In this weeks podcast from Priority One, Elijah has an eye-opening and even-handed discussion with STO Game Designer Jesse Heinig about the R&D system – specifically the costs associated with R&D and it’s impact on the casual gamer.

“We have been evaluating both the difficulty and the price of getting those (rare and very rare) materials, and we expect the costs both in terms of materials and EC costs to get the upgrades (to be reduced) and we will visit the EC costs… but we have not landed where we want that to fall yet, but it will probably come down to some degree, and we are certainly going to reduce the amount of materials needed by likely at least half. And we are going to guarantee that you will get at least one VR material from an advanced queue ..”

As for the costs associated with players with multiple alts and ships:

“This is a known gap.. We’re looking into ways at adjusting upgrades… looking to engage it in some way to make it less (expensive)..” for multiple alts.

Definitely worth a listen.

Update: Perception Differences

We’ll be adding infographics on what it costs to upgrade each major piece of you gear to balance the comments from Cryptic 😉  We agree that those costs are a little high.

Update: Several proposals on the table for mutliple-alt players

Again, baby steps from Cryptic that are very welcome.  Now I’m wondering what they’re going to do to reach out to players that have already left the game.  The winter event is days away, and I’m not feeling very excited…