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Evolution/Power creep
DeanWins
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It may have been discussed before in various ways, but figured Id bring it up just to see. Can't help but notice that most of the Event purples we are getting lately are slowly getting stronger and stronger, the natural progression of the game to want bigger and better. So obviously some of the new purples we get are stronger aka have better stats than some of the original legendaries. This seems normal for any game such as this, but is it really reflective of the actual show or is it even realistic.
Did the older legendaries some how become less proficient in there skills simply because they were released earlier in the game? I mean DB has never been completely realistic or ever has explained why some get certain skills and why some are higher than others, but Id like to think most at least make some kind of common sense. Maybe im wrong or naive lol.
Either way I wonder if it would be feasible as some games do, to update some of the older cards to make them in line with what was originally intended, and to make them more compatible with what is being released now. Many games often have patches, and updates to the game to bring older aspects of the game more current.
Not sure if this is practical, or fair, or what, but can't hurt to bring it up.
Did the older legendaries some how become less proficient in there skills simply because they were released earlier in the game? I mean DB has never been completely realistic or ever has explained why some get certain skills and why some are higher than others, but Id like to think most at least make some kind of common sense. Maybe im wrong or naive lol.
Either way I wonder if it would be feasible as some games do, to update some of the older cards to make them in line with what was originally intended, and to make them more compatible with what is being released now. Many games often have patches, and updates to the game to bring older aspects of the game more current.
Not sure if this is practical, or fair, or what, but can't hurt to bring it up.
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I think a patch would be great...especially for the legendaries. How 4 star archer has a higher dip base than 5 star picard is beyond me. As for Shinzon...well these days its just sad how weak he is.
Could this be rolled out in phases?? Eg 2017 crew 1st? Would solve the "useless 5 star" dilema too
So from that perspective, they have managed power creep somewhat well.
When you get into comparing 1/5s to 4/4s things are likely a bit different as a lot of older 1/5s are put to shame by new 4/4s, where newer 1/5s can hold their own.
Improving old crew is possible, but it also raises a lot of issues. How many people will complain about who they did/didn't pick in old beholds based on the stats. I imagine it's easier for DB to avoid the issues and just let the crew stay as is.
Let's take ye olde Captain Pike as an example. Some people have him, some don't.
During an upcoming event, Captain Pike 2.0 is the new Legendary people can win by placing top 1500.
Captain Pike 2.0 has updated stats, maybe adjusted arena ability. And new art. Going forward, the old version will no longer be available in the portal (but Captain Pike 2.0 will be added to the portal in a later update).
Fusing any Captain Pike with Captain Pike 2.0 results in Captain Pike 2.0 with the correct number of stars. Meaning anyone who has an old version of Captain Pike can upgrade to the new version and get his updated stats. And for those who have Captain Pike 1.0 in the freezer, there's bragging rights - there's no other way to get the old art.
There's an incentive for everyone:
- New players can try to get an old card that's actually useful
- Those who have the card less than FF/FE have an incentive to get more stars.
- Anyone who has him in the freezer, well, 2.0 is just like any other new card
I can already see some cragly old-timers manning their bridge with art that's no longer available.
Personally, I'd be cool with anyone who has immortalized Captain Pike getting one free copy of Captain Pike 2.0. It rewards, rather than retroactively sours, those choices players made during Beholds or where to spend their Honor.
You guys all have great feedback on the issue.
I agree, that when I first considered this, that DB picking and choosing, who or what gets updated, had the potential to open the door to a bit of drama among players.
That being said however, don't they pretty much pick and chose everything for us anyways? other then who we decide to go for. Every other game, especially when it comes to nerfs, rarely if ever do they ask permission let alone player's opinions on what they chose to nerf/fix/update. Usually developers do what they want, or what they feel is balanced, and let the chips fall where they may.
Besides, its not like DB really goes out of its way to avoid issues, whether it be intentional or not lol
I mean for instance, let's say they decide Enterprise-E Picard needs a pick-me-up. So what happens is the next event, somewhere high up on the threshold table (same kind of place they put the 5* when it's a rerun, is it like 450k? I forget, I don't bother) there's an item, Borg Queen's Skull, and if you get that you can use it to upgrade Enterprise-E Picard - like using a citation to add a star, only it doesn't add a star, it just gives him his upgraded stats and traits, and maybe a little gold medal or something in the corner of the art.
It'd be a little bit of coding on DB's part and a teensy bit of art for the item, but nothing crazy expensive, it'd be a nice reward for people willing to go hard in an event to get it, players who don't have the crew power to get 450k would probably be focused on getting new legendaries through packs or whatever rather than trying to upgrade old ones anyway, and for anyone who didn't already have Ent-E JLP, if they get the Skull it'd be a good reason to keep an eye out for him in beholds from then on. And it'd be fun seeing what the 'special item' for each old crew member is when they come out with one. Who else is weak? Shinzon could have, say, a hypospray of Picard's DNA. Is there a weak Riker? Give him that little hologram of the ladies playing harps, that'll perk him up.
This is not bad and it would be actually turning 5/5 to 6/5
I guess kind of, but it'd still be a 5/5 - and it'd work for any fusion and level, if you boosted a lvl30 2/5 you'd get the upgraded stats for lvl30 2/5, it's just swapping in the new stats.
I feel like 6* - if that ever happens - would have to be something spectacular, whereas even 5/5 'upgraded' Enterprise-E Picard still isn't going to be the best of the best or anything, he just won't be embarrassingly out of date anymore.
No ... old cards should not be "improved" by boosting their stats.
What should be the case is that DB makes it easier to obtain old crew ... every time the portal pool is updated, the card selection gets diluted so it becomes even harder to add stars to older, weaker non-FF 5* crew so they remain in the 1/5 or 2/5 doldrums.
I'm now nearing 15 10x Premium portal pulls without a 5* behold (I did have a 5* drop from a Merit pull) ... 10 have been 4* non-beholds (all immortalised crew) and 3 have been all immortal 4* beholds. That is kinda insane for a player who still has so many crew to add stars to (e.g. need 44 4*s to max current in-portal crew).
For voyages the gulf between the worst 3-skill immortal 5* and best 3-skill immortal 4* is decent enough ... but you can only get there if you can add *s to that non-FF 5* ... so a better solution is to help players immortalise those crew by:
- Adding a relevant 1/5 copy of crew to the event tier list ... e.g. this past week could have included a 1/5 Admiral Janeway at 400K VP or a 1/5 Lt. Com. La Forge ... crew that have been in game from the start. You then have the potential to gain a 5/5 Admiral Janeway after 5 Janeway-featured events.
- For the Flashback events ... add a copy of the 5* to the Threshold reward table!! (such an easy fix allowing players to get 2/5 of that event 5* over a span of 2 events).
- Giving us a chance to buy a behold with original 5* game crew for say 25k Honor. Or a behold with only 5* crew released in 2016 (through events and packs) for the same price.
DB has already done a good job to offer older crew in the Threshold rewards, this would basically expand on that idea.
How do you make your 1/5s better? Not by boosting stats, but by making sure you can get them to 5/5 easier. This helps towards the immortalisation achievement and some of the absolute worst (e.g. Kai Opaka, Orion Vina, Will Scarlett, Suliban Reed etc. etc.) can just be frozen and used for event purposes (how you mainly use your 4*s).
Ok, I'm done tagging people.
It would not be "a little bit of coding on DB's part", it would be A LOT of coding. The fundamental base crew definition is standard across the game. Level 1-100, 40 items, X/Y instances. They would have to add an extra flag for "super boost" or whatever. Every place crew stats are used they would need to go in and be sure they properly add the "super boost". One of the reasons stated for the vault requiring FFFE crew is because all DB needs to store is that you have the crew. With this they'd now need to also store if you had the "super boost" too. I can just imagine the issue now where the next replay/flashback event happens and crew stats aren't calculated correctly because DB forgot to add the super boost to the old event.
All for what? To boost stats on old crew? Will they generate 1 extra sale from that? Will that improve the Quality of Life for any player? Will that encourage any new players to start playing the game? This will be a lot of development time spent on an issue that won't improve things while there are plenty of other changes that will improve the game/qol that won't happen because resources are dedicated to a super boost instead.
You are being rude, friend. And you lack vision. You have a solid point about the coding. It may be more difficult than it appears on the surface. It may cost more in terms of dev time. But if they were to implement such a change, then sell the updated legendary for say, $15... I would probably fork over some dough. Would that properly fund the resources that DB would need to develop the change? I don't know. But there is no harm in presenting the idea.
Would I rather have a fix for the inventory cap? Yes I would. Would I rather have a new event type? Yep. Would I rather they add some new Tuesday pack that I probably won't buy? No. Bring on the updated legendaries.
But what if you missed that item? If I see the item for, say, Vina, who I don't have, I don't particularly want to have to go ham in the off chance I get her later. But more importantly, what about players who only join after?
There's got to be another way of acquiring said item for it to be feasible
Prickly tone aside, I have to agree - new coding means new opportunities for bugs, when programming resources should really be focused on ironing out existing bugs (stuck voyages, for example, represent a very real lost source of income that I am sure DB would like to have). It’s a neat idea to solve the problem, especially since it doesn’t require the crew to be immortal (as I read it, at least), but offering reduced-cost beholds limited to certain crew allows us to more quickly immortalize older/weaker crew and works within the existing framework of the game.
And ultimately, there are only so many crew that can be used at one time. Which ones are in use at any time are of course going to change with voyage skill changes, different shuttle missions, and events, but realistically between all game activities there are maybe 30 crew actively doing something at any one time. Given crew slot limitations, what’s really better - a 1/5* Enterprise-E Picard that has been souped up to be equivalent to a 1/5* LtC Uhura or a 5/5* Enterprise-E Picard you can freeze when you aren’t using him?
I just had to tag @Prime LorQa [10F] in response to this.
On topic:
I had a similar thought to Kaitee's, but the coding concerns made me think twice. It's been mentioned before in other places, but I think a viable solution is to split the loot tables into 2016-2017 and 2018+, followed by the creation of a "2016-2017 crew portal pack" to allow players to chase the older 5* crew (4* crew would be included as well). Offer it maybe once every 3 months (to keep it enticing). No new mechanisms required, just a specific loot table with standard drop rates. The new pack should be discounted: 390 Dil has precedent now, and seems reasonable considering that many targets would be Ent-E Picard, Shinzon, Grilka, Judge Q, and the like. These 5* cards are really only useful in events at this point, and even then, sometimes not (depending on your crew depth). Or of course, for fan/vanity/collector purposes.
Thanks for the tag.
I'm all for your idea, or some variation of it. I just thought it was also worth mentioning that I'm also not opposed to Kaitee's idea. Something to make those "decrepit" old legendaries a little more spicy is all I'm looking for - in whatever way DB wants to make it happen.
I also agree somewhat with @RaraRacing, at least in the fact that older or previous event legendaries should be a bit more accessible? I mean how many of us have 1 copy Legendary graveyards now? with little of no hope of ever getting them fused. I don't know about the rest of you, but I know personally ive busted my butt on an event or two just to get a Legendary who ends up waiting endlessly for his/her turn for a citation.
I can see the point that DB is probably doing exactly what was intended, making us constantly chase the white rabbit, so that we drop cash to achieve better and better characters who one day will be obsolete as more new shiny ones are released. However one could argue that might be great in the short term, However what happens when those players get burned out and tired of trying to keep up with the Jones'. There is always room for improvement, and opportunity for DB to make a more enjoyable game that would intern maybe improve the profits, not take away from them.
Not necessarily - if the game handled it like a fusion, like how you merge Janeway and Paris to make Catfish, only in this case you're merging Picard and Skull to make Skullcrusher Picard. So Skullcrusher Picard is a different crew to normal Ent-E Picard - the game doesn't have to do anything special to handle his stats - he just has the same art and item builds, so DB doesn't have to pay for new art. The only really new thing needed would be adding the little 'boosted' medallion or whatever to the corner of his icon so you can visually tell him apart.
The simplest solution is to make it easier to get older 5* characters either by separate loot table for those character and reduced pricing or by making it easier to gather honor.
Both ways enable players to immortalize older 5* and to freeze them.
Both solutions does not have great coding requirement.
a) it's been done before with reruns
b) it seems to work with no bugs
c) the drop rate of the legendary is measured and controlled, no horrid RNG scenarios from other suggestions such as voyages (e.g. a 100 Voriks syndrome - you get the idea).
For the more tougher option... would be a new game mode. Assignments - Say for example a standard RPG game with fork pathways where certain crew are selected and what action they take - so whether it would be a fitting or suitable selection determines it's success. This means that Traits and Skill type combination are the more determining factor for completing each stage successfully and if you want to complicate it some more with perhaps a very minor % weighting on either proficiency or base. This would potentially make older crew more useful and thus reduce the power creep factor, but it would also perhaps require the trait audit to be addressed.
I would rather suggest single guaranteed legendary beholds for like 590 Dil, but only for the oldest of the old (currently 2016's) cards. No SRs, no rares, no schematics, just one behold. Maybe 10 for 5500 Dil without any extra guarantees.
Removing 2016's SRs from the portal should be ok for most players as they were still aquireable through voyages. If not, because they were removed there as well, there could be an additional pack-option with a 2016's 10-pack like you suggested, but cheaper (like 150 Dil). To not inflate the price for honor there should not be any rares in these bargain-packs but only 2016's ship schematics (would be great for new players to get the old ships done and ready for Skirmish and Arena) and - if a rare crew would have dropped - a few merits or credits or honor instead.
I like the idea of introducing a 5* crew threshold reward into every event. This current event could feature an old 5* Kirk or any random 5* prisoner, to fit the theme as well.