PvP Weekly Update - 06/01/2012
Hi folks,
Not much of an update for PvP this week, but as I said before, some weeks I wont have much to talk about. Im at a point in the process where Im about ready to release a couple of test maps to Tribble to test out many of the new PvP related engine updates. These will be mostly invisible to you guys, but having you test them gives me data I can look at to make sure that the improvements are working as expected.
There is all sorts of new and useful information that will be collected and stored by the engine for PvP. Some of this data is stuff we were collecting before (team score, player kills, etc.), however now its being collected in a more robust and completely different way. Its this new data that is important to the future of PvP. Among other things, it allows us to create leader-boards

and know the difference between a Killing Blow or sustained damage to an enemy player. It also ties in to how rewards will be changing for PvP.
Right now, rewards for PvP are based on completion. Completion is fine for PvE (well mostly fine depending on the type of PvE), but doesnt work very well for PvP. The new PvP system will instead reward based on participation. For instance, if you join a PvP match and dont do anything, you wont get much of a reward. The rewards will scale depending on how much you participate in the match. This doesnt just mean how many kills you get credit for, but will include things like healing to team-mates, capturing objectives, how many times you may die in a match, and a number of other things.
Rewarding based on participation is something I will probably use for other team based end game content like STFs for example. If you join a STF and dont participate in any meaningful way you shouldnt be rewarded. Once I get his working for PvP, I can take a look at using it for things like STFs as well.
The list here goes on and on, but for any of that to work, I need to make sure Im getting the correct data first. This is step one.
Have a good weekend,
Goz
Comments
Have we told you we love you lately Gozer?
This is some amazing news and I love it for PVP and STF when that happens.
EDIT:
Actually I just thought, the level of participation how will it be determind? Will be based on a set scale of expected participation or will be on a curving scale based off your team.
Also, are there any long term plans/potential updates beyond FPS style PvP?
Are the new maps potentionally adjustable to fit into a broader PvP picture if yes to previous question?
Are there maps for specific ship styles ala KDF NPC raids?
Thanks.
Edit: for typo
Unfortunately, that breaks down w/BoPs in general and a typical builds, eg Sci scort, Tac/Carrier or Cruiser. It also gives an advantage to +1 ships and even more so to lotto ships.
Edit: Also, what happens to a healer on a good team that wipes the other w/o the need for healing?
Nova
Guess the only fair way would be to judge each ship against the rest of the team.
but should they be rewarded for using the skills they are best at, or for performing well at something they're not ideal for? In other words, to we wish to force players into playing the ship exactly as it was designed for?
If each ship should be judged by how it performs, rather than how it does what the ship was originally built for, a cruiser:
- should get higher score than an escort for big spikes of damage, but not for sustained damage
- should get lower score for healing than an escort, but higher score than a sciship for crowd control
but if we want the cruisers to be used only for tanking and healing, the cruiser can be judged by it's healing exclusively. Much easier to make a formula for this score, but not encouraging varied builds...
going to be interresting to see how this turns out...
Doesn't matter what you've got in the BoP's commander station, they're classified as a universal station. And considering the only ship with a universal commander station is the BoP...
Take STFs for example. Some players who really NEED top end gear are probablty not going to get it in favour of those who already have it and are therefore likely to perform better.
I am simply asking that these factors are considered carefully before any changes are made.
A good area to consider for inclusion is debuffing. It doesn't do any damage itself, but allows the team to do a great deal more damage overall - this should be considered in the equation. SOome players set up specifically for this kind of thing.
Smilarly AoE can cause considerable damage but given healing and such like, it is not really so useful.
For PvP though, rewarding participation is a great idea. I have seen far to many dilithium leaches in PvP matches who do nothing.
Are you doing something like this?
-Forjo
The Paragon Studios team have rectified the situation now, but they were not quick enough to avoid indignant users and forum threadnoughts.
So I suggest that when Gozer asks everyone to test, do it! Test away! Give him mountains of data! Set up controlled experiments in participation and non-participation! Use strange, but viable, builds! Don't worry about win/loss and K/D ratios, just test test test!
This is the first intelligent thing I've read from a cryptic dev since Snix Left. (You have no idea how much praise that is coming from me)
However I have some concerns. One, you need to make sure you put Assist tracking in (so you have KBs, Team Kills, and Assists) one this will greatly help out the Crowd Control guys. (not that there are many left with the current state of CC), also, maybe you should make sure you have some kind of Debuff and Buffer tracking as well. For example, often times when I'm locked down in pvp, I'll throw an APD on myself, so that even though I'm not in my prime arc at that time I'm still debuffing my enemies while making the healer's job in theory easier. This will also help underscore the effects of Sci on the battlefield so that they too can be sure to get their just rewards.
I would still prefer to see a 0 gains for losing system put into place so that 1 it forces people across the board to play more matches if they want the rewards and 2, it encourages people to get better or stop playing just for the sake of dilith.
But this is the first actual step I've seen for improving pvp on the non Systems related front.
good news so far.. but gozer.. the more details you provide to us.. the more feedback we can give you now. You know as well as I do that getting right first in the conceptualization, planning, and coding cycle will save you a lot of money and grief (for us as well) down the road and make what you are doing economical.
So please.. the more details you provide, the more time we can save you.
Related to the PvP rewards.. please take into account ship class. A tac should not be penalized for not healing as much. You did not mention that and maybe you thought it was implied, but I thought I would say it nonetheless.
1 eng should not be able to withstand 5 tacs.. it should barely be able to survive 2.. remember "Yesterday's enterprise" with 3 bops fighting the enterprise D? Yeah, D didn't survive that-- and it was even more "beefed" up because of the long war with the klingons in that alternate timeline.
You can chain everything in this game. Some players desire a more complex system. But I think that system to a degree already exists in this game if it wasn't for a players ability to chain everything. Take the tactical captain for example. He can chain 2 of the same version of rapid fire, high yield torpedo, attack pattern "x".
Or how about chaining consoles like four Phaser relays. Or maybe two Neutronium alloys which both do +18 kinetic and energy resist, effectively allowing one escort to have +35 resist for both kinetic and energy damage. The same as a Monotanium Alloy console for kinetic damage resist or a Hull Plating console except that with two Neutroniums you get +35 for all energy types. Now if stacking two of one console gives you the stats of the other six whats the point of the other six? Or how about chaining two of the same emergency power so that its never off of cooldown. Whats the point in even naming them "Emergency" powers if you can chain two of them and use them whenever you want?
Now as far as skills go I'm of the opinion that being able to double chain everything takes away from slotting a skill as part of a build within which there is a purpose where one skill works together with other skills chosen by the player to compliment each other to a particular end. Such as stacking tac team with rapid fire, beam overload, and high yield torpedo to cripple a shield and do catastrophic damage to the hull in the blink of an eye. My point is that it is the synergy of skills in combination with the talent of the player against another player that makes PVP fun. Not the double chaining of the same skill for every skill in the game. That detracts from intelligent game play and instead encourages spamming the space bar.
Now I do realize some of you reading this will say that not every class has enough skills for a change like the one I am suggesting to be feasible. Namely the escort captain and the engineer. But if you take the time to check you'll see that there are more than enough powers for each class. The problem is that some of the skills are not practical at all as a result of the way they work currently. But if these skills were looked at and actually made effective there would be enough skills. And regardless of whether anything is changed about some of the skills we find useless in PVP like "auxiliary to battery", namely because it puts other emergency powers on cool down when it shouldn't; Gozer should still look to see which skills and/or weapons need IMMEDIATE attention and start there before tackling more complex problems like re-balancing PVP relative to the new doff system and ftp consoles from the c-store ships.
Finally healing. And this once again ties back into chaining. You can chain hazard emitters, transfer shield strength, hell two cruisers can even chain extend shields on the same target..... ANOTHER CRUISER!?
So currently in PVP even though some premades use polarize hull many simply chain two hazard emitters to buff their healing during combat and at the end of a match. Is it because polarize hull sucks? Nope! When everyone on your team is double chaining heals why should you worry about getting out of a tractor beam or gravity well? The only thing in Star Trek Online that I personally would agree with being chained are the team skills. Tac Team, Sci Team, and Engineering Team.
But to be honest... it would simply be better if you couldn't stack the teams and they were reduced from 30 seconds to 15 seconds for a single team. They are buffs and I believe that its okay. You cannot kill another player with a buff. But you can kill that player with the skills you buffed. The only reason players chain these skills is to cheat the global cool down. But who thought that in STO's game design it would actually be okay to give the player the freedom to cheat global cool downs? I'd love to know. Because I don't see how spamming the same skill relentlessly with no reason to use anything else since you can spam the one thing is intelligent as far as game design goes.
Not only that but if you ask many of the players who PVP day in and day out many will agree that there is TOO MUCH healing in the game as it currently stands. Tactical Team in its current form actually compounds this problem since it auto balances shields for the wearer and makes that target invulnerable to an escorts alpha strike, which it relies on from target to target. As far as healing itself is concerned I believe like in everything else the problem is in being able to chain WAY TOO MANY things in this game to make it more interesting coupled with the fact that some skills and weapons types simply suck or are not working as they would need to in order to be effective for a player to consider adding to his repertoire.
If you asked me what I would do to solve the healing problem I would tell you to make it so that two extend shields could not stack on the same target and cut out the chaining of the same heal on a single ship. i.e. (no 2 hazard emitters, extend shields, transfer shield strength, polarize, etc.)
The only reason players chain skills is to cheat the global cool down. If you can cheat a global cool down as opposed to maybe speccing into your skill tree to trait down by a few seconds the global cool down of one skill that shares a cool down with another skill ( such as tac team and engineering team) what the hell is the purpose of the global cool down system in STO? I guess what I'm saying is that players shouldn't be able to cheat the global cool down on anything except for team skills and that chaining the same skill detracts from intelligent game play because you don't have to think about slotting anything else since you can double stack multiple skills.
Also I'd just like to add that I don't have a problem with tac team auto balancing shields. In my opinion Tactical Team was added to ensure that an escort could stay facing on its target without being able to immediately be forced to turn away from the target as a result of a broadside. Its meant to allow an escort to stay facing the target just long enough to do significant or fatal damage. My issue is that 10 seconds is way too long. And there is a lot of talk about turning it into a separate skill But I still think that 10 seconds is too long especially when you consider that nothing was given to either Science Team or Engineering Team to make those skills just as awesome in SOME WAY which is evident in the fact that many non-tacitcal class players use it or "cant seem to live without it."
I don't claim to be an expert on game design or balance but this post is simply to share my opinion with the community and to open up feedback for Gozer to chew through whats really on my mind as well as all of yours.
-Captain Glitch-