The CR Skip and Too Few Skill Points: What's the Solution?

With the sale going right now on the CR Skip to CR 255, I've seen an issue brought up that I'd forgotten about, honestly, namely that when you use the Skip, you're missing a TON of Skill Points (as well as all the Styles you would have gotten along the way.) Now, obviously, no player that actually knows the game is ever going to be satisfied with that.

So WHY did the Devs half-@$$ the CR Skip in this way? And who do we have to KILL to get them to do the right thing and re-do it so it gives us ALL the skill points and ALL the styles (yes, even the rarest ones) we skipped past and will therefore have a hell of a time farming for? I mean, what's the solution here?

And discuss.

the solution is you go back and earn them, i dont think ppl who never reached the cr skip level should even have access to buyin it in the 1st place

The CR skip basically already includes all non-dlc/PvP feats from the game up to T3 (outside of style feats and seasonals). Episode feats aren't included as you have to have access to the episode to do them (though they can be earned during open episodes). PvP feats aren't given away as there is a chance it could be adjusted in the future and they likely don't want to remove one of the few invectives to run it. Seasonal feats have a limited time to earn each year, and at this point giving those feats could impact seasonal currency sales. Legends pve is a newer addition to the game, so giving those feats would likely reduce the already small number of people playing it. Older style feats could be given, but it would be difficult for newer players to keep track of what styles they are missing (if they want the styles themselves). Artifact and augment feats are unlikely because they are newer to the game as well. Then of merit feats could be added, but are earned easily enough running it of relevancy content. Old TC feats are also unlikely to be given away in a cr skip, unless they are forced to remove feats from TCs due to government regulation of loot boxes.

Any one or more of these would have to be overcome to add more feats to the cr skip.
As mentioned, the token feats could be easily added and don't really detract from anything, but they are finite.
One possibility would be to have a rolling window on seasonal feats. So, for example, the 2021 cr skip could include all seasonal feats from 2018 and earlier. So there would still be some incentive to buy the seasonal currency, but each year more feats are added to the cr skip (although very few admittedly).
Another possibility is to make older episodes free and include their feats. Since we have open episodes in January anyway (and the cost to own a given episode sometimes decreases anyway), this might not be completely terrible. Though I'm sure there might be some outage from people that bought those episodes.

I highly doubt they would ever give out the older styles, thought they may give it the feats associated to them.

The devs did this to take the strain off the servers hosting the new content! Think for one second past what you think you should get! CR skip shouldn't give more SPs because then what would you play for? What would you farm? It is an MMO! You can go kill anyone, just hope they have PCs that meet the minimum requirement to play the game for your 20 minutes of internet time in prison. The CR skip was meant to give you a decent amount of skill points, not enough to where you won't sub or interrupt their cash cow(I agree because programmer,network engineers and staff need to eat). Style feats are a bane in almost everyone's side but it keeps that content somewhat relevant. The solution is to roll up your sleeves and get to work!

It's a CR skip, not a content, SP or style skip. They never advertised it to mean you wouldn't have to play other parts of the game, and for a variety of reasons the devs DO want us playing.

Also, a lot of those SP/feats come from content that's not part of the base/core game. I can't imagine it makes good business sense to include feats for content that players haven't paid for (either through sub or individual purchase), and if they were to include that it might mean an increase in price for the skip to help make up for lost income for folks not shelling out for that content.

As for solutions? Well a big step would be for some players to get over their aversion to running older content outside of their Mark relevancy and helping those players who use the CR skip and are looking to catch up on feats and styles. It's something players can do right now as opposed to waiting for the devs to do something.

The solution is simple, prohibit or deter new players from accessing the skip.

Make the CR Boost available for people who have at least Level 30 character!

Don't use CR skip except for alts; then use replay badges to give alts enough skill points.

This may not be the solution you are looking for or want to hear, but it's pretty much the only solution other than "grind out feats."

But anyone new to the game starting their first character is not making the best choice if they want to immediately CR-skip, even though the game obviously does make that an option. But people who do that never get a chance to learn the earlier part of the game and if they're new to the game, they won't do well anyway in high CR situations until they've learned what they're doing.

That's on top of the low SP problem.

Didn`t the CR skip grant all feats tho?

But it's kinda obvious that Daybreak is extremely unlikely to ever want to cut off that revenue stream.

It's like playing the incredibly bad odds of a state lottery: buyer beware of making stupid decisions, but if you want to throw your money away, any resulting problems are on you.

It's not as if such pay-to-level skips are all that unusual in MMORPGs.

"All"? No. A specific amount. I'm not sure what it is exactly at present. 70? It's enough to get started, but not much more.

It's almost like having stretch goals is integral to the MMO model...

I believe it's 77... and somewhere in one of these many threads in the forums I think Mepps even said that to include any more than what they already do starts going into actual content rather than side missions that don't necessarily add or subtract from the game. Some of the ultra-long grindy feats are included (Salvage items up to but not including the "Salvage 10k" and Gather Exomaterials up to but not including "Gather 25k"), and I don't have a problem with that.

OTOH, I think everyone should experience the pain that is the daily Toyman missions instead of being granted those feats... because I have a bit of a mean streak.

However, in regards to the level to which it goes, I've always kinda figured that it should go to the CR of your highest character or 255 (or whatever the current level offered is)... whichever is LOWER. Realistically, it's not that hard to get a character to that level on your own, even if all you do is run the event mode of the current DLC. The gravitational pull to get you to that level is enormous... plus if you level up stuff that way you are bound to get a few of the feats somehow, even if it's just the speed feats for completing the runs.

They didn't "half-@$$" it, they just expected people to not be lazy slackers. Perhaps it was foolish on their part but their hearts were in the right place when they expected people to go out and EARN those SP, especially since the increased CR made many of them almost trivial to get.

So suck it up, Karen. Go out and experience the dignity of work by earning them instead of wasting your time whining about not being given something that's simple enough to obtain.

No, you only get an insignificant number of feats, you wouldn't even be able to play with it.
If someone still thinks (and many newbies think) that they can go to the final game, in the last DLC because they bought cr and "flew" until the final cr, well, today they are a hindrance in the game, that type of player gets in the way, At no time is he an addition or an ally in a raid.

Good joke, I laughed a lot.
If you were serious I would think: "God, he must be playing for a few days and he never talked to anyone in the game". But as I know you must play longer and of course, you must have your 450sp ... So I laughed.
Congratulations, good joke!

It is already a pain enough to get groups together to run older episodes for the feats, sometimes even wth a league! If a CR skip were to start adding ALL the feats up to the CR skip, it would make it even more ridiculous to get a group together for older content feats for characters already established.

I believe it would turn into make an alt, buy a CR skip, and then use replay badges to buy the feats on main characters. It would be more income for the game, but a decrease in fun to be had earning the feats.

The CR skip should give skill points equal your CR otherwise its wasted money and the games curve towards the end factors in too heavy demand on augments, artifacts and sp. So you paid lot of money for something that you can't use effectively.

I would love for the CR skip to provide all PVP feats and a full 101 pvp gear. This way the people who only focus on PVE could purchase it and get the gear and feats from content they will never touch and all the people who may only play this game for the free PVP might be enticed because they would be able to get the full 101 gear. Especially considering I hear all the time that PVP is dead and DC need to do something to make it active again.

If a player were to purchase the episodes covered by the current CR skip, going by the episode purchase page on the main site you'd be looking at just under $200 US to get all those episodes. Granted you can bring that down by going with some of the bundles available on the Marketplace, but you're still looking at a decent chunk of change to buy the episodes regardless.

On top of that (for PC, anyhow) the cheapest deal for Membership is $9.99 a month, which gets billed as one purchase of just under $120 US every 12 months.

To get an equal amount of SP to the CR in the skip, you'd have to dip into content beyond what is offered for free. That means potentially dipping into either of those income amounts I mentioned, which I'd imagine isn't desirable for the company. Add in the detail that the devs want us to actually play the game to get our feats (there are some exceptions, but for the most part that's true) and it's tough to imagine them giving SP out like that.