New Command Specialization

[Eldiora]

Crytic simply gave up the pretense of trying to rain in the power creep.

Look at the difference between a new character and an old one before the rep system.

A new one was just a tad worse because he would have had no Borg gear, but not as much.

Now?

MK 14 gold weapons/consoles
Fleet gear
Reputation passives
Specs that are ludicrously overpowered
Level 50-60 grind

and do not get me startet on ground.

[Sysil]

Crytic simply gave up the pretense of trying to rain in the power creep.

Look at the difference between a new character and an old one before the rep system.

A new one was just a tad worse because he would have had no Borg gear, but not as much.

Now?

MK 14 gold weapons/consoles
Fleet gear
Reputation passives
Specs that are ludicrously overpowered
Level 50-60 grind

and do not get me startet on ground.

Don't you realise that if we did not have all of that to do WE WOULD IMMEDIATELY STOP PLAYING THE GAME AND NEVER PLAY AGAIN

[Eldiora]

Sorry I could not restrain myself to post this (after dropping if my char laughing really hard for 5 minutes)


NSFW!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Husker]

Sorry I could not restrain myself to post this (after dropping if my char laughing really hard for 5 minutes)


NSFW!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[QorDaq]

So, because you know everyone one was asking themselves; "Gee I wonder what QorDaq thinks about this"...

...*Smirk*...

For myself, to fully appreciate what the specializations mean in the proverbial big-picture, I have to go back to the early days of the game and ask myself the following...

"How might Specializations have helped me out during the four years between Level Cap increases?"

From that perspective, specializations would have been awesome, because I earned literally Millions and Millions of potential skill points that have not done much except lighten the load on Reps and BOff training over the years. Maybe a little to SB development here and there.

So I see them as filling that gap. As the Devs have mentioned repeatedly, the Specializations are a means to continue to level a Toon (For a long time) without the need for raising the Level Cap.

One of the huge mistakes...er... Questionable design decisions, Cryptic made in early development was tying Leveling to rank. That choice seriously limited their options for leveling.

In other words, I see the drawn-out process of leveling specializations as a good thing since it gives us medium and long-term goals to work towards.

What people really want is new content weekly to keep up with our rapid capacity to chew through story much faster than the game can possibly churn it out. As historically easy as STO has been to level, (I can go from level 1-50 in a few days if I push it), we are not used to having to take the long-view with progressing through the game.

Cryptic's response? Tie in resource sinks and timers to mitigate how quickly we can achieve milestones in-game. But we don't like that either.

I really think this is an honest attempt to give us long term goals that are not artificially gated. But, as you all know by now; I am the consummate optimist on these things. The game has only been around for 5 years, and it's seen a lot of changes (Some good some questionable). I think that this is a good one and hey, at least it does not cost Dilithium to level up Specializations!

As to the Command Specialization itself, one of those long-term goals will be leveling it up so that we can send our BOffs to Command School...*Woot*...

maj!

[Eldiora]

After trying out Argala, I am giving up on the new spec. Just not worth wasting my time over.

[Sysil]

After trying out Argala, I am giving up on the new spec. Just not worth wasting my time over.

I'm grinding to get my characters to 60. After that I start doing the stuff I enjoy instead of what Cryptic thinks I should be doing.

STO is not my job, Cryptic is not my boss and I'll do what I want when I want.

[Darhen]

I don't stress over the grind anymore. I do the things I enjoy doing and helping other fleet mates with things.

[Dancamvet]

I don't stress over the grind anymore. I do the things I enjoy doing and helping other fleet mates with things.

Ditto. I've found the rate of gain to be not too terrible with doffing and doing stfs every now and again. Whilst I'm nowhere near maxed out i've managed to get pretty deep into both intel and commando.

Dilithium be more of an issue imo but there you go.

[cmdraftbrn]

pop on. do something. pop off