We'll soon be testing some updates to Sensor Analysis that, I think, will make Science really interesting and give it a distinct playstyle that's not at the mercy of their foe's ability to clear debuffs.
Here's to hoping it'll be patched in with the auxiliary deflectors.
Crew is silly right now. We could pretty much pull it out of the game, buff everyone's out-of-combat regeneration, and nobody would notice. It's on our short list of orphaned powers features. If anyone feels strongly that it should be left in the game, I'd be interested in hearing what you wish it did.
While I don't feel strongly that it should be left in, if its removed it will fix a lot of issues with larger crew ships. But what would you do with the various crew defense and regain stat items or doffs ?
But it could continue to work as a larger modifier to system repair and in combat hull regen and hull repair abilities, take away the silly torpedo and mine destroying crew on shielded ships and make it more based on abilities like HY torpedoes that it can take out crew on shielded ships. This would give people more reason to use torpedoes to take down larger heavier armored targets.
It also never made immersion sense to me that Auxtosif is a single heal and not just a large bonus Hull like the singularity ability Quantum Absorption. That you can Heal under, engineering team I would also like to see it have more of a either % hull heal (based on crew and hull repair skill maybe ? ) or a slight hot after the initial heavy heal.
each type of ship has a hull mod, like shield mods.
Cruiser can have 1.40 hull mod?
Escorts 1.0
Sci 1.2
So there can be a hull slot where you have to slot hull. Cruisers can get a 2nd hull like sci has 2nd deflector
Have three types, a low grade, med, and high
low gives the lowest amount hull points but gives a small bonus to speed turn rate
Med gives no speed or turn rate
High gives a negative effect to speed and turn rate. (high hull point means less movement)
what i see alot is escorts can tank very well for being in a small ship, plus the amount of speed.
"Frankly, not sure why you're on a one man nerf campaign. "
Spinning Tac Team into two powers is something we've thought about doing for quite awhile - that's kind of what I was getting at when I say it's "overloaded". However, that change was too disruptive for this kind of content patch - it'd be better suited for a big, systems-focused release that's already changing the metagame with lots of other gameplay changes, so that people don't have to continually re-learn how to play.
Then you do realize you have serious problems in the "meta game" concerning the diversity and purpose of the contents with your "profession-trinity"?
each type of ship has a hull mod, like shield mods.
This Idea sounds a lot like the idea i had for a armor mod if they ever added armor items for ships. I don't think it would work as well as armor would as a mod. That would also be huge balance change.. It would also blurr too many ships unique properties for my liking.
Please reconsider that. I believe that the suggestions that was in my old thread would be better for the game, rather than just taking another dimension with great potential out.
I think crew could work if the loss mechanics were fixed some, make it so you respawn with full crew. Crew regeneration should also scale with size, big ships have big sickbays with more doctors so can heal crewmen faster. Also crew loss from kinetic damage should not scale up quite as much with bigger crews, this is also why big ships have no crew most of time. Also theta radiation is too strong, it instantly kills entire crew, this should take a few seconds longer so you have time to escape with some crew alive.
I would like crew to stay in place if crew loss gets fixed and then we could look at increasing the benefits of having crew and the penalties of losing crew.
The change we're testing de-couples sensor analysis from your hard target. It lets you pick a target to analyze by using a power on them, and does not require that they remain your target to build up stacks. It builds up to 30% effectiveness over 18 seconds, and it allows you to analyze allies as well as foes, giving you a healing bonus to analyzed allies.
The change is testing really well internally and should be on Tribble soon, which is why I'm comfortable telling you about it before it sees the light of day. Feedback and tuning on it will still be needed, of course, and as always in game development, this is not a promise that this will be what we end up doing.
Crew is silly right now. We could pretty much pull it out of the game, buff everyone's out-of-combat regeneration, and nobody would notice. It's on our short list of orphaned powers features. If anyone feels strongly that it should be left in the game, I'd be interested in hearing what you wish it did.
It would be intereting if things like the Team abilities actually deducted your crew
The game overall would be more interesting and unique if it focused on crew. Start with my proposal for using departments as a substitute for the skill points tree, then get rid of magic heals and use crew-based heals instead, deducted from your roster. Escort might have enough crew to run 1-2 heals simultaneously without negatively affecting performance, healer has a bunch of excess crew and sends them over to help for parallel healing, then the crew comes back after a little while. Its a different angle on time-blocking, using crew as resource gate.
Funnily enough, Tactical Team actually works this way, but only for the skill modifiers to Weapon skills, which is not why people use the ability.
I'd imagine scaling the shield distribution attribute might make people rage more than the Gal-X not having a LtCmdr tac. Would make that much more sense if it gets its own skill then.
it'd be better suited for a big, systems-focused release that's already changing the metagame with lots of other gameplay changes, so that people don't have to continually re-learn how to play.
I am now officially excited for season 9.
As for making tactical team less ... mandatory the simply fix is to allow other methods for the rapid shield distribution. Such as say Transfer Shield Strength. Or allow an 'auto distribute' like exists for auto-fire with weapons to save some spacebars.
As for crew, just remove it. STO already has enough layers of complexity with more added every patch the last thing it needs is a quasi resource pool forced to semi comply with already established cannon values and still be balanced in game. The sheer amount of headache a redesign of it would entail is doubtful to be worth any gains. Instead focus on making new Boff abilities
Just for giggles long ago I tried making a 'boarding party' focused ship out of the Corsair Flight Deck Cruiser with all those fancy doffs. Worked well enough until the 1,750 crew started to die like crazy and make it impossible to use the actual ability. Then it was simply wait ten minutes and that is with crew safety gear equipped like 2pc Honor Guard.
As for making tactical team less ... mandatory the simply fix is to allow other methods for the rapid shield distribution. Such as say Transfer Shield Strength. Or allow an 'auto distribute' like exists for auto-fire with weapons to save some spacebars.
As for crew, just remove it. STO already has enough layers of complexity with more added every patch the last thing it needs is a quasi resource pool forced to semi comply with already established cannon values and still be balanced in game. The sheer amount of headache a redesign of it would entail is doubtful to be worth any gains. Instead focus on making new Boff abilities
I never understood why in star trek online you had to tell your crew to keep the forward shield up, or transfer power to the aft shields every 5-10 seconds, without tactical team. Its like I'm calling security to make sure they are doing their jobs...
Crew is silly right now. We could pretty much pull it out of the game, buff everyone's out-of-combat regeneration, and nobody would notice. It's on our short list of orphaned powers features. If anyone feels strongly that it should be left in the game, I'd be interested in hearing what you wish it did.
This is exemplified in our Trait revamp and our upcoming Kit Revamp, and our ongoing efforts to make all of our ship classes competitive with each other but in different ways.
I've mentioned this before, but could you take a look at the trait descriptions. I get the feeling that they were not properly reviewed when the new trait system was released with Legacy of Romulus. There were reports of trait descriptions not matching in the character creation screen and the "Traits" tab. Also, many trait descriptions don't include stats; they just have a generic description of what the trait does.
Crew is silly right now. We could pretty much pull it out of the game, buff everyone's out-of-combat regeneration, and nobody would notice. It's on our short list of orphaned powers features. If anyone feels strongly that it should be left in the game, I'd be interested in hearing what you wish it did.
Honestly, I don't think most people would even notice if you changed it.
I do hope when you all look at BOFF powers you take a look at FAW, BO, CSV and CRF, and consider merging the AOE abilities and Single Target abilities so that beam/cannon mixing isn't so terrible. It would also be great to see 360 beams that are the beam equivalent of turrets added into the game.
Crew is silly right now. We could pretty much pull it out of the game, buff everyone's out-of-combat regeneration, and nobody would notice. It's on our short list of orphaned powers features. If anyone feels strongly that it should be left in the game, I'd be interested in hearing what you wish it did.
I think that the crew mechanic should be kept, but it probably needs to be reworked in some way. What that way is I'm not sure. A simpler fix for now, if it's possible and would actually be beneficial, could be to make time to get back to full crew the same no matter what the crew size is.
There's been a lot of hubbub about the Tribble changes to the cooldown lockout between Tactical Team, Science Team, and Engineering Team, and I wanted to come give you a rundown of what the change accomplishes and why we chose to do it.
There were multiple reasons to remove this shared cooldown:....
First - THANK YOU, not so much for the un-coupling, but for the context and answer.
First - THANK YOU, not so much for the un-coupling, but for the context and answer.
You sir, rock.
I concur and I hope any balance changes should be addressed before putting out changes like this to live. I know it would take a lot of time in your busy schedules to post these kinda things. But when companies like blizzard do this. I feel it facilitates better debate and discussions in general.
Crew is silly right now. We could pretty much pull it out of the game, buff everyone's out-of-combat regeneration, and nobody would notice. It's on our short list of orphaned powers features. If anyone feels strongly that it should be left in the game, I'd be interested in hearing what you wish it did.
Please please please please PLEASE just pull it out of the game.
The system is weird. And ever since you all put DOFFing into the game, you really kind of create the "crew" environment that way.
It's just a component that isn't needed for combat.
I LOVE your suggestion to pull it and just switch it over to out of combat regen with a buff to that to mimic what the thing does now. It'll make things a bit more streamlined.
Although i like the added options for making builds as it was getting a bit one sided and teams where kind of a no go as the shield refocus of the tac team is just to good to pass by its still added power creep. An easy way to counter that would be to just nerf the auto shield rebalance of tac team.
For me at least the main problem with healing others is not that i dont have the powers ready or something its just most of the time ppl are either too far away or i misclick or whatever.. it would be nice to have some way where say right clicking a heal will apply it the most dmged player in reach. So when i see someone in need i dont need to click on him just klick the heal and if noone else needs it more in range he will get the heal. i noticed something like that for extend shields but since normal heals can be used on myself there needs to be an easy way to do distingish between me wanting to heal myself or others. No need to go overboard on (pb)aoe effects be it heals or buffs or whatever.
Also as a sci targeting them would kill sensor analysis but you already stated that this will change.
While you're at it, could you pls add something similar for say eng captains to "take aggro" so bassically an anti-placate so the target can only attack them and noone else (maybe not include pvp^^) for say 30 seconds as long as the eng stays in range no matter how much dmg anyone else does except maybe other eng captains using the same ability. That would give engs the ability to really feel like tanking for others (and actually doing it). No large aggro bonus just straight "you there sir, here i am if you need a target".
If i could wish for something it would be to remove or completely rework go down fighting. it was bad before the need to go below 50% but now its like intentionally getting hit to get the dmg buffs is just stupid gameplay. I know its the players choise to do it or leave it but even seeing it done is just sad.
And crew well, they just die to fast thats all. and regeneration during a mission is something i never liked. Just drastically reduce the loss of crew by dmg but remove regeneration on mission maps. Increase the effect crew has on teams and heals in general so dying within a mission becomes more of a problem and something to avoid if you wanna keep up your effectiveness.
The change we're testing de-couples sensor analysis from your hard target. It lets you pick a target to analyze by using a power on them, and does not require that they remain your target to build up stacks. It builds up to 30% effectiveness over 18 seconds, and it allows you to analyze allies as well as foes, giving you a healing bonus to analyzed allies.
The change is testing really well internally and should be on Tribble soon, which is why I'm comfortable telling you about it before it sees the light of day. Feedback and tuning on it will still be needed, of course, and as always in game development, this is not a promise that this will be what we end up doing.
Wow! That is an interesting change, and one that really gives science vessels (and the science Odyssey!) a hand. I'm eager to test that out, particularly for the healing bonus.
Firstly, I do want to say thank you for writing the opening post and sharing the development perspective with the community. It is greatly appreciated.
I can certainly understand and appreciate the difference between having to choose between burst and over-time heals, but I don't think this addresses the core issue of tactical team being "mandatory"(my experiences with cruisers and science ships have taught me otherwise, but it is a crutch a lot of people lean on). I do hope the team is considering how to change the function of tactical team itself - in its current form, it does trivialize the purpose of having different shield facings. Perhaps happy compromise might be to prevent tactical team from taking shields from a facing that is below 30-50%?
As for crew, I think it probably should be removed. Getting crew to a point where it would actually be something meaningful to concern yourself with would probably take more effort than it is worth. At the very least, crew removal would clear up some stat tracking for various ships. I can understand wanting to keep it as it does play a small part in bits here and there, but I support crew(stat) removal.
There's been a lot of hubbub about the Tribble changes to the cooldown lockout between Tactical Team, Science Team, and Engineering Team, and I wanted to come give you a rundown of what the change accomplishes and why we chose to do it.
There were multiple reasons to remove this shared cooldown:
Certain team powers were rarely getting use due to perceived or real mandatory nature of other team powers - Engineering Team suffered the most here, while Science Team was in-use but played a significant "second fiddle" to Tactical Team
Dispel-type abilities are timing-sensitive in nature, but holding off using non-dispel powers so that a dispel would be available when a debuff is applied is unsatisfying gameplay if the debuff never comes or gets put on someone else
Similarly, needing to use Tactical Team to survive meant Science or Engineering debuffs applied by Voth or Borg were extra frustrating due to feeling like the player made the best choice they could (surviving) but still being punished (not being able to use the dispel they have equipped and hadnt used)
The shared lockout itself was based on an old paradigm of design within the game that has since been moved away from. It was entirely thematic in its nature the Teams were already busy and not mechanical the effects are too powerful together justification.
The combination of parts 1 and 4 meant that Engineering powers (Emergency Power to Shields) were the most frequent Shield heals, and Science powers (Hazard Emitters) were the most frequent Hull heals. This is contrary to the desired niches of the abilities.
Engineering Ensign and Science stations were far less desirable than intended due to Science Team and Engineering Team being on CD when Tactical Team was used. This was discussed back when the DDeridex was created and again now when we relaunched the Galaxy.
Giving players the choice of burst effectiveness but longer gaps in effectiveness (All 3 team powers on 30 second CDs rather than rotating a Team every 15 seconds) is interesting gameplay - deciding whether to mete out my heals over time or blow them all at once determines how vulnerable I am/how many cards I still have in my hand over the next 15 seconds.
"This is disruptive to current meta-game is this intentional? Is this good?"
Its definitely intentional. We want players to be able to use Engineering Team and Science Team, but we recognize the importance of Tactical Team in the currently widespread gameplay pattern adopted by many players. We want to make Tactical Team less mandatory over time (and in fact think the power itself is quite overloaded in terms of what it does), but bringing Tac Teams effectiveness down substantially would be more disruptive than allowing players to use Sci and Eng Team in conjunction with Tac Team. Were also hopeful that players will now be more willing to use Science and Engineering Teams on allied players once this change is made, since they wont have to make as much of a choice between selfishness and selflessness as they did before.
The metagame in general is dominated by choices that are too good compared to the other choices available. This leaves players dissatisfied with false choice. For instance, Beam Fire at Will is ostensibly an AoE power, but deals more damage to a single-target than normal Beam Fire does. Conversely, Beam Overload is a single-target damage power, but actually lowers the users medium-term DPS despite providing burst due to its more-than-substantial power drain, and due to competing with Fire at Will for a power slot. Long term, the more real (nontrivial) choices we can present players with, the happier they will be with the game. This is exemplified in our Trait revamp and our upcoming Kit Revamp, and our ongoing efforts to make all of our ship classes competitive with each other but in different ways.
Thank you for making changes on the gameplay itself, which has been one of my feedback complaints. It's pretty obvious from your communication that you guys are seeing things from the same perspective I am, and that's a refreshing bit of good news.
Like the idea behind the changes to Sensor Analysis. It allows for a way to improve effectiveness over time without actively shooting at someone. With is as a passive, it was easy to forget it was even there, but it should be more interesting as a targeted power.
As for crew, I wouldn't mind if the whole system was scrapped. I think some meaningful replacements to existing crew-related consoles would have to be made, though. We already have several systems and levels to monitor in combat (shields, hull, power, speed/defense), and crew would have to be meaningful enough to be worth keeping.
If the crew system were kept and improved to be relevant, though, one option is for crew levels to affect Boff power recharge rates. This way, it would be important in long engagements, but not critical to monitor in every smaller battle. Min-maxers and pvpers would have incentive to keep crew levels as high as possible, but it wouldn't cripple casual players who might not understand the system as well.
In the early days, healing powers like teams and Miracle Worker were dependent on crew levels. But this would only be noticed when you were in dire need of healing and then realized your heals weren't as effective as before. Any revamp to the crew system would have to have effects that were more gradual yet regularly noticeable. Under a power-recharge system, the efficacy of powers would remain the same, and recharge debuffs would only slowly build up, at least until the levels are well below 50%. Crew would return entirely once the ship has respawned, and some powers would have side effects of improving crew resistance or regenerating crew.
Take a look at my Foundry missions! Conjoined, Re-emergence, and . . .
Cleanses are too powerful. TT1, ET1, ST1, HE1 all cleanse as well as TT3, ET3, ST3, HE3. This is part of where an issue will arise in PvP and adversely affect Sci. This isn't adversely affecting Sci Captains or those in Sci Vessels...this adversely affects anybody that's using any offensive Sci ability. There was an opportunity cost - which I guess you guys saw as unsatisfying gameplay. I understand STO is not a game for folks with big boy pants, but c'mon - it's gone beyond getting silly.
From cleanses that were already OP, the WCE (Cleanse Everything) DOFF, various proc cleanses and heals - well, I mean - c'mon, eh? If it is a case that the game is meant to offer no challenge in the least, then why even bother pretending? Remove anything from enemy NPCs that might require a player to think - that might threaten a player in any way - either boost the damage players do even more or give enemy ships 1 health so they instasplode if a player even targets them. Or is it some metric that exists from years of research for the minimum challenge one needs to offer a player to give them the impression that they actually did something?
I was so ticked off between the announcement about the Fleet Galaxy-X (and I don't even have any Fed toons) and the changes to teams, I actually installed Angry Birds on the gf's tablet and was playing that. It was mind-boggling that this simple little game in requiring one to guesstimate, attempt to visualize, etc, etc, etc trajectories offered far more of a challenge than what STO has turned into because of how much everything for players has been buffed, how much everything for NPCs has been nerfed, how much of everything has been automated, and...and...it was just wow. It was a trip. It blew my mind.
So when you talk about satisfying gameplay - I have to ask, is it a case of sitting down some of the three to four year old kids of employees at Cryptic at the computer to see if they go wheee in playing the game? Because I can't imagine how what has become of STO could be satisfying in any fashion.
I'm not a hardcore gamer by any means. The last console I bought was a X-Box. I do not have any PC games installed. The last FPS I played was back in 2007 I think. Perhaps having played MMOs for over 16 years though means that I'm no longer an average gamer. Perhaps my definition of average gamer is simply outdated...much in the sense of how the increase of home broadband back in 2005 changed the nature of things - so too are we seeing that continued increase of the extremely casual gamer. Which in of itself is not bad, but for some reason it's been tied to some sort of twisted ego deal - where a person can't accept that they're casual and should be doing casual things, eh? "Oh no, I'm elite. Sure, I just installed the game 10 minutes ago and it's the first game I've ever played, but I'm elite!" FFS, what a load of TRIBBLE.
But yeah, the changes to teams is simply further evidence that the intended audience goes well beyond people that may be new to gaming but have heard of Trek - it's crossed over into special needs. Launching the game will soon require more thought and effort on the player's part than actually playing it.
I'm pretty bad at this game. I've been pretty bad at most games I've ever played, but I always accepted that - I always knew that meant I had room for growth and the opportunity to get better - I always had a reason to keep playing the game as long as I was still having fun. I used to rotate between 3-5 MMOs a year, because I didn't want to get burnt out. I always returned to them - but over the years, they either did things so fundamentally stupid that I didn't care how long I'd been playing that I left and never looked back...or they simply went under. Perhaps that's a sign, eh? I'm a dead breed of average gamer. I'm not the ultra hardcore guy nor am I the ultra casual guy - I'm just Joe Average that's enjoyed playing MMOs for a wee while. Maybe I should just go play Angry Birds...
...oh, btw - Crew? A place to start might be in addressing crew loss. It's never made sense how crew loss is handled. The tooltips read in a manner which makes sense, but that's now how the mechanic actually works.
Lose Lesser of X or Y. Sounds great. You lose the lesser of X or Y...but that's not what happens. You lose the greater of X or Y...that which results in lesser crew remaining. Thus, ships which have larger crews and should benefit from those larger crews are actually penalized for such. With the regen being a flat number but bonuses based on percentages, it takes large crewed ships longer to return to those percentages than smaller crewed ships...all the while losing crew at a much faster rate than the smaller crewed ships. A smaller crewed ship might lose 20-30 crew while the larger ship can lose over 300 from the same attack.
It's been a fundamental flaw in the crew system...trippy, eh? No idea why that hasn't been addressed over the years when it has been brought up countless times as an issue.
Probably more important to add more stuff so lil' Jimmy can grind T5 in all reps before he's out of diapers...
There's been a lot of hubbub about the Tribble changes to the cooldown lockout between Tactical Team, Science Team, and Engineering Team, and I wanted to come give you a rundown of what the change accomplishes and why we chose to do it.
There were multiple reasons to remove this shared cooldown:
Certain team powers were rarely getting use due to perceived or real mandatory nature of other team powers - Engineering Team suffered the most here, while Science Team was in-use but played a significant "second fiddle" to Tactical Team
Dispel-type abilities are timing-sensitive in nature, but holding off using non-dispel powers so that a dispel would be available when a debuff is applied is unsatisfying gameplay if the debuff never comes or gets put on someone else
Similarly, needing to use Tactical Team to survive meant Science or Engineering debuffs applied by Voth or Borg were extra frustrating due to feeling like the player made the best choice they could (surviving) but still being punished (not being able to use the dispel they have equipped and hadnt used)
The shared lockout itself was based on an old paradigm of design within the game that has since been moved away from. It was entirely thematic in its nature the Teams were already busy and not mechanical the effects are too powerful together justification.
The combination of parts 1 and 4 meant that Engineering powers (Emergency Power to Shields) were the most frequent Shield heals, and Science powers (Hazard Emitters) were the most frequent Hull heals. This is contrary to the desired niches of the abilities.
Engineering Ensign and Science stations were far less desirable than intended due to Science Team and Engineering Team being on CD when Tactical Team was used. This was discussed back when the DDeridex was created and again now when we relaunched the Galaxy.
Giving players the choice of burst effectiveness but longer gaps in effectiveness (All 3 team powers on 30 second CDs rather than rotating a Team every 15 seconds) is interesting gameplay - deciding whether to mete out my heals over time or blow them all at once determines how vulnerable I am/how many cards I still have in my hand over the next 15 seconds.
"This is disruptive to current meta-game is this intentional? Is this good?"
Its definitely intentional. We want players to be able to use Engineering Team and Science Team, but we recognize the importance of Tactical Team in the currently widespread gameplay pattern adopted by many players. We want to make Tactical Team less mandatory over time (and in fact think the power itself is quite overloaded in terms of what it does), but bringing Tac Teams effectiveness down substantially would be more disruptive than allowing players to use Sci and Eng Team in conjunction with Tac Team. Were also hopeful that players will now be more willing to use Science and Engineering Teams on allied players once this change is made, since they wont have to make as much of a choice between selfishness and selflessness as they did before.
The metagame in general is dominated by choices that are too good compared to the other choices available. This leaves players dissatisfied with false choice. For instance, Beam Fire at Will is ostensibly an AoE power, but deals more damage to a single-target than normal Beam Fire does. Conversely, Beam Overload is a single-target damage power, but actually lowers the users medium-term DPS despite providing burst due to its more-than-substantial power drain, and due to competing with Fire at Will for a power slot. Long term, the more real (nontrivial) choices we can present players with, the happier they will be with the game. This is exemplified in our Trait revamp and our upcoming Kit Revamp, and our ongoing efforts to make all of our ship classes competitive with each other but in different ways.
Seriously? Listen to what you just said:
1- Because tac team is mandatory and no one is using the other abilities, we are releasing the other team abilities from shared timers.
--- Do you realize what this does? It allows escorts to FULLY keep tac team dual cycling AND now they have access to an instant heal that at level 2 of the ability literally almost heals up their entire max possible shield and hull HP?
2- We dont want people to be using hazard or emg to shields as primary heals.
--- Here's a clue for you: Even in pre-f2p ..or 'the old design' as you call it, people did not use them as primary heals. Hazard keeps cleansing for the duration and heals very well and emg to shields actually reduces incoming damage while at the same time healing shields and increasing regen. That is why they are used.
Here's another clue for you: Sci team is useless to cleanse sci abilities. Why? Because sci abilities are already completely countered by passive resists you guys stupidly increased so long ago. Engineering team is a good hull heal.. this is why it was always kept as an emergency heal.
3- We want to give people a choice...
---There is no 'choice' to make for players here. You just gave all LT science and LT engineering limited ships the ultimate heal ability.. now they have massive dps, massive ability to speed tank and able to dual cycle tac team's shield balancing ability.
Only ESCORTS benefit big time from this. Where is the ability for science and cruisers to dual-equip tactical team and still be able to have a weapon buff? Weapon buffs are needed thanks to this 'new design' of yours that removed science and cruiser abilities in order for pure weapon damage to determine everything.
Here's a MUCH better solution to all this problem:
REMOVE TACTICAL TEAM SHIELD AUTOBALANCE.
See how easy that was?
Now escorts cant survive sitting still in space when something is shooting at them. They have to speed tank and rotate ship to distribute damage..which limits their damage output thanks to their noses not being aimed at the target the entire time.
Cruisers return to being the tanks of the game because they can actually tank without shield autobalance.
Science ships suddenly become slightly useful again now that the dps monsters are no longer vomiting massive dps with little danger to themselves...sci ships will now be healing, disabling enemy weapons, draining, etc.
ALL these benefits from one simple, little change.
... question is why was this not even considered at your meetings?
Spinning Tac Team into two powers is something we've thought about doing for quite awhile - that's kind of what I was getting at when I say it's "overloaded". However, that change was too disruptive for this kind of content patch - it'd be better suited for a big, systems-focused release that's already changing the metagame with lots of other gameplay changes, so that people don't have to continually re-learn how to play.
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While I don't feel strongly that it should be left in, if its removed it will fix a lot of issues with larger crew ships. But what would you do with the various crew defense and regain stat items or doffs ?
But it could continue to work as a larger modifier to system repair and in combat hull regen and hull repair abilities, take away the silly torpedo and mine destroying crew on shielded ships and make it more based on abilities like HY torpedoes that it can take out crew on shielded ships. This would give people more reason to use torpedoes to take down larger heavier armored targets.
It also never made immersion sense to me that Auxtosif is a single heal and not just a large bonus Hull like the singularity ability Quantum Absorption. That you can Heal under, engineering team I would also like to see it have more of a either % hull heal (based on crew and hull repair skill maybe ? ) or a slight hot after the initial heavy heal.
Why not have Hull's act like shields.
each type of ship has a hull mod, like shield mods.
Cruiser can have 1.40 hull mod?
Escorts 1.0
Sci 1.2
So there can be a hull slot where you have to slot hull. Cruisers can get a 2nd hull like sci has 2nd deflector
Have three types, a low grade, med, and high
low gives the lowest amount hull points but gives a small bonus to speed turn rate
Med gives no speed or turn rate
High gives a negative effect to speed and turn rate. (high hull point means less movement)
what i see alot is escorts can tank very well for being in a small ship, plus the amount of speed.
Then you do realize you have serious problems in the "meta game" concerning the diversity and purpose of the contents with your "profession-trinity"?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
This Idea sounds a lot like the idea i had for a armor mod if they ever added armor items for ships. I don't think it would work as well as armor would as a mod. That would also be huge balance change.. It would also blurr too many ships unique properties for my liking.
I think crew could work if the loss mechanics were fixed some, make it so you respawn with full crew. Crew regeneration should also scale with size, big ships have big sickbays with more doctors so can heal crewmen faster. Also crew loss from kinetic damage should not scale up quite as much with bigger crews, this is also why big ships have no crew most of time. Also theta radiation is too strong, it instantly kills entire crew, this should take a few seconds longer so you have time to escape with some crew alive.
I would like crew to stay in place if crew loss gets fixed and then we could look at increasing the benefits of having crew and the penalties of losing crew.
Sunds really good! Cant wait to test it.
Division Hispana
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The game overall would be more interesting and unique if it focused on crew. Start with my proposal for using departments as a substitute for the skill points tree, then get rid of magic heals and use crew-based heals instead, deducted from your roster. Escort might have enough crew to run 1-2 heals simultaneously without negatively affecting performance, healer has a bunch of excess crew and sends them over to help for parallel healing, then the crew comes back after a little while. Its a different angle on time-blocking, using crew as resource gate.
But having dead crew weaken your ship(maybe aside from disabling BOFFs/active DOFFs temporarily) I would disagree with.
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Funnily enough, Tactical Team actually works this way, but only for the skill modifiers to Weapon skills, which is not why people use the ability.
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
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I am now officially excited for season 9.
As for making tactical team less ... mandatory the simply fix is to allow other methods for the rapid shield distribution. Such as say Transfer Shield Strength. Or allow an 'auto distribute' like exists for auto-fire with weapons to save some spacebars.
As for crew, just remove it. STO already has enough layers of complexity with more added every patch the last thing it needs is a quasi resource pool forced to semi comply with already established cannon values and still be balanced in game. The sheer amount of headache a redesign of it would entail is doubtful to be worth any gains. Instead focus on making new Boff abilities
Just for giggles long ago I tried making a 'boarding party' focused ship out of the Corsair Flight Deck Cruiser with all those fancy doffs. Worked well enough until the 1,750 crew started to die like crazy and make it impossible to use the actual ability. Then it was simply wait ten minutes and that is with crew safety gear equipped like 2pc Honor Guard.
I never understood why in star trek online you had to tell your crew to keep the forward shield up, or transfer power to the aft shields every 5-10 seconds, without tactical team. Its like I'm calling security to make sure they are doing their jobs...
I'm pretty sure that the effect of subsystem repair also scales based on crew.
I've mentioned this before, but could you take a look at the trait descriptions. I get the feeling that they were not properly reviewed when the new trait system was released with Legacy of Romulus. There were reports of trait descriptions not matching in the character creation screen and the "Traits" tab. Also, many trait descriptions don't include stats; they just have a generic description of what the trait does.
Honestly, I don't think most people would even notice if you changed it.
I do hope when you all look at BOFF powers you take a look at FAW, BO, CSV and CRF, and consider merging the AOE abilities and Single Target abilities so that beam/cannon mixing isn't so terrible. It would also be great to see 360 beams that are the beam equivalent of turrets added into the game.
First - THANK YOU, not so much for the un-coupling, but for the context and answer.
You sir, rock.
I concur and I hope any balance changes should be addressed before putting out changes like this to live. I know it would take a lot of time in your busy schedules to post these kinda things. But when companies like blizzard do this. I feel it facilitates better debate and discussions in general.
Please please please please PLEASE just pull it out of the game.
The system is weird. And ever since you all put DOFFing into the game, you really kind of create the "crew" environment that way.
It's just a component that isn't needed for combat.
I LOVE your suggestion to pull it and just switch it over to out of combat regen with a buff to that to mimic what the thing does now. It'll make things a bit more streamlined.
For me at least the main problem with healing others is not that i dont have the powers ready or something its just most of the time ppl are either too far away or i misclick or whatever.. it would be nice to have some way where say right clicking a heal will apply it the most dmged player in reach. So when i see someone in need i dont need to click on him just klick the heal and if noone else needs it more in range he will get the heal. i noticed something like that for extend shields but since normal heals can be used on myself there needs to be an easy way to do distingish between me wanting to heal myself or others. No need to go overboard on (pb)aoe effects be it heals or buffs or whatever.
Also as a sci targeting them would kill sensor analysis but you already stated that this will change.
While you're at it, could you pls add something similar for say eng captains to "take aggro" so bassically an anti-placate so the target can only attack them and noone else (maybe not include pvp^^) for say 30 seconds as long as the eng stays in range no matter how much dmg anyone else does except maybe other eng captains using the same ability. That would give engs the ability to really feel like tanking for others (and actually doing it). No large aggro bonus just straight "you there sir, here i am if you need a target".
If i could wish for something it would be to remove or completely rework go down fighting. it was bad before the need to go below 50% but now its like intentionally getting hit to get the dmg buffs is just stupid gameplay. I know its the players choise to do it or leave it but even seeing it done is just sad.
And crew well, they just die to fast thats all. and regeneration during a mission is something i never liked. Just drastically reduce the loss of crew by dmg but remove regeneration on mission maps. Increase the effect crew has on teams and heals in general so dying within a mission becomes more of a problem and something to avoid if you wanna keep up your effectiveness.
Wow! That is an interesting change, and one that really gives science vessels (and the science Odyssey!) a hand. I'm eager to test that out, particularly for the healing bonus.
Thank you, again, for starting this thread.
I can certainly understand and appreciate the difference between having to choose between burst and over-time heals, but I don't think this addresses the core issue of tactical team being "mandatory"(my experiences with cruisers and science ships have taught me otherwise, but it is a crutch a lot of people lean on). I do hope the team is considering how to change the function of tactical team itself - in its current form, it does trivialize the purpose of having different shield facings. Perhaps happy compromise might be to prevent tactical team from taking shields from a facing that is below 30-50%?
As for crew, I think it probably should be removed. Getting crew to a point where it would actually be something meaningful to concern yourself with would probably take more effort than it is worth. At the very least, crew removal would clear up some stat tracking for various ships. I can understand wanting to keep it as it does play a small part in bits here and there, but I support crew(stat) removal.
Thank you for making changes on the gameplay itself, which has been one of my feedback complaints. It's pretty obvious from your communication that you guys are seeing things from the same perspective I am, and that's a refreshing bit of good news.
As for crew, I wouldn't mind if the whole system was scrapped. I think some meaningful replacements to existing crew-related consoles would have to be made, though. We already have several systems and levels to monitor in combat (shields, hull, power, speed/defense), and crew would have to be meaningful enough to be worth keeping.
If the crew system were kept and improved to be relevant, though, one option is for crew levels to affect Boff power recharge rates. This way, it would be important in long engagements, but not critical to monitor in every smaller battle. Min-maxers and pvpers would have incentive to keep crew levels as high as possible, but it wouldn't cripple casual players who might not understand the system as well.
In the early days, healing powers like teams and Miracle Worker were dependent on crew levels. But this would only be noticed when you were in dire need of healing and then realized your heals weren't as effective as before. Any revamp to the crew system would have to have effects that were more gradual yet regularly noticeable. Under a power-recharge system, the efficacy of powers would remain the same, and recharge debuffs would only slowly build up, at least until the levels are well below 50%. Crew would return entirely once the ship has respawned, and some powers would have side effects of improving crew resistance or regenerating crew.
Conjoined, Re-emergence, and . . .
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From cleanses that were already OP, the WCE (Cleanse Everything) DOFF, various proc cleanses and heals - well, I mean - c'mon, eh? If it is a case that the game is meant to offer no challenge in the least, then why even bother pretending? Remove anything from enemy NPCs that might require a player to think - that might threaten a player in any way - either boost the damage players do even more or give enemy ships 1 health so they instasplode if a player even targets them. Or is it some metric that exists from years of research for the minimum challenge one needs to offer a player to give them the impression that they actually did something?
I was so ticked off between the announcement about the Fleet Galaxy-X (and I don't even have any Fed toons) and the changes to teams, I actually installed Angry Birds on the gf's tablet and was playing that. It was mind-boggling that this simple little game in requiring one to guesstimate, attempt to visualize, etc, etc, etc trajectories offered far more of a challenge than what STO has turned into because of how much everything for players has been buffed, how much everything for NPCs has been nerfed, how much of everything has been automated, and...and...it was just wow. It was a trip. It blew my mind.
So when you talk about satisfying gameplay - I have to ask, is it a case of sitting down some of the three to four year old kids of employees at Cryptic at the computer to see if they go wheee in playing the game? Because I can't imagine how what has become of STO could be satisfying in any fashion.
I'm not a hardcore gamer by any means. The last console I bought was a X-Box. I do not have any PC games installed. The last FPS I played was back in 2007 I think. Perhaps having played MMOs for over 16 years though means that I'm no longer an average gamer. Perhaps my definition of average gamer is simply outdated...much in the sense of how the increase of home broadband back in 2005 changed the nature of things - so too are we seeing that continued increase of the extremely casual gamer. Which in of itself is not bad, but for some reason it's been tied to some sort of twisted ego deal - where a person can't accept that they're casual and should be doing casual things, eh? "Oh no, I'm elite. Sure, I just installed the game 10 minutes ago and it's the first game I've ever played, but I'm elite!" FFS, what a load of TRIBBLE.
But yeah, the changes to teams is simply further evidence that the intended audience goes well beyond people that may be new to gaming but have heard of Trek - it's crossed over into special needs. Launching the game will soon require more thought and effort on the player's part than actually playing it.
I'm pretty bad at this game. I've been pretty bad at most games I've ever played, but I always accepted that - I always knew that meant I had room for growth and the opportunity to get better - I always had a reason to keep playing the game as long as I was still having fun. I used to rotate between 3-5 MMOs a year, because I didn't want to get burnt out. I always returned to them - but over the years, they either did things so fundamentally stupid that I didn't care how long I'd been playing that I left and never looked back...or they simply went under. Perhaps that's a sign, eh? I'm a dead breed of average gamer. I'm not the ultra hardcore guy nor am I the ultra casual guy - I'm just Joe Average that's enjoyed playing MMOs for a wee while. Maybe I should just go play Angry Birds...
...oh, btw - Crew? A place to start might be in addressing crew loss. It's never made sense how crew loss is handled. The tooltips read in a manner which makes sense, but that's now how the mechanic actually works.
Lose Lesser of X or Y. Sounds great. You lose the lesser of X or Y...but that's not what happens. You lose the greater of X or Y...that which results in lesser crew remaining. Thus, ships which have larger crews and should benefit from those larger crews are actually penalized for such. With the regen being a flat number but bonuses based on percentages, it takes large crewed ships longer to return to those percentages than smaller crewed ships...all the while losing crew at a much faster rate than the smaller crewed ships. A smaller crewed ship might lose 20-30 crew while the larger ship can lose over 300 from the same attack.
It's been a fundamental flaw in the crew system...trippy, eh? No idea why that hasn't been addressed over the years when it has been brought up countless times as an issue.
Probably more important to add more stuff so lil' Jimmy can grind T5 in all reps before he's out of diapers...
Seriously? Listen to what you just said:
1- Because tac team is mandatory and no one is using the other abilities, we are releasing the other team abilities from shared timers.
--- Do you realize what this does? It allows escorts to FULLY keep tac team dual cycling AND now they have access to an instant heal that at level 2 of the ability literally almost heals up their entire max possible shield and hull HP?
2- We dont want people to be using hazard or emg to shields as primary heals.
--- Here's a clue for you: Even in pre-f2p ..or 'the old design' as you call it, people did not use them as primary heals. Hazard keeps cleansing for the duration and heals very well and emg to shields actually reduces incoming damage while at the same time healing shields and increasing regen. That is why they are used.
Here's another clue for you: Sci team is useless to cleanse sci abilities. Why? Because sci abilities are already completely countered by passive resists you guys stupidly increased so long ago. Engineering team is a good hull heal.. this is why it was always kept as an emergency heal.
3- We want to give people a choice...
---There is no 'choice' to make for players here. You just gave all LT science and LT engineering limited ships the ultimate heal ability.. now they have massive dps, massive ability to speed tank and able to dual cycle tac team's shield balancing ability.
Only ESCORTS benefit big time from this. Where is the ability for science and cruisers to dual-equip tactical team and still be able to have a weapon buff? Weapon buffs are needed thanks to this 'new design' of yours that removed science and cruiser abilities in order for pure weapon damage to determine everything.
Here's a MUCH better solution to all this problem:
REMOVE TACTICAL TEAM SHIELD AUTOBALANCE.
See how easy that was?
Now escorts cant survive sitting still in space when something is shooting at them. They have to speed tank and rotate ship to distribute damage..which limits their damage output thanks to their noses not being aimed at the target the entire time.
Cruisers return to being the tanks of the game because they can actually tank without shield autobalance.
Science ships suddenly become slightly useful again now that the dps monsters are no longer vomiting massive dps with little danger to themselves...sci ships will now be healing, disabling enemy weapons, draining, etc.
ALL these benefits from one simple, little change.
... question is why was this not even considered at your meetings?
*Ahem* Here you go.
There's a difference between splitting TT and just dropping the Shield Distro from it.