Oh ugh.. Skill caps and end game..

[Nishka]

I don't think the new cap and the issue with the skill points is that bad, maybe you won't be able to have points in every skill but at least for me that isn't the goal. I want to specify in a certain area.. If I want my char to be good in a completely different area then I will make a 2nd one..

(Maybe the years in Wow flawed me there...)

They really killed the versatality of the game with this move you know?

It was actually promised in several dev interviews and it's one of the main selling points on their site. I can only see negative advantages of such a cap and not a single positive one.

Anyways, meantime on the main forums I'm starting a signature revolution with big bold red letters against the cap, maybe it has an effect.

[Sodah]

I'm on the other side of the fence, I really hated the fact they didn't have a skill cap and would eventually let everyone max out everything.

That's not how it should work, you specialize! Not have every character become jack-of-all-trades. If you're a tank then you spec skillpoints accordingly. They'll all be there right in front of you....there's no mystery.

I've read a lot of peoples stories as to how they leveled their character and what they like/dislike about it. I even read a story about a Science Character in an Escort that fools enemies into thinking hes tactical by flying one then does a sensor sweep and blasts the cloaked guys to smitherines.

That extra nail in the coffin crap doesn't fly with me, I don't buy it.

This is good news, I love the idea of making the Borg Queen one of the endgame encounters right off the bat

[Tibor Rand]

Being a long time vet of WoW, I at first looked at this as ensuring the playing feild was level at the Admiral level, which would prevent unstable community issues.

"Such and Such is overpowered, you need to nerf ability X"
"Escorts are too powerful, nerf them"

And so on..

However, I thought about this from a realtively "real" prospective. Let me illustrate:

Capt. Virgil Hilts of the USS Great Escape has been a Captain for 20+ years. (Anyone who gets this reference get's +5 Tibby cool points.) He has superior tactics and first hand experience fighting Kligons.

Capt. Roger Bartlett has recently been promoted to the rank of Captain. He has spent his military life serving in tactical ships but this is his first command.

While Capt. Bartlett still has the backround and tactical experience he does not have the years of experience in command as Capt. Hilts. In this example, as it should be in STO, Time = Experience = Better skills as a captain (Or in this case, and Admiral)

The bottom line is that the accountants saw the potential for New Sales dropping off after the initial launch. Who wants to play an MMO where you will NEVER catch up to your enemy or your fellow Officers.

Just playing Devil's Advocate. I still think the skill cap is crap.

[Tsori]

I don't think the new cap and the issue with the skill points is that bad, maybe you won't be able to have points in every skill but at least for me that isn't the goal. I want to specify in a certain area.. If I want my char to be good in a completely different area then I will make a 2nd one..

(Maybe the years in Wow flawed me there...)

Right and youd willingly play through the already repetative gameplay in a miranda, then a tier 1, 2 ect ect just to get back up to admiral to find that in the time youve been leveling cryptic have done one of there major unbalancing nerfs they are so fond of doing and now all your work was for no point.

The lack of a skill cap was a good idea, it didnt have downsides, it wouldnt cause problems for people being the same as abilities of BO will be different, youd have to physically go out your way to copy someones spec.

the only thing it causes is people stopping jumping from ship to ship depending on what they feel like playing, which again isnt an issue as EVERYONE could do it... you could have a setup of officers for each ship.. it was just versatile goodness.

They have put it in first and formost to give themselves more money on selling character slots for alts, and selling subscriptions as people will play alts to see what they do.

[Plaxidia]

Right and youd willingly play through the already repetative gameplay in a miranda, then a tier 1, 2 ect ect just to get back up to admiral to find that in the time youve been leveling cryptic have done one of there major unbalancing nerfs they are so fond of doing and now all your work was for no point.

The lack of a skill cap was a good idea, it didnt have downsides, it wouldnt cause problems for people being the same as abilities of BO will be different, youd have to physically go out your way to copy someones spec.

the only thing it causes is people stopping jumping from ship to ship depending on what they feel like playing, which again isnt an issue as EVERYONE could do it... you could have a setup of officers for each ship.. it was just versatile goodness.

They have put it in first and formost to give themselves more money on selling character slots for alts, and selling subscriptions as people will play alts to see what they do.

But see.. That is another point.. some people.. *I live with one* Will play through that beginning content a million times.. They enjoy it.. And because you or I dont like to have alts doesn't mean it is like that for everyone..

I do not disagree that for some.. SOME.. this was a bad business move and will hurt their reputation with SOME people.. But not everyone.. It is narrow minded to think that my opinion is the only one out there and because I dont like a certain change they make then everyone will feel the same.. Just reading this thread you can see that is not the case..

I still stand by my statement that in the end, for them.. not us.. it is likely a good decision..

And personally, although I thought it was kind of neat, I prefer it this way.. I take pride building and specking a character a certain way it makes it special and individual. I have no doubt there will be some sort of re-spec option for screw ups. But on the whole I have no real problem with the cap on points.

[Nishka]

Another great part is that since you can get all the skill points you can specialize anyway you want.

This may sound weird so let me explain; To take the example of the science officer in an escort, he's doing that tactic for the first month, but eventually grows bored with it and rather specializes in a cruiser instead into fooling people that he's an engineer instead, after gaining enough skills to get all the engineering specializing done and switching to the right ship and gearing that up he can do so without the need for respeccing.

The real specialization that you're doing in STO was by means of ship equipment and BO's, the skills were only to support any spec you came up with. It's basicly like the dual talent system in WoW in which you can just pick which talents you need at that moment. Keep in mind that not all talents are useful for everything. If you're an engineer flying in an escort then most of your science skills will not do anything and it's mostly the tactical skills that are being used.

Now if you want to respec it'll cost you some dollars (I heard $ 5,=), in WoW I sometimes respecced two times per week before the dual talent system was added, some guildies respecced 10x a day. Granted that is rather excessive, but 10x 5 dollar = 50 dollar on 1 day you'd pay extra, or in my case 5x 2 x 4 = 40 dollar extra in a month...
That's almost 3x the subscription fee for 1 month!

To me that sounds rediculous.

It's a huge violation of freedom that they're doing now with the current limitation.

[California]

What cryptic should have done was developed a skill tree where you had to have skills A, B, and C already purchased to get skill D. They also need to increase the number of skills cause there aren't very many. And they need to figure out endgame quickly. Hitting lvl 45 in a few hours of gameplay is stupid, once you hit 45 you need to change classes into something else, but once you hit 'Admiral' i don't know what that something else would be, like how in KotOR you change into Jedi class after a few levels, maybe you can become a Q lol, I dunno, but you have to be able to continue to level up or spend skills after hitting the 'ceiling', especially since it takes little time to get there. They are going to have everyone running around at admiral in less than a month. That equals $0 in their pocket, so I don't get the level cap.

Sorry about the random thoughts.

[Tsori]

Right and youd willingly play through the already repetative gameplay in a miranda, then a tier 1, 2 ect ect just to get back up to admiral to find that in the time youve been leveling cryptic have done one of there major unbalancing nerfs they are so fond of doing and now all your work was for no point.

The lack of a skill cap was a good idea, it didnt have downsides, it wouldnt cause problems for people being the same as abilities of BO will be different, youd have to physically go out your way to copy someones spec.

the only thing it causes is people stopping jumping from ship to ship depending on what they feel like playing, which again isnt an issue as EVERYONE could do it... you could have a setup of officers for each ship.. it was just versatile goodness.

They have put it in first and formost to give themselves more money on selling character slots for alts, and selling subscriptions as people will play alts to see what they do.

But see.. That is another point.. some people.. *I live with one* Will play through that beginning content a million times.. They enjoy it.. And because you or I dont like to have alts doesn't mean it is like that for everyone..

I do not disagree that for some.. SOME.. this was a bad business move and will hurt their reputation with SOME people.. But not everyone.. It is narrow minded to think that my opinion is the only one out there and because I dont like a certain change they make then everyone will feel the same.. Just reading this thread you can see that is not the case..

I still stand by my statement that in the end, for them.. not us.. it is likely a good decision..

And personally, although I thought it was kind of neat, I prefer it this way.. I take pride building and specking a character a certain way it makes it special and individual. I have no doubt there will be some sort of re-spec option for screw ups. But on the whole I have no real problem with the cap on points.

And i get your point.. i realise to some this isnt a bad thing.. but its not exactly good to those people,its not giving them anything good. Its purely taking away from those who want to not roll and pay for alts.

I agree, good business move, but only in the short term, the amount of crap cryptic have chucked at fans lately is starting to build up and people only take so much.

As for your character.. great.. but say you make a really good character ect, and she actually turns out unintentionally really good. Then other people notice.. and because its doing well, someone will come along and just copy your setup.. suddenly your not so unique.. your the same as everyone else.

Otherside of the coin, say its really bad.. youl actually be kicked from groups for not running a FOTM build, as your dps or your healing wont be as much as they are after.. and there not willing to find out if your way is good enough, so they get rid of you immediately.

Now it might not matter to you, i mean to some of us it would just be "hah jerks" and id find anouther group, but to some this gets really annoying. The case of champions at the moment is it is so Unbalanced BECAUSE they promised a system where you could choose what you want and mix skills, then they added a skill cap and suddenly.. taking one skill, meant you couldnt go into a pvp match as youd be constantly staring at the floor.


By having no skill cap they themselves were protected from the backlash of unbalancing to an extent, they were protected by stale Fotm builds, such that plague CO (i was an ice build... only other ice'rs could know the pain of cryptics system). It causes more problems.. and has given nothing to anyone but themselves...


Short version: Its giving to none, yet taking from some. Its not good for anyone but themselves and your right, some people dont care.. but theyve no reason to as they wont be effected, those that do care however are losing the options alot have been really looking forward too.

[Tsori]

What cryptic should have done was developed a skill tree where you had to have skills A, B, and C already purchased to get skill D. They also need to increase the number of skills cause there aren't very many. And they need to figure out endgame quickly. Hitting lvl 45 in a few hours of gameplay is stupid, once you hit 45 you need to change classes into something else, but once you hit 'Admiral' i don't know what that something else would be, like how in KotOR you change into Jedi class after a few levels, maybe you can become a Q lol, I dunno, but you have to be able to continue to level up or spend skills after hitting the 'ceiling', especially since it takes little time to get there. They are going to have everyone running around at admiral in less than a month. That equals $0 in their pocket, so I don't get the level cap.

Sorry about the random thoughts.

Oh god dont give them ideas..

They have a skill tree with requirements in CO and it doesnt work, its very restricting in that its no secret that cryptic suck at balancing, and having to take possibly pointless and useless skills JUST to get the higher ones becomes very annoying when trying to build a character.

The lack of a skill cap caused no problems, they are just getting money hungry, like releasing life time subs early.. they love sucking as much cash as then can and then selling the game off and running away.

[California]

Yeah I don't know what the greatest solution is, but I don't agree with everyone hitting the ceiling in 80 hours. If I wanted to beat a game in 80 hours I'd play a one player RPG. This is just not a good financial move, unless they just planned on getting all of their money through lifetime subs.