The question I was asked was basically "my beams are not as good as cannons, can you make them better".
My feeling is that beams are fine. They are WAD and don't need to be made better. The outlier are the cannons, and, in a perfect world (see what I did there), I would bring cannon power drain in line with beams instead of making beams more powerful. The analogy I was suggesting is that if everything good, and one thing is OP, its healthier for the game to bring the OP item down in line with all the other items instead of raising all items to the level of the one OP item.
My comment was suggesting the question should evaluate what the real problem is.
I meant no subtext to suggest if enough players complained, there would be justification to nerf cannons.
Again, we have no plans to nerf cannons in any way. I cant make it any more clear than that.
Oh look, a dev saying no to balance - bookmarking this one.
Geko, no offense, but saying no to a cannon nerf IS saying no to balance. I should NOT be capable of a three-second Cube kill. Tac Escorts with full alpha strikes do more damage than fourteen elite-difficulty NPC Battleships (My tank can survive the final fight of Battleship Royal Rumble on Elite, but can't stand against a Defiant-R alpha strike? LOLNO).
Tacs need a nerf to their damage boosting abilities, since it makes them good at LITERALLY everything. Escorts need a nerf to their durability - they're not glassy enough, and I've heard of unkillable JHASes from my more PvP-avid friends. Engineers and (ESPECIALLY) Science Officers need buffs, as do their associated ship classes. Science BOff powers need a complete overhaul.
I know you have your May update soon... but after that, could you PLEASE devote a season to game balance? It's so bad, it warrants it (considering the Vesta has DPS and tankiness and the Kumari is capable of almost 10,000 DPS with no buffs at all). It's been neglected too long. Now, it's an absolutely massive tumor that needs to be excised. The game is broken. Fix it. Let the Tac pures rage, the game needs to be fair and open to variety.
The question I was asked was basically "my beams are not as good as cannons, can you make them better".
My feeling is that beams are fine. They are WAD and don't need to be made better. The outlier are the cannons, and, in a perfect world (see what I did there), I would bring cannon power drain in line with beams instead of making beams more powerful. The analogy I was suggesting is that if everything good, and one thing is OP, its healthier for the game to bring the OP item down in line with all the other items instead of raising all items to the level of the one OP item.
My comment was suggesting the question should evaluate what the real problem is.
I meant no subtext to suggest if enough players complained, there would be justification to nerf cannons.
Again, we have no plans to nerf cannons in any way. I cant make it any more clear than that.
Thanks for making an appearence!! As I said in one of my posts a lot of formites(myself being one) would like to see you comment more often, the interviews are less personal.
Oh look, a dev saying no to balance - bookmarking this one.
Geko, no offense, but saying no to a cannon nerf IS saying no to balance. I should NOT be capable of a three-second Cube kill. Tac Escorts with full alpha strikes do more damage than fourteen elite-difficulty NPC Battleships (My tank can survive the final fight of Battleship Royal Rumble on Elite, but can't stand against a Defiant-R alpha strike? LOLNO).
Tacs need a nerf to their damage boosting abilities, since it makes them good at LITERALLY everything. Escorts need a nerf to their durability - they're not glassy enough, and I've heard of unkillable JHASes from my more PvP-avid friends. Engineers and (ESPECIALLY) Science Officers need buffs, as do their associated ship classes. Science BOff powers need a complete overhaul.
I know you have your May update soon... but after that, could you PLEASE devote a season to game balance? It's so bad, it warrants it (considering the Vesta has DPS and tankiness and the Kumari is capable of almost 10,000 DPS with no buffs at all). It's been neglected too long. Now, it's an absolutely massive tumor that needs to be excised. The game is broken. Fix it.
This is some very good points. The Tac/escort power creep is getting out of control. If Al won't do a cannon nerf as he just said then some other changes to powers/abilities need to be made. There will be some people that might not like the tac/escort - "de-power" lets call it - but I think Al is the one dev who could step into that fire.
Oh look, a dev saying no to balance - bookmarking this one.
Geko, no offense, but saying no to a cannon nerf IS saying no to balance. I should NOT be capable of a three-second Cube kill. Tac Escorts with full alpha strikes do more damage than fourteen elite-difficulty NPC Battleships (My tank can survive the final fight of Battleship Royal Rumble on Elite, but can't stand against a Defiant-R alpha strike? LOLNO).
What!?!? After we get finally confirmation that the nerf bat is not coming out, you turn around and ask for it?!?!
Tacs need a nerf to their damage boosting abilities, since it makes them good at LITERALLY everything. Escorts need a nerf to their durability - they're not glassy enough, and I've heard of unkillable JHASes from my more PvP-avid friends. Engineers and (ESPECIALLY) Science Officers need buffs, as do their associated ship classes. Science BOff powers need a complete overhaul.
No... Tacticals do not need a nerf, in fact they're perfect, they're the most well balanced class in the game! The other two are just so... weird.
I mean, as of right now, they're both support classes. How bizarre is that? I don't know of a single MMO with five or less classes that has two classes devoted to support. That is just odd.
What!?!? After we get finally confirmation that the nerf bat is not coming out, you turn around and ask for it?!?!
I guess that's why we can't have nice things.
You're damned right I'm asking for it. I fly DPS, too. It's totally BLOODY game-breaking. Like I said, 3-second Cube-kills, and I haven't even got the best stuff yet!
We can't have nice things because the Tacs always smash it with their DHCs that are basically energy torpedoes now.
No... Tacticals do not need a nerf, in fact they're perfect, they're the most well balanced class in the game! The other two are just so... weird.
I mean, as of right now, they're both support classes. How bizarre is that? I don't know of a single MMO with five or less classes that has two classes devoted to support. That is just odd.
Tacticals are the most BROKEN class in the game. The other two seem weird because they're TRIBBLE compared to Tacs. A Tac can fly ANY ship, and it'll have almost an Escort's damage and either the crippling capacity of a Science Vessel or the survivability of a Cruiser. They can MORE THAN DOUBLE the damage of Science powers. Science and Engineers can't BEGIN to match them. They're so totally broken, it's RIDICULOUS.
And yes, I've seen all of that myself. My evidence is personal experience and 2 years of gameplay, as well as 6 max characters. I know my TRIBBLE, I fly DPS. I see the truth of us, centersolace, and I decree NO MORE!
Oh look, a dev saying no to balance - bookmarking this one.
Geko, no offense, but saying no to a cannon nerf IS saying no to balance. I should NOT be capable of a three-second Cube kill. Tac Escorts with full alpha strikes do more damage than fourteen elite-difficulty NPC Battleships (My tank can survive the final fight of Battleship Royal Rumble on Elite, but can't stand against a Defiant-R alpha strike? LOLNO).
Cannons are supposed to out DPS beams. DPS balance is not desired nor is it intended and even if he DID nerf cannon drain, cannons would still outdamage beams by a noticeable margin.
As for your example here, you're refereing to a Foundry mission.
Where the enemies are attacking eachother. You're not under fire from 14 targets and you're actually being helped by some of those enemies, who are firing on one another.
The analogy I was suggesting is that if everything good, and one thing is OP, its healthier for the game to bring the OP item down in line with all the other items instead of raising all items to the level of the one OP item.
In general, sure. In practice it's the opposite. High level PvP is already a very defensive game. A nerf to DHCs could break the game all together, while a (small) buff to beams could actually correct some of your recent design mistakes.
Cannons are supposed to out DPS beams. DPS balance is not desired nor is it intended and even if he DID nerf cannon drain, cannons would still outdamage beams by a noticeable margin.
As for your example here, you're refereing to a Foundry mission.
Where the enemies are attacking eachother. You're not under fire from 14 targets and you're actually being helped by some of those enemies, who are firing on one another.
Those enemies auto-focus me as soon as B:FAW goes up, thanks to maxed Threat Control. Trust me, I've taken the beating. Escorts out-DPS all of them.
As for cannons... when I buff up, each pulse hits for the yield of a photon torpedo. They're energy cannons. THAT needs to be fixed.
And Al said in the interview ALSO implied he's interested in seperating PvE and PvP more and talked about how one possibility is making PvP matches slower than PvE matches as an answer to the un-fun factor of getting hit with DPS spikes.
So in the long run, I think it's far more likely that PvP will be adjusted to function differently than PvE (mechanically different gameplay: different pacing, objectives, etc.) than it will that cruisers and escorts will be given equal DPS capabilities.
In general, players are supposed to be about 5x as powerful as NPCs, without taking into account players being smarter than AI.
You're also talking 1v1, which isn't supposed to be supported or balanced.
I'm talking one escort versus one cruiser. That Cruiser can sustain focused fire from fourteen elite battleships, can buff its damage resists to 60% for a considerable duration, and evade 75.5% of attacks. And I don't last a minute against a single Escort. THAT is bad. THAT is game-breaking. By all rights, I should be able to withstand that in a balanced game. But this game is nowhere near balanced.
You're crazy. Gozer will always be my favorite dev and Geko has a long way to go to reach the heights that Gozer achieved.
Gozer's biggest highlight for me was telling the players they were wrong about there being a content drought (during the time when DStahl commented on the content drought ... keep that in mind), by saying content was continually produced during that time period. The content he was referencing? Things like the Counselor Troi uniform and Section 31 uniform.
Hey! CONTENT!
Geko just doesn't like smelly min-maxxers and their ability to break systems by playing the game. Gozer, he actively trolled the players by telling them content creation included uniforms put on the cash store. Hah.
That's why he'll remain my favorite dev. Well that and the fact that he created barely playable, buggy "content" and some of the least enjoyable end-game scenarios of any MMO I've ever played. STFs were pretty wretched for a long, long time.
But while we're discussing our favorites, Wishstone will forever remain my favorite Cryptic employee. Of all-time!
I miss the iron hand of Wishstone quelching discussion and the sharing of information. The volunteer Mods do an ok job of moving topics here and there, but Wishstone had the forums on lockdown. Literally.
I'm talking one escort versus one cruiser. That Cruiser can sustain focused fire from fourteen elite battleships, can buff its damage resists to 60% for a considerable duration, and evade 75.5% of attacks. And I don't last a minute against a single Escort. THAT is bad. THAT is game-breaking. By all rights, I should be able to withstand that in a balanced game. But this game is nowhere near balanced.
1v1 isn't a benchmark for balancing.
If Cryptic wanted to save themselves grief on this, they'd just disallow matches that are less than 5v5.
1v1 is not something that should be balanced. Not between ship classes. Not between ship types. Not between ship builds.
The fact that a 1v1 battle is imbalanced doesn't establish any feedback that Cryptic can or should act on.
At best, it might provide feedback on how team matchmaking should work.
Dueling is a feature "for the lols", not something you're going to see taken absolutely seriously in terms of balance considerations.
And Al said in the interview ALSO implied he's interested in seperating PvE and PvP more and talked about how one possibility is making PvP matches slower than PvE matches as an answer to the un-fun factor of getting hit with DPS spikes.
High level PvP is slow enough as it is, with two very good teams taking up to an hour to get to fifteen kills. Instead of slowing things down even more in a pointless attempt to appease care bears who die to fast a better solution would be to make a toggle that auto-balances shields. That would help players who are either too new or too slow to figure out how to bind redistribute shields to space bar a way to not be so viciously farmed.
The question I was asked was basically "my beams are not as good as cannons, can you make them better".
My feeling is that beams are fine. They are WAD and don't need to be made better. The outlier are the cannons, and, in a perfect world (see what I did there), I would bring cannon power drain in line with beams instead of making beams more powerful. The analogy I was suggesting is that if everything good, and one thing is OP, its healthier for the game to bring the OP item down in line with all the other items instead of raising all items to the level of the one OP item.
My comment was suggesting the question should evaluate what the real problem is.
I meant no subtext to suggest if enough players complained, there would be justification to nerf cannons.
Again, we have no plans to nerf cannons in any way. I cant make it any more clear than that.
The real problem is extremely simple and what needs fixed.
DHCs fire once per cycle and every shot is at the proper power level.
All other cannons fire twice per cycle and half the shots are at proper power level.
Beams fire four times per cycle and only a quarter of the shots are at proper power level.
Power overcapping can mitigate the beam and standard cannon drawback to an extent. Weapon power drain resist helps them as well but it still helps DHCs at the same time.
The fix is simple. Make weapons remember their power level from the first shot and have it continue to use that power level for all of the shots.
Done, fixed.
This is the issue. That it really has nothing at all to do with the -10 power or -12 power or anything like that but instead the way the game does it's math. Or to be more precise when it does it's math.
To put this in context, six beams will fire 19 of the 24 shots with a weapon power bonus of 65 provided initial weapon power is 125 and no mitigating factors such as overcapping or drain resist.
There's some curious aggro in this thread between players to players in not understanding why some might be upset with certain things said, not said, etc, etc, etc.
If you've got a player that has no interest in the KDF, has no interest in Sci, loved ENT, has Xindi posters over their beds...
...and you've got a player that deleted their Fed toon once they unlocked KDF, enjoys the potential shenanigans that playing a Bill Nye with his dirty bag o' tricks could provide, thought ENT was the worst thing ever on TV, and has to Google Xindi each and every time somebody mentions them...
...they're going to have very different reactions to the question being asked about additional KDF Sci Vessels, the mention of (yawn) yet another Battle Cruiser, and mentioning a Xindi 3pack.
It's entirely possible that the two of them could end up in a slap fight (sic)...
The same thing happens over and over again on so many things out there. Different things matter to different people - just because it doesn't matter to you, doesn't mean it doesn't matter to them.
So yeah, there tends to be quite a bit in various Geko interviews that tend to upset certain players out there...there are obviously things he cares about and does not care about. He doesn't hide that...why anybody would expect people that do care about things that he does not care about not to be upset...is just mind-boggling.
Sure, some of them can go over the top... and within forum rules, ahem - have at them.
Others though, you can't say they can't be disappointed... where do you get off trying to say something like that, eh?
The question I was asked was basically "my beams are not as good as cannons, can you make them better".
My feeling is that beams are fine. They are WAD and don't need to be made better. The outlier are the cannons, and, in a perfect world (see what I did there), I would bring cannon power drain in line with beams instead of making beams more powerful. The analogy I was suggesting is that if everything good, and one thing is OP, its healthier for the game to bring the OP item down in line with all the other items instead of raising all items to the level of the one OP item.
My comment was suggesting the question should evaluate what the real problem is.
I meant no subtext to suggest if enough players complained, there would be justification to nerf cannons.
Again, we have no plans to nerf cannons in any way. I cant make it any more clear than that.
If you make the upcoming playable D'deridex the best ship in the game... then, you can haz raise.
Ultimately, the problem is that there should never be a situation where one cruiser and one escort fight.
Cant be helped. Wether in a CnH, arena or kerrat its gonna happen.
It just shouldnt be the benchmark for balance because victory comes down to more than just ship type or weapons.
Skill and knowledge of the game is the bigger factor.
My feeling is that beams are fine. They are WAD and don't need to be made better. The outlier are the cannons, and, in a perfect world (see what I did there), I would bring cannon power drain in line with beams instead of making beams more powerful.
I disagree that cannons are an outlier.
I think what we have is an issue with how the listed power drain interacts with weapon cycles.
Please see bareel's post for what would be a fix to other weapons, without increasing their DPV/DPS numbers or tweaking any other weapon's drain values (not the actual issue, although I have my doubts most posters actually understand it as clearly as bareel has posted it).
The real problem is extremely simple and what needs fixed.
DHCs fire once per cycle and every shot is at the proper power level.
All other cannons fire twice per cycle and half the shots are at proper power level.
Beams fire four times per cycle and only a quarter of the shots are at proper power level.
Power overcapping can mitigate the beam and standard cannon drawback to an extent. Weapon power drain resist helps them as well but it still helps DHCs at the same time.
The fix is simple. Make weapons remember their power level from the first shot and have it continue to use that power level for all of the shots.
Done, fixed.
This is the issue. That it really has nothing at all to do with the -10 power or -12 power or anything like that but instead the way the game does it's math. Or to be more precise when it does it's math.
To put this in context, six beams will fire 19 of the 24 shots with a weapon power bonus of 65 provided initial weapon power is 125 and no mitigating factors such as overcapping or drain resist.
This would pretty much fix a lot of weapons, and does not require them to improve their actual Damage Per Volley or Damage Per Second numbers.
This would be a "fix" in my eyes, to something that is not working correctly.
If Cryptic wanted to save themselves grief on this, they'd just disallow matches that are less than 5v5.
1v1 is not something that should be balanced. Not between ship classes. Not between ship types. Not between ship builds.
The fact that a 1v1 battle is imbalanced doesn't establish any feedback that Cryptic can or should act on.
At best, it might provide feedback on how team matchmaking should work.
Dueling is a feature "for the lols", not something you're going to see taken absolutely seriously in terms of balance considerations.
You're LITERALLY saying that one type of ship should be more powerful, for some arbitrary decision. NO. Every type of ship SHOULD be equal, in its own role. Right now, DPS is king for 2 reasons. 1: DPS is over-the-top. 2: The other rolls can't do their jobs as well. Tanks can't tank a dead enemy, science ships can't lock down a warp core breach.
Keep in mind as well, the Lakota and the Defiant were pretty evenly matched in the show. That means that ships, even by CANON, should be relatively equal in strength.
You're arguing that this game doesn't need any balance, that DPS should be supreme for some arbitrary decision. Lack of balance is a game killer. You want to kill this game.
Also, what if two friends want to slug it out for fun? Just say "too bad, get 8 strangers?" NO. 1v1 stays. Tacs being OP goes. This game lives. Or do you hate this game so much that you'd see it die out of spite?
You're damned right I'm asking for it. I fly DPS, too. It's totally BLOODY game-breaking. Like I said, 3-second Cube-kills, and I haven't even got the best stuff yet!
We can't have nice things because the Tacs always smash it with their DHCs that are basically energy torpedoes now.
Tacticals are the most BROKEN class in the game. The other two seem weird because they're TRIBBLE compared to Tacs. A Tac can fly ANY ship, and it'll have almost an Escort's damage and either the crippling capacity of a Science Vessel or the survivability of a Cruiser. They can MORE THAN DOUBLE the damage of Science powers. Science and Engineers can't BEGIN to match them. They're so totally broken, it's RIDICULOUS.
And yes, I've seen all of that myself. My evidence is personal experience and 2 years of gameplay, as well as 6 max characters. I know my TRIBBLE, I fly DPS. I see the truth of us, centersolace, and I decree NO MORE!
I agree entirely. I have flown every ship type with every captain type and it has gotten to the point of stupid.
I can solo an entire side of KASE with time to spare with my Tac/Defiant. That includes killing the probes.
I clear probe spawns in ISE as they are spawned on the first side. ACT quoted me at over 60k DPS while doing so that is insane.
I could go on but their is no point. The simple fact is thus:
The math is broken
1: Why is tank reliant upon stacking resists and regen instead of raw HP having a more significant effect?
2: Why do tacs enjoy math that multiplies while everyone else is stuck with simple addition? (IE APA gives .5 bonus damage, GDF gives .5 that becomes 1.25 moar damage...)
The game math does not hold up very well to power creep. At all.
Al, you would be right about beams if this was pre F2P. but since then the power creep from duty officer system with its various defensive buffs like the shield distribution officer, the borg set, the stf sets, especially the maco shield, but they are all vastly better then normal shields, the rep system defensive bonuses to regeneration and proc healing, the elite fleet shields that people can effortlessly cap resistence with, and the embasy consoles that proc heals too, and fleet ships being the new baseline, all these things are a direct nerf to the effect of pressure damage, and everyone has at least some of these things.
this inclusion of passive and active healing has made escorts, as long as they can move quickly and concentrate on staying out of narrow fireing arcs, tank much more effectively then cruisers that tank only be out healing damage and cant out maneuver damage at all. at the same time those escorts are using the only weapons that can damage. not the most powerful weapons, like they should have, literally the only weapons that can damage.
because of the shield resistance level the average pvper has now, pressure damage from all energy weapons, save spiky DHCs, is literally worthless. basic EPtS cycling and shield distribution with all the passives out paces pressure damage from these weapons, no mater how strong that pressure is.
heres why:
DHC spike can remove a single shield faceing and start dealing hull damage in a single CRF fireing cycle. each fireing cycle, it can completely remove the shield strength that gets refilled, and deal more hull damage. this is also the only opportunity there is to use torpedoes effectively. torpedoes are worthless unless pared with DHCs. most DHC user kills are to ships with more then 50% of their total shields left.
non DHCs deal their dps gradually, at a rate that will not breach the shield facing your shooting at, as long as your opponent is cycleing the most basic of heals and distributing his shields. for a non DHC user to get to the hull, he would have to shoot through 4 shield facings worth of shields before he ever can touch the hull. any cross healing will completely undo minutes of pressure damage, used to beat all those shields down.
thats why all non spike damage, that cant surgically remove 1 shield facing at a time, is worthless. you could buff beam arrays to have higher DPS then DHCs, and it wouldn't mater, they arent dealing spike damage, they would still have less effect then DHCs. its THAT bad. you could only know this though if you have seen it first hand in pvp, NPCs dont have all these passives that have been added, but they should. then everyone would know just how bad it is now.
solution:
change the fireing cycle of beam arrays, dual beam banks, and single cannons to have a similar 2 shots per cycle fireing cycle like DHCs have. dual cannons, maybe increase their DPS by 25%, they might be sorta ok then. the weapons would be on an even footing with DHCs in effect then, only the damage magnitude would be different. pressure no longer works in game, thanks to the power creep, so everything needs to have an element of spike. just buffing the DPS of non DHC weapons would be pointless, it wont change anything, its all about how they deal damage per cycle that has an actual effect.
this change to beam arrays and the other weapons has to happen, before the power creeps even more, and pressure damage is again directly nerfed as a result.
change the fireing cycle of beam arrays, dual beam banks, and single cannons to have a similar 2 shots per cycle fireing cycle like DHCs have. dual cannons, maybe increase their DPS by 25%, they might be sorta ok then.
DHCs fire once per cycle. Once. The log reports two hits, one for shield and one for hull, but it is a single shot and hit AFAIK.
One versus one is a joke.
If I go against a noob in Kerrat chances are I win due to my meager knowledge giving me an advantage over them.
If I go against say a Panda then chances are I lose for the same reason, my skill doesnt add up to thiers.
Tacs are not OP. NPCs in PvE are wimps and explode at a glance thats why that tac has killed the target before the Cruiser can tank it or the Science debuff it.
Make PvE require skill and thought to overcome instead of just PewPew.
In PvP its skill of build, knowledge of game mechanics and the timing to prebuff properly before attacking.
You're LITERALLY saying that one type of ship should be more powerful, for some arbitrary decision. NO. Every type of ship SHOULD be equal, in its own role. Right now, DPS is king for 2 reasons. 1: DPS is over-the-top. 2: The other rolls can't do their jobs as well. Tanks can't tank a dead enemy, science ships can't lock down a warp core breach.
Keep in mind as well, the Lakota and the Defiant were pretty evenly matched in the show. That means that ships, even by CANON, should be relatively equal in strength.
You're arguing that this game doesn't need any balance, that DPS should be supreme for some arbitrary decision. Lack of balance is a game killer. You want to kill this game.
Also, what if two friends want to slug it out for fun? Just say "too bad, get 8 strangers?" NO. 1v1 stays. Tacs being OP goes. This game lives. Or do you hate this game so much that you'd see it die out of spite?
If two friends want to slug it out for fun, what they're doing is agreeing to do something FOR FUN. I can install STO on some of the new higher end tablets but that doesn't make it supported.
I'm arguing that the best way to balance is to look at an aggregate of who wins 5v5 matches with non-direct combat objectives thrown in like Capture the Flag.
I'm not aware of any MMO that WANTS 1v1 balance or, necessarily, fighting balance. And you can have factors that are important to overall balance, like survivability, healing support, coordination, and AoE damage.
Say you've got two ships. One of them only does 50% the single target damage of the other ship but can hit 20 targets instead of 2. Who's imbalanced there?
Dueling is not what MMOs are going to balance PvP around. Dueling is dumb fun.
Matches in teams and the combinational power of teams is what PvP will be based around.
5 escorts with no healing abilities may beat 5 cruisers if they split up and 1v1 it but I doubt that will happen EVER if the cruisers heal and coordinate.
Comments
Oh look, a dev saying no to balance - bookmarking this one.
Geko, no offense, but saying no to a cannon nerf IS saying no to balance. I should NOT be capable of a three-second Cube kill. Tac Escorts with full alpha strikes do more damage than fourteen elite-difficulty NPC Battleships (My tank can survive the final fight of Battleship Royal Rumble on Elite, but can't stand against a Defiant-R alpha strike? LOLNO).
Tacs need a nerf to their damage boosting abilities, since it makes them good at LITERALLY everything. Escorts need a nerf to their durability - they're not glassy enough, and I've heard of unkillable JHASes from my more PvP-avid friends. Engineers and (ESPECIALLY) Science Officers need buffs, as do their associated ship classes. Science BOff powers need a complete overhaul.
I know you have your May update soon... but after that, could you PLEASE devote a season to game balance? It's so bad, it warrants it (considering the Vesta has DPS and tankiness and the Kumari is capable of almost 10,000 DPS with no buffs at all). It's been neglected too long. Now, it's an absolutely massive tumor that needs to be excised. The game is broken. Fix it. Let the Tac pures rage, the game needs to be fair and open to variety.
Thanks for making an appearence!! As I said in one of my posts a lot of formites(myself being one) would like to see you comment more often, the interviews are less personal.
Thanks.
This is some very good points. The Tac/escort power creep is getting out of control. If Al won't do a cannon nerf as he just said then some other changes to powers/abilities need to be made. There will be some people that might not like the tac/escort - "de-power" lets call it - but I think Al is the one dev who could step into that fire.
What!?!? After we get finally confirmation that the nerf bat is not coming out, you turn around and ask for it?!?!
I guess that's why we can't have nice things.
No... Tacticals do not need a nerf, in fact they're perfect, they're the most well balanced class in the game! The other two are just so... weird.
I mean, as of right now, they're both support classes. How bizarre is that? I don't know of a single MMO with five or less classes that has two classes devoted to support. That is just odd.
We can't have nice things because the Tacs always smash it with their DHCs that are basically energy torpedoes now.
Tacticals are the most BROKEN class in the game. The other two seem weird because they're TRIBBLE compared to Tacs. A Tac can fly ANY ship, and it'll have almost an Escort's damage and either the crippling capacity of a Science Vessel or the survivability of a Cruiser. They can MORE THAN DOUBLE the damage of Science powers. Science and Engineers can't BEGIN to match them. They're so totally broken, it's RIDICULOUS.
And yes, I've seen all of that myself. My evidence is personal experience and 2 years of gameplay, as well as 6 max characters. I know my TRIBBLE, I fly DPS. I see the truth of us, centersolace, and I decree NO MORE!
Cannons are supposed to out DPS beams. DPS balance is not desired nor is it intended and even if he DID nerf cannon drain, cannons would still outdamage beams by a noticeable margin.
As for your example here, you're refereing to a Foundry mission.
Where the enemies are attacking eachother. You're not under fire from 14 targets and you're actually being helped by some of those enemies, who are firing on one another.
In general, sure. In practice it's the opposite. High level PvP is already a very defensive game. A nerf to DHCs could break the game all together, while a (small) buff to beams could actually correct some of your recent design mistakes.
Those enemies auto-focus me as soon as B:FAW goes up, thanks to maxed Threat Control. Trust me, I've taken the beating. Escorts out-DPS all of them.
As for cannons... when I buff up, each pulse hits for the yield of a photon torpedo. They're energy cannons. THAT needs to be fixed.
So in the long run, I think it's far more likely that PvP will be adjusted to function differently than PvE (mechanically different gameplay: different pacing, objectives, etc.) than it will that cruisers and escorts will be given equal DPS capabilities.
How many escorts?
In general, players are supposed to be about 5x as powerful as NPCs, without taking into account players being smarter than AI.
You're also talking 1v1, which isn't supposed to be supported or balanced.
I'm talking one escort versus one cruiser. That Cruiser can sustain focused fire from fourteen elite battleships, can buff its damage resists to 60% for a considerable duration, and evade 75.5% of attacks. And I don't last a minute against a single Escort. THAT is bad. THAT is game-breaking. By all rights, I should be able to withstand that in a balanced game. But this game is nowhere near balanced.
I love this post and appreciate the sarcasm.
1v1 isn't a benchmark for balancing.
If Cryptic wanted to save themselves grief on this, they'd just disallow matches that are less than 5v5.
1v1 is not something that should be balanced. Not between ship classes. Not between ship types. Not between ship builds.
The fact that a 1v1 battle is imbalanced doesn't establish any feedback that Cryptic can or should act on.
At best, it might provide feedback on how team matchmaking should work.
Dueling is a feature "for the lols", not something you're going to see taken absolutely seriously in terms of balance considerations.
I can agree Tac Captain abilities should not buff science but escorts are not everything ships and Tacs are not the devil.
R.I.P
High level PvP is slow enough as it is, with two very good teams taking up to an hour to get to fifteen kills. Instead of slowing things down even more in a pointless attempt to appease care bears who die to fast a better solution would be to make a toggle that auto-balances shields. That would help players who are either too new or too slow to figure out how to bind redistribute shields to space bar a way to not be so viciously farmed.
The real problem is extremely simple and what needs fixed.
DHCs fire once per cycle and every shot is at the proper power level.
All other cannons fire twice per cycle and half the shots are at proper power level.
Beams fire four times per cycle and only a quarter of the shots are at proper power level.
Power overcapping can mitigate the beam and standard cannon drawback to an extent. Weapon power drain resist helps them as well but it still helps DHCs at the same time.
The fix is simple. Make weapons remember their power level from the first shot and have it continue to use that power level for all of the shots.
Done, fixed.
This is the issue. That it really has nothing at all to do with the -10 power or -12 power or anything like that but instead the way the game does it's math. Or to be more precise when it does it's math.
To put this in context, six beams will fire 19 of the 24 shots with a weapon power bonus of 65 provided initial weapon power is 125 and no mitigating factors such as overcapping or drain resist.
If you've got a player that has no interest in the KDF, has no interest in Sci, loved ENT, has Xindi posters over their beds...
...and you've got a player that deleted their Fed toon once they unlocked KDF, enjoys the potential shenanigans that playing a Bill Nye with his dirty bag o' tricks could provide, thought ENT was the worst thing ever on TV, and has to Google Xindi each and every time somebody mentions them...
...they're going to have very different reactions to the question being asked about additional KDF Sci Vessels, the mention of (yawn) yet another Battle Cruiser, and mentioning a Xindi 3pack.
It's entirely possible that the two of them could end up in a slap fight (sic)...
The same thing happens over and over again on so many things out there. Different things matter to different people - just because it doesn't matter to you, doesn't mean it doesn't matter to them.
So yeah, there tends to be quite a bit in various Geko interviews that tend to upset certain players out there...there are obviously things he cares about and does not care about. He doesn't hide that...why anybody would expect people that do care about things that he does not care about not to be upset...is just mind-boggling.
Sure, some of them can go over the top... and within forum rules, ahem - have at them.
Others though, you can't say they can't be disappointed... where do you get off trying to say something like that, eh?
If you make the upcoming playable D'deridex the best ship in the game... then, you can haz raise.
Cant be helped. Wether in a CnH, arena or kerrat its gonna happen.
It just shouldnt be the benchmark for balance because victory comes down to more than just ship type or weapons.
Skill and knowledge of the game is the bigger factor.
R.I.P
I agree that beams should not be as good as cannons.
I disagree that cannons are an outlier.
I think what we have is an issue with how the listed power drain interacts with weapon cycles.
Please see bareel's post for what would be a fix to other weapons, without increasing their DPV/DPS numbers or tweaking any other weapon's drain values (not the actual issue, although I have my doubts most posters actually understand it as clearly as bareel has posted it).
This would pretty much fix a lot of weapons, and does not require them to improve their actual Damage Per Volley or Damage Per Second numbers.
This would be a "fix" in my eyes, to something that is not working correctly.
You're LITERALLY saying that one type of ship should be more powerful, for some arbitrary decision. NO. Every type of ship SHOULD be equal, in its own role. Right now, DPS is king for 2 reasons. 1: DPS is over-the-top. 2: The other rolls can't do their jobs as well. Tanks can't tank a dead enemy, science ships can't lock down a warp core breach.
Keep in mind as well, the Lakota and the Defiant were pretty evenly matched in the show. That means that ships, even by CANON, should be relatively equal in strength.
You're arguing that this game doesn't need any balance, that DPS should be supreme for some arbitrary decision. Lack of balance is a game killer. You want to kill this game.
Also, what if two friends want to slug it out for fun? Just say "too bad, get 8 strangers?" NO. 1v1 stays. Tacs being OP goes. This game lives. Or do you hate this game so much that you'd see it die out of spite?
I agree entirely. I have flown every ship type with every captain type and it has gotten to the point of stupid.
I can solo an entire side of KASE with time to spare with my Tac/Defiant. That includes killing the probes.
I clear probe spawns in ISE as they are spawned on the first side. ACT quoted me at over 60k DPS while doing so that is insane.
I could go on but their is no point. The simple fact is thus:
The math is broken
1: Why is tank reliant upon stacking resists and regen instead of raw HP having a more significant effect?
2: Why do tacs enjoy math that multiplies while everyone else is stuck with simple addition? (IE APA gives .5 bonus damage, GDF gives .5 that becomes 1.25 moar damage...)
The game math does not hold up very well to power creep. At all.
this inclusion of passive and active healing has made escorts, as long as they can move quickly and concentrate on staying out of narrow fireing arcs, tank much more effectively then cruisers that tank only be out healing damage and cant out maneuver damage at all. at the same time those escorts are using the only weapons that can damage. not the most powerful weapons, like they should have, literally the only weapons that can damage.
because of the shield resistance level the average pvper has now, pressure damage from all energy weapons, save spiky DHCs, is literally worthless. basic EPtS cycling and shield distribution with all the passives out paces pressure damage from these weapons, no mater how strong that pressure is.
heres why:
DHC spike can remove a single shield faceing and start dealing hull damage in a single CRF fireing cycle. each fireing cycle, it can completely remove the shield strength that gets refilled, and deal more hull damage. this is also the only opportunity there is to use torpedoes effectively. torpedoes are worthless unless pared with DHCs. most DHC user kills are to ships with more then 50% of their total shields left.
non DHCs deal their dps gradually, at a rate that will not breach the shield facing your shooting at, as long as your opponent is cycleing the most basic of heals and distributing his shields. for a non DHC user to get to the hull, he would have to shoot through 4 shield facings worth of shields before he ever can touch the hull. any cross healing will completely undo minutes of pressure damage, used to beat all those shields down.
thats why all non spike damage, that cant surgically remove 1 shield facing at a time, is worthless. you could buff beam arrays to have higher DPS then DHCs, and it wouldn't mater, they arent dealing spike damage, they would still have less effect then DHCs. its THAT bad. you could only know this though if you have seen it first hand in pvp, NPCs dont have all these passives that have been added, but they should. then everyone would know just how bad it is now.
solution:
change the fireing cycle of beam arrays, dual beam banks, and single cannons to have a similar 2 shots per cycle fireing cycle like DHCs have. dual cannons, maybe increase their DPS by 25%, they might be sorta ok then. the weapons would be on an even footing with DHCs in effect then, only the damage magnitude would be different. pressure no longer works in game, thanks to the power creep, so everything needs to have an element of spike. just buffing the DPS of non DHC weapons would be pointless, it wont change anything, its all about how they deal damage per cycle that has an actual effect.
this change to beam arrays and the other weapons has to happen, before the power creeps even more, and pressure damage is again directly nerfed as a result.
DHCs fire once per cycle. Once. The log reports two hits, one for shield and one for hull, but it is a single shot and hit AFAIK.
If I go against a noob in Kerrat chances are I win due to my meager knowledge giving me an advantage over them.
If I go against say a Panda then chances are I lose for the same reason, my skill doesnt add up to thiers.
Tacs are not OP. NPCs in PvE are wimps and explode at a glance thats why that tac has killed the target before the Cruiser can tank it or the Science debuff it.
Make PvE require skill and thought to overcome instead of just PewPew.
In PvP its skill of build, knowledge of game mechanics and the timing to prebuff properly before attacking.
R.I.P
If two friends want to slug it out for fun, what they're doing is agreeing to do something FOR FUN. I can install STO on some of the new higher end tablets but that doesn't make it supported.
I'm arguing that the best way to balance is to look at an aggregate of who wins 5v5 matches with non-direct combat objectives thrown in like Capture the Flag.
I'm not aware of any MMO that WANTS 1v1 balance or, necessarily, fighting balance. And you can have factors that are important to overall balance, like survivability, healing support, coordination, and AoE damage.
Say you've got two ships. One of them only does 50% the single target damage of the other ship but can hit 20 targets instead of 2. Who's imbalanced there?
Dueling is not what MMOs are going to balance PvP around. Dueling is dumb fun.
Matches in teams and the combinational power of teams is what PvP will be based around.
5 escorts with no healing abilities may beat 5 cruisers if they split up and 1v1 it but I doubt that will happen EVER if the cruisers heal and coordinate.
are you sure? you can literally see 2 sets of bolts durring a normal cycle