I'm sure he tells the low DPS players that they suck and should quit playing the game......which is why I won't play TFOs at all
I hear ya. I sign in to have my fun, ain't gonna deal with ruffians with bad attitudes for a game.
They are bailing out on their team....Some mentally, some physically. I do not want to play with players like that, either.
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I just remind myself, it is an attitude. That is all it is.
Yet, it is sad to see that attitude is breaking everything to pieces in this game, and driving players into isolation from each other. One side thinking they don't matter and the other side into thinking they must do everything all alone.
Support each other, until everyone catch on to it. Just like darkbladejk's story.
"Spend your life doing strange things with weird people." -- UNK
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
I'm sure he tells the low DPS players that they suck and should quit playing the game......which is why I won't play TFOs at all
I hear ya. I sign in to have my fun, ain't gonna deal with ruffians with bad attitudes for a game.
They are bailing out on their team....Some mentally, some physically. I do not want to play with players like that, either.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I just remind myself, it is an attitude. That is all it is.
Yet, it is sad to see that attitude is breaking everything to pieces in this game, and driving players into isolation from each other. One side thinking they don't matter and the other side into thinking they must do everything all alone.
Support each other, until everyone catch on to it. Just like darkbladejk's story.
Indeed there's no "I" in team (nor there is "me" neither, there is "em" but that's not the same thing) play for the team not yourself. Who knows you might even find it fun trying to figure out ways to make the weaker members of the team feel like they're contributing while not outright carrying them.
That said "support each other" goes both ways and shouldn't be seen as an excuse to not try to improve.
I for one am happy for the system, gives me a reason and something to do each day that benefits my entire account. And im all for the average DPS to rise. New players are just bad, they arnt useful in ques, at least if they did more damage, they could at least help the teams.
The main reason you find new players in queues is because TFO's are included in the mission arcs and it's not immediately obvious to new players that they can be skipped.
Draal - FED, Saurian, LV60 - TAC
Mirak - FED 23c, Vulkan, LV60 - TAC
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Melchiah - KDF, Gorn, LV60 - TAC
Ne'roon - KDF,Lethian, L60, TAC
Turel - ROM-KDF, Reman, 30, TAC
Elric - ROM-Fed, Romulan, L60, TAC
Richtor Belmont - FED 23c, Human,LV20, SCI
G'Kar - KDF, Gorn, L10
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USS Brakiri - T6 Elachi Escort
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I for one am happy for the system, gives me a reason and something to do each day that benefits my entire account. And im all for the average DPS to rise. New players are just bad, they arnt useful in ques, at least if they did more damage, they could at least help the teams.
The main reason you find new players in queues is because TFO's are included in the mission arcs and it's not immediately obvious to new players that they can be skipped.
Very true, and this change was just plain stupid. TFO's in the mission arcs is now and always has been a horrible idea.
you are competing for, at times, is "Kill X targets", "Deal Y-thousand damage", and unless they've changed it, even the minimal damage needed to not get an AFK penalty
I'm going to go through your points because I think you've missed the mark on a few of them.
In these examples you are still not in competition with the other players. When you get an endeavor tells you something such as "deal 200k phaser damage in space", it doesn't care where in space you deal that damage as long as you do it. If it says "kill x amount of enemy Y" then unless it specifies a place, it doesn't care where you do it.
If you get "Kill 60 Herald ships", true, it doesn't care where you do it. But if the easiest place to do that is Gateway to Grethor, or some other team TFO, then yes, you're in competition with other players to get your kills in. This also isn't only about completing endeavours. It's about all game play. If Borg Red Alert weekend is on, and you want to participate, then you are in competition with other players to get to the spawns and deal sufficient damage to earn the ship XP that is part of the event. If you get "Deal 500,000 Polaron Damage in space", and you're also trying to earn some decent rewards doing Random TFOs, you are absolutely in competition with other players to get to the ships and deal some damage before they are already dead. You can say "Well hey you don't need to do rTFOs". But play time is limited, people need their rewards for many game purposes, and after all, the game shouldn't become "go find a solo scenario you can complete on your own".
As for your examples of the AFK penalty I think a couple of things need to be clarified. To avoid the AFK penalty you only need to deal 1-2% of the total damage in the run.
Do you have a source for this? I've seen various guesstimates of the AFK penalty limit, but never anything resembling a numeric test or a dev source. People just seem to be quoting other people on this. Keeping in mind that if there are 2 150K+ DPS players in your queue, you need to do 3K DPS just to reach the 1%.
Without some type of gear check system to group similarly geared players together, there will always be queues where people have vastly different levels of gear. (...) Without some way to check the gear level like WoW does this will always be a possibility. (...) If a person is feeling outclassed and useless in a queue, then they have the means to get better gear and to better themselves in game, but it's up to them to actually go for it and do it.
When I say "some forethought should be put into addressing issues", some sort of gear check or player grouping system is one of the options. When an endeavour goal is "Complete TFO X" or "Complete N TFOs of type Y", the player has no choice but to be in the queue. I haven't currently tested this but quite a few people have told me that Normal difficulty queues don't work for those, so if a player gets them, then he does Advanced whether he is ready for it or not.
- Yes, power creep is going to happen. It's the nature of the game. That said, not all power creep is equal. Cryptic was happy to put in plasma-exploder consoles and original plasmonic leeche
I don't mean this the way it may read over the internet but, have you ever developed anything for a video game, be it a full on studio production like what Cryptic does, or small time modding like what I do for older games? I don't mean that to sound insulting as that's a legitimate question. (...)
In other words, they were able to double dip and do both things at the same time. I don't need to tell you that something like that was never intended and there was no way they were going to let that keep going on. The plasma consoles in that instance were THE answer in all situations. (...)
The original leech was fine at first, until folks figured out it had no hard upper limit and could be cheesed to let your ship have maxed out power in all 4 subsystems at all times. (...) Again being able to have max power levels guaranteed at all times was NEVER intended.
B.Sc.(H) Computer Science. Spent over 8 years designing, coding, publishing multi-player online games - and making a living at it. Played everything from Colossal Cave Adventure to Pong to Islands of Kesmai to UO to EQ to EvE to WoW... on first release. You could say I'm not completely new to this.
Your reply makes exactly my point, about Cryptic putting things in that are too powerful, without realizing what the stacking effects may be, and not understanding how players will take maximum use of synergizing features to push performance through the roof. Then the game is either trivialized, or they have to make sweeping 'balance' changes, or they have to bump up NPC difficulty. Those can be dealt with when its a case of getting better gear etc. But when it becomes a case of a time-gated, RNG-driven process, then you simply cannot look up some good build advice, grind some gear and EC and dil, outfit your ship better and learn better piloting. The only way to remain on par (for latecomers) is to spend years grinding out perks to catch up.
- I don't expect newer players to be able to perform on par with older veterans. That said, I wouldn't design a game that regularly throws newer players into the exact same queues and events as those older veterans and have them receive rewards or AFK penalties based on something as simplistic as 'total damage dealt'. (...)
That doesn't mean I can't look ahead and see possible issues with things that STO already has trouble dealing with, becoming bigger issues as the power gap widens.
As I said above, without some kind of gear check it's impossible to keep newer players and veterans alike from being thrown into the same queues. (...) in almost all cases, the veteran player will outperform the new player simply because of the experience factor. Gear alone does not make one a powerful player if you don't know how to use that gear.
(...) 1-2% of the damage is absolutely reasonable. This isn't 1-2% maintained constantly, but over the ENTIRE RUN. (...) Unless something beyond the control of the player occurs, getting an AFK penalty should be an EXTREMELY rare event.(...)
You've said you don't expect newer players to be able to perform on par with the veteran players, yet with respect to you, I have to seriously question that statement based on a few of the comments you have made.
"Perks just widen the gap between the uberpowered and the less developed players."
"That doesn't mean I can't look ahead and see possible issues with things that STO already has trouble dealing with, becoming bigger issues as the power gap widens."
You say you don't expect newer players to be able to perform at the same level as veterans, yet with those 2 statements, I must respectfully question if you really believe what you just said.(...)
With proper time and effort every new player has the capacity to become that veteran player (...)
I really don't understand how some people can come into a game and expect that they should have equal outcome of results to someone who has played longer(...)
To be clear, I have no problem doing content, TFOs, Endeavours, what have you. What I have, is over 10 captains who all started new, were given 2 million EC to start (when they could reach a bank), and used nothing but what they could unlock themselves until they were level 60. I've also personally started 3 new people in the game and watched over their shoulder(ish) as they learned the game. These players do run events, they do Red Alerts, they do TFOs and they do get AFK penalties, cursed out for being noobs, or just generally feel completely ineffective at times because they are put into content with people who are literally 100 times more powerful (and experienced) than them.
Previously, I could at least say "Here's some missions to get some gear, here's how this STF works, here's some piloting tips". But a year from now all I will be able to say is "Well, if you grind out a perk every two days for the next year, you'll be starting to catch up."
I've ranted enough so I will wrap it up with this. The very same perks that yes will give vets more tools to play with, will also give newer players those same tools when they unlock everything themselves.
Picture a newer player, seeing a Borg Red Alert weekend coming up, thinking "Ah this is cool, this is what Star Trek is all about, me defending the quadrant against the Borg onslaught". He enters his Red Alert (because nothing in the game tells him he shouldn't), looks around for his first Borg spawn, hits Full Impulse... and the 4 guys he's in with are 30% faster than him, know exactly where to go, and have weapons that will decimate the Borg before he even finishes clicking off his Full Impulse.
So he looks for his next Borg spawn, waits for Full Impulse to be ready again, rockets off... and that one is dead before he is even 1/2 way there. Repeat until Unimatrix, then repeat again. This already happens. It will only get worse with perks.
Stack +Speed with +Damage, add +Crits/CritSev and +Resists, toss in the advantage veterans always have (experience, knowledge, practice, better builds etc), and you massively magnify take a problem that already exists. This isn't about being on par with veterans... it's about being able to participate at all.
As said, I like the endeavor system - for me. But I suspect that if I start my next of-age nephew off on STO in about 6 months... it's going to cause problems for him.
you are competing for, at times, is "Kill X targets", "Deal Y-thousand damage", and unless they've changed it, even the minimal damage needed to not get an AFK penalty … If you get "Kill 60 Herald ships", true, it doesn't care where you do it. But if the easiest place to do that is Gateway to Grethor, or some other team TFO, then yes, you're in competition with other players to get your kills in.
I'm going to go through your points because I think you've missed the mark on a few of them.
In these examples you are still not in competition with the other players. When you get an endeavor tells you something such as "deal 200k phaser damage in space", it doesn't care where in space you deal that damage as long as you do it. If it says "kill x amount of enemy Y" then unless it specifies a place, it doesn't care where you do it.
I think you 'slightly' misunderstand how it works, as my colleague @darkbladejk tried to 'politely' suggest, in the second lower quote below yours.
As long as you often do about 10-25% of the damage, while in a team it should 'count' as a defeated enemy. If you're not able to do a least 10% of the damage in a TFO, then stick to completing 2-5 missions in an episode ARC, as they will scale and grow with you! There are many ways to achieve the objectives with a bit of creativity. There's nothing wrong with doing TFO's once your Level 25+ and as long as your in the fight with mostly (Rare) or better gear, and you should not regularly be getting an AFK penalty either, unless your unfortunately paired with a DPLSLEAGUE elite, but those times are more rare. Also TFO's can also be a great way to earn XP, especially as you level when defeating enemy several levels above your current rank. Denote the part you still got to do 10-25% of the damage, for it to count as a defeat or to earn the XP for your character for Ship Mastery.
Still your first goal should be to earn a higher rank, and upgrade gear from Mark IV (Lt.Commander) to at least Mk XII, and focus on becoming a Captain &/or Admiral first.
Most missions and REPS as you level them also give Rare or Very Rare Gear often to choose. Missions especially first runs are great for DIL as well. REPUTATION boxes can also give Very Rare Mk XII gear, and missing pieces can be purchased with DIL from the REP STORE. Most things Cryptic does are in fact very 'fair' to all sorts of players, and allow players a wide bit of latitude in how or what they focus on at each stage of their development.
If one character is lower level rank, do Endeavor's on your 'Highest' Character, or stick to missions that scale with you.
Endeavor's is designed to be a slow progression mostly for end-game players, so if your lower level and can't do 1 or 2 the odd day. It should not be a big deal, there are going to be days that applies to everyone, just perhaps for different reasons.
If you require extra Energy Credit or DIL try "Tour the Galaxy" in the AVAILBLE tab of HAIL. Or if you need a bit of extra DIL progress your missions &/or Turn in Contraband at Security Officer's.
Still I wish you all the best, we've all started from the beginning, and were all learning &/or evolving.
Not that I want to stand in the way of anyone's path to ultimate power... but STO is a game where power creep is already a common issue, and people fly around in ships that decimate Borg cubes in seconds and wipe out entire TFOs in a couple minutes.
Looking at the perks available, it seems we will take those OP ships and add 7.5% more crit chance, 30% more crit severity, 30% more base damage to every damage type, and quite a bit of extra hull, shields, maneuverability and resists.
I'm particularly thinking of what happens when you take these all together: +30% more base damage, critting +7.5% more often, for an extra +30% crit severity, etc, etc.
Yes, it will take ages to amass all those perks, but even just getting 1/3 to 1/2 of them will represent a significant power increase. I'm concerned about the effect this will have on overall balance between NPCs, maxed out players, and newer players. It is already difficult in many cases for a newer player who doesn't gear up massively to have much of an impact in a TFO or Red Alert.
Players with maxed out gear/traits/perks will either expect to see something new with more challenge, or will trivialize older content. Newer players will struggle with endeavours, random TFOs etc. that toss them into competition with power players for kills, damage etc.
Obviously this isn't something 'broken' as yet... but Cryptic does have this tendency to introduce broken mechanics into the game, then have to make sweeping changes/nerfs later to bring things back in line again. It would be nice if maybe some forethought was put into it this time around to keep that from happening.
While I agree that the perks lead to a considerable boost in sum it should be noted that we don’t look at any sort of magnitudes we do not get thrown in our faces all the time anyway by cryptic.
Ship traits, specializations, reputations, access to high rank fleet-gear.
Granted, it is a 2 year time gate but given the timeframe it takes to come up with 1,5B EC for a high end ship, the grinding of socialization XP on multiple alts or the pulling of countless rep sliders it isn’t that problematic as endeavors are account wide.
The tasks are easy to do for everybody and the gained perks will aid everybody no matter if he has knowledge about how the game works or not. Nobody will need to spend two years studying builds or running after any Meta changes over them.
It is power creep, yea, but in my opinion it’s of a positive sort. It's easy, it’s free, and it's through active play. Simple, linear progression, just like leveling.
New players will catch on in time. The only downside is to seasonal players, but hey that’s their loss not the one of those enthusiastic enough to bring those 10 minutes a day for a game.
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I am not sure they are too powerful. I mean, sure, they are power creep, but everything new system Cryptic will add will add to that. It's what ruined PVP, unfortunately.
However, one thing to consider is that sometimes, bonuses like that mean less to high end builds than they mean to low-end builds, depending on the specific stacking rules.
If you already got +100 Crit Severity, another +30 is not as powerful as a boost if you only have the base +50 Crit Severity, for example. The latter player would notice more of a difference than the former.
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If you get "Kill 60 Herald ships", true, it doesn't care where you do it. But if the easiest place to do that is Gateway to Grethor, or some other team TFO, then yes, you're in competition with other players to get your kills in. This also isn't only about completing endeavours. It's about all game play. If Borg Red Alert weekend is on, and you want to participate, then you are in competition with other players to get to the spawns and deal sufficient damage to earn the ship XP that is part of the event. If you get "Deal 500,000 Polaron Damage in space", and you're also trying to earn some decent rewards doing Random TFOs, you are absolutely in competition with other players to get to the ships and deal some damage before they are already dead. You can say "Well hey you don't need to do rTFOs". But play time is limited, people need their rewards for many game purposes, and after all, the game shouldn't become "go find a solo scenario you can complete on your own".
If you get an endeavor to kill 60 Herald ships per your example, then as I said prior, the endeavor will not care where you kill those 60 ships so long as you do it. This means you could run a Story Arc mission, a Foundry mission, or join a TFO such as the Gateway to Grethor one that you mentioned prior. This means there is more than one way to get to your hypothetical 60 Herald ship kills, which you yourself have also acknowledged. You claim that Gateway to Grethor would be easiest in your example. At the same time you raise the complaint that Gateway to Grethor forces you to compete for ship kills since they can be blown up before you can get credit for the kills as well. You've raised similar arguments that the Red Alert weekend forces you to compete for ship XP and that the "deal 500k Polaron Damage in space" would also forces you to compete with other players to get your 500k damage. If people jacking your kills, damage, xp etc is a concern, then the simplest solution is to eliminate the competition from the picture by doing a Story Arc mission, or a Foundry mission. By doing a Story Arc mission or Foundry mission, you can guarantee you are the only one in there, thus you have all the time you need to get your kills, xp and damage dealt. If you don't get it on the first go you can repeat them near instantly since they don't have the 30 minute lockout that TFOs have. Thus I would have to ask the question, if you can guarantee that you have no competition, why would you go into a TFO and compete to start with? That's simply making it harder on yourself than it needs to be. As I'm fond of saying, grind smarter not harder.
In terms of ship XP, spam a few patrol missions on the highest difficulty you can survive in. Most folks hit up Japori, Beta Thoridar, or Argala. Again grind smarter not harder.
If for whatever reason you still want to go the TFO route, then take a team of like minded players in there with you or friends you can coordinate with. Also if you have time to do a time gated queue like Gateway to Grethor, you also have time to do some of the shorter story missions. If you are otherwise unwilling to do a story mission or foundry mission, then you're just going to have to tough it out and deal with "competing" against the other players in the TFO. You have ALOT more options than you think you do. Whether you choose to use them or not is up to you.
Do you have a source for this? I've seen various guesstimates of the AFK penalty limit, but never anything resembling a numeric test or a dev source. People just seem to be quoting other people on this. Keeping in mind that if there are 2 150K+ DPS players in your queue, you need to do 3K DPS just to reach the 1%.
The percentage has been stated on dev streams by some of the systems bunch before. Myself and my crew of test monkeys have also been able to verify the 1-2% mark via testing since we're also Bug Hunters. To give you an idea of how much testing that I've done in this game, I put at least 200 hours with the crew into testing the new skill trees when they were first released to determine optimal point allocations for ourselves and hunting down the bugs with that system. I say that not to be arrogant, but to give you an idea of the testing some of us do in this game.
In terms of dealing damage, by the time you reach level 30 you can deal 3k damage with a set of mk vi whites an attack pattern boff power, and a fire at will boff power, and especially if you're a tactical captain. If you can't do it at level 30, then you can most certainly do it at level 40 in the free sovereign with mk x whites from the vendors. In fact I've parsed 20k on an old t5u excelsior using mk x white weapons, and the rest being mission reward gear. If the weapons were better I could've taken it much much higher. When I scored my highest tank parse of 120k, another friend was in the run that scored 202k dps. This means between the 2 of us we were pulling a combined total of 322k dps, well above the hypothetical 300k in your example. Yet even though we were pulling that amount of damage, not a single one of the other 3 people were given an AFK penalty. The lowest person in there was dealing 9.6k DPS, so just shy of 10k. I kept a copy of that parse cause reasons.
With a basic cohesive build, and basic understanding of your ship and environment, you should be able to pull 3k DPS in your sleep. If someone is having trouble breaking 3k DPS that tells me they do not in fact have a cohesive build and are not in fact ready for advanced content, and especially not ready for elite level anything. There are several queues that have damage checks at certain points, with Korfez being the most notorious one. If the team can't put out enough damage then the queue automatically fails at the first objective. If someone is having issues breaking that 3k then myself and others can recommend builds and setups for them and help them to learn. However I can't help someone if they're not willing to learn and listen. I really don't understand what's so unreasonable about expecting folks to contribute to downing the foes in the run by popping off only 1-2% damage. If someone is getting an AFK penalty on a regular basis that is absolutely NOT normal at all.
When I say "some forethought should be put into addressing issues", some sort of gear check or player grouping system is one of the options. When an endeavour goal is "Complete TFO X" or "Complete N TFOs of type Y", the player has no choice but to be in the queue. I haven't currently tested this but quite a few people have told me that Normal difficulty queues don't work for those, so if a player gets them, then he does Advanced whether he is ready for it or not.
Unless an endeavor specifically calls for completing the queue on Advanced or Elite difficulty, then Normal mode is supposed to give credit towards "Complete TFO X" type of endeavors. If it's not giving credit and there is no difficulty specified, then that's a bug, which WILL get fixed once someone reports it. If there are Normal mode TFOs that are not counting, then get me a list of those TFOs that aren't counting as well as a screenshot of what the endeavor text says, and I will pass it up the chain and make sure someone sees it so the issue can be fixed.
Now with that said, if someone has an endeavor that says "Complete TFO X", if they can't meet that minimum requirement and get an AFK penalty as a result, they won't get any rewards for the queue anyways. If that happens they're locked out of the queue system for 2 hours and have to do the queue again. So it's in their best interest to be able to meet the minimum requirements of the queue itself. Every other MMO out there has minimum requirements for some of their higher tier content and STO is no different. So if the choice is between missing a single day of the endeavor, or shooting myself in the foot and eating a 2 hour lockout, I would much rather just miss that day and improve my build and skills so that doesn't need to happen again. Endeavor xp isn't free and must be earned.
B.Sc.(H) Computer Science. Spent over 8 years designing, coding, publishing multi-player online games - and making a living at it. Played everything from Colossal Cave Adventure to Pong to Islands of Kesmai to UO to EQ to EvE to WoW... on first release. You could say I'm not completely new to this.
Your reply makes exactly my point, about Cryptic putting things in that are too powerful, without realizing what the stacking effects may be, and not understanding how players will take maximum use of synergizing features to push performance through the roof. Then the game is either trivialized, or they have to make sweeping 'balance' changes, or they have to bump up NPC difficulty. Those can be dealt with when its a case of getting better gear etc. But when it becomes a case of a time-gated, RNG-driven process, then you simply cannot look up some good build advice, grind some gear and EC and dil, outfit your ship better and learn better piloting. The only way to remain on par (for latecomers) is to spend years grinding out perks to catch up.
If you spent time helping to design those games as you say, then I'll guarantee you had to do a little trial and error experimentation at some point. If an item or ability was too weak, you buffed it up, if it was too strong you nerfed it down before pushing it out there.
With that said there are only a few hundred employees that work for these various game companies building these games that test them, code them etc. I don't know how many folks are actually in the systems department at Cryptic designing stuff and so on, but let's assume for the sake of argument there is 40 of them. That's potentially 40 different types of playstyle there and ways of thinking. Now compare that to the 7.3 million players or the 40k active fleets per their most recent info-graphic. It's a guarantee that from time to time the 7.3 million will think of something or find some combination that the 40 systems employees simply didn't. They're not omniscient and can't possibly anticipate every single interaction or build that players will throw together. You try to minimize it as much as possible but from time to time something will slip through the cracks, that's just part of gaming in general. To expect them to get everything perfect all the time is a completely unrealistic expectation.
As time goes on, certain new combinations of items, traits, and abilities may cause something to go well beyond its original intended limits and must be nerfed as a result. All MMOs do it and STO is no different to WoW or the others out there. The plasmonic leech and the plasma exploders were prime examples of this. They were perfectly fine for a time until some players discovered some broken combinations with them down the road.
Since you say you have experience dealing with WoW, then you may be familiar with the example their lead designer gave at the time as to why they initially didn't want to allow flying in Warlords of Draenor and forward. The example he gave involved a particular hypothetical quest in which a player had to run into an enemy camp and free a prisoner from a cage. In the pre-flight era, players would roll into the camp and have to fight their way through about 25 guys before clicking the quest and the guy going free. In the era of flying mounts, the players could land on the roof of the building, click the cage and the guy goes free without every fighting any of the 25 mobs. His gripe was that flying was overpowered and it allowed players to bypass content since they no longer had to fight the 25 mobs. The simplest solution would have been to update that quest so it now requires a key from one of the 25 mobs to open the cage. Likewise in the case with the plasma exploders and plasmonic leech, the simplest solution was to cap their performance since they were over-performing. As time goes on people will naturally become more and more powerful requiring more and more powerful threats to fight. From time to time as well in real life we may update our houses when something no longer works as well as before, likewise from time to time a game needs to be updated as well. It's the natural order of things in games.
Even in the time gated missions, you still need to be able to put forth a minimum amount of damage and ability to avoid getting hit by the AFK penalty, and to survive long enough to get through that time gate. So again its in your best interest to learn and get stronger.
As for ship advice, who says that you can't ask others for build advice or find good build advice? There are easy ways to get EC and dilithium to upgrade a ship, as well as easy ways to farm out a budget build to get you started. The new perks will help the newcomers up their game as well as the veteran players alike. The new people coming in will have the same opportunities that veteran players like myself and others have. It will take them some time to build up yes, but eventually they will get there, which is the entire point. I don't know about you, but unless I just want to horse around, I don't find it fun starting out at the top of the gear ladder. If you or someone needs help grinding stuff out or knowing how to do it, then we can't help them if they don't tell us they need it. We're not mind readers, even though we may wish we were at times
To be clear, I have no problem doing content, TFOs, Endeavours, what have you. What I have, is over 10 captains who all started new, were given 2 million EC to start (when they could reach a bank), and used nothing but what they could unlock themselves until they were level 60. I've also personally started 3 new people in the game and watched over their shoulder(ish) as they learned the game. These players do run events, they do Red Alerts, they do TFOs and they do get AFK penalties, cursed out for being noobs, or just generally feel completely ineffective at times because they are put into content with people who are literally 100 times more powerful (and experienced) than them.
Previously, I could at least say "Here's some missions to get some gear, here's how this STF works, here's some piloting tips". But a year from now all I will be able to say is "Well, if you grind out a perk every two days for the next year, you'll be starting to catch up."
I can understand being annoyed if someone queues for something and can't pull their own weight, but cursing someone out simply because they're new is WAY over the line. If someone is getting AFK penalties as often as you're making it sound then that's absolutely NOT and I repeat NOT normal at all. Getting an AFK penalty once in a blue is one thing, but getting them practically every other run as you're making it sound is not normal at all.
If someone is getting AFKed that often than that tells me one of several things is happening, usually a combination of things. One: they're trying to do content they're not yet ready for, Two: there is something wrong with the build, Three: they've not yet mastered their build or pilot error is occurring, Four: someone doing a gazillion damage was in the run, Five: they don't understand the queue and aren't completing objectives as they should be. Usually it's a combo of those 5 things.
People are still going to need a set of basic gear to get started so they can farm out those endeavor perks, so you've not lost the ability to recommend budget builds for people. In addition to giving them a budget build, some piloting tips, and tips to complete the TFOs, now you can give them tips about farming the Endeavors as well. It will be a gradual build up, but they will eventually notice it once they start collecting a bunch of points. The need for having a basic cohesive build will always be there, only now it will have something else that can eventually supplement it as well.
Picture a newer player, seeing a Borg Red Alert weekend coming up, thinking "Ah this is cool, this is what Star Trek is all about, me defending the quadrant against the Borg onslaught". He enters his Red Alert (because nothing in the game tells him he shouldn't), looks around for his first Borg spawn, hits Full Impulse... and the 4 guys he's in with are 30% faster than him, know exactly where to go, and have weapons that will decimate the Borg before he even finishes clicking off his Full Impulse.
So he looks for his next Borg spawn, waits for Full Impulse to be ready again, rockets off... and that one is dead before he is even 1/2 way there. Repeat until Unimatrix, then repeat again. This already happens. It will only get worse with perks.
Stack +Speed with +Damage, add +Crits/CritSev and +Resists, toss in the advantage veterans always have (experience, knowledge, practice, better builds etc), and you massively magnify take a problem that already exists. This isn't about being on par with veterans... it's about being able to participate at all.
As said, I like the endeavor system - for me. But I suspect that if I start my next of-age nephew off on STO in about 6 months... it's going to cause problems for him.
In this scenario this tells me that the new person is not yet ready for that Red Alert content. Again there is nothing wrong with that, it simply means they need to learn a bit more of the game and get a little more built up before going back in. Just like my WoW tanking example. When I first started out I didn't have the gear the vets did, and I wasn't able to pull as much or handle as much as they could. Over time however i learned and got better along with improving my gear. Eventually I was able to get into some of the harder mode content.
You say you don't expect newer players to be able to perform on par with veteran players, yet I'm having an extremely hard time believing that as some of your statements suggest otherwise. There will always be a power gap and a skill gap between new and veteran players. The vets have played longer and will naturally have an edge over the new guys. With proper time those new guys will eventually be those veteran players they saw running around when they got started. If you know someone wants to go into something like the Red Alert but they're new, then go in there with them the first couple of times until they can do it solo. I've done it with several of my fleetmates and friends. Now most of them are able to keep up with me and even exceed my own abilities in certain areas.
There are ways around every issue you've brought up and tools that can be utilized to help the newer players close that power gap and learn what they need to learn. I would really love to help but I'm have a hard time understanding what the problem is here since the new players have the same opportunities as the veteran players did.
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I get such a laugh out of all these threads in every game forum everywhere. I like the endeavors, I play for fun, not a second job nor to impress or keep up with xxlmleetroflstompggscrubgetonmylevel so called self proclaimed "elite" players in the game.
When some of these so called "elite" players and mega dps drag queens that bash newer players learning the ropes can actually show endorsements from a MLG sanctioned event, paycheck from such or be on a nationally ranked pro MLG team, they are just like the rest of us, gamers.
They have no right to call anyone bad and should get on the regular level.
In this scenario this tells me that the new person is not yet ready for that Red Alert content.
I know the tendency is to skip through to Advanced Queues and Red Alerts (because of the push to get Rep Marks)....but....
A level down from "Red Alerts" is "Deep Space Encounters". They may want to try those instead.
It is a kind of practice with Pugs.....and sometimes you will pull solo instances.
there will be another re-balance in the future... by then, developers will take into account personal endeavor buffs and mk 15 epic gear... ie more inflated npc hp. as for pvp... lol was it ever balanced?
There is nothing wrong with power creep. The personal endeavors are a reason to play which STO was previously sorely lacking.
But yeah, the game does also need content where that power is necessary.
Go to the foundry, search for "SRS MRP Mercury Rising", run it with a team of 5 on elite, then you'll be wishing you had a lot more power than you have now!
And what reason do I have to play that?
The PE's have recently encouraged me to venture into the foundry a bit for some "Kill X <insert enemy here>" tasks, but that's pretty much it.
The real end game challenge is always going to be the foundry, if Cryptic put missions as difficult as Mercury Rising in their standard list of episodes there would be an outcry as most players would be wiped out in seconds, the folks who come on here complaining that this or that queue is too OP on normal difficulty, let alone something designed to test a team of Vets on elite.
No doubt. And the proper response to that would be to tell them to play content appropriate for their level of skill and resources instead. The culture of complaining about everything being too hard exists here because Cryptic panders to it.
All the TFOs are already child's play with the exception of Korfez which requires specific builds to beat and perhaps Into the Hive, there are no difficult queues anymore. What I would love to see would be a return of the elite Borg STFs, you know a Wolf 359 scenario which takes 20 ships to take down one very tough Borg cube, until then the foundry is your way of really testing your build.
Me too. But only if it gave me a reason to actually play it, which neither Korfez, Hive nor the foundry do.
There is nothing wrong with power creep. The personal endeavors are a reason to play which STO was previously sorely lacking.
But yeah, the game does also need content where that power is necessary.
Go to the foundry, search for "SRS MRP Mercury Rising", run it with a team of 5 on elite, then you'll be wishing you had a lot more power than you have now!
And what reason do I have to play that?
The PE's have recently encouraged me to venture into the foundry a bit for some "Kill X <insert enemy here>" tasks, but that's pretty much it.
The real end game challenge is always going to be the foundry, if Cryptic put missions as difficult as Mercury Rising in their standard list of episodes there would be an outcry as most players would be wiped out in seconds, the folks who come on here complaining that this or that queue is too OP on normal difficulty, let alone something designed to test a team of Vets on elite.
No doubt. And the proper response to that would be to tell them to play content appropriate for their level of skill and resources instead. The culture of complaining about everything being too hard exists here because Cryptic panders to it.
All the TFOs are already child's play with the exception of Korfez which requires specific builds to beat and perhaps Into the Hive, there are no difficult queues anymore. What I would love to see would be a return of the elite Borg STFs, you know a Wolf 359 scenario which takes 20 ships to take down one very tough Borg cube, until then the foundry is your way of really testing your build.
Me too. But only if it gave me a reason to actually play it, which neither Korfez, Hive nor the foundry do.
Reasons to play: personal challenge, does everything have to give a physical reward nowadays?
Yes.
That's why the new endos are such great reason to play. Cryptic finally put in a unique reward with the perks.
I don't think Endeavors kick in till lvl 50 or 60.
I could be wrong though.
Your possibly very correct, it's likely similar to specialization points, I haven't levelled a toons since Mirror of Discovery. Possibly similar to perhaps yourself or others.
I was just generalizing between a few earlier comments, made by a limited few claiming issues with, endeavor's &/or people queueing TFO's.
Still it's good general advice, if one just surpassed Lt.Commander, or a first time Captain, on their way to the Admiralty.
There is nothing wrong with power creep. The personal endeavors are a reason to play which STO was previously sorely lacking.
But yeah, the game does also need content where that power is necessary.
Go to the foundry, search for "SRS MRP Mercury Rising", run it with a team of 5 on elite, then you'll be wishing you had a lot more power than you have now!
And what reason do I have to play that?
The PE's have recently encouraged me to venture into the foundry a bit for some "Kill X <insert enemy here>" tasks, but that's pretty much it.
The real end game challenge is always going to be the foundry, if Cryptic put missions as difficult as Mercury Rising in their standard list of episodes there would be an outcry as most players would be wiped out in seconds, the folks who come on here complaining that this or that queue is too OP on normal difficulty, let alone something designed to test a team of Vets on elite.
No doubt. And the proper response to that would be to tell them to play content appropriate for their level of skill and resources instead. The culture of complaining about everything being too hard exists here because Cryptic panders to it.
All the TFOs are already child's play with the exception of Korfez which requires specific builds to beat and perhaps Into the Hive, there are no difficult queues anymore. What I would love to see would be a return of the elite Borg STFs, you know a Wolf 359 scenario which takes 20 ships to take down one very tough Borg cube, until then the foundry is your way of really testing your build.
Me too. But only if it gave me a reason to actually play it, which neither Korfez, Hive nor the foundry do.
Reasons to play: personal challenge, does everything have to give a physical reward nowadays?
Yes.
That's why the new endos are such great reason to play. Cryptic finally put in a unique reward with the perks.
So you play to get rewards that help you do more events that get rewards to help you get more play more events that get rewards and so on.
Most of anything in STO doesn't help me do anything. Nor do I need any help to complete any relevant content in STO. I mostly play STO to collect stuff.
In my opinion this is a very shallow way of approaching anything, the real reward is not something tangible but the sense of achievement you feel when you have beaten your own best effort.
It is entirely too common for different player archetypes to not understand each other. Sad.
As said, I like the endeavor system - for me. But I suspect that if I start my next of-age nephew off on STO in about 6 months... it's going to cause problems for him.
The buffs are account wide... so unless your starting a new toon on a new account... your in good hands!
When I get an endeavor that states to do X-energy damage on ground then I generally take my away team to Nimbus, do the three Yamlun missions and then hunt scorpions if that didn't get it.
If the endeavor also has a mission to kill X number of a specific enemy, then I'll do a story mission with that enemy in it.
Such as I had a mission to do Polaron damage and to kill X number of Hurq Attendants, so I did Melting Pot.
Another two I had was to kill X Tzenkethi ships and X Tzenkethi ground, so I did Scylla and Charbidys.
Now a LTS and loving it.
Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything.
Not that I want to stand in the way of anyone's path to ultimate power... but STO is a game where power creep is already a common issue, and people fly around in ships that decimate Borg cubes in seconds and wipe out entire TFOs in a couple minutes.
Looking at the perks available, it seems we will take those OP ships and add 7.5% more crit chance, 30% more crit severity, 30% more base damage to every damage type, and quite a bit of extra hull, shields, maneuverability and resists.
I'm particularly thinking of what happens when you take these all together: +30% more base damage, critting +7.5% more often, for an extra +30% crit severity, etc, etc.
Yes, it will take ages to amass all those perks, but even just getting 1/3 to 1/2 of them will represent a significant power increase. I'm concerned about the effect this will have on overall balance between NPCs, maxed out players, and newer players. It is already difficult in many cases for a newer player who doesn't gear up massively to have much of an impact in a TFO or Red Alert.
Players with maxed out gear/traits/perks will either expect to see something new with more challenge, or will trivialize older content. Newer players will struggle with endeavours, random TFOs etc. that toss them into competition with power players for kills, damage etc.
Obviously this isn't something 'broken' as yet... but Cryptic does have this tendency to introduce broken mechanics into the game, then have to make sweeping changes/nerfs later to bring things back in line again. It would be nice if maybe some forethought was put into it this time around to keep that from happening.
There is ALWAYS ONE... What can I say OP seems like you do want anyone to out gun you I guess. So sorry that the new endeavor system threatens your sense of superiority.
I LOVE the new system, even if it's for the sole purpose of signing on every day and feeling at the end of it like I actually accomplished something in the game.
It's also really fun to have an endeavor for something that people don't do every day, and see that thing be popular and actually BUSY for a day or two. Like the Dyson ground BZ have over 14 instances.
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I hear ya. I sign in to have my fun, ain't gonna deal with ruffians with bad attitudes for a game.
They are bailing out on their team....Some mentally, some physically. I do not want to play with players like that, either.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I just remind myself, it is an attitude. That is all it is.
Yet, it is sad to see that attitude is breaking everything to pieces in this game, and driving players into isolation from each other. One side thinking they don't matter and the other side into thinking they must do everything all alone.
Support each other, until everyone catch on to it. Just like darkbladejk's story.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
That said "support each other" goes both ways and shouldn't be seen as an excuse to not try to improve.
The main reason you find new players in queues is because TFO's are included in the mission arcs and it's not immediately obvious to new players that they can be skipped.
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Very true, and this change was just plain stupid. TFO's in the mission arcs is now and always has been a horrible idea.
If you get "Kill 60 Herald ships", true, it doesn't care where you do it. But if the easiest place to do that is Gateway to Grethor, or some other team TFO, then yes, you're in competition with other players to get your kills in. This also isn't only about completing endeavours. It's about all game play. If Borg Red Alert weekend is on, and you want to participate, then you are in competition with other players to get to the spawns and deal sufficient damage to earn the ship XP that is part of the event. If you get "Deal 500,000 Polaron Damage in space", and you're also trying to earn some decent rewards doing Random TFOs, you are absolutely in competition with other players to get to the ships and deal some damage before they are already dead. You can say "Well hey you don't need to do rTFOs". But play time is limited, people need their rewards for many game purposes, and after all, the game shouldn't become "go find a solo scenario you can complete on your own".
Do you have a source for this? I've seen various guesstimates of the AFK penalty limit, but never anything resembling a numeric test or a dev source. People just seem to be quoting other people on this. Keeping in mind that if there are 2 150K+ DPS players in your queue, you need to do 3K DPS just to reach the 1%.
When I say "some forethought should be put into addressing issues", some sort of gear check or player grouping system is one of the options. When an endeavour goal is "Complete TFO X" or "Complete N TFOs of type Y", the player has no choice but to be in the queue. I haven't currently tested this but quite a few people have told me that Normal difficulty queues don't work for those, so if a player gets them, then he does Advanced whether he is ready for it or not.
B.Sc.(H) Computer Science. Spent over 8 years designing, coding, publishing multi-player online games - and making a living at it. Played everything from Colossal Cave Adventure to Pong to Islands of Kesmai to UO to EQ to EvE to WoW... on first release. You could say I'm not completely new to this.
Your reply makes exactly my point, about Cryptic putting things in that are too powerful, without realizing what the stacking effects may be, and not understanding how players will take maximum use of synergizing features to push performance through the roof. Then the game is either trivialized, or they have to make sweeping 'balance' changes, or they have to bump up NPC difficulty. Those can be dealt with when its a case of getting better gear etc. But when it becomes a case of a time-gated, RNG-driven process, then you simply cannot look up some good build advice, grind some gear and EC and dil, outfit your ship better and learn better piloting. The only way to remain on par (for latecomers) is to spend years grinding out perks to catch up.
To be clear, I have no problem doing content, TFOs, Endeavours, what have you. What I have, is over 10 captains who all started new, were given 2 million EC to start (when they could reach a bank), and used nothing but what they could unlock themselves until they were level 60. I've also personally started 3 new people in the game and watched over their shoulder(ish) as they learned the game. These players do run events, they do Red Alerts, they do TFOs and they do get AFK penalties, cursed out for being noobs, or just generally feel completely ineffective at times because they are put into content with people who are literally 100 times more powerful (and experienced) than them.
Previously, I could at least say "Here's some missions to get some gear, here's how this STF works, here's some piloting tips". But a year from now all I will be able to say is "Well, if you grind out a perk every two days for the next year, you'll be starting to catch up."
Picture a newer player, seeing a Borg Red Alert weekend coming up, thinking "Ah this is cool, this is what Star Trek is all about, me defending the quadrant against the Borg onslaught". He enters his Red Alert (because nothing in the game tells him he shouldn't), looks around for his first Borg spawn, hits Full Impulse... and the 4 guys he's in with are 30% faster than him, know exactly where to go, and have weapons that will decimate the Borg before he even finishes clicking off his Full Impulse.
So he looks for his next Borg spawn, waits for Full Impulse to be ready again, rockets off... and that one is dead before he is even 1/2 way there. Repeat until Unimatrix, then repeat again. This already happens. It will only get worse with perks.
Stack +Speed with +Damage, add +Crits/CritSev and +Resists, toss in the advantage veterans always have (experience, knowledge, practice, better builds etc), and you massively magnify take a problem that already exists. This isn't about being on par with veterans... it's about being able to participate at all.
As said, I like the endeavor system - for me. But I suspect that if I start my next of-age nephew off on STO in about 6 months... it's going to cause problems for him.
I think you 'slightly' misunderstand how it works, as my colleague @darkbladejk tried to 'politely' suggest, in the second lower quote below yours.
As long as you often do about 10-25% of the damage, while in a team it should 'count' as a defeated enemy. If you're not able to do a least 10% of the damage in a TFO, then stick to completing 2-5 missions in an episode ARC, as they will scale and grow with you! There are many ways to achieve the objectives with a bit of creativity. There's nothing wrong with doing TFO's once your Level 25+ and as long as your in the fight with mostly (Rare) or better gear, and you should not regularly be getting an AFK penalty either, unless your unfortunately paired with a DPLSLEAGUE elite, but those times are more rare. Also TFO's can also be a great way to earn XP, especially as you level when defeating enemy several levels above your current rank. Denote the part you still got to do 10-25% of the damage, for it to count as a defeat or to earn the XP for your character for Ship Mastery.
Still your first goal should be to earn a higher rank, and upgrade gear from Mark IV (Lt.Commander) to at least Mk XII, and focus on becoming a Captain &/or Admiral first.
Most missions and REPS as you level them also give Rare or Very Rare Gear often to choose. Missions especially first runs are great for DIL as well. REPUTATION boxes can also give Very Rare Mk XII gear, and missing pieces can be purchased with DIL from the REP STORE. Most things Cryptic does are in fact very 'fair' to all sorts of players, and allow players a wide bit of latitude in how or what they focus on at each stage of their development.
If one character is lower level rank, do Endeavor's on your 'Highest' Character, or stick to missions that scale with you.
Endeavor's is designed to be a slow progression mostly for end-game players, so if your lower level and can't do 1 or 2 the odd day. It should not be a big deal, there are going to be days that applies to everyone, just perhaps for different reasons.
If you require extra Energy Credit or DIL try "Tour the Galaxy" in the AVAILBLE tab of HAIL. Or if you need a bit of extra DIL progress your missions &/or Turn in Contraband at Security Officer's.
Still I wish you all the best, we've all started from the beginning, and were all learning &/or evolving.
I could be wrong though.
My character Tsin'xing
While I agree that the perks lead to a considerable boost in sum it should be noted that we don’t look at any sort of magnitudes we do not get thrown in our faces all the time anyway by cryptic.
Ship traits, specializations, reputations, access to high rank fleet-gear.
Granted, it is a 2 year time gate but given the timeframe it takes to come up with 1,5B EC for a high end ship, the grinding of socialization XP on multiple alts or the pulling of countless rep sliders it isn’t that problematic as endeavors are account wide.
The tasks are easy to do for everybody and the gained perks will aid everybody no matter if he has knowledge about how the game works or not. Nobody will need to spend two years studying builds or running after any Meta changes over them.
It is power creep, yea, but in my opinion it’s of a positive sort. It's easy, it’s free, and it's through active play. Simple, linear progression, just like leveling.
New players will catch on in time. The only downside is to seasonal players, but hey that’s their loss not the one of those enthusiastic enough to bring those 10 minutes a day for a game.
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However, one thing to consider is that sometimes, bonuses like that mean less to high end builds than they mean to low-end builds, depending on the specific stacking rules.
If you already got +100 Crit Severity, another +30 is not as powerful as a boost if you only have the base +50 Crit Severity, for example. The latter player would notice more of a difference than the former.
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If you get an endeavor to kill 60 Herald ships per your example, then as I said prior, the endeavor will not care where you kill those 60 ships so long as you do it. This means you could run a Story Arc mission, a Foundry mission, or join a TFO such as the Gateway to Grethor one that you mentioned prior. This means there is more than one way to get to your hypothetical 60 Herald ship kills, which you yourself have also acknowledged. You claim that Gateway to Grethor would be easiest in your example. At the same time you raise the complaint that Gateway to Grethor forces you to compete for ship kills since they can be blown up before you can get credit for the kills as well. You've raised similar arguments that the Red Alert weekend forces you to compete for ship XP and that the "deal 500k Polaron Damage in space" would also forces you to compete with other players to get your 500k damage. If people jacking your kills, damage, xp etc is a concern, then the simplest solution is to eliminate the competition from the picture by doing a Story Arc mission, or a Foundry mission. By doing a Story Arc mission or Foundry mission, you can guarantee you are the only one in there, thus you have all the time you need to get your kills, xp and damage dealt. If you don't get it on the first go you can repeat them near instantly since they don't have the 30 minute lockout that TFOs have. Thus I would have to ask the question, if you can guarantee that you have no competition, why would you go into a TFO and compete to start with? That's simply making it harder on yourself than it needs to be. As I'm fond of saying, grind smarter not harder.
In terms of ship XP, spam a few patrol missions on the highest difficulty you can survive in. Most folks hit up Japori, Beta Thoridar, or Argala. Again grind smarter not harder.
If for whatever reason you still want to go the TFO route, then take a team of like minded players in there with you or friends you can coordinate with. Also if you have time to do a time gated queue like Gateway to Grethor, you also have time to do some of the shorter story missions. If you are otherwise unwilling to do a story mission or foundry mission, then you're just going to have to tough it out and deal with "competing" against the other players in the TFO. You have ALOT more options than you think you do. Whether you choose to use them or not is up to you.
The percentage has been stated on dev streams by some of the systems bunch before. Myself and my crew of test monkeys have also been able to verify the 1-2% mark via testing since we're also Bug Hunters. To give you an idea of how much testing that I've done in this game, I put at least 200 hours with the crew into testing the new skill trees when they were first released to determine optimal point allocations for ourselves and hunting down the bugs with that system. I say that not to be arrogant, but to give you an idea of the testing some of us do in this game.
In terms of dealing damage, by the time you reach level 30 you can deal 3k damage with a set of mk vi whites an attack pattern boff power, and a fire at will boff power, and especially if you're a tactical captain. If you can't do it at level 30, then you can most certainly do it at level 40 in the free sovereign with mk x whites from the vendors. In fact I've parsed 20k on an old t5u excelsior using mk x white weapons, and the rest being mission reward gear. If the weapons were better I could've taken it much much higher. When I scored my highest tank parse of 120k, another friend was in the run that scored 202k dps. This means between the 2 of us we were pulling a combined total of 322k dps, well above the hypothetical 300k in your example. Yet even though we were pulling that amount of damage, not a single one of the other 3 people were given an AFK penalty. The lowest person in there was dealing 9.6k DPS, so just shy of 10k. I kept a copy of that parse cause reasons.
With a basic cohesive build, and basic understanding of your ship and environment, you should be able to pull 3k DPS in your sleep. If someone is having trouble breaking 3k DPS that tells me they do not in fact have a cohesive build and are not in fact ready for advanced content, and especially not ready for elite level anything. There are several queues that have damage checks at certain points, with Korfez being the most notorious one. If the team can't put out enough damage then the queue automatically fails at the first objective. If someone is having issues breaking that 3k then myself and others can recommend builds and setups for them and help them to learn. However I can't help someone if they're not willing to learn and listen. I really don't understand what's so unreasonable about expecting folks to contribute to downing the foes in the run by popping off only 1-2% damage. If someone is getting an AFK penalty on a regular basis that is absolutely NOT normal at all.
Unless an endeavor specifically calls for completing the queue on Advanced or Elite difficulty, then Normal mode is supposed to give credit towards "Complete TFO X" type of endeavors. If it's not giving credit and there is no difficulty specified, then that's a bug, which WILL get fixed once someone reports it. If there are Normal mode TFOs that are not counting, then get me a list of those TFOs that aren't counting as well as a screenshot of what the endeavor text says, and I will pass it up the chain and make sure someone sees it so the issue can be fixed.
Now with that said, if someone has an endeavor that says "Complete TFO X", if they can't meet that minimum requirement and get an AFK penalty as a result, they won't get any rewards for the queue anyways. If that happens they're locked out of the queue system for 2 hours and have to do the queue again. So it's in their best interest to be able to meet the minimum requirements of the queue itself. Every other MMO out there has minimum requirements for some of their higher tier content and STO is no different. So if the choice is between missing a single day of the endeavor, or shooting myself in the foot and eating a 2 hour lockout, I would much rather just miss that day and improve my build and skills so that doesn't need to happen again. Endeavor xp isn't free and must be earned.
If you spent time helping to design those games as you say, then I'll guarantee you had to do a little trial and error experimentation at some point. If an item or ability was too weak, you buffed it up, if it was too strong you nerfed it down before pushing it out there.
With that said there are only a few hundred employees that work for these various game companies building these games that test them, code them etc. I don't know how many folks are actually in the systems department at Cryptic designing stuff and so on, but let's assume for the sake of argument there is 40 of them. That's potentially 40 different types of playstyle there and ways of thinking. Now compare that to the 7.3 million players or the 40k active fleets per their most recent info-graphic. It's a guarantee that from time to time the 7.3 million will think of something or find some combination that the 40 systems employees simply didn't. They're not omniscient and can't possibly anticipate every single interaction or build that players will throw together. You try to minimize it as much as possible but from time to time something will slip through the cracks, that's just part of gaming in general. To expect them to get everything perfect all the time is a completely unrealistic expectation.
As time goes on, certain new combinations of items, traits, and abilities may cause something to go well beyond its original intended limits and must be nerfed as a result. All MMOs do it and STO is no different to WoW or the others out there. The plasmonic leech and the plasma exploders were prime examples of this. They were perfectly fine for a time until some players discovered some broken combinations with them down the road.
Since you say you have experience dealing with WoW, then you may be familiar with the example their lead designer gave at the time as to why they initially didn't want to allow flying in Warlords of Draenor and forward. The example he gave involved a particular hypothetical quest in which a player had to run into an enemy camp and free a prisoner from a cage. In the pre-flight era, players would roll into the camp and have to fight their way through about 25 guys before clicking the quest and the guy going free. In the era of flying mounts, the players could land on the roof of the building, click the cage and the guy goes free without every fighting any of the 25 mobs. His gripe was that flying was overpowered and it allowed players to bypass content since they no longer had to fight the 25 mobs. The simplest solution would have been to update that quest so it now requires a key from one of the 25 mobs to open the cage. Likewise in the case with the plasma exploders and plasmonic leech, the simplest solution was to cap their performance since they were over-performing. As time goes on people will naturally become more and more powerful requiring more and more powerful threats to fight. From time to time as well in real life we may update our houses when something no longer works as well as before, likewise from time to time a game needs to be updated as well. It's the natural order of things in games.
Even in the time gated missions, you still need to be able to put forth a minimum amount of damage and ability to avoid getting hit by the AFK penalty, and to survive long enough to get through that time gate. So again its in your best interest to learn and get stronger.
As for ship advice, who says that you can't ask others for build advice or find good build advice? There are easy ways to get EC and dilithium to upgrade a ship, as well as easy ways to farm out a budget build to get you started. The new perks will help the newcomers up their game as well as the veteran players alike. The new people coming in will have the same opportunities that veteran players like myself and others have. It will take them some time to build up yes, but eventually they will get there, which is the entire point. I don't know about you, but unless I just want to horse around, I don't find it fun starting out at the top of the gear ladder. If you or someone needs help grinding stuff out or knowing how to do it, then we can't help them if they don't tell us they need it. We're not mind readers, even though we may wish we were at times
I can understand being annoyed if someone queues for something and can't pull their own weight, but cursing someone out simply because they're new is WAY over the line. If someone is getting AFK penalties as often as you're making it sound then that's absolutely NOT and I repeat NOT normal at all. Getting an AFK penalty once in a blue is one thing, but getting them practically every other run as you're making it sound is not normal at all.
If someone is getting AFKed that often than that tells me one of several things is happening, usually a combination of things. One: they're trying to do content they're not yet ready for, Two: there is something wrong with the build, Three: they've not yet mastered their build or pilot error is occurring, Four: someone doing a gazillion damage was in the run, Five: they don't understand the queue and aren't completing objectives as they should be. Usually it's a combo of those 5 things.
People are still going to need a set of basic gear to get started so they can farm out those endeavor perks, so you've not lost the ability to recommend budget builds for people. In addition to giving them a budget build, some piloting tips, and tips to complete the TFOs, now you can give them tips about farming the Endeavors as well. It will be a gradual build up, but they will eventually notice it once they start collecting a bunch of points. The need for having a basic cohesive build will always be there, only now it will have something else that can eventually supplement it as well.
In this scenario this tells me that the new person is not yet ready for that Red Alert content. Again there is nothing wrong with that, it simply means they need to learn a bit more of the game and get a little more built up before going back in. Just like my WoW tanking example. When I first started out I didn't have the gear the vets did, and I wasn't able to pull as much or handle as much as they could. Over time however i learned and got better along with improving my gear. Eventually I was able to get into some of the harder mode content.
You say you don't expect newer players to be able to perform on par with veteran players, yet I'm having an extremely hard time believing that as some of your statements suggest otherwise. There will always be a power gap and a skill gap between new and veteran players. The vets have played longer and will naturally have an edge over the new guys. With proper time those new guys will eventually be those veteran players they saw running around when they got started. If you know someone wants to go into something like the Red Alert but they're new, then go in there with them the first couple of times until they can do it solo. I've done it with several of my fleetmates and friends. Now most of them are able to keep up with me and even exceed my own abilities in certain areas.
There are ways around every issue you've brought up and tools that can be utilized to help the newer players close that power gap and learn what they need to learn. I would really love to help but I'm have a hard time understanding what the problem is here since the new players have the same opportunities as the veteran players did.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
When some of these so called "elite" players and mega dps drag queens that bash newer players learning the ropes can actually show endorsements from a MLG sanctioned event, paycheck from such or be on a nationally ranked pro MLG team, they are just like the rest of us, gamers.
They have no right to call anyone bad and should get on the regular level.
I know the tendency is to skip through to Advanced Queues and Red Alerts (because of the push to get Rep Marks)....but....
A level down from "Red Alerts" is "Deep Space Encounters". They may want to try those instead.
It is a kind of practice with Pugs.....and sometimes you will pull solo instances.
Here is the page in the Wiki info in there: https://sto.gamepedia.com/Deep_Space_Encounter
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
The PE's have recently encouraged me to venture into the foundry a bit for some "Kill X <insert enemy here>" tasks, but that's pretty much it.
No doubt. And the proper response to that would be to tell them to play content appropriate for their level of skill and resources instead. The culture of complaining about everything being too hard exists here because Cryptic panders to it.
Me too. But only if it gave me a reason to actually play it, which neither Korfez, Hive nor the foundry do.
That's why the new endos are such great reason to play. Cryptic finally put in a unique reward with the perks.
Your possibly very correct, it's likely similar to specialization points, I haven't levelled a toons since Mirror of Discovery. Possibly similar to perhaps yourself or others.
I was just generalizing between a few earlier comments, made by a limited few claiming issues with, endeavor's &/or people queueing TFO's.
Still it's good general advice, if one just surpassed Lt.Commander, or a first time Captain, on their way to the Admiralty.
It is entirely too common for different player archetypes to not understand each other. Sad.
The buffs are account wide... so unless your starting a new toon on a new account... your in good hands!
If the endeavor also has a mission to kill X number of a specific enemy, then I'll do a story mission with that enemy in it.
Such as I had a mission to do Polaron damage and to kill X number of Hurq Attendants, so I did Melting Pot.
Another two I had was to kill X Tzenkethi ships and X Tzenkethi ground, so I did Scylla and Charbidys.
There is ALWAYS ONE... What can I say OP seems like you do want anyone to out gun you I guess. So sorry that the new endeavor system threatens your sense of superiority.
My character Tsin'xing