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So... apparently I was afk.

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  • meimeitoomeimeitoo Member Posts: 12,594 Arc User
    meimeitoo wrote: »
    You know what happens when let’s say 5 Diamond or already gold DPSer team-up and play ISA the regular L->R way? As the sum of the critter hit points along the joint flight path is far below the dmg potential of the participants none in team is likely to set any records or even do any good. That’s why it is common that players from high channels often ask for teams in low channels leading to better results for the high level player.


    In a bit of a round-about way, you bring up an interesting point about DPS optimum. Typically, you want to team up with players who are better than you, because, as the whole of the queue is done faster, your own DPS shoots up too (as DPS is a measurement of dmg over time). But the rest of the team shouldn't be soo superior to you, that you can't get a shot in, edge-wise.

    Apparently, that works top-down too: the better player (you, in this case) often benefits from having one or two weaker players around, leaving more room for him to take down lotsa HP fast.

    Someone should do the math on that one day. :)

    Oh yea that would really be interesting. The ceiling for ISA is simply far too low. :)

    So, this piqued my interest, but after a convo with Jay, he pretty much confirmed what I had already suspected - it's kinda impossible to do that due to extreme numbers of variables. Moreover, it's not so much about numbers but rather the pace of the run - who reaches which targets when. Obviously, numbers matter, but no 2 players, even with same DPS, act exactly the same way in a run. The difference gets even more nuanced when you take several build types into account (for example, a single target 100k build will affect the overall course of run in a totally different way than an AoE 100k build would).
    jcsww wrote: »
    The simple solution is to cap the maximum DPS a player can output.
    And exactly how would you be able to do that? I'm genuinely curious. Given that you made a suggestion like that, surely you have a deep understanding how DPSing in STO works and thus can offer perfect solutions to HOW exactly maximum DPS will be capped.


    Capping DPS would be relatively easy. Like once the game detects your DPS > 100k, you get on an asymptotic curve, where all extra DPS is rapidly nearing zero. Not that I'm a proponent of such nonsense, but it probably could be done.

    Cryptic would never do it anyway, of course, as it would leave ppl with absolutely no incentive whatsoever to buy better equipment, ever, or even feel the need to better themselves, pilot-wise.
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  • meimeitoomeimeitoo Member Posts: 12,594 Arc User
    ruinthefun wrote: »
    jcsww wrote: »
    The simple solution is to cap the maximum DPS a player can output.
    I'm not sure how that logically follows. DPS isn't a stat. How do you cap "DPS", given that it's a combination of many factors?


    Of course DPS is a stat. It's Damage per Second, and is measured every day by everyone who has ever parsed.

    Thing, of course, is, that your DPS is not truly yours alone, but part of the team effort (see posts above). So, you could get penalized for flying with better players even. So, the whole idea of capping DPS should be abandoned immediately, LOL -- even though it could technically be done, no doubt.
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  • tunebreakertunebreaker Member Posts: 1,222 Arc User
    meimeitoo wrote: »
    meimeitoo wrote: »
    You know what happens when let’s say 5 Diamond or already gold DPSer team-up and play ISA the regular L->R way? As the sum of the critter hit points along the joint flight path is far below the dmg potential of the participants none in team is likely to set any records or even do any good. That’s why it is common that players from high channels often ask for teams in low channels leading to better results for the high level player.


    In a bit of a round-about way, you bring up an interesting point about DPS optimum. Typically, you want to team up with players who are better than you, because, as the whole of the queue is done faster, your own DPS shoots up too (as DPS is a measurement of dmg over time). But the rest of the team shouldn't be soo superior to you, that you can't get a shot in, edge-wise.

    Apparently, that works top-down too: the better player (you, in this case) often benefits from having one or two weaker players around, leaving more room for him to take down lotsa HP fast.

    Someone should do the math on that one day. :)

    Oh yea that would really be interesting. The ceiling for ISA is simply far too low. :)

    So, this piqued my interest, but after a convo with Jay, he pretty much confirmed what I had already suspected - it's kinda impossible to do that due to extreme numbers of variables. Moreover, it's not so much about numbers but rather the pace of the run - who reaches which targets when. Obviously, numbers matter, but no 2 players, even with same DPS, act exactly the same way in a run. The difference gets even more nuanced when you take several build types into account (for example, a single target 100k build will affect the overall course of run in a totally different way than an AoE 100k build would).
    jcsww wrote: »
    The simple solution is to cap the maximum DPS a player can output.
    And exactly how would you be able to do that? I'm genuinely curious. Given that you made a suggestion like that, surely you have a deep understanding how DPSing in STO works and thus can offer perfect solutions to HOW exactly maximum DPS will be capped.


    Capping DPS would be relatively easy. Like once the game detects your DPS > 100k, you get on an asymptotic curve, where all extra DPS is rapidly nearing zero. Not that I'm a proponent of such nonsense, but it probably could be done.

    Cryptic would never do it anyway, of course, as it would leave ppl with absolutely no incentive whatsoever to buy better equipment, ever, or even feel the need to better themselves, pilot-wise.

    Hell, actually I might even entertain myself here.

    So, let's take an arbitrary number of 50k - no player can do more DPS than 50k at any point, ever. So, I line up my Gravity Well (dealing 10k damage per pop, every second) against 6 spheres. Ok, the game is instructed to ignore that 6th sphere and deal damage to only 5 of them - 50k DPS. Game also ignores any attack dealt by my weapons, and there's no use in activating my Delphic Tear - hell, actually I won't upgrade my weapons or buy that (lockbox, mind you) console, stripping Cryptic from possible revenue, because yay - DPS is capped!

    Ok, now comes along @peterconnorfirst who is in queue with me and kills 3 of the spheres. For a second there, my DPS at that point drops to only 30k, and then rest of the spheres die, leaving me to fly away to look new opponents (and since I'm not in combat, I'm doing 0 DPS for the time being). Now comes the big question - what happens next when I meet another group of 10 spheres and unleash my Destabilizing Resonance Beam upon them. Since I spent 5 seconds near those spheres alone (50k DPS, 250k total dmg), another second with Pete (30k DPS, now 280k total dmg), and 4 seconds without any combat activity (0 DPS, still 280k total dmg), overall time for that combat encounter has been 10 seconds, and my overall DPS is 28k. Will the game still only let me damage 5 spheres out of those 10, thus leaving my overall DPS at the end of the encounter severely below 50k? Or will it do the calculations to allow me damage extra spheres this time in order to buff me back to overall 50k, probably crashing the already pretty unstable server in the process?

    If the former, what incentive do players have to even buy new items and upgrade already existing ones? If the latter, I still won't have much incentive to buy all the new stuff, plus good luck having the game do constant "DPS-checks" on every player in every combat encounter.

    So to @jcsww - please, before spouting utter nonsense, do the thought process and perhaps then you realize how ideas like "let's just cap player DPS" are plain stupid.
  • jaephjaeph Member Posts: 77 Arc User
    To the OP, let me ask a different question:

    How many RA's have you been in? How many resulted in an AFK due to the dps of other players?

    This sounds like a statistical aberration. Unless this happens to many people, I don't see why the devs should make major changes for such an isolated case.

    -Jeff

    P.S. I leveled my rommie from 26->65 over the xp weekend. As I hit 60, I had gear largely in the mk Vii-Viii range, with a little vi and x/xi thrown in. All greens and blues. I also was determined to be a torpedo boat with this character, which means I'll be garbage until I get some decent gear.

    Even with all of these handicaps, I never got an AFK penalty in the RAs I joined. I was slow, stupid, and severly under-powered, and I still did enough damage.

  • warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    The so-called "AFK" penalty being broken is not the DPS players' fault.
  • nimbullnimbull Member Posts: 1,564 Arc User
    warpangel wrote: »
    The so-called "AFK" penalty being broken is not the DPS players' fault.

    To a point I'd argue it's Cryptic's fault for letting power creep get so bad in the game that some players can work the numbers to blow most anything away in a near instant.
    Green people don't have to be.... little.
  • davefenestratordavefenestrator Member Posts: 10,511 Arc User
    I've been through hundreds of Borg RAs and have never had this happen, so while this one run was probably under 30 seconds I don't think it's something to worry about.

    Next time go after your own cube. Turn left and there are 2 groups close together so if someone beats you to one just head to the other.
  • postagepaidpostagepaid Member Posts: 2,899 Arc User
    There's often a small cluster of probes and spheres just off spawn that can't be seen as you pan the camera but show on the minimap.

    Content will have been abandoned by players less because of difficulty but more because it either doesn't fit the time/reward metric folk prefer over something that might be considered gameplay OR its simply broken and will likely never get fixed because for whatever reason fixing new content before it comes out is inconceivable and its easier to let it die a death and hope players forget it even existed.

    Of course there are times when a core piece of the game is borked such as the pve queue system on PS4 which has currently made the entire gamma waiting zone gimmick even worse than it is on PC now folk are almost done repping alts.

    DPS is a flexible figure usually quoted as the average unless you really want to waggle the epeen. It starts at a base level and fluctuates as buffs, debuffs and procs come and go during the fight.

    I'm kind of curious about the AFK threshold in the CC event as there seems to be an increasing number of players who fly in, do some pewpewing until the first pulse, die and don't bother respawning.
  • lordsteve1lordsteve1 Member Posts: 3,492 Arc User
    edited August 2018
    I have seen a similar situation to the OP a few times in RA's but i think it's probably not around the 10sec time and probably a bit longer (just it feels short when you're stuck there in the middle and get hit with a penalty), time is a funny thing.

    As for DPS limits, i have no idea how you'd implement that. I mean on a single target build sure it's easy enough but what about a build throwing out a GW3/SSV3/DRB3/TS3/BFAW? What happens once the limit is reached and you are still hitting new targets or those already caught? Does it ignore them or simply stop doing damage to some of the ships?

    DPS is a funny thing really. Go in to a map with 4 similarly skilled players and you might all knacker each others potential, leaving you with lower ratings. Go in to a newbie-filled map and you'll probably blow them away and "steal" their own DPS potential quite easily. Or on occasion you'll actually need those high parsing friends to reduce the length of the run and thus "fudge" your numbers into a smaller time limit. It's so much more than just a simply measure of damage and it is vastly affected by what other people are doing in the same instance.

    Limits are not the way to go with the problem here.

    The real problem here is that for these "elite" players (or really anyone doing over 50K in most content even i'd say) there is almost zero content to play in!
    You've got Korfez and a few elite level maps like HSE, STSE, THSE but these are your lot really, unless you PVP. Where's the playground for this level of players in STO? People complain about having uber-DPS machines in normal or elite maps but if there's nowhere else to play what do we expect??! And this is conflated even more by the issue going on in the other thread currently on this forum, a lot of queues are dead; players have few other places to go, so they end up giving poor newbies and casual players afk penalties. Even I've given some poor souls in a few CCA matches afk penalties and borked their parses and i'm a pretty TRIBBLE player in terms of DPS (freely admitting to it as well!)
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  • warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    nimbull wrote: »
    warpangel wrote: »
    The so-called "AFK" penalty being broken is not the DPS players' fault.

    To a point I'd argue it's Cryptic's fault for letting power creep get so bad in the game that some players can work the numbers to blow most anything away in a near instant.
    No, that's not anyone's fault either. That's more or less inevitable in any game that has any kind of power progression. Content meant for newbies will always be curbstomped by the elite. The only part of that feature unique to STO is that here the newbie content is also the best farming ground for everyone.

    What is Cryptic's fault, is them having put in a mechanism that falsely labels and punishes honestly active players as "AFK" if they get upstaged by more experienced teammembers in a random queue.
  • dracounguisdracounguis Member Posts: 5,358 Arc User
    That new Swarm caller thing we got calls in a very strong swarm (unless it got nerfed). That and a good DPSer could take down the boss ship very fast.
  • peterconnorfirstpeterconnorfirst Member Posts: 6,225 Arc User
    meimeitoo wrote: »
    meimeitoo wrote: »
    You know what happens when let’s say 5 Diamond or already gold DPSer team-up and play ISA the regular L->R way? As the sum of the critter hit points along the joint flight path is far below the dmg potential of the participants none in team is likely to set any records or even do any good. That’s why it is common that players from high channels often ask for teams in low channels leading to better results for the high level player.


    In a bit of a round-about way, you bring up an interesting point about DPS optimum. Typically, you want to team up with players who are better than you, because, as the whole of the queue is done faster, your own DPS shoots up too (as DPS is a measurement of dmg over time). But the rest of the team shouldn't be soo superior to you, that you can't get a shot in, edge-wise.

    Apparently, that works top-down too: the better player (you, in this case) often benefits from having one or two weaker players around, leaving more room for him to take down lotsa HP fast.

    Someone should do the math on that one day. :)

    Oh yea that would really be interesting. The ceiling for ISA is simply far too low. :)

    So, this piqued my interest, but after a convo with Jay, he pretty much confirmed what I had already suspected - it's kinda impossible to do that due to extreme numbers of variables. Moreover, it's not so much about numbers but rather the pace of the run - who reaches which targets when. Obviously, numbers matter, but no 2 players, even with same DPS, act exactly the same way in a run. The difference gets even more nuanced when you take several build types into account (for example, a single target 100k build will affect the overall course of run in a totally different way than an AoE 100k build would).
    jcsww wrote: »
    The simple solution is to cap the maximum DPS a player can output.
    And exactly how would you be able to do that? I'm genuinely curious. Given that you made a suggestion like that, surely you have a deep understanding how DPSing in STO works and thus can offer perfect solutions to HOW exactly maximum DPS will be capped.


    Capping DPS would be relatively easy. Like once the game detects your DPS > 100k, you get on an asymptotic curve, where all extra DPS is rapidly nearing zero. Not that I'm a proponent of such nonsense, but it probably could be done.

    Cryptic would never do it anyway, of course, as it would leave ppl with absolutely no incentive whatsoever to buy better equipment, ever, or even feel the need to better themselves, pilot-wise.

    Hell, actually I might even entertain myself here.

    So, let's take an arbitrary number of 50k - no player can do more DPS than 50k at any point, ever. So, I line up my Gravity Well (dealing 10k damage per pop, every second) against 6 spheres. Ok, the game is instructed to ignore that 6th sphere and deal damage to only 5 of them - 50k DPS. Game also ignores any attack dealt by my weapons, and there's no use in activating my Delphic Tear - hell, actually I won't upgrade my weapons or buy that (lockbox, mind you) console, stripping Cryptic from possible revenue, because yay - DPS is capped!

    Ok, now comes along @peterconnorfirst who is in queue with me and kills 3 of the spheres. For a second there, my DPS at that point drops to only 30k, and then rest of the spheres die, leaving me to fly away to look new opponents (and since I'm not in combat, I'm doing 0 DPS for the time being). Now comes the big question - what happens next when I meet another group of 10 spheres and unleash my Destabilizing Resonance Beam upon them. Since I spent 5 seconds near those spheres alone (50k DPS, 250k total dmg), another second with Pete (30k DPS, now 280k total dmg), and 4 seconds without any combat activity (0 DPS, still 280k total dmg), overall time for that combat encounter has been 10 seconds, and my overall DPS is 28k. Will the game still only let me damage 5 spheres out of those 10, thus leaving my overall DPS at the end of the encounter severely below 50k? Or will it do the calculations to allow me damage extra spheres this time in order to buff me back to overall 50k, probably crashing the already pretty unstable server in the process?

    If the former, what incentive do players have to even buy new items and upgrade already existing ones? If the latter, I still won't have much incentive to buy all the new stuff, plus good luck having the game do constant "DPS-checks" on every player in every combat encounter.

    So to @jcsww - please, before spouting utter nonsense, do the thought process and perhaps then you realize how ideas like "let's just cap player DPS" are plain stupid.

    Yea that was a good read tune!

    But somehow I think you came out of the last match with 51,224 DPS and me only at 48,776 DPS. I call foul and make a bug report. Stupid game. :D
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  • lordsteve1lordsteve1 Member Posts: 3,492 Arc User
    Yeah true enough.
    I mean I personally don’t care for marks etc anymore as I don’t need nor want them but it would be nice if when finishing an elite map I could at least get some sort of worthy reward, not the pitence I currently get. Some nice loot to sell for EC, or perhaps a title, or some cosmetic items to show off my skills.
    Currently there’s sod all reason to punish yourself with a gruelling run at HSE etc unless you just enjoy the mission. And after playing HSE as much as I have I’m simply bored of running the same damned content endlessly.
    SulMatuul.png
  • admrenlarreckadmrenlarreck Member Posts: 2,041 Arc User
    Killing the pickle is possible to do in a couple of seconds. If you know the right spot to sit in when it fires its big gun, you can get it to kill itself. I used to do this myself, Haven't tried it in a year so I don't know if it was patched so that trick wont work. but as far as I know it is still currently possible.
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  • lexusk19lexusk19 Member Posts: 1,407 Arc User
    I have friends that are in the 200k range of DPS, its not surprising at all. Red alerts are lol easy. I doubt Cryptic will do anything though, they dont directly make money from it.
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  • jcswwjcsww Member Posts: 6,789 Arc User
    lexusk19 wrote: »
    I have friends that are in the 200k range of DPS, its not surprising at all. Red alerts are lol easy. I doubt Cryptic will do anything though, they dont directly make money from it.

    Money always over function! Just look at how much Star Citizen has made off of pretty much nothing but some ships. :P

    As some have pointed out from a better understanding of the game than most. DPS are numbers generated based on formulas and numbers assigned to items, modifiers, bonuses, etc. Creating a dump or addition to that formula that negates all damage exceeding a specific number shouldn't be too difficult. Then you gear all content based on that maximum until there is a bump need or desired, which just means the cap is increased.

    Taking the OP at their word. If it only happened once. Why complain about it? If this happened every single time you played a particular piece of content, then bug report it! Then the dev team can take a look and make adjustments to the content so this doesn't happen again.

    As far as I am concerned, there needs to be an AFK punishment. Most things don't take long to complete, like the CE, even on Advanced. If participating in something that on average, takes about 2 minutes to complete is too much to ask. Then don't play that content.

    To solve this problem for those that want the rewards that don't want to spend the time. PWE needs to add what most other games have now. A pack you can buy with real money to basically skip playing to unlock the reward. There are times when I am so busy during some events that I can't complete them or I just don't feel up to the grind. If the option is there to essentially, buy it out. I just might if the price is fair enough. What is two weeks time of 2 minutes a day worth to a person? Personally, the CE event rewards I would say might be worth $5. Something like a Summer or Winter event, which can currently only be bought out with Lobi, I would say is worth $20 because currently, those are a T6 ship.
  • seaofsorrowsseaofsorrows Member Posts: 10,918 Arc User
    jcsww wrote: »
    Taking the OP at their word. If it only happened once. Why complain about it?

    I am just going to isolate this part of your post because I honestly fundamentally disagree with pretty much everything else.

    This however, is a great point.. I like the OP.. he's a good guy but this thread never should have even been made. He got into a freak run where he happened to get a group of Diamond Level DPS players, there was probably also some lag or delay in him joining the queue and these things turned into a 'perfect storm' of sorts that ended with him getting an AFK.

    It's unfortunate, but it's a freak occurrence. There is no need for any sweeping changes like DPS caps, nerfs, or any of the other insanely silly suggestions that have been put out to combat this "problem." Again, I don't want to bash on the OP, but the best solution here would have been if he realized that people don't need to start a thread every time they have anything bad happen in the game. If this was a common occurrence.. then yes, I get it, but I still maintain my original point.. this is simply not an issue.

    The unfortunate side effect of the AFK system is the occasional false positive. It's an unfortunate but unavoidable side effect, the AFK system cannot be removed and the number of false positives is too minuscule to justify sweeping change. The real solution here is that sometimes players need to just learn to let things go and move on with life.
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  • darkbladejkdarkbladejk Member Posts: 3,712 Community Moderator
    guys this thread has gone off course. we've all said our peace and attempted to help where we could. /thread
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