test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Catch 22
verusisrael
Member Posts: 93 Arc User
Warning: wall of text rant (I'v been holding this in for awhile)
When the game launched I was scared of the pvp queues. Bad men in evil ships would take me out back and do horrible things to me. My only previous mmo experience was city of heroes and I sure as hell didn't pvp in that game. I didn't queue for about a year and a half because I was so vastly outmatched. I really didn't have a handle on what was affected. I was overwhelmed by the options presented to me. The fact you can basically train boffs with any skill at that level was too much for my simple mind to comprehend. But finally fed side grew tiring and I made a kdf. I wanted to RP the part of a pirate a bit (I was a nausicaan) so I started hanging out in kerrat. I started making friends with some of the most successful ships I saw every night. I would ask them questions about their builds. Then I bought a garumba. As I saw it, if I wanted to have the output I was looking for that was something I would have to buy. Now my life had purpose. That ship single-handedly brought me back into the game after about a year of basically ignoring it. It is one of the sexist ships in the game and I love it. But when ever I saw a ship with higher numbers than me at the end of the match I PMed them asking for advice. After making some good friends I finally joined a fleet, and I'v been happily with them ever since. We aren't the best, or the most well known, but they are some smart guys who I'm happy to call my friends. I have had such an amazing time with this game because of pvp.
The number of strictly pve players vastly outnumbers the number of pvp interested folk. Just look at the queues. You can see the numbers. Of course we have all read the threads about why this is so I wont waste your time laying them all out here again. I just look around at other successful mmo/moba type games, or any popular e-sports in general and its all pvp based. People do play starcraft for the single player, but come-on....you didn't by it for the campaign did you? Ya...diablo 3 is really fun single player :P My point is that if STO wishes to grow it should start with the rabid pvp fans. If they could just balance the game right and give us possibly some form of ranking system so matches could be more evenly matched and more fun maybe they would make more money off of the expanding base of players. IDK...call me crazy, but ignoring the pvp community to cater to the whims of pve'rs will hasen the demise of my beloved game. If you look at the numbers and say: we should ignore pvp because no one does it, you shouldn't be surprised to see dwindling sales because you are ignoring the demographic who have proven (as evidence in other games) that they will pay your bills.
And let me be clear: I FREAKING LOVE THIS GAME.
I have fantasized about being a captain of a starfleet vessel since I was very young. My playset in the backyard growing up was my bridge of the enterprise. There are some REALLY talented writers coming up with some of the story lines. I was blown away at launch by how every 10 levels felt like a season consisting of different episodes. They took me on a tour of a universe I was familiar with. Everytime I went over the neutral zone my TRIBBLE tightened and I was freaking out because years of watching star trek had conditioned me to NEVER GO OVER LINE. All the little nods and winks to past episodes were so brilliantly handled. and while I am dismayed that this story tramples ALL OVER the far superior book universe (caeliars anyone?) I still found it utterly engrossing. I got goosebumps playing the episode "temporal ambassador" I had yesterdays enterprise on vhs and watched that **** like every day. Seriously, I am addicted to this game because it basically lets me spend my free time pretending I'm a captain. I'm too much of a nerd to pass this up.
HOWEVER....I have fallen asleep grinding stfs to get all the gear I need for pvp. I can sit there and just mindlessly drone away at targets. Pvp is the only fun and contently interesting part of this game. It changes DAILY and is always challenging me to be better. The PVE is just straight up boring to me now. I know I'm just venting at this point but I guess I need to shout at the wall to get this all out. I have so many good things to say about the game but it still looks like utter TRIBBLE 3 years in. When I installed guild wars 2 I just sat there and stared at the screen I had forgotten how good games could look. Why do doors have to have a height clearance of 20' in this game??!?
This game will continue to stagnate if it continues to ignore a demographic of money spending pvp interested gamers. If cryptic wants Riot LoL money they need to fix the only last interesting part of the game.
Ah...but how do you do this? More game types? Balancing? Less cheese? idk I personally dont use ams, but I dont fault someone who does. Its just something you have to be prepared for, and if you're not you will prolly get screwed. Energy drain builds? Some of my favorite to run. If the goal is to kill someone and you do it really well...I'm not mad. Sure it sucks and nobody likes losing, but thats the nature of pvp. adapt or die. If you can pull of insane numbers no one else can pull off you should be proud of your accomplishment, of course exploits is another matter haha. Unfortunately due to the broken nature of many of the things in this game exploits are something we have to contend with and this will turn off the paying pvp demographic I'm talking about. I'm sure the guys at cryptic are a bit burnt out at this point. To still be coming up with quality product like this has to be hard (I use the term quality loosely). And if any of them by chance get through this wall of text, honestly from the bottom of my heart: thank you for this game. But please...stop doing everything in your power to turn me off from this game! I'm starting to question wither spending money in the star trek universe is worth putting up with some of the broken stuff that is supposed to pass as "working as intended" Its not more powerful and insane ships and lock boxes that will bring people back, its a fun balanced game that is accessible and doesn't **** your face when you queue for pvp for the first time.
TL/DR: nobody queues because its unbalanced, its unbalanced because nobody queues.
god....is my catch 22 metaphor working at all? It makes sense in my head but I can't freaking type it out right haha. oy...you figure it out. you're smart people
Happy hunting!
When the game launched I was scared of the pvp queues. Bad men in evil ships would take me out back and do horrible things to me. My only previous mmo experience was city of heroes and I sure as hell didn't pvp in that game. I didn't queue for about a year and a half because I was so vastly outmatched. I really didn't have a handle on what was affected. I was overwhelmed by the options presented to me. The fact you can basically train boffs with any skill at that level was too much for my simple mind to comprehend. But finally fed side grew tiring and I made a kdf. I wanted to RP the part of a pirate a bit (I was a nausicaan) so I started hanging out in kerrat. I started making friends with some of the most successful ships I saw every night. I would ask them questions about their builds. Then I bought a garumba. As I saw it, if I wanted to have the output I was looking for that was something I would have to buy. Now my life had purpose. That ship single-handedly brought me back into the game after about a year of basically ignoring it. It is one of the sexist ships in the game and I love it. But when ever I saw a ship with higher numbers than me at the end of the match I PMed them asking for advice. After making some good friends I finally joined a fleet, and I'v been happily with them ever since. We aren't the best, or the most well known, but they are some smart guys who I'm happy to call my friends. I have had such an amazing time with this game because of pvp.
The number of strictly pve players vastly outnumbers the number of pvp interested folk. Just look at the queues. You can see the numbers. Of course we have all read the threads about why this is so I wont waste your time laying them all out here again. I just look around at other successful mmo/moba type games, or any popular e-sports in general and its all pvp based. People do play starcraft for the single player, but come-on....you didn't by it for the campaign did you? Ya...diablo 3 is really fun single player :P My point is that if STO wishes to grow it should start with the rabid pvp fans. If they could just balance the game right and give us possibly some form of ranking system so matches could be more evenly matched and more fun maybe they would make more money off of the expanding base of players. IDK...call me crazy, but ignoring the pvp community to cater to the whims of pve'rs will hasen the demise of my beloved game. If you look at the numbers and say: we should ignore pvp because no one does it, you shouldn't be surprised to see dwindling sales because you are ignoring the demographic who have proven (as evidence in other games) that they will pay your bills.
And let me be clear: I FREAKING LOVE THIS GAME.
I have fantasized about being a captain of a starfleet vessel since I was very young. My playset in the backyard growing up was my bridge of the enterprise. There are some REALLY talented writers coming up with some of the story lines. I was blown away at launch by how every 10 levels felt like a season consisting of different episodes. They took me on a tour of a universe I was familiar with. Everytime I went over the neutral zone my TRIBBLE tightened and I was freaking out because years of watching star trek had conditioned me to NEVER GO OVER LINE. All the little nods and winks to past episodes were so brilliantly handled. and while I am dismayed that this story tramples ALL OVER the far superior book universe (caeliars anyone?) I still found it utterly engrossing. I got goosebumps playing the episode "temporal ambassador" I had yesterdays enterprise on vhs and watched that **** like every day. Seriously, I am addicted to this game because it basically lets me spend my free time pretending I'm a captain. I'm too much of a nerd to pass this up.
HOWEVER....I have fallen asleep grinding stfs to get all the gear I need for pvp. I can sit there and just mindlessly drone away at targets. Pvp is the only fun and contently interesting part of this game. It changes DAILY and is always challenging me to be better. The PVE is just straight up boring to me now. I know I'm just venting at this point but I guess I need to shout at the wall to get this all out. I have so many good things to say about the game but it still looks like utter TRIBBLE 3 years in. When I installed guild wars 2 I just sat there and stared at the screen I had forgotten how good games could look. Why do doors have to have a height clearance of 20' in this game??!?
This game will continue to stagnate if it continues to ignore a demographic of money spending pvp interested gamers. If cryptic wants Riot LoL money they need to fix the only last interesting part of the game.
Ah...but how do you do this? More game types? Balancing? Less cheese? idk I personally dont use ams, but I dont fault someone who does. Its just something you have to be prepared for, and if you're not you will prolly get screwed. Energy drain builds? Some of my favorite to run. If the goal is to kill someone and you do it really well...I'm not mad. Sure it sucks and nobody likes losing, but thats the nature of pvp. adapt or die. If you can pull of insane numbers no one else can pull off you should be proud of your accomplishment, of course exploits is another matter haha. Unfortunately due to the broken nature of many of the things in this game exploits are something we have to contend with and this will turn off the paying pvp demographic I'm talking about. I'm sure the guys at cryptic are a bit burnt out at this point. To still be coming up with quality product like this has to be hard (I use the term quality loosely). And if any of them by chance get through this wall of text, honestly from the bottom of my heart: thank you for this game. But please...stop doing everything in your power to turn me off from this game! I'm starting to question wither spending money in the star trek universe is worth putting up with some of the broken stuff that is supposed to pass as "working as intended" Its not more powerful and insane ships and lock boxes that will bring people back, its a fun balanced game that is accessible and doesn't **** your face when you queue for pvp for the first time.
TL/DR: nobody queues because its unbalanced, its unbalanced because nobody queues.
god....is my catch 22 metaphor working at all? It makes sense in my head but I can't freaking type it out right haha. oy...you figure it out. you're smart people
Happy hunting!
Post edited by verusisrael on
0
Comments
/10char.
While some people may not queue because of the unbalanced nature of the game, that nobody queues is not the cause of the game being as unbalanced as it is.
This is the most casual, I mean - it's insanely casual - mindbogglingly super casual game that I have ever played. The intended audience for the game...well, to elaborate on that would result in all sorts of pesky messages from mods about how those weren't very nice things to say about fellow humans.
/cough
Some people complain about some games being akin to shooting fish in a barrel. I used to joke that STO was like dropping a grenade in a barrel of fish. The game has gone so far beyond that...to cater to certain players...that it's more akin to ordering a planetary bombardment from a fleet of hundreds of ships to kill a single goldfish in a styrofoam cup.
/cough
When the game's PvE content can be completed easily by the average player (or a group of average players) in nothing more than RA ships and whatever haphazard gear they picked up along the way...
...and the vast majority of the game's playerbase in their shiny Zen/Fleet ships geared out the wahzoo with everything from under every Sun in the Star Trek Universe still complain about the difficulty...
...well, you've lost the vast majority of the playerbase as potential folks to queue up.
These folks are lost. Not going to happen. Even if you were to remove all that stuff and put limits on what could be used in PvP, you're not going to get those folks...it's too hard.
Course now, if you were to remove stuff/limit stuff - you might get the average player. That average player that avoids the queues like the plague as is, because they simply can't compete with the above average player that's using the same stuff.
So that might be a way to get them into the queues.
Of course, doing so might cause you to lose some of the folks in the queues as they realize that they're not quite as skilled as they were...and...their egos simply cannot take that.
While there is a group that plug on through, creating their own rules and playing by them - muddling along - even many of those folks eventually give up, give in, and just walk away from the game.
Cryptic knows this. You can look at the way the game's being developed to see this. You can see what's been mentioned in regard to PvP areas...disabling certain things. Cryptic is weighing their options on how to grow PvP to keep customers and even gain some, knowing that they might lose a few and that the majority couldn't give a rat's...
...but yeah, I'd have to disagree that the game is unbalanced because folks don't queue. The game is unbalanced because of the intended market for the game...simple as that.
To this point here is a polite example, my 9 year old plays STO and can hold her own in Pve, I don't let her pvp or queue team missions, she isn't quick enough and her build isn't sufficient. How do people feel about the game being built that a 4th grader understands it? On one hand it is a fun thing for me to share with her, on the other it seems that the simplicity would be a turn off.
Now this is not a comparison to other MMOs because the only other things we play are Sims3, Kerbal Space, and Minecraft.
Hey, if I were 9 years old again I'd be much better at this game.
[Kluless][Kold][Steel Heels][Snagtooth]
[Louis Cipher][Outta Gum][Thysa Kymbo][Spanner][Frakk]
[D'Mented][D'Licious]
Joined October 2009. READ BEFORE POSTING
Make a ladder system to match players based on skill.
The queue already takes many minutes to launch a game just by matching everyone with everyone.
If it only launched games of similarly skilled players, then it would never launch.
Somehow, if we want to see any progress in PvP, we need to increase the interest and number of players.
@DevolvedOne
She's a great little wingman, i am very proud.
However, I have a personal belief that, even if PvP players are a minority in an MMO, PvP is still critical to the game. PvP is sort of a sanity check on whether the game 'works' in a meaningful way.
I hope PvP gets a serious overhaul at some point, but I'm not too optimistic, and I suspect we are pretty far down a road of no return.
[Kluless][Kold][Steel Heels][Snagtooth]
[Louis Cipher][Outta Gum][Thysa Kymbo][Spanner][Frakk]
[D'Mented][D'Licious]
Joined October 2009. READ BEFORE POSTING
It's still being quietly hyped for S9-S10. Though, it's been lumped in with endgame improvements, no?
Laughed so hard at this! Very true.
Depends on the kind of reward system, and how things are rewarded. I like the idea of unlocking vanity items, as opposed to a leaderboard system that other people have been pushing for.
I suggest, when a player first gets the mission to talk to Calhoun and Mazza at K-7, the game allows the player to choose what kind of captain they wish to be. "Do you want to gain marks through damage dealing, survivability, team healing, CC, etc?" You get a choice on what you want to gain marks on. Then, as you PvP, you can gain those marks based on how many points of team healing you do.
And in order to push the escorts back down, Cryptic could balance the mark achievement by slanting it in favour of roles that are not pure damage dealer. (ex. damage dealers get 1 mark per 100,000 points of damage dealt. healers would get 1 mark per 80,000 points of healing.) This would help balance out the problems associated with too many damage dealers, and encourage people to try a different style or role in PvP.
Missing the good ol' days of PvP: Legacy of Romulus to Season 9
My List of Useful Links, Recently Updated November 25 2017!
Yep, good point.
Again, true.
They've painted themselves into a bizarre corner, and the fault lays squarely at their doorstep.
They have taken the MMO [ gear progress > raid/endgame progress > repeat with new tier] progression model and warped it into something that makes no sense.
They sell us new powers and gear or make us grind stores to buy it in, usually more powerful or unbalanced compared to most of what was released before...
...but they do not add new, harder content for that gear progression to feed off of.
If they did, I could actually have a bit more forgiveness for the constant power creep.
Instead this power creep is just poisoning their own well, making already easy-breezy content even easier.
That's what they tell themselves.
That's what they tell us.
Those are the words they say.
However their other words say a lot more.
They don't PvP, they don't like PvP and part of me gets the feeling that some of them really don't like PvPers.*
I have no proof of that, other than some off hand comments from interviews, but its still my opinion.
I'm not sure why they continually allow this segment of their market to languish and deteriorate, one that has been proven repeatedly to spend and remain engaged at an intense level.
*I do admit readily that the PvP segment often contains a lot of rancor but at the same time a good portion of that rancor comes from 3 years of stagnation, neglect, "unfun" game mechanics allowed to run rampant and an unrelenting barrage of constant metagame shifts and a degradation of virtual equity.
That's kind of what led to my thoughts earlier about who the game this game is intended for...
Though I'm not a fan of the "gear check" carrot on a stick progression, there's still a logic there, eh?
Gear A to do Content B, Content B rewards Gear B so you can do Content C, Content C rewards Gear C so you can do Content D, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc...
STO on the other hand, well - we're on what, Gear L and still on Content A? There's been additional Content A added, sure...but no Content B.
Rather than adding Content B, they add Grindsinks. You keep doing Content A, so you can Grind stuff for Grinds ABC. It gets easier and easier to do Content A, so there are Timegates on the Grinds. Even then, certain of the Grinds are still done within a month - wham, bam, hrmmm.
There's the big Grind of a Starbase - but it was somewhat out of reach of many - so introduce Grind K to make it easier for smaller Fleets to do that Grind.
They're still doing Content A over and over and over and over and over though.
But again, they've spoken about S9-S10 being about endgame improvements...including PvP...so it's a case of waiting and seeing, eh?
Meanwhile, Grind R(isa) starts today...
yea.
Agreed.
I don't prefer that kind of system necessarily, but as you say it does at least have some kind of a logic to it.
Again, agree completely.
I understand part of that is driven to "cast a wider net" as Captain Gecko has put it (just like action movies that don't require much translation to export), but what I don't understand is why they willingly let the smaller, more dedicated, "high-engagement" player segments wither on the vine?
please raise your hand if your a pvper that was allowed to test it. those that have leaked pictures of the things stats and build, surly in violation of thier nondisclosure agreement, not only have laughably bad builds but arent even trust worthy. you would have found a lot more trustworthy, talented and impartial folks here, among pvpers.
also their ideas of harder content for this new power creep gear is the elatchi and tholians. not harder, just trolls. its miserably to fight them, not because they are harder and more player ship like, but because they are disabling your subsystems, spam subspace jump, have a bordering party no counter works against, and have their damn web walls and webs that some times you cant even target the nodes to get out of. they are just a pain in the TRIBBLE, they are not more like player ships, and thus fun to fight. they still have huge hitpoints, still have 2 or 3 weapons instead of 6 to 8, still have huge damage modifiers with those few weapons, still barely use any station power other then thier troll powers, and you fight a ton at once, which is also wrong. you should not engage fleets of ships alone. these new npc races are not what we have been asking for when we say we want a challenge.
they should give npc ships tier levels and a full station setup with that tier, more weapons slots, and ability up time thats the same as a player that puts 9 points into the skill. doing a mission were you destroy 10 or 20 ships is silly. a good fight vs 2 or 3 ships, spaced out in a mission that are an approximate match for your player ship in staion powers, weapons, and hitpoints would make pve actually fun. someone paying attention might learn how to set up a ship based on what they see the npc do too.
It wasn't the leg bouncing, trance-like state in PvP where fingers are flying almost of their own accord...but it required more than periodically tapping the spacebar with a pinkytoe while flipping channels trying to find something on TV.
My best LoR memory was during the beta when I was half-asleep and ran the Rhi mission in a shuttle on another toon I was leveling. But wait, the Rhi mission is a shuttle mission. No, the part in orbit before you drop down to the atmosphere. Yep, fighting Monbosh in a shuttle. Was good fun.
Yeah, I never got the complaints about the Elachi in space. Even offered that in my feedback, that I hoped it was a hint of things to come and there might be an AI overhaul of other NPCs in the game so that it was more than just a monster farm.
Still say Cryptic needs to adjust their difficulty levels:
Casual
Normal
Advanced
Elite
Armageddon
That each level should reward appropriately...or perhaps offer Accolades/Titles/Vanity stuff to reflect the level of difficulty that has been completed.
As is, Normal is far from Normal. Elite is the closest thing approaching Normal...and...it's at the lower end of the spectrum.
But yeah, I was disappointed how much Cryptic ended up nerfing the Elachi (even repeatedly)...in space that is, lol - ground on the other hand, either they were running through walls and hiding or doing their own form of invisitorp instadeaths. Ground needed some bugfixing (not nerfing - just fixing).
Unfortunately, that's not quite how it works out. With Devil's Choice, folks offered all sorts of advice to folks that were having issues with it in numerous threads. They didn't care. They didn't want to rise to the challenge. They didn't want any challenge. They didn't want any help, didn't want to change anything they were doing, didn't want to improve, etc, etc, etc...
...yes, those discussions turned me against a large portion of STO's playerbase. So many posts edited before I posted or moments after, knowing that I'd get those pesky messages from mods otherwise.
They'll walk away...taking their wallets with them. Cryptic knows how to get their bread buttered...
For me, the PvP thing goes well beyond that. I don't do Ground (which is not necessarily Cryptic's fault - plenty of folks do Ground and enjoy it...both PvE and PvP) nor do I do Shuttle, so I'm looking at the following:
Gorn/Fed Minefield
SB24 (Fed)
CCE
SFD
F/KSB
FFA/KFA
NWS
CSE
ISE
HOE
KVE
ANR
VE
For the most part, each and every time those are done - they're going to be the same.
That's not a Cryptic/STO issue. That's a Dungeon/Raid Progression issue. I find it tedious.
PvP on the other hand (PUG), and you'll never know what you've got or what you're facing. It's a new adventure every time. It's endless content. Yes, it could do with more maps/choices to keep things a little more varied, but it's endless content at its core.
It's always what has kept me in a game the longest since the MMO market shifted back around 2005-2006 to the more casual player as home broadband became more available to the masses.
Cryptic knows they've got the space PvP thing going for them - they're not competing against EVE there, that's like apples and oranges. They can do the casual pew pew funtastic PvP thing...as long as it will show a return on the investment.
Which puts them in that definite catch-22...when it comes to PvP. PvE? Sure, keep selling more and more powerful stuff to folks...nifty ROI. PvP though?
I honestly believe Geko wants more for PvP, but it's a case of having to look at it from a business point of view as well. Thus, we've heard things about mixed PvE/PvP and all the rest. Ways in which he can get stuff out there for PvP while still getting a return on the investment. That mix of competitive PvE and PvP would be a potential angle to tackle that from...
...heh, outside of having folks pay to keep things out of PvP - how would they monetize PvP, eh?
True , but "Content A" has been through at least a dozen difficulty tweaks (at least the STF's have) .
Thing is , ever since S.7 and the reputations & new Doffs -- those tweaks have not been keeping up with the power creep , enabling players to create such STF channels as DPS-5000 , and having the rumored ability to finish 3 space STF's in 15 minutes .
And unlike the Foundry Dilithium "cheat" or the FM "cheat" in NWS , Cryptic is not stepping in and say that "just because a player can do something , does not mean he should" .
Nope .
Things are just fine and dandy as far as what's going on , as long as we keep buying the next wave of power enhancing Doffs (new pack out now ! :cool:)