Oh I know, nerf is such a bad word. I suppose the alternative would be to boost the hell out of unbuffed base stats. So give ships ten times the hull and shields that they have now. It's the same basic idea of diminishing the all importance of stacking poorly balanced skills.
Want to reduce the likelihood of being instapopped or running into invincible zombies? Don't like "one shot kills" and yo-yo hull healing? Bring all abilities in the game back down to a reasonable level. Work out smarter mechanics for stacking items and skills. This would make the game more accessible for new players and add extra tactical dimensions for more skilled players.
There is a reason Commander and Captain level PvP were so much fun and it's largely related to the less twitchy game play. Call me crazy but we don't need this game to continue down this path of inaccessibility. The skill gap between players themselves is vast enough. Continuing to pile on more and more vastly over powered abilities is only going to further hurt the player base.
The game is too spammy. Abilities are too strong. There is a tremendous difference between a buffed ship and an unbuffed ship. Abilities should add dimensions to combat, not break it.
__________________________________________
Foundry: Yet Another Borg Mission
It's terrible but easy, and these Borg are way cooler than the mess STO and Voyager left us.
May not actually be "way" cooler or even "slightly" cooler.
90% of survivability is out healing damage, 90% of useful damage dealing is CRF + other buffs, the base line is nothing. ive said the same thing in the past.
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Oh I know, nerf is such a bad word. I suppose the alternative would be to boost the hell out of unbuffed base stats. So give ships ten times the hull and shields that they have now. It's the same basic idea of diminishing the all importance of stacking poorly balanced skills.
Want to reduce the likelihood of being instapopped or running into invincible zombies? Don't like "one shot kills" and yo-yo hull healing? Bring all abilities in the game back down to a reasonable level. Work out smarter mechanics for stacking items and skills. This would make the game more accessible for new players and add extra tactical dimensions for more skilled players.
There is a reason Commander and Captain level PvP were so much fun and it's largely related to the less twitchy game play. Call me crazy but we don't need this game to continue down this path of inaccessibility. The skill gap between players themselves is vast enough. Continuing to pile on more and more vastly over powered abilities is only going to further hurt the player base.
The game is too spammy. Abilities are too strong. There is a tremendous difference between a buffed ship and an unbuffed ship. Abilities should add dimensions to combat, not break it.
Well yah. Unbuffed ships die quick violent deaths. And I'm just fine with that. Even baseline abilities that everyone has access to should be sufficient to stop such a thing from happening to oneself. And really right now I'm not sure that that is true. From a purely tactical attack it is fairly simple to make yourself well defended. Staggeringly simple. As has been pointed out to me repeatedly. What isn't so easy is to make yourself strong against the broken flavors of abilities and doff combos.
Buffed and unbuffed, HUGE difference, easily changed. Mostly by....
No knowledge and some knowledge of pvp, HUGE difference. Easy to convert one to the other.
Borked abilities and items, just not getting around that.
So if they just did as you suggest, it may not change the outcome, it may just make it take longer. And maybe that's a good thing.
Now if you were suggesting the end of quirky doff stacking to gain neverending evasives or TT or blah blah blah. Or five tac consoles ships for the lucky few, or something that the 95% (yup im making that number up) of players will never reasonably have, I'm all for it.
Abilities should add dimensions to combat, not break it.
I've never quite been happy with the way BOFF abilities are setup in STO. They feel off - handled in a manner I do not consider to be logical in the least. The connection between the BOFFs and the stations is far too simplified in my opinion. They need to be separated.
Say what?
Let's look at a BOFF and let's look at a Station. The BOFF should have a Rank. The Station should have a Tech Level.
Say we have a Commander Tac BOFF - I'll give him some random abilities for what I'm trying to say (they're not thought out, etc): APD3, DPB2, THY2, and TT1. This Tac BOFF's best ability is APD - it's what they've specialized in.
Now let's put that Tac BOFF in a ship. I'll drop him in a Steamrunner - and - I'll drop him in that Commander Tac BOFF slot.
That's fine, eh? That's what we've got now.
Okay, but what if I drop him in a Lt Tac Slot on a Dreadnought? Well, he can only use THY2 and TT1. Sure, he's specialized in APD and subspec'd DPB - but he can't use them.
Logically, if he knows APD3 - he knows APD2 and he knows APD1. If he knows DPB2 then he knows DPB1. But that's not the way it works in the game.
Now if the stations were based on a tech level rather than rank level - we'd have TL1, TL2, TL3, TL4. The BOFF Rank abilities would still be connected. You would need a TL4 Tac Station to run APD3. You could not run APD3 in a TL3, TL2, nor TL1 station.
What you could do though with that Tac BOFF is the following though:
With both APD and DPB requiring a min TL2 station - they could not be used in a TL1 slot.
You could have a max of 3 abilities in a TL1 station with either a LCdr or Cmdr BOFF (the Commander's Cmdr rank ability - their best ability would only be available at TL2 or higher depending on what it is). Further - depending on how you build that BOFF, you might only have a single ability in that TL1 station.
Logically though, if the guy knows Ability X3 - they should know X2 and X1.
Just something I've expressed before in regard to how abilities should add dimensions to play in space...
I'm certainly not naive enough to think that this is the perfect solution. Anything worth doing is going to take some serious thought and effort. But it would go a long way towards helping make PvP more accessible to the masses without dumbing it down for the more strategic or hardcore players.
__________________________________________
Foundry: Yet Another Borg Mission
It's terrible but easy, and these Borg are way cooler than the mess STO and Voyager left us.
May not actually be "way" cooler or even "slightly" cooler.
Oh I know, nerf is such a bad word. I suppose the alternative would be to boost the hell out of unbuffed base stats. So give ships ten times the hull and shields that they have now. It's the same basic idea of diminishing the all importance of stacking poorly balanced skills.
Want to reduce the likelihood of being instapopped or running into invincible zombies? Don't like "one shot kills" and yo-yo hull healing? Bring all abilities in the game back down to a reasonable level. Work out smarter mechanics for stacking items and skills. This would make the game more accessible for new players and add extra tactical dimensions for more skilled players.
There is a reason Commander and Captain level PvP were so much fun and it's largely related to the less twitchy game play. Call me crazy but we don't need this game to continue down this path of inaccessibility. The skill gap between players themselves is vast enough. Continuing to pile on more and more vastly over powered abilities is only going to further hurt the player base.
The game is too spammy. Abilities are too strong. There is a tremendous difference between a buffed ship and an unbuffed ship. Abilities should add dimensions to combat, not break it.
If you nerf EVERYthing from 10 to 1, there is zero change. lol
To clarify I am referring to all abilities, not necessarily base statistics although those too could probably stand to be adjusted. I'd be interested in seeing the way that game play might change if abilities operated under the same basic cool down system but with much smaller buffs.
For example, Cruisers could have significantly higher hulls if yo yo healing was brought in line or if it required multiple people using multiple heals (at roughly 1/10th of their current value) to achieve a near full recovery. At the very least it would reduce near instant healing and create a significant opportunity cost to focus an entire teams healing skills onto a single ship.
And before anyone thinks this is about nerfing healing, it's not. Damage would be subject to the same reductions.
__________________________________________
Foundry: Yet Another Borg Mission
It's terrible but easy, and these Borg are way cooler than the mess STO and Voyager left us.
May not actually be "way" cooler or even "slightly" cooler.
I like the idea of great reduction to damage and healing. If nothing else, it would slow down the gameplay a bit, and allow for more tactics, strategies, planning and teamwork.
Whenever I fire off 10 abilities in 2 seconds, I feel like the captains tongue should tie up into a knot. This is Trek after all.
I'd like tosee them cutting all damage, healing and regen 50%. (along with cutting all NPC HP 50%)
I don't want to sound like giving an election speech, but the OP is onto something. It sounds like the last possible course of action after one mistake after the other on part of the systems team, or whoever, fails to make balance concerns part of Holodeck releases. Even cutting everything down to 1/10 of current value won't achieve much.
Unless they come up with a vision, no quick fix will solve the underlying problems, neither will fixing one doff's stat here, and one skill's cd there.
Oh I know, nerf is such a bad word. I suppose the alternative would be to boost the hell out of unbuffed base stats. So give ships ten times the hull and shields that they have now. It's the same basic idea of diminishing the all importance of stacking poorly balanced skills.
Want to reduce the likelihood of being instapopped or running into invincible zombies? Don't like "one shot kills" and yo-yo hull healing? Bring all abilities in the game back down to a reasonable level. Work out smarter mechanics for stacking items and skills. This would make the game more accessible for new players and add extra tactical dimensions for more skilled players.
There is a reason Commander and Captain level PvP were so much fun and it's largely related to the less twitchy game play. Call me crazy but we don't need this game to continue down this path of inaccessibility. The skill gap between players themselves is vast enough. Continuing to pile on more and more vastly over powered abilities is only going to further hurt the player base.
The game is too spammy. Abilities are too strong. There is a tremendous difference between a buffed ship and an unbuffed ship. Abilities should add dimensions to combat, not break it.
Honestly I don't think this will really help things hale, because it's all proportional. If you reduce weapon damage to 10% of its current, as well as all heals/etc then things will be slower, but it will be proportionally the same where people will get wrecked quickly or they'll sit and tank.
To be honest, I think the best and quickest route to change/improve things is to do an across the board nerf of defense on all ships. That way escorts won't be able to dodge as many shots as they do, and the slower ships will just get hit that much more often.
The bad players won't notice a difference, and it will break stalemates that currently exist during certain modes of play.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] Support a KDF equivalent to the Vesta Here
I suppose the main point I was attempting to make is that the number of abilities are the problem. There are just so very many and the emphasis is so heavily placed on them. Stacking creates potential "problems" like insane spikes (which I admit, I love performing) and zombies (which wouldn't be so bad if they'd sell us a headshot space console in the z-store).
More abilities are coming.
Between captain skills, boffs skills (not even including voldy for the moment), STF sets, rep passives, fleet stuff, low cooldowns, doffs that reduce cool downs, 9-10 console slots and a significant emphasis on the z-store, the number of abilities available to a single player is crazy. The game has become much more twitchy than strategic. That's part of why people can run long stretches of attacks/buff on a single key. I'm not saying key binding is a bad thing, but it speaks to the importance of hitting as many skills as fast as you can.
Players are hit with so much, so fast, and it's all so very strong that if we continue down this road we'll never find a way to make PvP more balanced or more appealing to a broader audience.
How would having the same amount of abilities, but in a much weaker state, make anything more accessible? In theory, strategy would become more important than stacking (which I suppose is a strategy too). Reaction times would increase exponentially. Yo-yo healing the magic hull could potentially be addressed while instagibbing (as sexy as it is) would be less likely. Not to mention that the amount of stacking you'd have to do for either effect would create significant vulnerabilities for both teams. All of these special consoles you can buy could still be fun without making any particular combination of those and everything else too overwhelming.
And you know, it could make for more appealing game play while also sparking the interest of the canon crowd.
Like I said, it's far from perfect. I don't suppose wide spread support is ever really likely anyway. I can't even begin to imagine the cost of adjusting all of these skills for PvE and PvP. I just think things are getting out of hand and it makes me sad.
__________________________________________
Foundry: Yet Another Borg Mission
It's terrible but easy, and these Borg are way cooler than the mess STO and Voyager left us.
May not actually be "way" cooler or even "slightly" cooler.
Comments
you speak in a foreign tongue.
all i hear is logic, i don't think the devs will be able to grasp the message you are sending.
me on the other hand, i hear ya loud and clear.
have fun kill bad guys
Starship combat should take minutes not
Seconds
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Well yah. Unbuffed ships die quick violent deaths. And I'm just fine with that. Even baseline abilities that everyone has access to should be sufficient to stop such a thing from happening to oneself. And really right now I'm not sure that that is true. From a purely tactical attack it is fairly simple to make yourself well defended. Staggeringly simple. As has been pointed out to me repeatedly. What isn't so easy is to make yourself strong against the broken flavors of abilities and doff combos.
Buffed and unbuffed, HUGE difference, easily changed. Mostly by....
No knowledge and some knowledge of pvp, HUGE difference. Easy to convert one to the other.
Borked abilities and items, just not getting around that.
So if they just did as you suggest, it may not change the outcome, it may just make it take longer. And maybe that's a good thing.
Now if you were suggesting the end of quirky doff stacking to gain neverending evasives or TT or blah blah blah. Or five tac consoles ships for the lucky few, or something that the 95% (yup im making that number up) of players will never reasonably have, I'm all for it.
I've never quite been happy with the way BOFF abilities are setup in STO. They feel off - handled in a manner I do not consider to be logical in the least. The connection between the BOFFs and the stations is far too simplified in my opinion. They need to be separated.
Say what?
Let's look at a BOFF and let's look at a Station. The BOFF should have a Rank. The Station should have a Tech Level.
Say we have a Commander Tac BOFF - I'll give him some random abilities for what I'm trying to say (they're not thought out, etc): APD3, DPB2, THY2, and TT1. This Tac BOFF's best ability is APD - it's what they've specialized in.
Now let's put that Tac BOFF in a ship. I'll drop him in a Steamrunner - and - I'll drop him in that Commander Tac BOFF slot.
That's fine, eh? That's what we've got now.
Okay, but what if I drop him in a Lt Tac Slot on a Dreadnought? Well, he can only use THY2 and TT1. Sure, he's specialized in APD and subspec'd DPB - but he can't use them.
Logically, if he knows APD3 - he knows APD2 and he knows APD1. If he knows DPB2 then he knows DPB1. But that's not the way it works in the game.
Now if the stations were based on a tech level rather than rank level - we'd have TL1, TL2, TL3, TL4. The BOFF Rank abilities would still be connected. You would need a TL4 Tac Station to run APD3. You could not run APD3 in a TL3, TL2, nor TL1 station.
What you could do though with that Tac BOFF is the following though:
TL4 Station: APD3, DPB2, THY2, TT1
TL3 Station: APD2, DPB2, THY2, TT1
TL2 Station: APD1, DPB1, THY2, TT1
TL1 Station: THY1, TT1
With both APD and DPB requiring a min TL2 station - they could not be used in a TL1 slot.
You could have a max of 3 abilities in a TL1 station with either a LCdr or Cmdr BOFF (the Commander's Cmdr rank ability - their best ability would only be available at TL2 or higher depending on what it is). Further - depending on how you build that BOFF, you might only have a single ability in that TL1 station.
Logically though, if the guy knows Ability X3 - they should know X2 and X1.
Just something I've expressed before in regard to how abilities should add dimensions to play in space...
It's terrible but easy, and these Borg are way cooler than the mess STO and Voyager left us.
If you nerf EVERYthing from 10 to 1, there is zero change. lol
For example, Cruisers could have significantly higher hulls if yo yo healing was brought in line or if it required multiple people using multiple heals (at roughly 1/10th of their current value) to achieve a near full recovery. At the very least it would reduce near instant healing and create a significant opportunity cost to focus an entire teams healing skills onto a single ship.
And before anyone thinks this is about nerfing healing, it's not. Damage would be subject to the same reductions.
It's terrible but easy, and these Borg are way cooler than the mess STO and Voyager left us.
Whenever I fire off 10 abilities in 2 seconds, I feel like the captains tongue should tie up into a knot. This is Trek after all.
I'd like tosee them cutting all damage, healing and regen 50%. (along with cutting all NPC HP 50%)
Unless they come up with a vision, no quick fix will solve the underlying problems, neither will fixing one doff's stat here, and one skill's cd there.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Honestly I don't think this will really help things hale, because it's all proportional. If you reduce weapon damage to 10% of its current, as well as all heals/etc then things will be slower, but it will be proportionally the same where people will get wrecked quickly or they'll sit and tank.
To be honest, I think the best and quickest route to change/improve things is to do an across the board nerf of defense on all ships. That way escorts won't be able to dodge as many shots as they do, and the slower ships will just get hit that much more often.
The bad players won't notice a difference, and it will break stalemates that currently exist during certain modes of play.
Support a KDF equivalent to the Vesta Here
More abilities are coming.
Between captain skills, boffs skills (not even including voldy for the moment), STF sets, rep passives, fleet stuff, low cooldowns, doffs that reduce cool downs, 9-10 console slots and a significant emphasis on the z-store, the number of abilities available to a single player is crazy. The game has become much more twitchy than strategic. That's part of why people can run long stretches of attacks/buff on a single key. I'm not saying key binding is a bad thing, but it speaks to the importance of hitting as many skills as fast as you can.
Players are hit with so much, so fast, and it's all so very strong that if we continue down this road we'll never find a way to make PvP more balanced or more appealing to a broader audience.
How would having the same amount of abilities, but in a much weaker state, make anything more accessible? In theory, strategy would become more important than stacking (which I suppose is a strategy too). Reaction times would increase exponentially. Yo-yo healing the magic hull could potentially be addressed while instagibbing (as sexy as it is) would be less likely. Not to mention that the amount of stacking you'd have to do for either effect would create significant vulnerabilities for both teams. All of these special consoles you can buy could still be fun without making any particular combination of those and everything else too overwhelming.
And you know, it could make for more appealing game play while also sparking the interest of the canon crowd.
Like I said, it's far from perfect. I don't suppose wide spread support is ever really likely anyway. I can't even begin to imagine the cost of adjusting all of these skills for PvE and PvP. I just think things are getting out of hand and it makes me sad.
It's terrible but easy, and these Borg are way cooler than the mess STO and Voyager left us.