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"This Just really bugs me" and other random thoughts

mreeves7amreeves7a Member Posts: 499 Arc User
I've been playing STO since it went free-to-play and I have enjoyed my time in game greatly. However, some things have begun to annoy me as I gain experience with the game and all it's ins and outs. To be upfront about it: I am mainly a Science Captain player, so many of my impressions will likely be colored by that fact. Also, wall 'o text incoming.

Lack of Diversity is builds:
This is something that is becoming a great sadness for STO. We have a lot of ships, and a lot of powers to use, yet everyone always seems to gravitate towards a fraction of them. A quick skim for recommend builds always turns up the same things over and over: 2x Tac Team, 2x A2B, EPtS is a must, use TSS and HE! ...Isn't this a bad thing to have happen? A t5 ship can have 12 boff powers and yet, often, 6-8 of them are already the same as any other ship. Escorts are the worst when it comes to builds; there seems to be approximately 2.3 builds that make a good escort.

Ground is nearly as bad. When was the last time you saw anyone use the Grenade Satchel, Xenobiologist, or Bunker Fabrication kits?

Now, I do not PvP enough to be able to say what changes most power need to be made (PvE is a cakewalk with most ships), but I have a few thoughts towards some of the problems:

Science Ground:
Biofilter Sweep: long CD, yet only cures 3 of the 5 types of debuffs? it would have greater useability if it was able to cure all types debuffs for the 5 second window it has.

Hyperonic Radiation: minor DoT damage, disappears when the primary target dies, perhaps increase the DoT or make it persist or perhaps change it to a weaken effect (-slower CDs or more vulnerability to holds and stuns?)

Nanite Health Monitor: great in theory and general practice, but it tries to heal certain debuffs that it has no power to clear (ground STF borg use Ruse Armor, which nanite tries to clear, but it can't, wasting the limited charges), really just needs to be made to ignore what it can't heal

Anestizine Gas: very long CD, easily avoided, a reduced CD would be nice


Science Space:

Yeah, I really don't know what to say here... so much is so situational or so weak in effect, a single sci team or eng team can keep your powers at bay forever or they can flat out be ignored. Science Space powers probably need a rebuild from the ground up


Tactical Ground:
Battle Strategies: a minor team wide tac debuff clear and revenge expose would have greater use than only ever being used on self

Smoke Grenade: small AoE, easy to ignore, needs some kind of secondary effect (maybe a short confuse or some kind of misdirection effect?)


Tactical Space:
Beam Target X: main effect is really, really easily resisted, only useful for chance at subsystem disable, perhaps change to drain a percentage of subsystem power?

Attack Patterns Omega, Beta, and Delta: one is nearly required for PvP, one has next to no effect in PvP, and the last is okay... I think splitting up omega and adding the removed stats to the other 2 would help, APO (+speed, turn, immune to stun and CC), APB (-DR on target, +all damage to self), APD (revenge DR debuff, +DR to self, +defense to self)


Engineering Ground:
Combat Supply: difficult to use since it only gives 5 of each item, and chances are, you're in combat and can't swap them into your device slots, change to giving 'charges' when interacted with that allows a number of 'free' uses of an item without using up said item

Seeker Drone: nice little bit of damage, maybe let it hunt stealth targets and prioritize them?


Engineering Space:
Aceton Beam: way to long a CD for the effect, change to a shorter CD or change the effect (instead of debuff and damage, how about have it lower target power levels when they fire energy weapons based on the strength of the weapons and changed the Doff for it to just add a static -10 power level to the debuff effects)


Recent additions to STO:
I understand that to keep people playing (and paying), new things have to be added. But, lately, nearly everything new has been power creepy. Do we really need continuous power creep? Why can't we get just 'different' and not necessarily more 'power'? I've seen a lot of people write off the Nukara ship set because it doesn't replace everything that came before it, it's a good example of different, but really more powerful (makes a great shield tank set).

The Embassy consoles are great because they added small bonuses to consoles people avoided; then, the Mine arrives, and it only has the consoles that people already use... Wat? Shouldn't the Mine consoles have been the ones no one uses now with bonuses?

And the most recent Doff pack is aggravating: minor buffs to things that are currently useless (+duration to MES) or major buffs to things that are already strong (+damage to ambush). Again, this should have been a way to encourage use of unpopular skills; that means meaningful boosts to underused skills or if you're going to boost popular stuff, do it by way of adding something and taking away elsewhere (what if the new Ambush Doff added a chance to back fire or tripled the CD of Ambush?).



If you made it this far, thanks for reading. If any part of this resonates with you, i would appreciate if you jump in on the conversation. Perhaps just laying out what the problems are and suggesting ideas without demanding the exact changes we want will get better responses from the Devs.
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • rathelmrathelm Member Posts: 69 Arc User
    edited June 2013
    Power Creep has to be expected. The problem is Cryptic designed everything to be finite. Bridge officer layouts, as an example, cannot reasonably continue to increase. There's already so much overlap and the triggering of long cooldowns on powers that overlap means we're already close to the limit. Adding another commander slot would just break the game even more for DPS oriented ships.

    The power systems being hard coded to 100 is another problem. How can they add more levels? Ships have way more power than they were originally intended to have. Anymore and you're going to see people max out 125 on 3 of the 4 systems.

    Although the combat is acceptable it is a mess. DPS is all the matters. Survivability only matters to the point where if you can keep yourself alive then good. Grouping is only for having more pew pew. There is no synergizing between group members. This game might as well have been made single player with group play as an option.

    I'm not trying to out right knock it, but I don't see how Cryptic can tack on more without completely re-writing core mechanics of the game. The level cap can't be raised without breaking the game even more. Adding more powerful ships is kind of pointless because the ships currently out there are already way more powerful than are needed for most the content. Sci is completely pointless. It heals worse than engineering and dps lesses than escorts. Finally they are the worse tank ships too.

    Good luck Cryptic is all I have to say. Though I wouldn't be surprised that within the next year if they don't try to fix it somehow. They seem to be making money hand over fist from the Zen store, and I'm sure they don't want that cash cow to dry out.
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