The idiocy of the R&D school "fix" in one table

First, a basic fact about MMO design: the "reward schedule" -- the timeline of when advancing characters acquire new toys -- is one of the most critical factors in a game's addictiveness and its players' perception of fun. You want to spread out your rewards so that a new one is always perceived to be right around the corner. Generally, you want there to be a steady stream of new stuff early on, slowing to a trickle later on as the player becomes comfortable with the system and willing to sink more time and thought into it.

So, let's look at the reward schedule for R&D, now that you can't queue a single discipline's research projects in multiple slots to advance it more quickly:


DaySlot 1Slot 2Slot 3Slot 4Slot 5Rewards1621263181242418530246363067423612848421895448241060543011666036127266421378724814847854159084601696906617102967218108102786191141088412201201149018211261209624221321261023023138132108362414413811442251501441204826156150126542716215613260281681621386629174168144723018017415078311861801568432192186162903319819216896342041981741023521020418010836216210186114372222161921203822822219812639234228204132402402342101384124624021614442252246222150432582522281564426425823416245270264240168462762702461744728227625218048288282258186492942882641925030029427019851306300276204523123062822105331831228821654324318294222553303243002285633633030623457342336312240583483423182465935434832425260360354330258613663603362646237236634227063378372348276643843783542826539038436028866396390366294674023963723006840840237830669414408384312704204143903187142642039632472432426402330734384324083367444443841434275450444420348764564504263547746245643236078468462438366794744684443728048047445037881486480456384824924864623908349849246839684504498474402855105044804088651651048641487522516492420885285224984268953452850443290540534510438915465405164449255254652245093558552528456945645585344629557056454046896576570546474975825765524809858858255848699594588564492100600594570498101606600576504102612606582510103618612588516104624618594522

That's...wow.

In fairness, this amortization assumes only applying the R&D research projects, which are material-efficient, but not time-efficient.

Using the crafting projects for leveling apply a standard rate of 10 XP/min, whereas the research projects apply 5 XP/min.

Granted, one can't be camping the R&D interface for 24 hours a day, but the balance of additional R&D slots should help with that, especially if one is concentrating on only one or two schools on a character at a time.

As for materials efficiency, the research projects only require a single Common (white) material to operate, whereas the crafting projects clearly consume substantially greater.

Add to that the XP-rich, long-term upper-tier crafting projects (Mk8 and up) require Rare (blue) or better mats, so that balance of resource availability is going to need to be factored in, especially at higher levels.

Obviously, spending dil or Zen is incentivized throughout the system.

You can use that technique to pile-on a couple of slots to one branch, but only for as long as you play every day. The affordable projects take seconds, meaning you can't do ANYTHING but R&D, and the longer ones have steep costs. Assuming 3 hours of play, doing nothing but R&D, and never running out of resources? You get a piddling 1800 extra XP daily per slot. That's less than a third of what you're gaining through the affordable research projects. There's no angle from which that's an effective strategy. With three slots, you're still talking ~70 days to reach level 15, and the problem with the reward schedule has barely changed.

That chart and the fact that they reset all of the work we already out into crafting is pretty demoralizing.

My essential point is that for all the things that are not well-designed for R&D, the projected timescales are one of my least concerns.

Taking three months actually seems awfully skimpy in my eyes - especially for a content-lite game as STO.

I'd much rather address issues I see as more fundamental - non-transparency, disparity in material and leveling. But the system taking a few months?

I think it's actually easier, given that the core of the system is basically set-and-forget auto-levelling.

Wait...they're resetting our current crafting levels?

They already did in the 9.5 patch.

There's certainly a lot of dumb to go around in the whole 9.5 update. This table is specifically about the patch that prevents multiple instances of the same research project, though. The reason that specific thing bugs me so much is that out of all the broken crap in the new crafting system, the one thing that merited an emergency, "gotta fix it immediately" day 2 patch was the one thing that already kinda did what it was supposed to - the reward schedule. And it was replaced with something woefully broken. That is indicative of the complete lack of thought that seems to have gone into the whole mess that is R&D.

And to clarify, the problem with the patch is not that the whole shebang takes about a year to complete. (220 days only gets you level 15s.) The overall time sink was unchanged by the patch. The problem is that the system as it was launched gave you regular rewards spaced about a month apart, and that had to be "fixed" to a total content desert with one oasis of actual progression bizarrely stuck smack in the middle.

There seems to be bonus xp on crit on the 20h projects. It's not been a lot yet (only 1k on top), but I'm also ridiculously low level comparatively. I'm wondering if we're not seeing an acceleration factor as we start blowing past the 40 skill "needed". And +1k on crit is a drop in the bucket comparatively, but I'm wondering if there's higher crit rewards?

I know, I know. Having played MMOs this long and still having faith in the devs knowing what they're doing is very pollyanna, but...

(For the record, having had capped crafting under the old system, I'm still grumbling about their "reward".)

Quote by Keioel

Wait...they're resetting our current crafting levels?

Yeah, all of the work on the four toons I had at max levels for crafting, and they come and use the Krenim time weapon on it. At least I got the Aegis set on most toons before this, a couple of them before the dilithium suck.

...well I had the aegis on one of my toons and was procrastinating on a 2nd...so that sucks. I'm now done with the crafting system in STO.