You can do spike damage (that is, damage that is done in a very short time, followed by not so high regular damage for a while, until the next spike) in excess of about three times the maximum hitpoint count of any player vessel in STO.
Some people believe this is all right and that there is no problem with that. Others believe that damage should be lower, yet others believe that hitpoints of player ships should be higher. And then there are all those people who believe something about this subject not listed here.
What kind of STOer are you?
Remember, STO is nothing but a cosmetics game, where only the rule of cool matters. The game mechanics are intentionally out of balance, don't try to "optimize" anything, as it would just frustrate you.
Is damage too high or are hitpoints/resistances too low in PvP? 41 votes
There is absolutely no problem with damage/hitpoint ratios in STO, PvP should be that way.
Damage is too high in PvP.
Hitpoints are too low in PvP.
PvE should be like PvP is now in that regard.
I think something entirely different about this, see below.
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I believe there's too much hull/shield pen stuff around that allows players to 1-shot even so called tanks. I'm not shouting "nerf cannons/tacs", however, but I do however think cruisers/engis need especially some kind of boost. FAW and BO need to be good again also, since cruisers obviously don't have the turn-rate to use DHC's.
Right now in PvP it's more or less DHC vapelife or GTFO. Anything else is really an inferior option at this point. I've got a couple of cannons builds myself (for the sake of diversity between characters), but I much prefer to use torps and/or beams.
You can nerf some things without even touching them, by just beefing the weaker guy.
1.) There are too many ways to ignore shields and armor resistances. Tacs are way out of hand with this, Sci a bit less so. This is even more problematic when damage boosts are addictive and stack, whereas resistances have diminishing returns as they're calculated multiplicatively.
Simply said, there is no way to justify giving a class of players the ability to be able to easily do spikes in excess of 500K damage against another class of player, while simultaneously ignoring all of that player's shields and resists.
>>>There is a Competitive Reputation consumable to stop weapon damage bleedthrough in the Competitive Rep store for Dilithium, but few seem to know about it, and it doesn't address Resist-ignoring damage.<<<
2.) Pilot ships have no drawbacks. If you're a Tac in a cloaking pilot ship, with virtually zero skill and easily obtainable equipment and traits, you can pump out spikes of damage 5x that of a true tank's hitpoints, ignore their shields and armor, you can tank the damage being returned to them, and they can evade all snares and roots, and disappear. They can essentially roll their faces over the keyboard and never die.
>>>This is why Cold Hearted is an unforgivably OP trait. The Devs gave an enormous boost to the one class of players who didn't need it.<<<
It's bad game design in general, and it's likely never going to change. They had a chance earlier this year, but a lot of things were rolled back due to the eTears of Faceroll Tacs, and a lot of things weren't even addressed.
It seems pretty clear to me either our Lead Dev or Executive Producer must be a huge fan of that one season of Deep Space 9 that was Diet Star Wars with the Defiant zooming around like David amongst a bunch of Goliaths, and chooses to ignore that every other series and film of Star Trek involved highly strategic naval combat. So, without major changes up top, I think this is what we've got to work with for better or worse, our PVP is mostly just Diet Star Wars.
Great post, more or less what I've been saying, though english isn't my first language.
We're back at the old "tac-escort" scourge all over.
The thing I get the most tired of is the constant power creep. The first thing I remember was the Invincible trait. Then they came out with the Synergistic Restoration trait, then Shield Overload. Now it's Honored Dead. Not to mention the Miracle Worker spec and all the healing/tanking console you have to have now. It's just a never ending cycle of newer, more powerful things coming out that seem great at first but only make PvP harder to play. Even in 2015 and 2016, PvP wasn't too bad at all. I remember having a lot of fun back then. I think it started getting really bad with the skill revamp. Then the Temporal stuff came and that was OP. Nowadays it's all super fast science ships and escorts that kill most people in one pass.
I found it interesting the other day to look at the progression of my defensive support healer/tank builds in PvP. It's amazing how much power creep there is in PvP. My most recent build is far less able to survive in PvP relative to my earliest build, despite being many times tankier on paper.
This made me realize PvP is basically an arms race, as my friend put it. Personally, it isn't fun like it used to be, and I won't be PvPing anymore the way it currently is. But that's my take as to the problems in PvP now. HP is just one major one.
This. I've never played an MMO that had PvP I found enjoyable, if I want PvP I'll load up CoD Multiplayer instead.
you really wanna have to deal with a bunch of mouthy 12 year olds screaming foul epithets and slurs over a mic? because that's the CoD population in a nutshell
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
The console from the Voth event seems to be geared toward PVP, as did the competitive reputation and lots of recently added abilities and equipment. The recent patch notes also reflect interest, albeit small, in fixing certain items and abilities used frequently in PVP. Interpretation: Devs are looking at PVP as a way of increasing player retention and selling shiny stuff because unlike the queues, replaying the same stories, and the quasi-functional accolades system, PVP seems to be capable of keeping players playing and spending $$$.
Doesn’t seem like they’re going to make pre-made builds for PvP, as that would mean negating the buying power of hundreds of endgame players trying to min/max. So the problem, if there is one, seems to be the many newcomers who aren’t familiar with using resistances, immunities, placates, speed, disables, etc. to avoid spike damage, be it from energy weapons, exotic, or kinetic sources.
I think the way to fix this is to make PVE more like PVP from the start. Instead of having hitpoint sponges for bosses and AI that flies in circles until dying, make mastering dmg-type specific resistances, debuffing enemy defenses, survivability, and disabling shields/subsystems necessary to advance in the game. Don’t allow players who haven’t mastered these basic skills advance past levels 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60, forcing them to learn the gameplay necessary for a successful PVP match as part of leveling up. At present, it is hardly a challenge to go from 1-60 using the bare minimum knowledge of what ships are capable of doing.
Want to advance past the Borg arc? Well, you need to learn how to disable the Queen’s subsystems in order to get any damage through. Want to beat the Romulans? Better bring a particle emission torp and some other cloak detection tech because they’re not going to make it easy for you by firing spike dmg on your rear arc and going back to cloak before you can react. Each enemy NPC type should have its tactics tweaked to TEACH one important aspect of PVP. Then, when players reach STO’s true endgame they won’t get PvPTSD when they are nuked in five seconds. They will know how they died, why they died, and have some basic understanding about how to adapt besides calling for the removal or segregation of PVP in the forums. The Hur’Q AI—the way the swarmers find your rear arc—is something that should be expanded upon, taken in different directions, and applied to every NPC in the game.
Players aren’t going to learn these tactics by doffing, doing admiralty, mashing the spacebar, or even achieving a super high DPS. And those are the current paths to level 60 in STO. The game is too easy, resulting in players who reach the endgame thinking they know more than they do. Then, when they try PVP they find out that there are dozens of boff abilities, builds, and play styles they need to learn in order to adapt. This makes them sad and forces them to take their anger out on the PVP community when they should be angry at developers for lulling them into a state of learned helplessness.
Hitpoint/DMG ratio is fine. Player mastery needs to improve. As far as changes, I would probably welcome an increase in hyper-specific defensive abilities to offset spike dmg from whatever the flavor of the current meta is.
Well, I play on PC, so not as many kids. I also only play Hardcore, which may further impact the age range of players, but I'm not sure on that. Been a fairly enjoyable experience the past few weeks, with the exception of a small number of idiots calling everybody they don't like the 'N' word. Those people are easily reported though.
Without an anti-PvP option of some kind the poll becomes biased. At the very least you need an "I don't care" option.
PvP was fine and relatively alive in pre-DR days.