I'd say that played a role in it - wasn't the sole cause, but it played a major role in it.
People overestimate the popularity of Klingons. Heck, even with the Romulans - people overestimate their popularity. Star Trek is basically a Federation/Starfleet franchise - all the series, all the movies - Federation/Starfleet.
There are still a majority of Fedbunnies running around out there. The Romulans haven't changed that.
But what the Romulans did show - was that if Cryptic had given that much attention to the KDF in the first place, the KDF would have likely had better numbers than they did. "Finishing" up the KDF at this point, though - their shiny is still pretty dim compared to what they did for the Roms and when you look at the itemization, yeah...meh.
Have to wonder if at some point in the design/development process, the KDF weren't simply expected to be "Monster Play ala LotRO" - that they decided to try to do more, but they were never really into do more (one of the many countless half-assed things in STO).
It has nothing specific to do w/KDF as an appeal to fans of the IP. It's that it was incomplete, and the "PvP" faction. Both of which went years w/next to no resource investment. Please just stop blaming customers for the suppliers business choices.
They chose to release a buggy unfinished product. They chose to focus on a single player PvE mentality where people could pay for power. This started well before F2P came. In some ways it's (admittedly sadly) satisfying to read when the power creep wheels role over all those who were happy to be in a pay for power system for years.
[Zone] Dack@****: cowards can't take a fed 1 on 1 crinckley cowards Hahahaha you smell like flowers
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
It's the otherway around. Other than a few consoles and for a little while carriers Feds had/have advantages in ships. Btw, that started w/the 1st major C-Store release prior to F2P. The fact you are unable/willing to admit this is too funny.
Edit: As far as KDF population, it's always been low for the same reason PvP has been low. Cryptic spent TRIBBLE resources to build it for years. It wasn't until LoR that it was actually "finished".
What you call advantage in ships I call milking the cashcow with mediocre or outright terrible ships. That said I will concede that more ships, even if mostly bad ones, does result in greater choices, even if most choices were bad.
Also, the "uniqueness" to attract players to the KDF side were more than consoles and carriers, but its largely becoming irrelevant. They're slowly changing things so that those "unique" things are disappearing, I don't expect the contraband gathering doff missions to remain as they are for much longer tbh. In their minds they have made the KDF equal and no longer require the uniqueness it once did.
Have to wonder if at some point in the design/development process, the KDF weren't simply expected to be "Monster Play ala LotRO" - that they decided to try to do more, but they were never really into do more (one of the many countless half-assed things in STO).
They were supposed to be a PvP only faction. Common sense would make one think some sort of monster play or max level only mechanic was planned for them. But then for reasons unknown to us (Atari pressured them wanting to have space WoW?) they changed them to a faction that stated at lvl 25-ish.
It has nothing specific to do w/KDF as an appeal to fans of the IP. It's that it was incomplete, and the "PvP" faction. Both of which went years w/next to no resource investment. Please just stop blaming customers for the suppliers business choices.
They chose to release a buggy unfinished product. They chose to focus on a single player PvE mentality where people could pay for power. This started well before F2P came. In some ways it's (admittedly sadly) satisfying to read when the power creep wheels role over all those who were happy to be in a pay for power system for years.
I think you are misunderstanding things greatly. No one is saying things are in any way, shape, or fashion the fault of the players. I think we can all agree that our various problems with STO all stem from Cryptic, not other players. Keep in mind though, and this is something that some folks have a hard time understanding, failing to like a faction, is NOT player's fault. I often wonder if that is a reason why so many KDF players have so much anger toward feds, they are angry because more people do not like their faction?
Remember a little over a year ago when there were more engineering healers because the engineer could heal others with skills then keep himself alive with personal heals? That isn't useful anymore because with rep and embassy consoles anyone can "tank" and with a science healer you get an extra SNB to boot.
Well, make their heal self abilities work as heal other abilities and they will work better as healers.
I think you need to reevaluate that they're damage mitigation specialists thing again.
1) RSF mitigates direct shield damage.
2) Nadion mitigates power drains, this includes things that attack you.
3) MW is a straight heal.
4) Eng Fleet is primarily a resistance buff, and a buff to skills.
Remember, I've not specifically stated "damage" mitigation. You added that.
EPS is the wild card, it doesn't directly mitigate anything although it does allow for fast shifting of power and for higher power levels for better heals and better shielding at the same time - so by default your resistances will generally be higher for shields, and from any linked boff powers.
But I think every career was designed with a crossover or sub-specialty (power management before we were drowning in power, in the case of Eng) in mind at one point, as muddy as it all is now. Which is possibly why Tac has a force multiplier power.
It's hard to make a definitive statement on this, because it was all designed so long ago, by a different dev team, under a different design paradigm for what is really at this point a very different game.
It has nothing specific to do w/KDF as an appeal to fans of the IP.
Of course it does. How could you say it didn't? This wasn't some game without any history - this wasn't a new idea without any previous fanbase. The number of folks that are going to associate with the heroes of the show is going to be far greater than the number of folks that associate with any other characters that made an appearance here and there. Even if STO launched with both the Feds and KDF as completely balanced, the number of Feds would have still made the number of KDF look tiny by comparison...
...that it was the cluster-er-um that it was, made the numbers worse - but be real. Seriously, be real.
There was over 40 years of Star Trek before the release of STO.
11 films following the Federation/Starfleet.
6 series following the Federation/Starfleet, comprised of 826 episodes.
How many card games, boardgames, video games, pinball games, etc, etc, etc...where the extreme majority of them all followed the Federation/Starfleet?
It's ridiculous to say that wouldn't have a major effect on player numbers for the game. It likely played a major role in the KDF being as unfinished as they were, given that Cryptic taking over for the game didn't really change the release date range for the game - so they would have been forced to look at what the majority of players would have wanted in order to try to meet that deadline.
Which also ties into PvP...because again, the majority of players out there would not have been interested in it.
Here's a little fun thing to do. Go to Google Images and do a search for: Star Trek Convention. Take a look at the images...notice the extreme majority of uniforms being Starfleet? Tada...
edit: Don't get me wrong, when I went to Universal Studios with the family/aunt/cousins in the late 80s and did Star Trek Adventure, I was a Klingon. But I'm not going to try to deny that Star Trek is what it was...
Remember, I've not specifically stated "damage" mitigation. You added that.
No, I didn't disagree with you until did say it. Remember the discussion about going from tank to mitigation specialist where we agreed. It was this part...
If you have some ideas how to make them better mitigators of damage, feel free to post them. At least that's what they are specialized to do.
...that resulted in the post you just replied to regarding the mitigators of damage/damage mitigators.
Like we agreed with the tank/mitigation thing, outside of the artificial threat mechanics - the Eng's got a good base to be a tank, but without them - can't really call them a tank. So the mitigation thing came into play...but it wasn't damage mitigation at that point.
Of course it does. How could you say it didn't? This wasn't some game without any history - this wasn't a new idea without any previous fanbase. The number of folks that are going to associate with the heroes of the show is going to be far greater than the number of folks that associate with any other characters that made an appearance here and there. Even if STO launched with both the Feds and KDF as completely balanced, the number of Feds would have still made the number of KDF look tiny by comparison...
...that it was the cluster-er-um that it was, made the numbers worse - but be real. Seriously, be real.
There was over 40 years of Star Trek before the release of STO.
11 films following the Federation/Starfleet.
6 series following the Federation/Starfleet, comprised of 826 episodes.
How many card games, boardgames, video games, pinball games, etc, etc, etc...where the extreme majority of them all followed the Federation/Starfleet?
It's ridiculous to say that wouldn't have a major effect on player numbers for the game. It likely played a major role in the KDF being as unfinished as they were, given that Cryptic taking over for the game didn't really change the release date range for the game - so they would have been forced to look at what the majority of players would have wanted in order to try to meet that deadline.
Which also ties into PvP...because again, the majority of players out there would not have been interested in it.
Here's a little fun thing to do. Go to Google Images and do a search for: Star Trek Convention. Take a look at the images...notice the extreme majority of uniforms being Starfleet? Tada...
edit: Don't get me wrong, when I went to Universal Studios with the family/aunt/cousins in the late 80s and did Star Trek Adventure, I was a Klingon. But I'm not going to try to deny that Star Trek is what it was...
Yeah, hate to break it to you, but there were/are more potential customers than Star Trek fans. A quality product will attract customers. They just decided to target only Trek Fans and only Feds at that. Don't kid yourself if they had hindsight they'd never have put KDF/PvP in this game.
[Zone] Dack@****: cowards can't take a fed 1 on 1 crinckley cowards Hahahaha you smell like flowers
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
But I think every career was designed with a crossover or sub-specialty (power management before we were drowning in power, in the case of Eng) in mind at one point, as muddy as it all is now. Which is possibly why Tac has a force multiplier power.
It's hard to make a definitive statement on this, because it was all designed so long ago, by a different dev team, under a different design paradigm for what is really at this point a very different game.
And it really does show with all the 'working as designed but not intended' systems in the game.
In the end though I view this game's design to be much closer to that of an ARPG or even a MOBA at this point. You really don't have the trinity for the most part and even in PvP rolling a premade with a healer does not mean the trinity exists. Instead you have an Initiator (Sci), the Carry/Assassin (Tac), and the Support (Sci again).
What you call advantage in ships I call milking the cashcow with mediocre or outright terrible ships. That said I will concede that more ships, even if mostly bad ones, does result in greater choices, even if most choices were bad.
Also, the "uniqueness" to attract players to the KDF side were more than consoles and carriers, but its largely becoming irrelevant. They're slowly changing things so that those "unique" things are disappearing, I don't expect the contraband gathering doff missions to remain as they are for much longer tbh. In their minds they have made the KDF equal and no longer require the uniqueness it once did.
They were supposed to be a PvP only faction. Common sense would make one think some sort of monster play or max level only mechanic was planned for them. But then for reasons unknown to us (Atari pressured them wanting to have space WoW?) they changed them to a faction that stated at lvl 25-ish.
I think you are misunderstanding things greatly. No one is saying things are in any way, shape, or fashion the fault of the players. I think we can all agree that our various problems with STO all stem from Cryptic, not other players. Keep in mind though, and this is something that some folks have a hard time understanding, failing to like a faction, is NOT player's fault. I often wonder if that is a reason why so many KDF players have so much anger toward feds, they are angry because more people do not like their faction?
It's really is sad you won't admit Fed ships were by design better than KDF since the first major C-Store release. Fyi, I'm not a particular fan of KDF. I just really disliked what they were doing on the Fed side so I switched. This happened before I started PvPing.
Fyi, they were "PvP" only b/c they couldn't finish the faction in time, so they were changed to "PvP".
Again, there are/were more potential customers than Star Trek fans. There was/isn't a lot of alternatives for a combination of ground/space combat MMOs (though look out when Star Citizen comes out they've gotten a TRIBBLE ton of $ just in crowd funding to develop the game). They could have released a faction of Rabbits w/fangs and Holy hand grenades and if was more fully developed it'd have had more players in it. :P
17 million and climbing for space game not even in beta.
[Zone] Dack@****: cowards can't take a fed 1 on 1 crinckley cowards Hahahaha you smell like flowers
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Like we agreed with the tank/mitigation thing, outside of the artificial threat mechanics - the Eng's got a good base to be a tank, but without them - can't really call them a tank. So the mitigation thing came into play...but it wasn't damage mitigation at that point.
You're right, my mistake.
Let's stick with "mitigation specialist" or maybe "survival specialist".
And it really does show with all the 'working as designed but not intended' systems in the game.
In the end though I view this game's design to be much closer to that of an ARPG or even a MOBA at this point. You really don't have the trinity for the most part and even in PvP rolling a premade with a healer does not mean the trinity exists. Instead you have an Initiator (Sci), the Carry/Assassin (Tac), and the Support (Sci again).
Well the trinity is really a PvE convention and this is a PvE game with PvE careers that PvPers are trying to work with.
Premades are realistically going to have at least 2, if not 3 Scis.
3 means they'd either all be set up as healers, with 1 or 2 critical control powers or you might have 2 dedicated healers with 1 control heavy.
Typically they will all have at least 1 "control" power like PSW, SS, etc., because there are no heals or resistance buffers for CMD Sci.
This is a key point, most PUG only players generally don't realize it.
Premades load up on Sci/healers because they are the strongest.
They win battles, they make teams harder to break and they make it easier to break teams.
Also because teams that load up on Tac/Escorts are easy to kill.
People love to complain about the Tankyness of Tac/Escorts but the reality of premades is that you will rarely bring more than 2 because they weaken the team's healing resources and because they are easier to kill than most (heal spec) Sci ships, Cruisers or Carriers.
So what does that work out as?
Well, usually 2 "damage dealers".
Usually 2 or 3 "healers/buffers"*
Sometimes 1 "controller"*
*Sci is always a controller even if they have no control BOFF powers, SNB alone is enough to keep a single escort under control for an entire match.
Yeah, hate to break it to you, but there were/are more potential customers than Star Trek fans. A quality product will attract customers. They just decided to target only Trek Fans and only Feds at that. Don't kid yourself if they had hindsight they'd never have put KDF/PvP in this game.
A quality product will attract interested customers. There are many quality products out there that the vast majority of people have absolutely no need for in the least. They're not going to be attracted to them simply because they're quality products.
How many "space" MMOs are there, are coming, have been? It's not a big sector of the market. It's like the "superhero" sector of the market - it just doesn't compare to that fantasy market. A "SciFi" MMO wouldn't fit SciFi - because the massively thing would throw it off. So even that's a small sector and doesn't do that well. Then when you look at each of those, those that want PvP to be part of the game will be even smaller...
Perhaps they should have held off on including the KDF at launch. Perhaps PvP should have just comprised of a mix of wargames and monster play. Then they could have done a KDF xpac down the road. Something without the farcical Fed-KDF War. They could have offered the KDF something the Feds wouldn't have had - House Wars, something allowing for KDF fleets and their allies to fight in something other than wargames or monster play.
In the end though, this isn't Generic Space MMO...it's Star Trek Online. Yes, they'll want to attract interested parties outside of the Star Trek IP...but Star Trek didn't provide that nifty Light/Dark element that one finds in Star Wars. There were countless enemies. And quite frankly, for the most part - the Klingons and Federation weren't enemies. /shrug
A quality product will attract interested customers. There are many quality products out there that the vast majority of people have absolutely no need for in the least. They're not going to be attracted to them simply because they're quality products.
How many "space" MMOs are there, are coming, have been? It's not a big sector of the market. It's like the "superhero" sector of the market - it just doesn't compare to that fantasy market. A "SciFi" MMO wouldn't fit SciFi - because the massively thing would throw it off. So even that's a small sector and doesn't do that well. Then when you look at each of those, those that want PvP to be part of the game will be even smaller...
Perhaps they should have held off on including the KDF at launch. Perhaps PvP should have just comprised of a mix of wargames and monster play. Then they could have done a KDF xpac down the road. Something without the farcical Fed-KDF War. They could have offered the KDF something the Feds wouldn't have had - House Wars, something allowing for KDF fleets and their allies to fight in something other than wargames or monster play.
In the end though, this isn't Generic Space MMO...it's Star Trek Online. Yes, they'll want to attract interested parties outside of the Star Trek IP...but Star Trek didn't provide that nifty Light/Dark element that one finds in Star Wars. There were countless enemies. And quite frankly, for the most part - the Klingons and Federation weren't enemies. /shrug
Most of the space IPs to come and go were based on long standing IPs which delivered a below standard product. On the other hand those that focused on a quality product have done well. EvE online is a niche PvP space MMO that's going on a decade.
Star Citizen has raised 17 million in crowd funding for a good reason.
Star Trek fans are in general low population whales. That's who the company chose to go after, it doesn't follow they wouldn't have attracted a larger customer base who would've eclipsed the #s of the IP whales.
[Zone] Dack@****: cowards can't take a fed 1 on 1 crinckley cowards Hahahaha you smell like flowers
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
I don't think I've seen you do that, but correct me if I'm wrong.
Maybe you missed this post?
Those are some of the proposed ideas that I do like.
What are your ideas?
Those are pretty much the exact ideas (and I posted them before that post) that I posted from page 7 of this discussion. Here is the cut-and-paste quote:
"How about our EPS power boost effecting a large sphere for our teammates to take advantage of. How about miracle worker being used on others as well. How about Nadion inversion acting like Dem 3 as well and it would stack with normal Dem. This would not be much different than a tac stacking Alpha and Beta. The attack type would be different, .. bleedthrough instead of burst... a different mechanic for attack focus."
Lastly you are not the arbiter of what is a good idea or not a good idea. Right now the class is in desperate need of something,..nearly anything. You have an opinion and a point of view like anybody else. Yours is not worth more or less than anybody's ideas. So maybe YOU can post ideas you see as workable or put a list together if you are so inclined and list even the "bad" ideas and post your point of view of how they can be changed to be "good" ideas from your point of view. But for now, this class is dying because any idea that treads upon the holy damage or support tree and steps out of the tank realm is shunned like a vampire shuns a cross.
Let's be clear. There is NO tank role in this game. Not any more. So unless they decide to add a new mechanic to the game, we have to tread into one of the other roles. I don't see any other way currently. This can be done with power level caps or any other directions or powers that are unique. But let's be clear.. there is no 4th mechanic..and one of the 3 is pointless.
So,.. you have been corrected.
Eleven of Twenty-Nine. Thousands of pvp matches done...hundreds of tournaments ran..and still seeing the same problems grow even larger than ever for us engineers.
I mean, we have a dev saying they didn't give the Rom Temporal Sci & Destroyer sing cores or battle cloaks because they were worried about power-creep...
Yet most of what was released in LoR completely escaped this sense of worry.
Truly baffling.
when you look at the base stats of the warbirds, they are fleet level when directly compared to federation ship. and then theres romulan fleet ships that are another 10% better. compared to kdf ships, the kdf ships are totally half assed and pay for pitiful non battle cloak with deep stat penalties. compare a qin to a mogai and die laughing. thats just the things you can compare to other faction ships, the rest theres no answer for. the battlecloak and the singularity powers make them incredible escape artists. most of the time when i fight romulans, all you can really do is drive them into hiding and then focus down those that cant disappear.
the reduced power basically means they have a bit less shield resistance, but almost every warbird can use EPtS3, and thanks to ether tech or damage control doffs you can have EPtS3 all the time. and if you live dangerously with 2 AtB builds, what power deficiency? seriously. if im in trouble i can use sing jump or quantum absorption and BC live were ether my fed or kdf would have died.
but even all that is not game breaking. like the bug, skill will beat advantages like that every time, sorta. if only they stopped there, things would have been fine. now take all that, and add 4 superior romulans and 1 superior reman, and its gg balance. rom/rem boffs having 2 hilariously broken stacking trates shot all balance in the foot. they ether have to remove those space traits, and make it so the embassy doffs are the best thing again, or they need to super buff every other species of boff so they can potentially have 2 just as powerful space traits. what a cluster.
It's once every 5 minutes. That's an eternity at this point in the game.
Right now an ambush striker should be working the following pattern:
APA Cycle > Kill cycle every 90s [High rate of success]
45s later
Sub-cycle > Attempted kill without APA [Moderate rate of success - 30% to 50% or so]
Success % will increase with a bit of teamwork, or go down vs. skilled opposition. A lot of variables here.
Tac fleet is nice, 2 Tacs can dole it out between themselves every 2 1/2 minutes - but that's still almost every 2 APA kill cycles.
Usually, I reserve Tac fleet for when a kill attempt isn't going well and just a little bit more will push it into success.
I certainly don't rely on it for spike though.
thats generally how i role, only using tac fleet when i can taste victory if only i could hit a little harder for my next alpha/beta strike. or i save of for when i can use GDF and am not about a second from death. still, and especially from cloak, many times ive faced a tough team, and use tac fleet with my decloak alpha and im pretty sure it made the difference. some matches last so fricking long i can use my team skill 4 or 5 times.
nadion's cooldown isn't as long, but its a few minutes right? so i include nadion were i include tac fleet. nadion would be a great skill if it was hard to get power to 125, and you couldn't overcap, its so redundant though currently. you would need it if your weapons subsystem effect cap could get to 140 though, especially with non DHCs, to get most shots having a ~30% damage advantage.
Romulans are so far above everyone else its really eyeopening. We knew Cryptic was 100% on board with power creep so long as it sold ships and Dil, but the Romulans are not a "creep".
...
Makes the new Boffs more powerful than anything before: Check
I've been saying this ever since LoR. 2.0.% CrtH is the equivalent of a full extra 9/9 in Energy Weapons Specialization... per stacking boff. That's absurd. It really pulls the entire game askew, where no sane person can fit anything else but Rom boffs. It means I have my Fed bridges filled with abhorrent 'Elfs' in Robin Hood suits, that cannot be changed even.
Cryptic has sabotaged their own game, with eyes wide open; and all for their own greed creep.
I will admit the Role and usefulness of the the Engineering class has went in many directions over the last few years. However I totally disagree with everyone saying the Engineer is complete and total waste of space. All of my Healers are Engineering, I even have a Engy in a dps setup in a Dominion Dreadnought..... Granted a tact can prolly do more damage of me of course but i do believe alot of you really overlook the actual purpose of a Engineer.
For example.......... You dont use a Tact in a Recluse to be the teams healer do you? I dont think so, So what makes you think a engineer should keep pace or out dps a tact? If that was the case........ everyone would go back to flying Engineers again and the tact class would die once again. I honestly feel in my opinion that a Engineer was seriously ment to to be support / healer..... provide some dps, and have the means to heal other team mates.
Granted a Recluse is TRIBBLE for damage, but it is an awsome ship for healing, and awsome with a Engineer in it. Yes, you can make a DPS Engy cruiser....... but its not gonna spike, its ment for support dps. Now a Engy Scort at best is good for high sustained dps, but even then whats the point? You would have to have a tact fly as your wingman to still kill targets.
This game have gone around with the class's. At some points each and every class was frigging OP, while others were left in the dust and forgotten about. I guess everyone has forgotten long ago when Tacts were useless and the class of choice was a Engy? Or when Science was so OP you instapoped and shuddered thinking about it........ Or when tacts were so OP they instapoped you squeezing a TRIBBLE out.......... I believe granted Engineers are abit underpowered at the moment, but there is no identity crisis with the threat of the engineering class being total useless. If you doubt me come check out my Engineer Recluse healer, you will change your mind. But then you say *silly idiot you dont do dps*. Well I dont need to because my tacts and sci's work well together killing and disabling their targets, while I make sure they stay alive, and I do it so very well. Anywho thats my 2 cents and opinion from what I have seen and witnessed from the game since season 1. Qapla!
not dealing damage is only one of the complaints. not haveing anything that makes an eng the best healer, and haveing zero synergy with any sort of CC, leaves it with nothing useful that its good at. sure, an eng can do the job of a healer. but so can a sci, and grant the team another subnuke, and the whole host of other much more useful captain abilities. if no one on the team cross heals, then an eng in the healer role has an advantage. but everyone should be sharing heals all the time, even escorts, with at least tac team.
not dealing damage is only one of the complaints. not haveing anything that makes an eng the best healer, and haveing zero synergy with any sort of CC, leaves it with nothing useful that its good at. sure, an eng can do the job of a healer. but so can a sci, and grant the team another subnuke, and the whole host of other much more useful captain abilities. if no one on the team cross heals, then an eng in the healer role has an advantage. but everyone should be sharing heals all the time, even escorts, with at least tac team.
The truly sad part is, that an engineer being essentially superfluous is not some fluke, or the result of some imbalance, but rather part and parcel of this game's innate design philosophy, in which everyone, in principle, should be self-sufficient. We sometimes work together, a little; but this game was designed, from the ground up, to let everyone kinda do their own 'thang.' That's why everyone can heal themselves, and why DPS is the only true measure of strength by which every outcome is determined.
Sure, you can always roll a healer Recluse. And it might help at times, for certain. But it does not detract one iota from every ship and Captain being made to essentially be able to having to rely on nothing but their own mettle. Truly needing other players would simply mean losing frustrated customers.
Sure, you can always roll a healer Recluse. And it might help at times, for certain. But it does not detract one iota from every ship and Captain being made to essentially be able to having to rely on nothing but their own mettle. Truly needing other players would simply mean losing frustrated customers.
Sorry that's PvE.
Well played healers cross healing is incredibly strong in PvP.
It's a role worth specializing in.
It just requires 2 of the scarcest commodities in the entire game: communication and coordination.
Well played healers cross healing is incredibly strong in PvP.
I know this. Been spider-tanking in EVE ever since the idea became known. But STO is a PVE-game, is the point. Cryptic/PWE will simply never allow Escorts to really *need* anyone else. In PvP, cross-healing with Extend Shields and the right doffs, I can see how that might be useful, though.
Cryptic/PWE will simply never allow Escorts to really *need* anyone else.
And this is where they fail. High DPS classes have usually had to be played very precisely in order to be successful in battle situations that slower heavier classes can do easily. This is not because the high dps class is weak, but it is a risk/reward situation.
For example, I play Guild Wars 2 ( and 1 ) and my Guardian class can solo legendary mobs easily...but it takes forever. My thief has a LOT more damage. They can also solo the mobs,.. provided I don't make a single mistake. But the time it takes is so much less.
Now, applying this concept to STO it is clear that what we have is a problem with the other classes now performing the roles that invalidate the need for a "tank". There is no real risk to the reward for rolling a DPS based character. In fact, it can be said that there is major risk in rolling a tank based character. Because you can not do the damage needed to hurt the DPS class,..and the DPS class can nearly insta-pop you.. the whole situation is literally bass-ackwards.
But no matter how many ideas or reasonable concepts are mentioned, there will always be those who can't acknowledge the real source of the problem.
The other classes have taken over 90% of what we do with 0% loss to what they did before.
So either we need to be lifted up.. or their butts need to be knocked down.
I am never one for nerfs.. so I prefer the former.
But to be honest, it is not like this would make PvE much harder if it was a nerf. PvE has been a snore fest for years.
Eleven of Twenty-Nine. Thousands of pvp matches done...hundreds of tournaments ran..and still seeing the same problems grow even larger than ever for us engineers.
I know this. Been spider-tanking in EVE ever since the idea became known. But STO is a PVE-game, is the point. Cryptic/PWE will simply never allow Escorts to really *need* anyone else. In PvP, cross-healing with Extend Shields and the right doffs, I can see how that might be useful, though.
I know this. Been spider-tanking in EVE ever since the idea became known. But STO is a PVE-game, is the point. Cryptic/PWE will simply never allow Escorts to really *need* anyone else. In PvP, cross-healing with Extend Shields and the right doffs, I can see how that might be useful, though.
1) These are the PvP forums.
2) Against anything you could consider an actual opposition in PvP, escorts actually do need others.
be careful around bops, when their wings go down in what would appear to be hug mode, its actually quite the opposite of hug mode :eek:
It is closer to the "overly-friendly neighbor's dog having sexy-time with your leg" mode
Eleven of Twenty-Nine. Thousands of pvp matches done...hundreds of tournaments ran..and still seeing the same problems grow even larger than ever for us engineers.
Admittedly, I'm quite needy. I expect, at the very least, a hug.
You're not alone Hale ='(
There are some fantastic escort pilots in this game. But against any decent team worth it's salt, they need help. Of course they do.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] @Aquitaine985 Lag Industries STO PvP Fleet - Executive
A Sad Panda of Industrial calibre. 2010: This is Cryptic PvP. Please hold the line, your call is very important to us...
Look around you. Don't you see them? Countless engineer alts, left by the wayside due to feeling 'unneeded' in PvP. These poor alts, left to simply be dil farmers are dying off due to a lack of any PvP.
But you can help these engineers. For less than the EC cost of one Self-sealing Stem Bolt, you can donate to the 'PvP for Engineers' fund and help these engineers take part in PvP matches where they can make a difference.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
Look around you. Don't you see them? Countless engineer alts, left by the wayside due to feeling 'unneeded' in PvP. These poor alts, left to simply be dil farmers are dying off due to a lack of any PvP.
But you can help these engineers. For less than the EC cost of one Self-sealing Stem Bolt, you can donate to the 'PvP for Engineers' fund and help these engineers take part in PvP matches where they can make a difference.
Please donate generously.
Honestly, the only reason I do not PvP, other than ker'rat, is because my main and most played/enjoyed character is an eng... and therefore unwanted and unneeded. If, at some unforeseen future date, the Engineer class is wanted or needed in PvP combat instead of considered a liability, then i would gladly take part. Until then...there is simply no point even trying to participate.
edited to add: Although i did take my Aux2dampers beamrunner into kerrat this morning and it was a hell of a lot of fun... yeah, a beamscort: ANATHEMA!!!
When I think of they continuously dying state of pvp in this game,.. I don't think the community can stand to lose about 1/3 of the player base who love their engineers best, but are not allowed to use them.
Want to make PvP a bit more alive.
Help bring 1/3 of the players back to the game.
Eleven of Twenty-Nine. Thousands of pvp matches done...hundreds of tournaments ran..and still seeing the same problems grow even larger than ever for us engineers.
Comments
It has nothing specific to do w/KDF as an appeal to fans of the IP. It's that it was incomplete, and the "PvP" faction. Both of which went years w/next to no resource investment. Please just stop blaming customers for the suppliers business choices.
They chose to release a buggy unfinished product. They chose to focus on a single player PvE mentality where people could pay for power. This started well before F2P came. In some ways it's (admittedly sadly) satisfying to read when the power creep wheels role over all those who were happy to be in a pay for power system for years.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
What you call advantage in ships I call milking the cashcow with mediocre or outright terrible ships. That said I will concede that more ships, even if mostly bad ones, does result in greater choices, even if most choices were bad.
Also, the "uniqueness" to attract players to the KDF side were more than consoles and carriers, but its largely becoming irrelevant. They're slowly changing things so that those "unique" things are disappearing, I don't expect the contraband gathering doff missions to remain as they are for much longer tbh. In their minds they have made the KDF equal and no longer require the uniqueness it once did.
They were supposed to be a PvP only faction. Common sense would make one think some sort of monster play or max level only mechanic was planned for them. But then for reasons unknown to us (Atari pressured them wanting to have space WoW?) they changed them to a faction that stated at lvl 25-ish.
I think you are misunderstanding things greatly. No one is saying things are in any way, shape, or fashion the fault of the players. I think we can all agree that our various problems with STO all stem from Cryptic, not other players. Keep in mind though, and this is something that some folks have a hard time understanding, failing to like a faction, is NOT player's fault. I often wonder if that is a reason why so many KDF players have so much anger toward feds, they are angry because more people do not like their faction?
Well, make their heal self abilities work as heal other abilities and they will work better as healers.
That's really all we might be lucky to get.
1) RSF mitigates direct shield damage.
2) Nadion mitigates power drains, this includes things that attack you.
3) MW is a straight heal.
4) Eng Fleet is primarily a resistance buff, and a buff to skills.
Remember, I've not specifically stated "damage" mitigation. You added that.
EPS is the wild card, it doesn't directly mitigate anything although it does allow for fast shifting of power and for higher power levels for better heals and better shielding at the same time - so by default your resistances will generally be higher for shields, and from any linked boff powers.
But I think every career was designed with a crossover or sub-specialty (power management before we were drowning in power, in the case of Eng) in mind at one point, as muddy as it all is now. Which is possibly why Tac has a force multiplier power.
It's hard to make a definitive statement on this, because it was all designed so long ago, by a different dev team, under a different design paradigm for what is really at this point a very different game.
Of course it does. How could you say it didn't? This wasn't some game without any history - this wasn't a new idea without any previous fanbase. The number of folks that are going to associate with the heroes of the show is going to be far greater than the number of folks that associate with any other characters that made an appearance here and there. Even if STO launched with both the Feds and KDF as completely balanced, the number of Feds would have still made the number of KDF look tiny by comparison...
...that it was the cluster-er-um that it was, made the numbers worse - but be real. Seriously, be real.
There was over 40 years of Star Trek before the release of STO.
11 films following the Federation/Starfleet.
6 series following the Federation/Starfleet, comprised of 826 episodes.
How many card games, boardgames, video games, pinball games, etc, etc, etc...where the extreme majority of them all followed the Federation/Starfleet?
It's ridiculous to say that wouldn't have a major effect on player numbers for the game. It likely played a major role in the KDF being as unfinished as they were, given that Cryptic taking over for the game didn't really change the release date range for the game - so they would have been forced to look at what the majority of players would have wanted in order to try to meet that deadline.
Which also ties into PvP...because again, the majority of players out there would not have been interested in it.
Here's a little fun thing to do. Go to Google Images and do a search for: Star Trek Convention. Take a look at the images...notice the extreme majority of uniforms being Starfleet? Tada...
edit: Don't get me wrong, when I went to Universal Studios with the family/aunt/cousins in the late 80s and did Star Trek Adventure, I was a Klingon. But I'm not going to try to deny that Star Trek is what it was...
No, I didn't disagree with you until did say it. Remember the discussion about going from tank to mitigation specialist where we agreed. It was this part...
...that resulted in the post you just replied to regarding the mitigators of damage/damage mitigators.
Like we agreed with the tank/mitigation thing, outside of the artificial threat mechanics - the Eng's got a good base to be a tank, but without them - can't really call them a tank. So the mitigation thing came into play...but it wasn't damage mitigation at that point.
Yeah, hate to break it to you, but there were/are more potential customers than Star Trek fans. A quality product will attract customers. They just decided to target only Trek Fans and only Feds at that. Don't kid yourself if they had hindsight they'd never have put KDF/PvP in this game.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
And it really does show with all the 'working as designed but not intended' systems in the game.
In the end though I view this game's design to be much closer to that of an ARPG or even a MOBA at this point. You really don't have the trinity for the most part and even in PvP rolling a premade with a healer does not mean the trinity exists. Instead you have an Initiator (Sci), the Carry/Assassin (Tac), and the Support (Sci again).
It's really is sad you won't admit Fed ships were by design better than KDF since the first major C-Store release. Fyi, I'm not a particular fan of KDF. I just really disliked what they were doing on the Fed side so I switched. This happened before I started PvPing.
Fyi, they were "PvP" only b/c they couldn't finish the faction in time, so they were changed to "PvP".
Again, there are/were more potential customers than Star Trek fans. There was/isn't a lot of alternatives for a combination of ground/space combat MMOs (though look out when Star Citizen comes out they've gotten a TRIBBLE ton of $ just in crowd funding to develop the game). They could have released a faction of Rabbits w/fangs and Holy hand grenades and if was more fully developed it'd have had more players in it. :P
Edit:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13159-15-Million
17 million and climbing for space game not even in beta.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
You're right, my mistake.
Let's stick with "mitigation specialist" or maybe "survival specialist".
Well the trinity is really a PvE convention and this is a PvE game with PvE careers that PvPers are trying to work with.
Premades are realistically going to have at least 2, if not 3 Scis.
3 means they'd either all be set up as healers, with 1 or 2 critical control powers or you might have 2 dedicated healers with 1 control heavy.
Typically they will all have at least 1 "control" power like PSW, SS, etc., because there are no heals or resistance buffers for CMD Sci.
This is a key point, most PUG only players generally don't realize it.
Premades load up on Sci/healers because they are the strongest.
They win battles, they make teams harder to break and they make it easier to break teams.
Also because teams that load up on Tac/Escorts are easy to kill.
People love to complain about the Tankyness of Tac/Escorts but the reality of premades is that you will rarely bring more than 2 because they weaken the team's healing resources and because they are easier to kill than most (heal spec) Sci ships, Cruisers or Carriers.
So what does that work out as?
Well, usually 2 "damage dealers".
Usually 2 or 3 "healers/buffers"*
Sometimes 1 "controller"*
*Sci is always a controller even if they have no control BOFF powers, SNB alone is enough to keep a single escort under control for an entire match.
Those are the roles, it's not really a trinity.
A quality product will attract interested customers. There are many quality products out there that the vast majority of people have absolutely no need for in the least. They're not going to be attracted to them simply because they're quality products.
How many "space" MMOs are there, are coming, have been? It's not a big sector of the market. It's like the "superhero" sector of the market - it just doesn't compare to that fantasy market. A "SciFi" MMO wouldn't fit SciFi - because the massively thing would throw it off. So even that's a small sector and doesn't do that well. Then when you look at each of those, those that want PvP to be part of the game will be even smaller...
Perhaps they should have held off on including the KDF at launch. Perhaps PvP should have just comprised of a mix of wargames and monster play. Then they could have done a KDF xpac down the road. Something without the farcical Fed-KDF War. They could have offered the KDF something the Feds wouldn't have had - House Wars, something allowing for KDF fleets and their allies to fight in something other than wargames or monster play.
In the end though, this isn't Generic Space MMO...it's Star Trek Online. Yes, they'll want to attract interested parties outside of the Star Trek IP...but Star Trek didn't provide that nifty Light/Dark element that one finds in Star Wars. There were countless enemies. And quite frankly, for the most part - the Klingons and Federation weren't enemies. /shrug
Most of the space IPs to come and go were based on long standing IPs which delivered a below standard product. On the other hand those that focused on a quality product have done well. EvE online is a niche PvP space MMO that's going on a decade.
Star Citizen has raised 17 million in crowd funding for a good reason.
Star Trek fans are in general low population whales. That's who the company chose to go after, it doesn't follow they wouldn't have attracted a larger customer base who would've eclipsed the #s of the IP whales.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Those are pretty much the exact ideas (and I posted them before that post) that I posted from page 7 of this discussion. Here is the cut-and-paste quote:
"How about our EPS power boost effecting a large sphere for our teammates to take advantage of. How about miracle worker being used on others as well. How about Nadion inversion acting like Dem 3 as well and it would stack with normal Dem. This would not be much different than a tac stacking Alpha and Beta. The attack type would be different, .. bleedthrough instead of burst... a different mechanic for attack focus."
Lastly you are not the arbiter of what is a good idea or not a good idea. Right now the class is in desperate need of something,..nearly anything. You have an opinion and a point of view like anybody else. Yours is not worth more or less than anybody's ideas. So maybe YOU can post ideas you see as workable or put a list together if you are so inclined and list even the "bad" ideas and post your point of view of how they can be changed to be "good" ideas from your point of view. But for now, this class is dying because any idea that treads upon the holy damage or support tree and steps out of the tank realm is shunned like a vampire shuns a cross.
Let's be clear. There is NO tank role in this game. Not any more. So unless they decide to add a new mechanic to the game, we have to tread into one of the other roles. I don't see any other way currently. This can be done with power level caps or any other directions or powers that are unique. But let's be clear.. there is no 4th mechanic..and one of the 3 is pointless.
So,.. you have been corrected.
when you look at the base stats of the warbirds, they are fleet level when directly compared to federation ship. and then theres romulan fleet ships that are another 10% better. compared to kdf ships, the kdf ships are totally half assed and pay for pitiful non battle cloak with deep stat penalties. compare a qin to a mogai and die laughing. thats just the things you can compare to other faction ships, the rest theres no answer for. the battlecloak and the singularity powers make them incredible escape artists. most of the time when i fight romulans, all you can really do is drive them into hiding and then focus down those that cant disappear.
the reduced power basically means they have a bit less shield resistance, but almost every warbird can use EPtS3, and thanks to ether tech or damage control doffs you can have EPtS3 all the time. and if you live dangerously with 2 AtB builds, what power deficiency? seriously. if im in trouble i can use sing jump or quantum absorption and BC live were ether my fed or kdf would have died.
but even all that is not game breaking. like the bug, skill will beat advantages like that every time, sorta. if only they stopped there, things would have been fine. now take all that, and add 4 superior romulans and 1 superior reman, and its gg balance. rom/rem boffs having 2 hilariously broken stacking trates shot all balance in the foot. they ether have to remove those space traits, and make it so the embassy doffs are the best thing again, or they need to super buff every other species of boff so they can potentially have 2 just as powerful space traits. what a cluster.
i use my feds and kdf still. and give them skills like CPB to ruin an otherwise flawless romulan escape :cool:
thats generally how i role, only using tac fleet when i can taste victory if only i could hit a little harder for my next alpha/beta strike. or i save of for when i can use GDF and am not about a second from death. still, and especially from cloak, many times ive faced a tough team, and use tac fleet with my decloak alpha and im pretty sure it made the difference. some matches last so fricking long i can use my team skill 4 or 5 times.
nadion's cooldown isn't as long, but its a few minutes right? so i include nadion were i include tac fleet. nadion would be a great skill if it was hard to get power to 125, and you couldn't overcap, its so redundant though currently. you would need it if your weapons subsystem effect cap could get to 140 though, especially with non DHCs, to get most shots having a ~30% damage advantage.
I've been saying this ever since LoR. 2.0.% CrtH is the equivalent of a full extra 9/9 in Energy Weapons Specialization... per stacking boff. That's absurd. It really pulls the entire game askew, where no sane person can fit anything else but Rom boffs. It means I have my Fed bridges filled with abhorrent 'Elfs' in Robin Hood suits, that cannot be changed even.
Cryptic has sabotaged their own game, with eyes wide open; and all for their own greed creep.
For example.......... You dont use a Tact in a Recluse to be the teams healer do you? I dont think so, So what makes you think a engineer should keep pace or out dps a tact? If that was the case........ everyone would go back to flying Engineers again and the tact class would die once again. I honestly feel in my opinion that a Engineer was seriously ment to to be support / healer..... provide some dps, and have the means to heal other team mates.
Granted a Recluse is TRIBBLE for damage, but it is an awsome ship for healing, and awsome with a Engineer in it. Yes, you can make a DPS Engy cruiser....... but its not gonna spike, its ment for support dps. Now a Engy Scort at best is good for high sustained dps, but even then whats the point? You would have to have a tact fly as your wingman to still kill targets.
This game have gone around with the class's. At some points each and every class was frigging OP, while others were left in the dust and forgotten about. I guess everyone has forgotten long ago when Tacts were useless and the class of choice was a Engy? Or when Science was so OP you instapoped and shuddered thinking about it........ Or when tacts were so OP they instapoped you squeezing a TRIBBLE out.......... I believe granted Engineers are abit underpowered at the moment, but there is no identity crisis with the threat of the engineering class being total useless. If you doubt me come check out my Engineer Recluse healer, you will change your mind. But then you say *silly idiot you dont do dps*. Well I dont need to because my tacts and sci's work well together killing and disabling their targets, while I make sure they stay alive, and I do it so very well. Anywho thats my 2 cents and opinion from what I have seen and witnessed from the game since season 1. Qapla!
Leader of SVKELITE
Lt. General Cha'hak
@Soveliss-Sovair
The truly sad part is, that an engineer being essentially superfluous is not some fluke, or the result of some imbalance, but rather part and parcel of this game's innate design philosophy, in which everyone, in principle, should be self-sufficient. We sometimes work together, a little; but this game was designed, from the ground up, to let everyone kinda do their own 'thang.' That's why everyone can heal themselves, and why DPS is the only true measure of strength by which every outcome is determined.
Sure, you can always roll a healer Recluse. And it might help at times, for certain. But it does not detract one iota from every ship and Captain being made to essentially be able to having to rely on nothing but their own mettle. Truly needing other players would simply mean losing frustrated customers.
Sorry that's PvE.
Well played healers cross healing is incredibly strong in PvP.
It's a role worth specializing in.
It just requires 2 of the scarcest commodities in the entire game: communication and coordination.
I know this.
And this is where they fail. High DPS classes have usually had to be played very precisely in order to be successful in battle situations that slower heavier classes can do easily. This is not because the high dps class is weak, but it is a risk/reward situation.
For example, I play Guild Wars 2 ( and 1 ) and my Guardian class can solo legendary mobs easily...but it takes forever. My thief has a LOT more damage. They can also solo the mobs,.. provided I don't make a single mistake. But the time it takes is so much less.
Now, applying this concept to STO it is clear that what we have is a problem with the other classes now performing the roles that invalidate the need for a "tank". There is no real risk to the reward for rolling a DPS based character. In fact, it can be said that there is major risk in rolling a tank based character. Because you can not do the damage needed to hurt the DPS class,..and the DPS class can nearly insta-pop you.. the whole situation is literally bass-ackwards.
But no matter how many ideas or reasonable concepts are mentioned, there will always be those who can't acknowledge the real source of the problem.
The other classes have taken over 90% of what we do with 0% loss to what they did before.
So either we need to be lifted up.. or their butts need to be knocked down.
I am never one for nerfs.. so I prefer the former.
But to be honest, it is not like this would make PvE much harder if it was a nerf. PvE has been a snore fest for years.
No ship or captain *needs* anyone else in PvE.
And since STO *is* a PvE game, I rest my case.
1) These are the PvP forums.
2) Against anything you could consider an actual opposition in PvP, escorts actually do need others.
It's terrible but easy, and these Borg are way cooler than the mess STO and Voyager left us.
be careful around bops, when their wings go down in what would appear to be hug mode, its actually quite the opposite of hug mode :eek:
It is closer to the "overly-friendly neighbor's dog having sexy-time with your leg" mode
You're not alone Hale ='(
There are some fantastic escort pilots in this game. But against any decent team worth it's salt, they need help. Of course they do.
@Aquitaine985
Lag Industries STO PvP Fleet - Executive
A Sad Panda of Industrial calibre.
2010: This is Cryptic PvP. Please hold the line, your call is very important to us...
But you can help these engineers. For less than the EC cost of one Self-sealing Stem Bolt, you can donate to the 'PvP for Engineers' fund and help these engineers take part in PvP matches where they can make a difference.
Please donate generously.
Honestly, the only reason I do not PvP, other than ker'rat, is because my main and most played/enjoyed character is an eng... and therefore unwanted and unneeded. If, at some unforeseen future date, the Engineer class is wanted or needed in PvP combat instead of considered a liability, then i would gladly take part. Until then...there is simply no point even trying to participate.
edited to add: Although i did take my Aux2dampers beamrunner into kerrat this morning and it was a hell of a lot of fun... yeah, a beamscort: ANATHEMA!!!
Derrick - Fed Eng
Want to make PvP a bit more alive.
Help bring 1/3 of the players back to the game.