Well, I think this thread may have already ran its course.
Thank you all very much for your feedback, and taking the time to consider the possibilities.
It sounds like we're all fairly well agreed that the benefits of the originally-stated proposals would range from "Minimally-Good" to "Massively-Bad," and are therefore not really sound propositions as large, sweeping changes.
Were we able to provide any ideas at least that were helpful?
Is there any way that players could better help you moving forward?
well Escorts are good like they are.... they dont need more damage they dont need more hull and they dont need more shields...
Cruisers need more damage more hull and more shields... mainly for engineers
And sci ships like the vesta need more hull... and more efectiveness on the sci abilities... because the only good thing sci captians have right now is subnuc and scatter field... and even the subnuc can be cleared...
Escorts right now are way over powered... just one escort can make good damage on a engi cruiser... so to balance things out you should only give boosts to any non tactical & escort ship... because tactical captians already have dps... escorts have a lot of dps... so cruisers and sci ship should be the only ones to have boost on weapons shields and hull to balance things out... because right now tactical is the one to have...and only persons with love for the other professions are using it... do we want everyone using tac escorts? no... so work on the other ones make them better and dont buff even more the escorts
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] Federation :: Fleetless :: Klingon Jorge Silva - Tac | Nayja - Sci | Jorge E. Silva - Eng Jorge R. Silva - Tac (Romulan Fed) Nayja K Silva - Sci | Vurg'jah - Tac
Well, I think this thread may have already ran its course.
Thank you all very much for your feedback, and taking the time to consider the possibilities.
It sounds like we're all fairly well agreed that the benefits of the originally-stated proposals would range from "Minimally-Good" to "Massively-Bad," and are therefore not really sound propositions as large, sweeping changes.
your on the right track really, there just has to be the correct give and take. buff hitpoints, nerf resistance, and suddenly damage, heals and spike become less powerful, but you wouldn't really die any faster. my post on page 3 spells it out in detail, hope you saw it. http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=8303411&postcount=25
bluntly saying that this is a bad idea is a bit of a kneejerk, but something like this REALLY needs to be done at this point. to many things have been marginalized by power creep, not everything is power creeping equally. the more hitpoints/less resistence fix would set up an environment were things could power creep more evenly.
or my other suggestion of making all weapons more spiky, less shots with more power behind them.
It's also worth noting that while everyone seems to have a different approach, there is a general consensus for more normalized gameplay that is less of a back and forth of extremes between Damage, healing, and resistances.
Given the global diversity of the player base I'd say it's pretty telling overall.
Well everyone knows it's the real issue, and while Bort steps in this forums quite often he's also responsible for some ships stats, such as the Kumari.
So, um, well... What's the point?
pretty sure he's one of the PR guys, nothing more, and so has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with anything data-related to the game, otherwise he'd be the one posting the release notes
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
I think you got more of don't nerf me, bro... than anything else, tbh.
Tom's a healer - don't nerf mah healing, bro!
Rick's a Bill Nye - don't nerf mah dirty bag o' tricks, bro!
Harry does DPS - don't nerf mah spike, bro!
There was also a lot of independent feedback on each item without taking them as a whole.
It takes too long to kill as is - don't make it harder!
Everybody dies too fast as is - don't make it easier!
And er, 50/50, on the third - some saying it takes too long - some saying it happens too fast...don't make it harder...er...easier...harder...easier!
To an extent, the responses are a perfect example of how it's an On/Off switch - you've either got the right team comp and all your enemies are dead in a blink or you've got the wrong comp and can't kill anything. There's too much survivability - there's not enough survivability.
Addressing the three things (perhaps with others) - could actually change it from being that On/Off. You're not going to get those replies...
You're going to get the...
Don't nerf mah stuff, bro!
Whether it's Tom, Rick, Harry, or the guys that have found a nice comp that works well for them...
Folks want everybody else nerfed but themselves. They don't realize that it's a give and take situation if you want a better, more balanced game...
edit: And oh yeah, what's up with the coffee?
This.
Honestly there are maybe five posters I have come across that have a solid understanding of the mechanics and the math in this game. Their is only one that I will trust without double checking their testing and math.
Most posters simply have an agenda, style, or philosophy on how they want the game to be, or how they like the game to be. The quantity of unbiased opinions and feedback from any of these forums is very low.
Just check the last thread trying to determine 'balanced' PvP tornie rules that was a riot.
In the TV shows and Movies. Weapon power is just that, The shields start to go down when being fired upon. They always have to divert power from one resource to the shields or weapons.
What makes the show exciting is: The ship can be destroyed (which is why I say discard number 1). What makes the show even more exciting is: They creatively find away to save themselves. And that is what we need to be doing in PVP.
If you are in an escort, you make that first pass, if the ship that you are attacking is still alive you might want to get out of there before they can take your shields and hull out.
If you are a Science ship, Control, control control.
If you are a Cruiser, Tank it and provide sustained firepower.
Either way, all ships can be destroyed, but whomever is creative in finding away to survive, the spoils goes to them.
pretty sure he's one of the PR guys, nothing more, and so has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with anything data-related to the game, otherwise he'd be the one posting the release notes
You don't read signatures very well, do you?
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
SNB's not a complete strip.
TT/ET/ST/HE/etc are not a complete cleanse.
...in conjunction with the first two?
It's a buff to both buffs/debuffs in its own way. It would no longer be the "Haha, your buffs are gone!" nor "Haha, your debuffs are gone!" - it would allow for more of a middleground. Debuffs would stay longer and help offset buffs while buffs would stay longer and help offset debuffs. A sort of balancing act...
Sounds feasible. Could help with some areas. But of course we're still in the problem area where Spike damage is king where Pressure Damage is not as useful usually.
You think that your beta test was bad?
Think about this: American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
If you can create the tech to do this though really consider somehow wrapping in the real issues of passives and doff effects and the low level ship included consoles.
I know turning those effects off could be a massive PR nightmare at this point... taking things away isn't really a favorite option I know.
However perhaps it isn't a full disable... if you have the control to tune each one only in PvP... perhaps we don't have to suffer 30s gravity pulses... perhaps things like leach can go back to being OP vs the borg, but remain as weak against Players.
The idea behind the Tech is fine... most of us have likely called ideas like this one cope outs before... and depending on the implementation perhaps it is. However I understand we are likely never going to get a sweeping set of changes that will really effect PvE as well anymore. So perhaps some fine tuning on some of the more heavily unbalanced items and effects for PvP can work.
pretty sure he's one of the PR guys, nothing more, and so has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with anything data-related to the game, otherwise he'd be the one posting the release notes
No, he's in charge of tuninb abilities, creating new ones, he can tune NPCs too, and he's in charge of the doff system. He can also step in the starbase system occasionally. And he has a word to say in ships stats.
TBH I don't know if he's the one thinking that if it's not OP it won't be bought, but at least amajority of the devs must think so, and he can't really tellus what he thinks, but he's also definitely a part of what's happening in pvp too.
The latest tribble patch notes proves two things:
- Cryptic doesn't care really much about pvp balance when it comes to ship sales.
- Some devs have really poor anticipation abilities. How can someone expect that a DPS console on an escort ship won't break everything? How can they expect players not to complain to get uber OP dps consoles?
It can look a bit off topic but it's not. Powers are completely out of control, in pvp and even in pve (which currently really looks pathetic). You can stack amazing resistances and have insane spike damage abilities. This needs to have a hard limit, both for resists (to sci stuff, to damage) and dps at the same time, otherwise, pvp makes no sense because it's a spike damage + snb war. And a placate war too these days.
I can't count the number of angry tells i've been getting using all of the dirty tricks the game has. And I know it can be frustrating when you have someone flying a supposedly fragile ship tanking a pair of escorts working in tandem. And to get almost instantly smoked by someone when you're not expecting anything (esp. in kerrat ). This is a bit too extreme in both cases.
As a crucial alternative or addition to your proposal, Borticus, a two league system should be considered.
For really serious end-game PvP, several special Zen store consoles would be must-haves (e.g., the Andorian +25% dmg to shields debuff etc.). This would be Pay2Win.
Instead of tackling the lengthy task of re-scaling/re-evaluating all of these consoles or simply disabling them in general, there should be one league allowing, and one league not allowing special consoles.
My guess would be that, initially, the special console league would seem the more prestigious one, but in time, the "normal" league would become the more serious one, lacking any "I win buttons". But anyhow, players would still be able to decide and there would be no outcry due to simply disabling expensive consoles...
Of course the Pay2Win league would need slightly higher rewards than the normal league, as Cryptic wants to create an incentive for players to actually buy Zen store ships and their special consoles. However, such a system still seems like the best compromise to me.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
and if you get blown up more than once? time to re-evaluate your skills and boff setup, because what you have currently isn't working
That can be very difficult to determine because you need to know *exactly* how the game works to know all the dirty tricks and how they can be stacked together for great effect.
When Diogene or any other experienced PvPer goes into a PUG, they dominate, and the PUG largely will have no clue how, nor will they learn much of anything. Then they get super frustrated and say "&#$^ this game's PvP".
it is good, no it's fantastic, that you, cryptic, tries to improve pvp.
but to be honest and without offending any other people, especially people having "problems" in pvp, don't listen to the majority of player.
i am really tired of reading comments like "cruisers need more damage + healing + turn rate + replicators + whatever". there are some cruiser ingame, which can't be cracked by one or two escorts, even with one snb. on the other hand, there are cruisers with full health, which can be destroyed by an escort with one dhc volley and one overload
like naz already told, experienced pvp teams (knowing mechanics, good teamplay, decent build and setup, ...), can need several hours for one match. my fleet had some weeks ago a league fight (no fleet shields allowed). the match ended after 45minutes and we "won" 5:3 (or something like this). nearly all kills were extremely high beam overload critshots (40k and more). without the timelimit it would have taken for sure at least 2 hours.
taking "top pvp teams" as scale, damage of _all_ ships should be increased or healing should be decreased. but the changes (only a few percentage points) should be done in several small steps.
and these changes won't help not so professional pvp player. a good pvp player in a desastrous pug v. another desastrous pug match will still decide the match. professional pvp player (with or without teamspeak, assist train and so on) will still roflstomp a "classic" pug team.
it is not the fault of the game mechanic nor of an experienced player, when some people don't try to improve their whole game play.
the best thing which can be done at this time by cryptic, are such projects like the pvp boot camp. there are a lot of people in pvp, doing meanwhile a much better job.
That can be very difficult to determine because you need to know *exactly* how the game works to know all the dirty tricks and how they can be stacked together for great effect.
When Diogene or any other experienced PvPer goes into a PUG, they dominate, and the PUG largely will have no clue how, nor will they learn much of anything. Then they get super frustrated and say "&#$^ this game's PvP".
see, the thing is, those same experienced PvPers will be more than happy to explain in great detail exactly how they turned your ship into an expanding cloud of superheated plasma and potential ways to counter it, plus giving you general build advice to make your ship more effective, if you but ask them...something more people should be encouraged to do, instead of throwing a tantrum like a two year-old just because they get blown up once
if you PvP, you're going to get blown up; that's a fact of this game, but you don't have to keep blowing up if you're willing to ask for help
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Sorry if this is going a little off topic, but... while I can't speak for anyone else, but there was a time when I could take pretty much anything into PvP and make a decent contribution. I could get plenty of kills flying any type of ship, with whatever powers took my fancy (except maybe BP); all it really required was not being totally clueless and incompetent. I could do that while still healing and debuffing too.
Now, I apparently need a two week induction course, super elite gear that can take months of grinding to acquire, and one of only a small handful of viable cookie-cutter builds.
Hardly seems unreasonable to think the days when stuff actually worked were better than the days when the game's elite have to set up a school just to stop people rage quitting out of sheer frustration (though I greatly respect such a laudable effort BTW). Sure, I know those days had their own problems, but I still know which era I had more fun with.
In short, as a casual PvPer, I don't feel that 'ask for help' is a real solution to the problem (well... maybe in the case of people who don't care what they are flying, so long as it wins them matches, but some of us do care).
That can be very difficult to determine because you need to know *exactly* how the game works to know all the dirty tricks and how they can be stacked together for great effect.
When Diogene or any other experienced PvPer goes into a PUG, they dominate, and the PUG largely will have no clue how, nor will they learn much of anything. Then they get super frustrated and say "&#$^ this game's PvP".
Lots of the hardcore pvpers that have the time, coach for the boot camp.
Others of us answer questions as best we can on Opvp.
I just spent 30min PMing someone that asked for help.
Ask and you will discover there are no dirty secrets... just answers to questions you have yet to ask.
The kinetic weapons, torpedo's and mines, deal only 25% of its damage to shields. This because they are, as the word says, kinetic weapons.
However, energy weapons deal 100% of their damage to shields AND hull (I think this is strange, since the hull can also absorps heat etc from beam weapons.). You can make the energy weapons the oposite of kinetic weapons, so that they would do less than 100% of their dameg to hull, like only 50%. That way escorts would need also torpedo's, which is kind of canon and the DPS of energy weapons can be increased a bit.
Then to get rid of the OP spike damage, you can think of implementing a few seconds "no fire cooldown"after a rapid fire volley, or increase the power drain from rapid fire.
That can be very difficult to determine because you need to know *exactly* how the game works to know all the dirty tricks and how they can be stacked together for great effect.
When Diogene or any other experienced PvPer goes into a PUG, they dominate, and the PUG largely will have no clue how, nor will they learn much of anything. Then they get super frustrated and say "&#$^ this game's PvP".
Indeed. When I want to troll people in kerrat or sometimes in arena withmy KDF tac/escort, i often say that it's easier than the tau dewa patrol. Seriously, my poor krenn destroyer can take a lot of damage, and two escorts aren't enough to take it down (unless there's a sci/escort), and most of the times i need 1 to 4 second or so to kill unexpecting players, and they just say you cheat and so on. In both cases this is too extreme.
Unfortunately, I think PvP is complex enough that it would not be straightforward to provide a more enjoyable experience by tweaking a set of global parameters. I suspect the main thing that would emerge is even more complexity of balance, and even more complexity of gameplay.
I've often heard it recommended that things should behave differently in PvE from PvP, with the best of intentions -- surely it would be simpler to work in an isolated environment to balance each? Well, perhaps it would in the beginning, by working from a cleaner slate, but I think the truth is that it is still one game. It is not as isolated as all that. Having separate behaviors literally doubles (or worse) the number of things that need to be considered for balance, and introduces the possibility of unintended bleed-through of effects from one to the other. It becomes very, very, very difficult indeed to determine if everything is working as desired in both situations.
And it must be taken into the account that, as the game continues to change (as it always will, with new gear, new abilities, new and unexplored design spaces), there will be emergent gameplay and gameplay trends that may not be foreseen through design. Any kind of tweaking must be continuously evaluated and reevaluated. That's the nature of gameplay, which can be highly sensitive to even small changes in abilities. Not that change is bad, by the way. Change is good, and the only way there can be improvement.
That said, I would welcome a Tribble environment test lab, where broad changes to how the game works could be experimented with, or specific adjustments to powers could be explored, with no commitment to bringing them in to the main game. I think this would benefit both PvE and PvP. But it does come with a considerable commitment of developer resources, to set it up and to run it.
For some time now, we have been kicking around the idea of instituting map-wide variables on all PvP maps we currently have in the game, in order to apply global changes to the way that certain powers operate. While this wouldn't be considered a true "fix" for PvP overall, we feel that, if we got the numbers right, it could go a long way towards addressing some points of primary concern among both players that are both Casual and Hardcore PvP enthusiasts.
Before I go into the details of what's so far been considered, I want to make it absolutely clear that these are only IDEAS, and stating them here for feedback is absolutely NOT a guarantee that they will be implemented. And even if they are, there's a good chance they will not see the light of day, even on Tribble, until after our May Update.
With that in mind, here are a couple of the map-wide modifications we've been considering:
1) Max Hitpoints/Shields Increases
This was originally considered for Ground PvP specifically, but we later began to wonder if it might be appropriate for Space as well. For now, we're considering very large increases - as much as 200%-300% of your base hitpoint and shield amounts.
We fully realize that changing this one factor, without modifying powers, would fundamentally alter the flow of battle. It would completely change the intrinsic values and opportunity costs associated with many powers, as well as changing the perceived value of cooldowns and escape tactics.
The recent thread titled "Spike vs. Pressure" paints a picture that seems to indicate that this would end up being a bad thing for Space PvP, resulting in the very real possibility of matches where ships never died. However, we've yet to see any evidence that this would be anything other than a good thing for Ground PvP.
2) Healing -OR- Damage Output Decreases
Unlike the previous option, which would have a fairly equal impact on both Damage and Healing effectiveness, these ideas are more surgical, affecting either one or the other, at disparate levels.
Applying Healing effectiveness reduction to PvP maps would lead to extremely volatile matches unless it came hand-in-hand with limitations to Spike Damage potential. While limiting overall damage output would likely be a bad idea because it impacts "Pressure" DPS more profoundly than "Spike" -- not a great idea to exacerbate this issue. This probably means that this option is even less likely to be a good idea, than the previous notion. At least for Space PvP.
3) Reduction in Status Ability Effectiveness -OR- the Resistance Thereof
Presume that the term "Status" refers to just about anything that is not Damage. Buffs, Debuffs, Repel, Disable, Confuse, etc.
To be frank, we're fairly well satisfied with how effective most powers are in PvE in terms of their ability to inflict Status effects, and manipulate the flow of an encounter. As well as players' options to resist the effects of these abilities when they are used by NPCs. That's not to say that they are perfect, or that there isn't room for improvement, but we're OK with them as they are. Generally speaking.
In PvP however, the combination of extreme skill stacking and high resistance factors, cause us difficulty when attempting to find the correct balance point of an ability's effectiveness. We have therefore theorized that allowing us to limit one side of the equation or the other, ONLY in PvP, might allow us to tune these abilities in a more focused, controlled manner.
So, those are the main ideas we've had so far. We'd like to hear some open-minded feedback on what consequences any of the above could potentially have on the viability and flow of PvP combat, and its popularity among Veterans and non-Veterans alike. Keep in mind that we recognize the potential risk involved with making global changes of this nature, so you can bet your self-sealing stem bolts that we'd be testing any map-wide alterations extensively on Tribble before sending them into a Live environment (we've already investigated how to control this).
I think the best 'fix' for everything is to simply implement a Intelligent queue system where people of equal gear/experience is queued up together.
As it stands now, there are a few premades active in a specific timezone, both premades queue up only knowing they are being queued up against pugs. (The system simply has 0% intelligence to wait for both fleets to have queued and then put them together. Just a pure example. (In this particular situation id rather wait 5/10 minutes to be queued against experience players, then do another round of pugstomping)
Lets say there are 10 good and long term pvp'ers playing, and 50/100 newbies or first time players, as it is now they are all scattered along the whole queue system and we all have to be lucky not going up a gainst a full newbie team, and the other newbie team unfortunately gets ququed up against very good players.
This is the FIRST step that has to be made, im 100% sure with such a queue system/player ranking system the first steps to making pvp better has been set, and this change will automatically make newbies stick to pvp longer because they are not getting insta vaped.
and also the long-term hardcore pvp'ers keep playing because they are not constantly queued up versus a team full of newbie pugs.
Well, I think this thread may have already ran its course.
Thank you all very much for your feedback, and taking the time to consider the possibilities.
It sounds like we're all fairly well agreed that the benefits of the originally-stated proposals would range from "Minimally-Good" to "Massively-Bad," and are therefore not really sound propositions as large, sweeping changes.
Like the man said, sounds like we're done here so I am going to go ahead and close the thread.
(Bort, if you need it reopened for some reason please let BranFlakes or one of us mods know.)
~Bluegeek
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Comments
Were we able to provide any ideas at least that were helpful?
Is there any way that players could better help you moving forward?
Cruisers need more damage more hull and more shields... mainly for engineers
And sci ships like the vesta need more hull... and more efectiveness on the sci abilities... because the only good thing sci captians have right now is subnuc and scatter field... and even the subnuc can be cleared...
Escorts right now are way over powered... just one escort can make good damage on a engi cruiser... so to balance things out you should only give boosts to any non tactical & escort ship... because tactical captians already have dps... escorts have a lot of dps... so cruisers and sci ship should be the only ones to have boost on weapons shields and hull to balance things out... because right now tactical is the one to have...and only persons with love for the other professions are using it... do we want everyone using tac escorts? no... so work on the other ones make them better and dont buff even more the escorts
Federation :: Fleetless :: Klingon
Jorge Silva - Tac | Nayja - Sci | Jorge E. Silva - Eng
Jorge R. Silva - Tac (Romulan Fed)
Nayja K Silva - Sci | Vurg'jah - Tac
your on the right track really, there just has to be the correct give and take. buff hitpoints, nerf resistance, and suddenly damage, heals and spike become less powerful, but you wouldn't really die any faster. my post on page 3 spells it out in detail, hope you saw it. http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=8303411&postcount=25
bluntly saying that this is a bad idea is a bit of a kneejerk, but something like this REALLY needs to be done at this point. to many things have been marginalized by power creep, not everything is power creeping equally. the more hitpoints/less resistence fix would set up an environment were things could power creep more evenly.
or my other suggestion of making all weapons more spiky, less shots with more power behind them.
Given the global diversity of the player base I'd say it's pretty telling overall.
pretty sure he's one of the PR guys, nothing more, and so has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with anything data-related to the game, otherwise he'd be the one posting the release notes
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
This.
Honestly there are maybe five posters I have come across that have a solid understanding of the mechanics and the math in this game. Their is only one that I will trust without double checking their testing and math.
Most posters simply have an agenda, style, or philosophy on how they want the game to be, or how they like the game to be. The quantity of unbiased opinions and feedback from any of these forums is very low.
Just check the last thread trying to determine 'balanced' PvP tornie rules that was a riot.
Numbers 2 and 3 are more viable.
In the TV shows and Movies. Weapon power is just that, The shields start to go down when being fired upon. They always have to divert power from one resource to the shields or weapons.
What makes the show exciting is: The ship can be destroyed (which is why I say discard number 1). What makes the show even more exciting is: They creatively find away to save themselves. And that is what we need to be doing in PVP.
If you are in an escort, you make that first pass, if the ship that you are attacking is still alive you might want to get out of there before they can take your shields and hull out.
If you are a Science ship, Control, control control.
If you are a Cruiser, Tank it and provide sustained firepower.
Either way, all ships can be destroyed, but whomever is creative in finding away to survive, the spoils goes to them.
You don't read signatures very well, do you?
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Lmao
Sounds feasible. Could help with some areas. But of course we're still in the problem area where Spike damage is king where Pressure Damage is not as useful usually.
Think about this:
American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
lol Classic.
Thanks for including us in the early talks Bort.
If you can create the tech to do this though really consider somehow wrapping in the real issues of passives and doff effects and the low level ship included consoles.
I know turning those effects off could be a massive PR nightmare at this point... taking things away isn't really a favorite option I know.
However perhaps it isn't a full disable... if you have the control to tune each one only in PvP... perhaps we don't have to suffer 30s gravity pulses... perhaps things like leach can go back to being OP vs the borg, but remain as weak against Players.
The idea behind the Tech is fine... most of us have likely called ideas like this one cope outs before... and depending on the implementation perhaps it is. However I understand we are likely never going to get a sweeping set of changes that will really effect PvE as well anymore. So perhaps some fine tuning on some of the more heavily unbalanced items and effects for PvP can work.
No matter which way you go... thanks for asking.
No, he's in charge of tuninb abilities, creating new ones, he can tune NPCs too, and he's in charge of the doff system. He can also step in the starbase system occasionally. And he has a word to say in ships stats.
TBH I don't know if he's the one thinking that if it's not OP it won't be bought, but at least amajority of the devs must think so, and he can't really tellus what he thinks, but he's also definitely a part of what's happening in pvp too.
The latest tribble patch notes proves two things:
- Cryptic doesn't care really much about pvp balance when it comes to ship sales.
- Some devs have really poor anticipation abilities. How can someone expect that a DPS console on an escort ship won't break everything? How can they expect players not to complain to get uber OP dps consoles?
It can look a bit off topic but it's not. Powers are completely out of control, in pvp and even in pve (which currently really looks pathetic). You can stack amazing resistances and have insane spike damage abilities. This needs to have a hard limit, both for resists (to sci stuff, to damage) and dps at the same time, otherwise, pvp makes no sense because it's a spike damage + snb war. And a placate war too these days.
I can't count the number of angry tells i've been getting using all of the dirty tricks the game has. And I know it can be frustrating when you have someone flying a supposedly fragile ship tanking a pair of escorts working in tandem. And to get almost instantly smoked by someone when you're not expecting anything (esp. in kerrat
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
I like DDIS's idea about increasing the spikeiness of all weapons a lot.
On a side note, the consensus on passives healing and resists seems to send a very clear message. Hope it helps.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
For really serious end-game PvP, several special Zen store consoles would be must-haves (e.g., the Andorian +25% dmg to shields debuff etc.). This would be Pay2Win.
Instead of tackling the lengthy task of re-scaling/re-evaluating all of these consoles or simply disabling them in general, there should be one league allowing, and one league not allowing special consoles.
My guess would be that, initially, the special console league would seem the more prestigious one, but in time, the "normal" league would become the more serious one, lacking any "I win buttons". But anyhow, players would still be able to decide and there would be no outcry due to simply disabling expensive consoles...
Of course the Pay2Win league would need slightly higher rewards than the normal league, as Cryptic wants to create an incentive for players to actually buy Zen store ships and their special consoles. However, such a system still seems like the best compromise to me.
STOWiki admin.
*sighs and slaps himself* i do now...though, to be fair, it's a tiny signature so it's easy to miss
but that's half the fun! you can't execute glorious revenge against someone if you don't get blown up at least once
and if you get blown up more than once? time to re-evaluate your skills and boff setup, because what you have currently isn't working
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
When Diogene or any other experienced PvPer goes into a PUG, they dominate, and the PUG largely will have no clue how, nor will they learn much of anything. Then they get super frustrated and say "&#$^ this game's PvP".
but to be honest and without offending any other people, especially people having "problems" in pvp, don't listen to the majority of player.
i am really tired of reading comments like "cruisers need more damage + healing + turn rate + replicators + whatever".
there are some cruiser ingame, which can't be cracked by one or two escorts, even with one snb. on the other hand, there are cruisers with full health, which can be destroyed by an escort with one dhc volley and one overload
like naz already told, experienced pvp teams (knowing mechanics, good teamplay, decent build and setup, ...), can need several hours for one match.
my fleet had some weeks ago a league fight (no fleet shields allowed). the match ended after 45minutes and we "won" 5:3 (or something like this). nearly all kills were extremely high beam overload critshots (40k and more). without the timelimit it would have taken for sure at least 2 hours.
taking "top pvp teams" as scale, damage of _all_ ships should be increased or healing should be decreased. but the changes (only a few percentage points) should be done in several small steps.
and these changes won't help not so professional pvp player. a good pvp player in a desastrous pug v. another desastrous pug match will still decide the match. professional pvp player (with or without teamspeak, assist train and so on) will still roflstomp a "classic" pug team.
it is not the fault of the game mechanic nor of an experienced player, when some people don't try to improve their whole game play.
the best thing which can be done at this time by cryptic, are such projects like the pvp boot camp. there are a lot of people in pvp, doing meanwhile a much better job.
*throws 2 cents in the hat*
see, the thing is, those same experienced PvPers will be more than happy to explain in great detail exactly how they turned your ship into an expanding cloud of superheated plasma and potential ways to counter it, plus giving you general build advice to make your ship more effective, if you but ask them...something more people should be encouraged to do, instead of throwing a tantrum like a two year-old just because they get blown up once
if you PvP, you're going to get blown up; that's a fact of this game, but you don't have to keep blowing up if you're willing to ask for help
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Now, I apparently need a two week induction course, super elite gear that can take months of grinding to acquire, and one of only a small handful of viable cookie-cutter builds.
Hardly seems unreasonable to think the days when stuff actually worked were better than the days when the game's elite have to set up a school just to stop people rage quitting out of sheer frustration (though I greatly respect such a laudable effort BTW). Sure, I know those days had their own problems, but I still know which era I had more fun with.
In short, as a casual PvPer, I don't feel that 'ask for help' is a real solution to the problem (well... maybe in the case of people who don't care what they are flying, so long as it wins them matches, but some of us do care).
Lots of the hardcore pvpers that have the time, coach for the boot camp.
Others of us answer questions as best we can on Opvp.
I just spent 30min PMing someone that asked for help.
Ask and you will discover there are no dirty secrets... just answers to questions you have yet to ask.
But is this idea ever suggested?
The kinetic weapons, torpedo's and mines, deal only 25% of its damage to shields. This because they are, as the word says, kinetic weapons.
However, energy weapons deal 100% of their damage to shields AND hull (I think this is strange, since the hull can also absorps heat etc from beam weapons.). You can make the energy weapons the oposite of kinetic weapons, so that they would do less than 100% of their dameg to hull, like only 50%. That way escorts would need also torpedo's, which is kind of canon and the DPS of energy weapons can be increased a bit.
Then to get rid of the OP spike damage, you can think of implementing a few seconds "no fire cooldown"after a rapid fire volley, or increase the power drain from rapid fire.
@rudiefix Feds: Rudiefix / Thron / Opa
@rudiefix KDFs: Lill / Xifeidur / Dehr / Ugly
@rudiefix Roms (KDF alligned): Chicita
Indeed. When I want to troll people in kerrat or sometimes in arena withmy KDF tac/escort, i often say that it's easier than the tau dewa patrol. Seriously, my poor krenn destroyer can take a lot of damage, and two escorts aren't enough to take it down (unless there's a sci/escort), and most of the times i need 1 to 4 second or so to kill unexpecting players, and they just say you cheat and so on. In both cases this is too extreme.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
I've often heard it recommended that things should behave differently in PvE from PvP, with the best of intentions -- surely it would be simpler to work in an isolated environment to balance each? Well, perhaps it would in the beginning, by working from a cleaner slate, but I think the truth is that it is still one game. It is not as isolated as all that. Having separate behaviors literally doubles (or worse) the number of things that need to be considered for balance, and introduces the possibility of unintended bleed-through of effects from one to the other. It becomes very, very, very difficult indeed to determine if everything is working as desired in both situations.
And it must be taken into the account that, as the game continues to change (as it always will, with new gear, new abilities, new and unexplored design spaces), there will be emergent gameplay and gameplay trends that may not be foreseen through design. Any kind of tweaking must be continuously evaluated and reevaluated. That's the nature of gameplay, which can be highly sensitive to even small changes in abilities. Not that change is bad, by the way. Change is good, and the only way there can be improvement.
That said, I would welcome a Tribble environment test lab, where broad changes to how the game works could be experimented with, or specific adjustments to powers could be explored, with no commitment to bringing them in to the main game. I think this would benefit both PvE and PvP. But it does come with a considerable commitment of developer resources, to set it up and to run it.
I think the best 'fix' for everything is to simply implement a Intelligent queue system where people of equal gear/experience is queued up together.
As it stands now, there are a few premades active in a specific timezone, both premades queue up only knowing they are being queued up against pugs. (The system simply has 0% intelligence to wait for both fleets to have queued and then put them together. Just a pure example. (In this particular situation id rather wait 5/10 minutes to be queued against experience players, then do another round of pugstomping)
Lets say there are 10 good and long term pvp'ers playing, and 50/100 newbies or first time players, as it is now they are all scattered along the whole queue system and we all have to be lucky not going up a gainst a full newbie team, and the other newbie team unfortunately gets ququed up against very good players.
This is the FIRST step that has to be made, im 100% sure with such a queue system/player ranking system the first steps to making pvp better has been set, and this change will automatically make newbies stick to pvp longer because they are not getting insta vaped.
and also the long-term hardcore pvp'ers keep playing because they are not constantly queued up versus a team full of newbie pugs.
Like the man said, sounds like we're done here so I am going to go ahead and close the thread.
(Bort, if you need it reopened for some reason please let BranFlakes or one of us mods know.)
~Bluegeek
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