A friendly (and somewhat urgent) reminder about Season 7

Hello Everypony!

For those who have not been keeping up on the STO forums and/or DevTrackers; Season 7 should be going live sometime in early Nov. Normally I would be estatic about new content in STO; but in this case Season 7 is including a complete retooling of the STF system and its rewards. From what i understand, it works much like a personal starbase system. One needs to "turn in" various amounts of EC/DIL/and new STF marks to run projects which are needed to eventually unlock each tier. Yay for more grind

At the start of Season 7, they are warning everypony that all un-redeemed salvage/EDCs will then be converted into the new universal STF currency of Omega Marks and Neural~whatnots.

Now the bad~bad news; these converted STF currencies are going to be "locked away" (Devs own term) and unaccessable until you reach/purchase Tier 5 of the new STF (Omega) rep system; which the Devs have repeatedly claimed should take approxamately 2 months of gameplay to reach/unlock.

So; in the next week or two, everypony needs to either redeem their current STF loot for gear/DIL (redeemed items such as the MACCO sets and Anti-borg weapons are being left alone); or have your STF loot locked away for around 2 months.

Also; from what I gathered so far from posts by the Tribble testers; the conversion from old STF gear to new is nothing short of ruinious. Somewhere around a 3-to-1 conversion (IE: if you converted 3 proto salvage to new STF credits, you would only have enough new marks to get one Proto salvage). As well as as this increased exchange cost, Cryptic adding a very substantial DIL cost (like with fleet weapons, but much more so) when redeeming STF gear under the new system.

So long story very short; if you need borg sets/weapons, now is the time to grind for/redeem them. otherwise it will cost you a lot more both in STF resources and DIL under the future system, and also after making players waiting/working for two months to unlock the new Tier 5 Omega system.

I know I am going to need to be grinding my sweet plot off these next few weeks :/ This is a really sucky new system, and everypony needs to get what they need before it is implemented; or be forced to wait through 2 months of STF grinding to finish their sets.

*ADDENDUM*

Season 7 is going live on this coming Tuseday (Nov 13th) according to information Cryptic has released on a gaming review site. Also another important note to add to Season 7 hidden stealth-nerfs; there will be no more Daily officer report quickie missions from what I have read on the offical forums.

*sigh* so many Dil sinks in Season 7; and Cryptic busy gutting most of the major sources players have to earn Dil in-game. This is not going to be a pretty update at all for free-to-play players :/

I have already cashed in all my surplus borg tech/EDCs for Dil, there is going to be a big crunch when S7 goes live; as everypony realises that everything released in Season 7 is going to have some degree of Dil cost(s) attached to them; and that traditional sources of earning Dil are being removed or seriously reduced.

Best to build up some reserves if possible :/

The Daily Officer Report quickies will still be there. They can't actually do anything about them, yet, due to how the Foundry actually works. Once Neverwinter comes out, and all it's bugs fixed, then they can port over it's "Foundry" to STO and CO. The Neverwinter "Foundry" supports giving out rewards based on mission time, enemies killed, etc. That won't happen till sometime next year though.

The daily officer report mission will still be there, what is going away is the ability to complete it with any mission that does not reward either EC and/or XP. I think this is a bit bugged at the moment, from what I gather, but the intent seem to be not letting people use the one click console missions to complete the officer report mission. You will actually have to do something in the missions, like kill something, for it to count. I think the best bet from her eis to do the Nagus dailies (search for Nagus). They're still pretty short and can be all done in about 15 minutes.

Also, all of the dilithium needs to leveling in the reputation system have gone away, so that's something. But that is for leveling only, you still need dilithium to get the items like the STF sets or consumables, etc.

Glad to hear they dropped some of their new Dil requirements. I can honestly say that my enjoyment of STO would decrease drastically when it seemed that everything you do after logging in would now require Dil of some amount to complete. Expecially when you are still limited to refining 8K a day; and several of the player Dil reward systems are being lowered/changed.

I completely understand that to support the Free-toPlay model that Cryptic needs to sell Zen; and I do buy occasionally. But Season 7 as it was originally proposed was basically was Cryptic saying "Just give us your Credit Card info; because you are going to need to buy plot-loads of Zen/Dil to do anything in-game now".

I have bought 4 C-store ships so far; and other various C-store goodies, and I do not mind spending on them because it is a purchase that I chose to make each time; requiring me in Season 7 to purchase Zen to level; to buy weapons/equipment; recruit/upgrade duty officers, ect. takes that choice from me and infact demands that I buy Zen frequently now just to be able to play. That I resent a lot in a "free-to-play" game.

Glad to see that Cryptic can be at least a little reasonable. I still think that they are going to see a lot of player back-lash on this update when it goes live.

*EDITE*

A little good news; and some bad news: Good news is that Cryptic apperently has decided to allow players to "unlock" their converted salvage/EDCs at Tier 3 now, instead of at Tier 5. So you can access your STF resources a bit quicker at least.

Bad news; somepony in our fleet today was telling us that their char with 300 EDCs; and a goodly amount of protos/rare and other misc salvage; when added to tribble got basically nothing (I think they sais a fair bit of omega marks; but only 30 neural-what~its, and when sold only worth about 12K Dil) when it was converted to the new STF system resources. so unfortunately the 3-to-1 ratio previously told to me by another Tribble tester now seems seriously over optimistic :/

More breaking news. Apparently the B'Tran sector exploration daily is going away. Some say that is is because you can combine it with the explore new worlds daily so its not fair. If that's the reason, I don't think they are doing it right.

And Pinkimania is out again...

Well, I went through all the release notes for Tribble. The thing I'm taking away from all of them: "If you are a casual player, this game isn't for you. We only cater to the hardcore grinders now." I'm glad I didn't get that LTS now. (Removes .sig)

And I really liked the game too. Oh well, SWTOR goes F2P the same day S7 launches, and it has a fun and engaging campaign.

EDIT: Well, turns out I was wrong, S7 goes live tomorrow, and SWTOR goes F2P Thursday. Meh, guess that gives me time to see how bad S7 is before switching...

I don't know about TOR, from what I heard, the f2P option there is actually worse.

Personaly, I don't know what I am more upset about, the complete 180 to no dilithium rewards for STFs with no warning until today, or Miss something I can't say here on the front page.

Not a happy pony right now.