Crystalline Catastrophe Major Bug.

overkilltbp

Now I don't know if this has been posted in other pages before, but something is majorly wrong with how 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place rewards on completion are being rewarded on the Crystalline event.

Now before last Thursdays patch I had 2 tactical toons placing 1st every time I did it, and my Sci and Eng toons placed 2nd or 3rd.

After Thursday's patch, both my tacts haven't placed 1st at all and my damn Engineer has.

And today I got 2nd on my tact and another Eng in my team got first. What the hell is the deal with the change?

There's no way, my engineer is better then my tactical toon and he shouldn't be first at all? So wtf did they change, that screws tactical over in CE?

Mind you, I have 2 lvl 50 Tacts that placed 1st 3 days in a row then a patch and they haven't placed first at all, and my engineer toon has twice now, when he didn't before.

I think that's a little messed up.

Explanation needed.

a3001

They redid the point scoring system. I personally don't know the details, but I'm sure the guys after me will have some meaningful numbers.

baudl

They redid the point scoring system

nothing of that sort is suggested in the patchnotes.
I asume that other players out-dpsed your tac toon, and when you where with your engi you had people doing less dmg than you.
And now mind that DPS and DMG is not the only (though still the major) contributer to a scoring place.

in my opinion the performance of other people on your team is the most integral part of your scoring.
If you have somebody on your team doing simply more dmg, you'll be second...if you are top dog, you win.

kajofolf

baudl wrote: »

nothing of that sort is suggested in the patchnotes.
I asume that other players out-dpsed your tac toon, and when you where with your engi you had people doing less dmg than you.
And now mind that DPS and DMG is not the only (though still the major) contributer to a scoring place.

in my opinion the performance of other people on your team is the most integral part of your scoring.
If you have somebody on your team doing simply more dmg, you'll be second...if you are top dog, you win.

Well, you're wrong on most parts. Since the reintroduction of the Crystalline Entity the way places are calculated has been changed. It now also adds healing to it. Being a tank in a Healcruiser is the easiest way to get 1st place now.

As soon as there's someone like that in your game, you as a Tactical Escort won't have a chance to be first anymore. I tried it several times and even got 1st with a Kar'Fi and only blue MKXI stuff, while my Bug couldn't get 1st, when a good Recluse Pilot was in there with me.

tlamstrike

I've seen the same thing, I run 8 toons though it daily and I've never gotten it on one of my tacs, only once did I get it on an escort (Peghqu' class) and that PUG had NOOOO dps since it took 30 minutes to complete! :eek: I've thrown Breen ships, Fleet Aramatages, Kumaris, Fleet Defiants, (Fleet Ambassador as well) at the CE and none of those seem to get 1st place! I've gotten 1st on my Jem'hadar Dreadnought (eng) and Vesta (sci). With the way I set up ships I'm always putting out heals for damage resistance so they must be factoring in that in to who gets 1st now.

Personally I think it is a good thing in general, just might need some tweaking.

shockwave85

Hm, interesting. I did notice this last week right around the patch, but I didn't make the connection. Could've been a stealth change that wasn't in the notes. Wouldn't be the first time. PvP scores both for damage and healing, so it makes sense to score FAs the same. Otherwise it's unfairly in favor of the tacs. It is hella hard to get first as a Tac now though. I've mostly been getting 2nd-3rd since the change. I even failed to place twice. I'll give the healers a bone on this one though, they deserve it.

monsh

I've managed to get 1st on either ENG and TAC at least once per day among six toons. I have not done it with the ENG by virtue of healing though, as I'm not equipped to do so... just DPS. The only class that I've not been able to do better than 2nd with is SCI.

I suspect that people may simply have gotten better at it over the course of the event rather than some abstract change in how the even scores. Once you learn what earns you better scoring, it becomes a simple matter to improve. So, I'd conclude that the competition has simply gotten better, not that anything changed with the mechanics...of course I could be dead wrong too.:)

brigonos1

Fleet Defiant - Tactical Officer

14 Completions

11 First Place

3 Second Place

****************
It's possible that the times you didn't get first you were in the same event as me.

obertheromulan

reyan01 wrote: »

I managed a 1st place using my Sci in my Vesta, alternating between healing, crowd control and attack (using the Vesta consoles wherever possible).

And I say BRAVO to this - FANTASTIC move on Cryptic's part - why on earth shouldn't sci and eng be rewarded? It's definitely a small step in the right direction*.

*namely away from the 'Escorts online' attitude of late

Except for the stupid ways in which it is exploited. I've seen some pretty stupid ways of people hogging points. Like ramming shards on purpose just to get points from healing, while letting their team mates die so they can't out damage them. :rolleyes:

Oh well I still usually top score in my Engi Defiant, just CSV everything and throwing my limited Sci heals at people.
And the shards are pretty easily avoided with the speed it has during the gaps.

shockwave85

obertheromulan wrote: »

Except for the stupid ways in which it is exploited. I've seen some pretty stupid ways of people hogging points. Like ramming shards on purpose just to get points from healing, while letting their team mates die so they can't out damage them. :rolleyes:

Yeah, that does seem to be an issue. Somebody suggested in another thread to eat the shockwave attack on purpose just to heal it off. I guess people will find a way of exploiting anything.

dma1986

shockwave85 wrote: »

Yeah, that does seem to be an issue. Somebody suggested in another thread to eat the shockwave attack on purpose just to heal it off. I guess people will find a way of exploiting anything.

How's it an exploit just to be hit by an attack, and then to heal yourself afterwards?

If you can tank it successfully, you may as well stay in place pumping out damage for the duration of the shockwave. Of course, if you miscalculate the damage, or miss a damage mitigating buff and get blown apart, you have no-one to blame but yourself.

satinavian

When i am on one of my big carriers, i always eat the wave. Do you know, how long it takes to avoid them and coming back in shooting positions ? You would waste more time doing that than being killed and respawn. Not that it is enough to be killed anyway. Not everyone flies an escort or sci ship.

On my Eng with Ambessador i recently also started to do that, even if i am fast enough to get away. Because... it is simply not dangerous for him. One or two of four availible buffs are enough to reliably have 75% hull left. Why run ?

Only my raptor and destroyer captains try to get away. Which is easy enough for them. Might as well kill some tholians off in between.

Don't really care about scoring, still reliably land between 1-3 on all toons. Don't see much difference between SCI, TAC, Eng or shiptypes. Always blamed the randomness of pugs and that most of the other people probably don't have full rep sets and fleet weapons.

telbasta7386

When i am on one of my big carriers, i always eat the wave. Do you know, how long it takes to avoid them and coming back in shooting positions ? You would waste more time doing that than being killed and respawn. Not that it is enough to be killed anyway. Not everyone flies an escort or sci ship.

Doesnt really take much, I sit at about 9.8k from the entity while fighting it, and continue fighting during the energy buildup. Just before the wave is released, I go into reverse, get just a hair beyond that 10k range of the wave, and as soon as it goes off I switch back to forward impulse and get back in weapons range.

Considering, though, that the wave only disables your systems for about 1 seconds, I'm starting to think that - assuming you can take the damage - it's better to just eat the wave and keep firing. If you put up a shield and hull damage resist ability, even the lighter science vessels can handle the wave without going below 40% hull.





Anyways, on topic, the biggest thing about the CE - and the reason why science ships do so well on it - is because it's extremely vulnerable to kinetic damage, as are the shards. Your typical escort or cruiser has few, if any, kinetic damage abilities - limited to torpedoes, cutting beams, or ramming speed. A science vessel, however, has access to gravity well - which is an AoE that does heavy kinetic damage and pulls in targets.

My engineer flies a caitian atrox. If I pop my +25 all power levels ability (engineer specific), so I'm capped at 125 auxilliary power, and then use gravity well 3 on the entity, I'll typically see 49-51k crits pop up about once per second on the entity and any shards caught nearby - and not only is it doing ridiculous damage, it's also pulling in those shards and killing off small shards before they can damage or heal.


If only gravity well were that useful outside of CE.

gpgtx

i just take the wave in my gal-x not enough to kill me or even get me to 50% and does not take long to heal

i also target the tholians during that phase i just do not find it necessary to move out of the way

fraghul2000

It's just a bit frustrating that it doesn't become clear as to WHY we placed first, second or third in that event. I've run a 3-digit number of events so far, tracking and recording most of them with ACT, yet some of the runs and placements simply don't make any sense at all.

For example:

On one of my newer 50's that I drag through the event I've just gotten 4-5th places on the first couple of runs (as I pretty much expected). Then there was a 2-game streak where I suddenly placed first, only to drop back down to the normal 4-5th in the games afterwards. According to ACT, my healing, damage taken and dps was lower than that of other members' of my group, my playstyle/choice of targets/equipment didn't change between the events, yet I placed first in those two games.

fourxgamer

I've run the CE event on twelve characters and I've managed getting trophies for eight of them. Today, my weakest character, a Sci shooting skittle single cannons/turrets and a photon torpedo managed a win. I wasn't consciously trying to win, didn't think she had a chance. The only remarkable thing about that run was that a lot of the recipients of my heals were in the critical zone. All I had was HE and some shield heals available.

I would like to know the exact scoring formula because I can't believe I either out-damaged or out-healed the rest of the map. Is it possible I interacted with more distinct targets and got some sort of bonus for that? Do people that camp and only shoot at the CE win a lot or is it better to spread the damage around? I very rarely park.

My rate of winning 1st prize is near 15%, making top 3 is around 70% across all characters. All weapons are Mk XI blue or purple, non fleet. No Gravity well on any.

My winners include:
Sci - Chel Grett (Phased Polaron DHC)
Tac- Chel Grett (2) (Tetryon/Plasma DHC)
Eng - Chel Grett (Phaser DHC)
Eng - D'kora (Phaser Beam Arrays) no torps, yes FAW
Tac - Galor (Spiral Disruptor Beam Arrays/turrets) yes FAW
Eng - Assault Cruiser (Tetryon Beam Arrays) no FAW
Sci - Recon Science Vessel (Skittle cannons)

These have all placed 2nd at least once but not won:
Tac - Chel Grett (Disruptor DHC)
Tac - Chel Grett (Phaser DHC)
Sci - Chel Grett (Phaser DHC) (this character almost never places despite good effort)
Sci - Chel Grett (Disruptor DHC) no torps (habitually 2nd or 3rd)

kintisho

Eng. Oddy - 3x 1st places ??x 2nd and 3rd I didnt place 2x (out of the 14 whole) so it shows its group/dps/heal based

blackjackwidow

On the CE release date, Branflakes quoted Borticus regarding scoring

My guess is if there is any big difference now, perhaps they were able to test and work out the additional scoring options:

Originally Posted by borticuscryptic

We attempted to work in additional scoring mechanisms for "Damage Prevented on Self" as well as something for Controls/Debuffs, but were unable to get them in and tested before the event is scheduled to go live.

radkip

Healing's scoring counter does seem a bit out of whack... took my ground tac character (100k points into ground skills, the rest into "kill stuff fast" space skills) with no science or engineer consoles in a stock level 40 science ship. I've had absolutely no experience with healing in space ever, I barely even heal myself in STFs because I go for those delicious Go Down Fighting numbers... I've taken first place every single time I've been in there, except once when there was another healer involved.

Not that I'm complaining. Switching up to heal/gravity well is certainly more dynamic than pointing my ship forward, parking and shooting. I'm enjoying space PvE for the first time in years.

milandare

I just noticed that just participating in a Tholian's demise is worth points. My best Sci/Sci runs have included Gravity Wells, Photonic ShockWaves and passive FeedBack Pulse to annoy the Tholian spawns, although I still mostly concentrate kinetic damage on the CE. I am not much of a healer. Perhaps apply some AoE (and enjoy the aggro) instead of hammering one Tholian to bits. Tacs should be able to manage some of that.

admiralq1732

I've been doing it with my tac and eng toons, all using cruisers (since my armitage is a tet boat and utterly worthless here. I nearly always get 3rd place. note I don't dies as much and I'm a beamer for the most part.

chakitty

While it does depend a lot on the PUG you end up in, I've gotten every placement possible on my Eng and Tac toons. Eng is in a Vesta, does excelent DPS and a bunch of healing, primarily on self to keep from going pop, but the fermion field does heal others as well, so it's a bonus. Tac is in a non-fleet armatige. Using the torpedo turret console helps when in range of the shards as well as the main target. In that one I use EM to get out of the way once it starts absorbing so I can survive the shockwave and pound on Tholians for a bit before returning to the Entity.

Ohh, before I forget, use Feedback Pulse, the 'matter conversion beams' will trigger the pulses and a good aux level/skill set will see almost 75% damage reflected. And the multi-dimensional graviton shield will protect from shards and help damage the entity for over 100% reflected damage if speced right. Now the real beast with the Vesta is the deflector phaser, with the right consoles and skill spec I've gotten it to over 4.2K DPS by itself. With maxed consoles (Mine are Mk XI blues) I'm betting it'd hit 5K DPS or bloody close to it. A rapid fire on three aux dual heavy cannons plus the deflector phaser plus the two power level eng abilities (plus power and drain resist) will keep the DPS maxed without having anything like APA available.