elsewhere. Maybe omega particles? The Omega upgrade event was rather popular.
My character Tsin'xing
The downside was that a lot of the time people weren't really playing to win. Sometimes people would do "offense only"(no healing or tanking allowed) teaming so that the kill quota would be reached sooner rather than later. That was actually rather fun.... mainly because it didn't matter if I won or lost. If I had to actually win it'd have been miserable.
My character Tsin'xing
All ships already have a class. You can check the wiki if you want to know which ship has which class. All they need to do is figure out the standard stats for a class and make a ship of a class have that stats and that's already pretty much done since ship classes have a range of stats, you will never find a destroyer with 1.3 shield modifier or 60k hp or a 5/2 weapon setup for example. So my idea doesn't alter the core of the game at all.
And about monetization, it's abased on several successful business models and it's almost the same one STO uses now but without selling PvP power creep. They can still use PvP to sell power creep to PvE players with PvP lockbox exclusive ships and stuff.
You really need to calm down and actually research stuff before posting or your body fluid will end up dissolving you. So if Mr.Negative has a better idea that's also simpler, alters the game even less and involves earning more money and less work I would like to hear it.
Could you make a system that condenses things into only 16 ship classes to be fun enough to be viable? Sure... But you might as well make it a separate game since it won't play the same as STO.
Also a preset loadout system would need to have razor sharp balancing to be as good as you want it to be. That's a lot of man hours for testing and balance tweaking.
Realistically though, people seem to pretty universally hate all the times we use premade loadouts in STO. Thus expecting people to flock to PvP because it has those? um yeah, no. SOME people would like it, but I don't think most would.
Also needing to buy PvP ships separately from PvE ships is an even worse idea. How much do you actually think people would be willing to pay in order to be able to use their Khopesh in PvP? As much as people whine about having to "rebuy" ships to get T5 and fleet variants? heh...
Also, in an environment where the mythical "perfect balance" has been achieved, ANYTHING that gives even a slight advantage will be flocked to by those who "play to win".
Honestly this is why I think a PvP rep system would be a better idea. It's not as much dev work and it avoids all the pitfalls inherent in any system where you ban half the stuff people want to use.
My character Tsin'xing