Of course the past was better. This should be self-explanatory under the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics: The net entropy of a closed system must always increase. As such, the game must necessarily progressively move to a worse and worse state until it ceases to be worth playing at all. That's how things have always been in every game. Net improvement is physically impossible. Every attempt to make things better must necessarily make other things worse, and the net change must be worse than if nothing had been done at all. That's how the universe works.
Thats making a very large assumption that a game is a closed system. Most are not and the average mmo is very much not. Its far more about a company's stance on code maintenance that affects product quality as time goes on. So many financial portions want to call rework bad and a money waste, when actually code rework is incredibly important in a constantly changing program.
If you dont rework and redo code as a large program continues to grow you get spaghetti code and eventually you get jenga code and then you get an unsupportable program.
Anyway glad to see mav suports me that 5 seconds of a shield hole is more than enough for an escort to do its work. Or at least burn so many powers that next time round its gonna work.
The fact that the hole is predictable unless you take eptx Doffs is almost as bad as the hole being there.
The real problem is, the lead designer is completely incompetent.
As long as they continue to allow Captain Gecko to have free reign over the game mechanics, things will not improve.
And I will continue not spending my hard earned money on this game.
When your solutions are blatantly obviously having the opposite effect and you keep doing them anyway (First it was by buffing heals, then it was by buffing resistance, then it was a complete removal of effective sci capability from the game, and now it's by forcing -short- windows in resistance values), you're either a complete moron or you just don't care.
RPing has overcome common sense, and math. the 'emergency' in the name was just to much for them and they finally had to react and ruin the up time and make nice tidy exploitable holes in it. and the snowball of other negative effects too
RPing has overcome common sense, and math. the 'emergency' in the name was just to much for them and they finally had to react and ruin the up time and make nice tidy exploitable holes in it. and the snowball of other negative effects too
Thing is, to an extent, imho, etc, etc, etc...they've made it less of an Emergency Power than it was previously in a sense - because now it's 20s additional buffs rather than 5s additional buffs. They've made the 2x EPtX more of a standard thing with that. 20s up, 20s up, >5s down, 20s up, 20s up...
...it's inconsistent though, because of the way it treats EPtX/EPtY builds as well as 1x EPtX builds.
The only folks they've actually made it an "Emergency" power for is the folks running the single EPtX. They've gone from 15s of downtime to 25s of downtime (unless they're going to use those DOFF slots for a single ability). They've gone from 30s up 15s down to 20s up to 25s down.
The EPtX/EPtY folks...well, it got harder...but it may still be manageable with a bunch of micromanagement and changed builds.
Will the 2x EPtX folks notice that >5s gap? That's pretty damn easy to cover. Yes, you can get popped in that time if you don't prepare for it...but that's just going to require a little thought.
The changes are just kind of mind-boggling and inconsistent.
If they want them to be Emergency Powers...then make them Emergency Powers (whether it's 1x EPtX, 2x EPtX, or EPtX/EPtY). If they don't want to make them Emergency Powers, then change the name and don't make them Emergency Powers for A, somewhat Emergency Powers for B, and not really Emergency Powers for C.
The real problem is, the lead designer is completely incompetent.
As long as they continue to allow Captain Gecko to have free reign over the game mechanics, things will not improve.
And I will continue not spending my hard earned money on this game.
When your solutions are blatantly obviously having the opposite effect and you keep doing them anyway (First it was by buffing heals, then it was by buffing resistance, then it was a complete removal of effective sci capability from the game, and now it's by forcing -short- windows in resistance values), you're either a complete moron or you just don't care.
/agree. Mav, I do not believe I've read a more truthful post on these forums.
The real problem is, the lead designer is completely incompetent.
As long as they continue to allow Captain Gecko to have free reign over the game mechanics, things will not improve.
And I will continue not spending my hard earned money on this game.
When your solutions are blatantly obviously having the opposite effect and you keep doing them anyway (First it was by buffing heals, then it was by buffing resistance, then it was a complete removal of effective sci capability from the game, and now it's by forcing -short- windows in resistance values), you're either a complete moron or you just don't care.
RPing has overcome common sense, and math. the 'emergency' in the name was just to much for them and they finally had to react and ruin the up time and make nice tidy exploitable holes in it. and the snowball of other negative effects too
Well, now using EPTx and EPTy will in fact create a 10s emergency.:P
Where this will really annoy me is on ships where I don't have two Eng ensign slots, and was using EPtS1 and 2.
_________________________________________________ [Kluless][Kold][Steel Heels][Snagtooth] [Louis Cipher][Outta Gum][Thysa Kymbo][Spanner][Frakk] [D'Mented][D'Licious]
Joined October 2009. READ BEFORE POSTING
The real problem is, the lead designer is completely incompetent.
As long as they continue to allow Captain Gecko to have free reign over the game mechanics, things will not improve.
And I will continue not spending my hard earned money on this game.
When your solutions are blatantly obviously having the opposite effect and you keep doing them anyway (First it was by buffing heals, then it was by buffing resistance, then it was a complete removal of effective sci capability from the game, and now it's by forcing -short- windows in resistance values), you're either a complete moron or you just don't care.
A few times I've waited until you took a breath in a Gecko rant to get some build advice or something from you. I figured it couldn't be that bad and went about my merry pew. Then I listened to the last podcasts and finally realized that yes, it is exactly that bad.
I want a podcast with Gecko answering questions from non-sycophants who will challenge him when he makes incorrect statements about fundamental game mechanics.
_______________ CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that? Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
I want a podcast with Gecko answering questions from non-sycophants who will challenge him when he makes incorrect statements about fundamental game mechanics.
C'mon, the 4:20:19 podcast was awesome. It was the perfect summary of Geko, no?
Rather than having him say one thing in one podcast and something else in another...it was long enough for him to do both in a single podcast! Multiple times! It was epic!
carebears talking to carebears. it was a combination of face palming and amusing hearing them talking about pvp, dynamics, 'beams', and all that. jesse, he pops on opvp some times to talk, he waid the same thing ive been saying, that was nice to hear. i told him to go back to systems and set them strait! so i almost think they do know what the problems are, at least the guys under geko, but they are to parralized to make sweeping corrective change.
thats what i think we would except though actually, a bit of a reset. 1 change here and 1 change there not only pisses a lot of people off, but legitimately does more harm then good.
carebears talking to carebears. it was a combination of face palming and amusing hearing them talking about pvp, dynamics, 'beams', and all that. jesse, he pops on opvp some times to talk, he waid the same thing ive been saying, that was nice to hear. i told him to go back to systems and set them strait! so i almost think they do know what the problems are, at least the guys under geko, but they are to parralized to make sweeping corrective change.
thats what i think we would except though actually, a bit of a reset. 1 change here and 1 change there not only pisses a lot of people off, but legitimately does more harm then good.
One thing I would like to chime in about as far as 'balance' goes.
Changes for the purpose of balance will only cause tons of anger by the players in two situations where you should worry.
1) The fix hurts more things than it helps. This is just sloppy design though.
2) The fix goes against the current game design philosophy. Once again sloppy design.
#2 is a bit messy and let me explain very briefly. Most MMO design balance philosophy revolves around the so called holy trinity and creating 'roles' for the various players of a team. STO PvP does have this to an extent and that is why you see far fewer complaints about beams in here than one does from PvE focused players. So when they do something that harms that 'role' philosophy PvPers get upset and rightfully so. A quick and dirty example of that would be if cruisers became the 'goto damage' ship. Or how engineers used to be considered solid healers but now not so much and the debate on how to fix them which has drastically different options depending on how one wants them fixed.
I really think the #2 problem is the largest one faced by STO. Does STO push the trinity? Yes and no. I mean in some ways it does, in others it simply does not. It also lacks the tools in the instant queue system to support a proper trinity without making the game much less casual friendly and more of a hardcore game experience.
I know that is kinda rambly but in all honesty let us use League of Legends as an example. Very rarely is a balance change complained about by the community, nor do they loose players, because of issue #2 it is more often because of #1. The exception to this is when they changed the definition of support characters from providing heavy sustain (healing) to being more of a utility/buffer style. That was a good thing though.
Also one big misconception I think many people are having, developers included, when looking at the EPtX powers is very simple. I do not choose between EPtS and EPtW. Those are not the options in reality. In reality I need a way to keep my ship alive under fire and to restore lost shields. The choice really is how do I do that without sacrificing much. That is why EPtS is so desirable. TSS is great, but not as strong at long term sustain. Additionally if I do take TSS instead of EPtS then I cannot slot a HE or TB in that slot.
So the choice in reality is EPtW or TB in an escort. If that makes no sense I'll try to clarify later.
One thing I would like to chime in about as far as 'balance' goes.
Changes for the purpose of balance will only cause tons of anger by the players in two situations where you should worry.
1) The fix hurts more things than it helps. This is just sloppy design though.
2) The fix goes against the current game design philosophy. Once again sloppy design.
Which is why the changes to EptX are so bizarre.
I can understand them TRIBBLE up and using the wrong CDs for their initial attempt at the new versions of EPtX. But then their second try was either also a mistake or a deliberate attempt to limit you add a hefty "opportunity cost" to using 2 EPtX types. If it was a deliberate attempt I can almost see them slapping each other's backs over what a "clever" way it was to force players to make "fun choices", after all, that's how Blizz does it right?
As it stands, the game is being built one way, but the design team seems to want to go another way. But unlike say.... WoW, that gets to change it all up between real Xpacs, STO doesn't have that luxury. STO can't just invalidate the stuff people have bought. Well, they could but their sales would take a nosedive.
To me its pretty clear that the way forward for ships in general would be to do more damage instead of being extra tanky or be hybrids like full carrier sci vesels. With the current EPtX changes they seem to be moving away from that. The scary thought is that they want to move away from the STF model and move everything towards the ROM rep model.... that'd be pretty horrible but on the other hand those brain dead missions require so little DPS that whatever changes they made to EPtX would be inconsequential.
Here's a thought. Why not release a C-store consumable that would let players change a Lt or lower Boff station to an Universal one on a ship? Limit it to one per ship (and allow for a way for it be reset back to what it was originally if so desired) and let people fix their own cruisers. Heck, it'd let them fix any ship they liked but had that one bad boff station. A ship like the Galaxy would benefit from such an option while not making it OP. Sure, it'd benefit all ships but ships like the Galaxy that are gimped far and above others would benefit the most.
I read this thread and here u bash this Geko and whatnot and it shames me cuz I have no clue who your talking about. Can someone fill me in?? I haven't been playing STO that long:D
I read this thread and here u bash this Geko and whatnot and it shames me cuz I have no clue who your talking about. Can someone fill me in?? I haven't been playing STO that long:D
He, whos name shall not be spoken....
"Cryptic Studio’s Jack Emmert (2010): Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
Sorry for the prolonged silence on the EPtX front, but until we had made a final decision on what we were going to do with these powers, I didn't want to risk miscommunication on the issue. We are planning to revert the cooldowns of these abilities back to their Holodeck recharge times, while maintaining the QoL upgrades to Weapons, Auxiliary, and Engines which are currently on Tribble. The duration of all Emergency Power buffs will be 30 seconds across the board.
While we do want to create situations in which players choose between survivability and damage and make conscious choices about what powers they use when, we've decided it's more important right now to make all Emergency Power choices viable than it is to disrupt the metagame that's evolved around builds with ensign-level Engineering powers. My hope is that now, every time you get an Engineering Bridge Officer with an Emergency Power ability of any sort, you will feel like you could conceivably benefit from slotting that officer without retraining them. We may make further adjustments to these powers in the future as part of our ongoing quest to keep the game fun for all players, but for now, this is what we're planning on doing.
-AdjudicatorHawk
just in case anyone misses this
cruisers are not nerfed! infant they will come out a bit ahead with this change. speed tanking escorts will be more powerful, and a slow mover might get even more powerful. sci ships that use damage control can get buffed sci stats, and DPS cruisers just got a bump. its a good day for everyone
I saw some math conducted on the boards that demonstrated the notion that the new EPtW ability actually decreased DPS due to the diminished power bonus (like none) to Weapon Power compared to the current trait... despite the damage bonus.
Anybody verify this or can otherwise speak to this based on experience on Tribble?
I saw some math conducted on the boards that demonstrated the notion that the new EPtW ability actually decreased DPS due to the diminished power bonus (like none) to Weapon Power compared to the current trait... despite the damage bonus.
Anybody verify this or can otherwise speak to this based on experience on Tribble?
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Comments
Thats making a very large assumption that a game is a closed system. Most are not and the average mmo is very much not. Its far more about a company's stance on code maintenance that affects product quality as time goes on. So many financial portions want to call rework bad and a money waste, when actually code rework is incredibly important in a constantly changing program.
If you dont rework and redo code as a large program continues to grow you get spaghetti code and eventually you get jenga code and then you get an unsupportable program.
Anyway glad to see mav suports me that 5 seconds of a shield hole is more than enough for an escort to do its work. Or at least burn so many powers that next time round its gonna work.
The fact that the hole is predictable unless you take eptx Doffs is almost as bad as the hole being there.
As long as they continue to allow Captain Gecko to have free reign over the game mechanics, things will not improve.
And I will continue not spending my hard earned money on this game.
When your solutions are blatantly obviously having the opposite effect and you keep doing them anyway (First it was by buffing heals, then it was by buffing resistance, then it was a complete removal of effective sci capability from the game, and now it's by forcing -short- windows in resistance values), you're either a complete moron or you just don't care.
Thing is, to an extent, imho, etc, etc, etc...they've made it less of an Emergency Power than it was previously in a sense - because now it's 20s additional buffs rather than 5s additional buffs. They've made the 2x EPtX more of a standard thing with that. 20s up, 20s up, >5s down, 20s up, 20s up...
...it's inconsistent though, because of the way it treats EPtX/EPtY builds as well as 1x EPtX builds.
The only folks they've actually made it an "Emergency" power for is the folks running the single EPtX. They've gone from 15s of downtime to 25s of downtime (unless they're going to use those DOFF slots for a single ability). They've gone from 30s up 15s down to 20s up to 25s down.
The EPtX/EPtY folks...well, it got harder...but it may still be manageable with a bunch of micromanagement and changed builds.
Will the 2x EPtX folks notice that >5s gap? That's pretty damn easy to cover. Yes, you can get popped in that time if you don't prepare for it...but that's just going to require a little thought.
The changes are just kind of mind-boggling and inconsistent.
If they want them to be Emergency Powers...then make them Emergency Powers (whether it's 1x EPtX, 2x EPtX, or EPtX/EPtY). If they don't want to make them Emergency Powers, then change the name and don't make them Emergency Powers for A, somewhat Emergency Powers for B, and not really Emergency Powers for C.
/agree. Mav, I do not believe I've read a more truthful post on these forums.
soooooo much this ^^
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Well, now using EPTx and EPTy will in fact create a 10s emergency.:P
[Kluless][Kold][Steel Heels][Snagtooth]
[Louis Cipher][Outta Gum][Thysa Kymbo][Spanner][Frakk]
[D'Mented][D'Licious]
Joined October 2009. READ BEFORE POSTING
I want a podcast with Gecko answering questions from non-sycophants who will challenge him when he makes incorrect statements about fundamental game mechanics.
CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that?
Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
C'mon, the 4:20:19 podcast was awesome. It was the perfect summary of Geko, no?
Rather than having him say one thing in one podcast and something else in another...it was long enough for him to do both in a single podcast! Multiple times! It was epic!
thats what i think we would except though actually, a bit of a reset. 1 change here and 1 change there not only pisses a lot of people off, but legitimately does more harm then good.
One thing I would like to chime in about as far as 'balance' goes.
Changes for the purpose of balance will only cause tons of anger by the players in two situations where you should worry.
1) The fix hurts more things than it helps. This is just sloppy design though.
2) The fix goes against the current game design philosophy. Once again sloppy design.
#2 is a bit messy and let me explain very briefly. Most MMO design balance philosophy revolves around the so called holy trinity and creating 'roles' for the various players of a team. STO PvP does have this to an extent and that is why you see far fewer complaints about beams in here than one does from PvE focused players. So when they do something that harms that 'role' philosophy PvPers get upset and rightfully so. A quick and dirty example of that would be if cruisers became the 'goto damage' ship. Or how engineers used to be considered solid healers but now not so much and the debate on how to fix them which has drastically different options depending on how one wants them fixed.
I really think the #2 problem is the largest one faced by STO. Does STO push the trinity? Yes and no. I mean in some ways it does, in others it simply does not. It also lacks the tools in the instant queue system to support a proper trinity without making the game much less casual friendly and more of a hardcore game experience.
I know that is kinda rambly but in all honesty let us use League of Legends as an example. Very rarely is a balance change complained about by the community, nor do they loose players, because of issue #2 it is more often because of #1. The exception to this is when they changed the definition of support characters from providing heavy sustain (healing) to being more of a utility/buffer style. That was a good thing though.
Also one big misconception I think many people are having, developers included, when looking at the EPtX powers is very simple. I do not choose between EPtS and EPtW. Those are not the options in reality. In reality I need a way to keep my ship alive under fire and to restore lost shields. The choice really is how do I do that without sacrificing much. That is why EPtS is so desirable. TSS is great, but not as strong at long term sustain. Additionally if I do take TSS instead of EPtS then I cannot slot a HE or TB in that slot.
So the choice in reality is EPtW or TB in an escort. If that makes no sense I'll try to clarify later.
Which is why the changes to EptX are so bizarre.
I can understand them TRIBBLE up and using the wrong CDs for their initial attempt at the new versions of EPtX. But then their second try was either also a mistake or a deliberate attempt to limit you add a hefty "opportunity cost" to using 2 EPtX types. If it was a deliberate attempt I can almost see them slapping each other's backs over what a "clever" way it was to force players to make "fun choices", after all, that's how Blizz does it right?
As it stands, the game is being built one way, but the design team seems to want to go another way. But unlike say.... WoW, that gets to change it all up between real Xpacs, STO doesn't have that luxury. STO can't just invalidate the stuff people have bought. Well, they could but their sales would take a nosedive.
To me its pretty clear that the way forward for ships in general would be to do more damage instead of being extra tanky or be hybrids like full carrier sci vesels. With the current EPtX changes they seem to be moving away from that. The scary thought is that they want to move away from the STF model and move everything towards the ROM rep model.... that'd be pretty horrible but on the other hand those brain dead missions require so little DPS that whatever changes they made to EPtX would be inconsequential.
Here's a thought. Why not release a C-store consumable that would let players change a Lt or lower Boff station to an Universal one on a ship? Limit it to one per ship (and allow for a way for it be reset back to what it was originally if so desired) and let people fix their own cruisers. Heck, it'd let them fix any ship they liked but had that one bad boff station. A ship like the Galaxy would benefit from such an option while not making it OP. Sure, it'd benefit all ships but ships like the Galaxy that are gimped far and above others would benefit the most.
He, whos name shall not be spoken....
just in case anyone misses this
cruisers are not nerfed! infant they will come out a bit ahead with this change. speed tanking escorts will be more powerful, and a slow mover might get even more powerful. sci ships that use damage control can get buffed sci stats, and DPS cruisers just got a bump. its a good day for everyone
Also I think I will add the EPtW to my sci boat, and get some extra damage from the DBB
Good times
Anybody verify this or can otherwise speak to this based on experience on Tribble?
That should soon be old news. See upcoming changes (that basically bring EP powers back where they were while buffing EPtW, EPtA and EPtE as they were on Tribble): http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=651071
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!