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Tier upgrades.
greyblaze
Member Posts: 2 Arc User
Would be interesting if they were able to have a ship tier upgrade system. Kind of like we did with T5 to T5-U. But it would work on all ships. Maybe require upgrade modules and actual in game resources like Dilithium and R&D components. I wouldn't mind having a Malachowski or Hegh'ta upgraded to T5 or T6.
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Ive got a mirror patrol escort id LOVE to t5-u but its not even considered a full t5 ship so I cant. part of my frequent "give me a stronger mirror ship" threads
The OP wants to pay (via Dilithium, tech upgrades, etc.) to level his ship. Why? The leveling ship concept requires nothing more than to play and level your character/ship simply by using it.
@nixboox Yes, we have to pay to upgrade T5-T5U, but that system is now antiquated with the introduction of T1-6 leveling ships. It's just a matter of time before all other ships are made into leveling ships.
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We can probably all agree that the making T5-U was partially designed to minimize the outrage of T6 making all our T5 (formally) max tier cash ships 'obsolete'. The whole -U thing wasn't something they intended to expand upon.
I think the thought here was that Cryptic is unlikely to suddenly allow ALL current ships become leveling up to T6....for free. So having an option to pay or grind for an upgrade token to ALLOW a ship to become a leveling vessel would be the idea. I would expect the cost would depend on the starting level ship. As a T1 can be bought for 500 zen? The upgrade token would cost 2500 (so total investment equal to T6 3000 zen ship) or a T3 bought for 1500 zen would cost 1500 zen for an upgrade token to T6. etc etc etc. There would be no monetary incentive to allow T1 ships to suddenly get a "free" leveling upgrade to T6 as then people wouldn't buy as many T6 ships. So if the financial cost was the same....buy the ship at whatever level PLUS an upgrade token thats total cost ended up being the 3000 T6 price....people would flood the shelves. I would love a T6 Heavy Cruiser (Stargazer), T6 Nova, T6 Oberth, T6 Star Cruiser, T6 Recon Science vessel, etc. There a bunch of ships that don't have T6 versions and an easier process than coming up with new T6 models individually as they are released would be to have a pay to upgrade system and just roll out the leveling mechanic to all existing ships. For a price.
Well they are rolling out more leveling ships. So they have a model in place for how a Tac, Eng, or Sci ship would level now. It's not that complicated, just adding X% hull and shield, consoles, weapons, BO layout/seating, etc. The bigger holdup I see is that a LOT of the ships that people want a T6 treatment for have MODELS that are dated or aged. The Oberth, and Nova come to mind as ships that have a LOT of player love for a T6, but would need new models to fit the new "standard level" of graphics. So the time crunch would be remodeling all the older ships that have been out since launch that need new face lifts.
But I think the indication as they are rolling out more leveling ships would be they have a coded script now for the leveling function as fair as BOFF, consoles, and weapons. Actually should be able to cut and past that into ship coding onto another vessel. Obviously add some variety so its not just 3 options. But from what the devs have said, its always the design portion that holds up ship releases. And this would require a LOT of ships to be remodeled. I think there are still dozens of ships released in the first 3 years of STO that today just look......bad.
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The problem with a system like this is it introduces far too much grind and other systems in place already take care of this idea. The new leveling starships take care of this problem easily enough and without the extra costs. This proposal would simply nickel and dime people to death, either in cash or in-game resources. The other issue is you're basically introducing several new tiers of starships on the technical side as well. T1U, T2U, T3U, and T4U. Now this brings with it a host of issues and concerns. First one is balance. A T1U should be able to perform as well as a basic T2, a T2U as well as a T3, T3U the same as a T4, and T4U as well as a T5. You then have to answer what kind of upgrade the ship is going to get at each level. Assuming it scales all the way to t6, you then have to answer what kind of specialist seating the ship will come with. Then folks will complain they can't choose the type of specialist seating they want, and if they did allow folks to choose their specialist seating that opens up a huge power imbalance between the ships.
This also raises another question, if I can just pick one ship and upgrade that thing all the way to t6, why would I ever both to invest in other t1-t5 ships at all, or even some of the t6 ships? At this point you would remove any and all incentive people would have to look at the other ships. If gear is a concern, there are vendors that sell white quality gear at various levels that will get you through all of the early content in the game with their gear going all the way up to mk ix. After that you'll be able to pick up purple very rare drops easily enough just by doing story missions. It would be much much simpler for them to just allow more skins to be used on different ships than to implement an unneeded system like this. This also opens up the possibility of one leveling faster than their ship can keep up with. If that's the case and I jump ship to get a more current tiered one, what's my motivation to go back and keep upgrading when I can just get a current tiered ship and be done with it? Respectfully I don't think you've thought this through as far as you needed to.
The Vulcan science ship we got with the Anniversary event this year was free as it didn't cost you any cash or in game resources like dilithium to obtain. All you needed to do was complete the daily event and turn in the marks. That ship is a scaling t6 ship. Any toon can claim that ship and use it straight out of the tutorial and never have to change ships even at end game if they don't want to. For the past several years we've been given 3 free ships a year, all of them being t6. We've gotten one at the anniversary event, summer event, and winter event. So to claim we never get free tier 6 ships is simply incorrect.
As you're leveling a toon the last ship that Quinn/J'mpok/D'Tan give you is a t5 ship that has the possibility to upgrade to t5u such as the Galaxy class for feds. As it sits right now that's the highest we've gotten outside of an event. Even then the t5 version of those ships will still do you quite well, even without the t5u upgrade. Then for about 3m EC last I looked you can get several of the old t5 lockbox prize ships like the D'kora that upgrade to t5u for free.
I wanted to get this quote in before I addressed the next point as it goes hand in hand. As it sits right now I own the entirety of the cstore in terms of ships, and appearance. I also own most of the lockbox and lobi ships as well as R&D promo ships. Some of that I have dropped cash to obtain, some of it I've converted dilithium to zen to obtain. As it sits right now, you can have everything I have in game without ever having to sink a dime into it. In fact I know several people who have just as much as I do. All you need to do is farm dilithium and flip it into zen and you can have virtually anything you could want in game for free without ever touching cash. In fact one of my crew very recently flipped enough dilithium that way to score himself the Miracle Worker Mega Bundle. All you need to do is know where to go, such as Dyson Ground Battlezone, and doing Admiralty or Doffing, as a few big examples, and you're good to get started.
The upgrade tokens you mentioned can be purchased from the exchange for EC or purchased from the cstore for zen. If you are able to farm the EC or you flip dilithium to zen you can get them without having to sink cash into the game. So they indeed can be obtained for free.
As I explained above, t1-t4 ships aren't intended to be your permanent ships as you will out level them quickly. This is part of why they don't release them too often unless there is a special reason for it. If you want a scaling Miranda class, it would be much simpler to just make the t6 we have now into a scaling starship than to make 4 individual new ships. There are free options to get ships and items out there in game already. Whether people will choose to use them is another debate entirely.
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Well if you aren't employed? I mean if you wake up and play games all day, you could argue that that is your "work" as it is all you do every day. NOT implying anyone in this thread is an unemployed person that only plays games and complains about them! I'm literally just saying...you MIGHT be able to argue playing a game to get free game currency to buy or earn a ship with no cash COULD POSSIBLY be stretched to be called work. Since you didn't just LOG IN and TADA.....FREE STUFF! You actually have to take TIME and apparently some people have a punch clock mentally associated with their fun time AND apparently would not have otherwise played the game at ALL for fun. So IF all you were doing is playing JUST to grind an event JUST to get a ship....technically...........you MIGHT call that....well no. In english you still couldn't say "work" at all, at BEST for this argument you could say it cost "Effort". But it takes "effort" to read and eat and sleep and type up complaints about no free stuff....so I don't know?
Although we have had many T5 ships and below, and costumes, and pets, and stuff like that just GIVEN to us every year as part of the anniversary event. Just for logging on and claiming them. And PLENTY of free ship equipment and weapons, and even some costumes have been free and giveaways for running a mission. SooooooI I guess just no "T6 ship for free just for logging in".
In short, there is no logical argument to the contrary. Free in english means you didn't pay for it with money. TIME has never been calculated as a cost in reference to a GAME. Heck there are even FREE perks you get for LENGTH of play (when we had gold accounts) But even the Gamma Recruit was tied to having to play that CHARACTER for 20 hours.....and then you got access to FREE stuff. But I'm sure the argument will continue......
Here's a crazy thought, maybe they'd rather be playing the game than having to deal with artificial inducements to do repetitive tasks until their fingers fall off every couple of weeks. Some of us actually have day jobs we play games to relax after, ya know.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
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