Reasonable TTK (time-to-kill) values are sort of hard to discuss in our game vs. in abstract game design. Realistically, the important thing is that players feel they have agency in their own survival or lack thereof - if I get bursted from 100 to 0 in a short duration, I need to feel that I made a mistake (either in build, loadout, or mechanical execution). The feeling of getting outplayed is important - it means there's something I can change in my approach to the situation to avoid that unfavorable outcome in the future.
In terms of abstract, ideal TTK values? For PvP in MMOs, that sweet spot is usually in the 20 sec - 2 min range, depending on the class and skill loadout matchup and the abilities used by either participant. A sitting duck totally failing to mitigate incoming damage in any way may die faster than that, but they would soon learn not to be a sitting duck and not to fail to mitigate damage. TTK for PCs has to be substantially longer than TTK for NPCs (many of whom need to die in under 20 seconds for the PCs defeating them to feel accomplishment).
It's a complex problem that's not fully solved within the industry, but those are my general thoughts on the situation. As a tangent to answer one of your later questions, the prolonged match times of 45 mins - 3 hours are a big problem for accessibility of the game to new players, but they're potentially core aspects to what the current PvP players enjoy, so any change to that would be considered risky and approached very carefully.
Please don't take this post as advocating for any changes or announcing anything other than my own, personal, inner thoughts on what makes PvP tick in MMORPGs. Just trying to have some real talk - if this post gets misconstrued and twisted to fit agendas, I'll have to avoid talking theorycraft and design with you guys in the future (in this abstract sense), and that would suck - so please don't do that.
Here is the thing though at the core. In most games it becomes a race of killing the other guy before he can kill you. This is true in most MMOs and even in other genres such as ARPGs and/or MOBAs. At the end of the day someone will be killed it is simply a race of your offense vs his defense and his offense vs your defense. This extends to PvE and PvP and while CC and the like do play a role they are still offensive or defensive, sometimes both.
STO is different. In STO it is not a question of killing the NPC before they kill you. It is a question of can you survive the NPCs damage output. You can either tank it all day without dying, or you will die in 10-20 seconds. This is thanks to how the abilities work and the amount of sustain and I directly blame shield power and regeneration paired with high resistance rates for this primarily. Then since NPCs rarely or never heal it simply becomes a matter of how long it takes for it to die. The race is against the clock, not your offense/defense VS his defense/offense.
PvP simply takes this to it's natural extreme. If sustained damage < sustained healing, which it is, then burst is the only way to get kills.
At the end of the day I can restore even an escort from 0 to full in under a minute while in combat and increase my effective health via resistances at the same time. That is simply silly. A single boff ability, Emergency power to Shields, by itself doubles the amount of damage it takes to kill me over the powers duration thanks to the resistance boost and the passive regeneration boost.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Attack Pattern Alpha is overpowered and creates too much burst. Emergency power to Shields (and shield power by extension) is overpowered and creates too much sustain. The change made to Go Down Fighting helps mitigate APA a little but not enough. The change to the other EPtX powers helps make the others more desirable but their is still little to no opportunity cost to slot EPtS with another one thanks to doffs.
Now obviously nerfing such things would be a bad idea this late in the games life cycle and would likely have many far reaching consequences, and you guys love creating new systems so lets take a whack at it.
Option 1: Structure HP like in EvE. This would be very difficult to repair/restore and would take mostly bleedthrew like damage. This would allow the 'race' or attrition to be used.
Option 2: Injuries without exploding. Perhaps as a crit of a crit, perhaps as a secondary effect of some Boff abilities, or perhaps just as a really low proc rate. Obviously they should then go away on respawn.
*Please note I'm not trying to misconstrue or be hostile but the core design of STO combat doesn't even follow typical MMO structure yet it is expected to have the performance of such. It cannot.
How much healing is acceptable to put out in the space of 3s?
Well, it has always felt wierd that heals are instantaneous except for HE. Shield heals are sensible, in that you are usually sending or apply power, which could be sub-second events. But hull heals should take time. Maybe 3s for A2S, or 5s for ET?
There has also been something of a serious power creep these days, and then i really mean power.
Today its easily possible for captains to fly almost any kind of ship with sustained power levels over 100% on ALL SYSTEMS, with use of equipment stacking and plasmonic leeches and doffs and what not.
Some can even cap alll their power levels at 125% for long durations at a time.
The problem is that it pretty much completely kills the entire power management system and the idea of balancing power between different subsystems.
I forgot their is one other big difference between STO and the standard MMO.
Resource mechanics. Most MMOs have a limitation on how much healing you can do by virtue of mana systems. STO only has cool downs. This means the system remains binary in nature where DPS is either > or < the targets sustain, or ability to heal. You will never run out of 'heals' they can merely be on cool down.
So you have three simple variables.
Effective Health = amount of damage it takes to explode.
Damage per Second = damage output.
Sustain = amount of damage healed or negated.
And at the end of the day that's it. Other things can change those variables, obviously your effective health and sustain will go down after being targeted by Sub-Nuke but that isn't any different than an attack pattern alpha buffing up the DPS or a tractor beam destroying your defense score and reducing your sustain and effective health really.
There is no limited resource that you can exhaust aside from cooldowns but those are so much different that they cannot really be compared.
I think 10-30s under fire is an acceptable amount of time.... I also thing all of you have gotten far to use to not dying.
I will use the Tyler Durden Channel matches to make my point... at this point many of you have at least playing in a few of them.
People have gotten used to being in there premade and not dying more then 1-2 times a night tops. Those poor new players, and random pugs that some of you love to yell at for giving up and or logging when they have died 8-9 times in a match are the ones doing it for you.
Back to the TD matches... I have honestly seen a small number of Fleet/Premade players getting upset about dying 4-5 times in a match... which I found funny. I mean if you are trying to balance a match for an ideal 15 -14 score... even the winners are going to die sometimes right ? lol
Right now the biggest issue I see is NOT pressure dmg... DMG is higher then it has ever been all around... FAW is working right.. beams are in fact good and parse higher DPS in PvE then Cannons can hope to... what is really wrong as I see it is ... a TON of really really terrible design choices that have given people a TON of healing.
STO has always been a game where we all have a small amount of healing all the time.... it is one of the Few MMOs I can think of where players are constantly healing in battle. Given we are supposed to be in starships with 100s and sometimes 1000s of people on board it is logical some would be repairing in battle. HOWEVER recently (the last year or so)... we have seen passive hull repair triple in many cases... We have seen Passive Shield repair triple as well.... We have also seen the inclusion of doffs which depending on which ones you run are providing tons of extra resist, boosts to healing stats... and in some cases flat out new burst and over time heals.
Then you have a slew of new items as well... that are providing even more healing... things like On Critical hit hull and shield heal consoles... and comboed up Turn consoles that provide more armour. Ship sets that provide more power and more healing... and the Leech console has become standard Equipment pushing people to max shield power settings almost all the time... heck even on my escort a combo of Leech + EPTS 1 + the +20 shield power doff... and I am sitting at 130 shield power ALL THE TIME.
Also you can't discount the fact that we are all in ships now that are just a little bit better... who is NOT in a fleet ship or lockbox ship ? None of you right. Very few of us are flying ships that don't have at least 1.0 shield mods anymore... and likely 5-10k more hull then the ships we where in 2 years ago. Also consider the skill tree revamp.... like it or love it bottom line in a lot of cases people got things they didn't have before in the deal... we don't have to spec ship types anymore... I love that as it was stupid but in the trade most of us ended up with no need for EPS as the tree provides us right around what 2 EPS units used to do for us just by specing 6 points in elctro.... yes wise players use power settings. I think the average player likely ended up with a good amount more in terms of power provided by EPTx... and there captain skills... and even in just raw Hull and Shield numbers.
On top of all that new passive healing... throw in a bunch of possible placates that reduce incoming dmg... Tier 5 get out of trouble buttons (yes long cool down but still if you have a solid defense roll once every 10min is all you really need a oh no button).
I will end it there... my point is DMG is up... its Up by a healthy amount... the real issue is healing counting actual heal numbers / resists / and Hit point pools... are UP much more and that is the real issue. The only thing it takes any talent to survive anymore is the super high spike builds that have evolved due to the healing issue.
Reasonable TTK (time-to-kill) values are sort of hard to discuss in our game vs. in abstract game design. Realistically, the important thing is that players feel they have agency in their own survival or lack thereof...
Hello Cryptic employee, thank you for taking an interest in the discussion.
So I've been PvPing in STO since it was released, and the game has changed in a lot of ways since then -- while in some ways being exactly the same. Which is not bad, it's good, but I think the PvP concept in STO is at least partially antiquated -- everything else is changing but it is not. There was a sizable change in the powers, cooldowns, resistances, and what not over a year ago (season 4 or 5? I can't remember now -- I don't think the dev works there anymore).
That, at the time was a bandaid fix. All this time later the same problem is still fundamental.
In terms of abstract, ideal TTK values? For PvP in MMOs, that sweet spot is usually in the 20 sec - 2 min range, depending on the class and skill loadout matchup and the abilities used by either participant....
The problem is skills are purely cooldown based, and they tend to be resistance buffs at the same time as heals. Which means you basically stack overlapping powers and make a fire-all macro that continually pushes your buffs for you so they are up all the time. That's, sadly, one of the ways to remain competitive in the mish-mash these days.
STO PvP is a game of extremes. Extreme buffs/healing, or extreme damage. While this setup itself is not flawed, as it's a system that seeks to balance itself and teams and players would do so -- the problem is that there is then only one way to really overcome that; via windows of opportunities. Gaps in the cooldown cycle. The problem is exacerbated then when you have no matchmaking system.
Teams and players ought to be rewarded for a level of coordination and skill that requires executing a perfect attack in a window of 5-10 seconds. Instead, it's pretty much mandatory.
With any kind of support at all, the windows of opportunities to destroy a ship are simply erased, and a battle can go on and on.. and on... and on... and on....
..and on... or one team simply face rolls the other.
As a tangent to answer one of your later questions, the prolonged match times of 45 mins - 3 hours are a big problem for accessibility of the game to new players, but they're potentially core aspects to what the current PvP players enjoy, so any change to that would be considered risky and approached very carefully.
Attrition, as so many people bring up, has been the problem since STO was released. A game is a game, and a show is a show, but every Star Trek series ever has limits on how much a ship can do before it is destroyed, disabled, or otherwise done with the fight -- damage it can take, weapons it can fire -- power runs out, crew members get injured, subsystems fail... you get the idea.
"burst" healing doesn't exist in Star Trek canon. That's for fantasy RPGs. The fact you can go from 1% to 100% on your hull AND shields in STO is a problem. Same exists for shields. This game has (more or less) 2 health bars in most circumstances, both of which can be refilled rapidly (if not instantly with RSP, or a big hull heal), and the heals themselves provide resistances making hurting the target a compound problem that grows close to exponentially.
I'm not against the design itself. The problem isn't so much the skills themselves or any such thing. The problem is uptime on the abilities with team play in mind. The problem is that there is no limiting factor other than very, very narrow windows of opportunities that can evaporate on a whim, depending on allies and focus fire.
I don't want to punish team coordination -- no. But, again, no limiting factor once you remove time (easily done with your current cooldown/overlapping skills system).
Ships don't have a "power" pool that eventually depletes. Imagine if the new warp core item recently introduced had a value, say 10,000, and every time you fired a weapon and the power had to replenish, the pool would be deducted to put the power back into the weapon system.
Eventually you'd end up at minimal weapon power and couldn't hurt anything. Or minimal auxiliary power and couldn't heal anything. Or minimal shield power and would eventually be facing destruction. Whatever it may be, the point is, a ship, at some point, would cease to be immune to everything. That ship would either need to be destroyed/respawn and start over, or it'd have to break combat, stop firing, stop healing, stop consuming mass amounts of its power, and take time to regenerate (similar to hull repair in combat and out of combat -- power might come back quicker out of combat).
Long term battles would solve themselves either by ships simply running out of effective power -- getting destroyed, cloaking and regenerating out of combat for a while, or just straight up retreating to fight a minute later after their power has come back to reasonable levels.
I loathe the idea of adding yet more mechanics to STO or more resources to manage -- so, as I recommended years ago, you could do something more useful with the crew system (replace it with energy, or make it a partial component to what I've suggested). It is, honestly, kind of a wasted bar presently (I mean it helps a little -- but ask anyone who flies a Vo'Quv if it really matters -- they're all dead throughout the entire PvP match).
Also, adding a new "mode" might not hurt. A new map maybe? It's been the same since release day. Maybe "king of the hill" or "last man standing" style with a couple rounds per match. I don't know. Something?
I know you have to juggle pvp and pve, but I could only see PvE benefitting from this as well -- encounters would have a reason and means to resolve themselves in some kind of time frame.
Reasonable TTK (time-to-kill) values are sort of hard to discuss in our game vs. in abstract game design. Realistically, the important thing is that players feel they have agency in their own survival or lack thereof - if I get bursted from 100 to 0 in a short duration, I need to feel that I made a mistake (either in build, loadout, or mechanical execution).
The feeling of getting outplayed is important - it means there's something I can change in my approach to the situation to avoid that unfavorable outcome in the future.
Hi Hawk, thanks for stopping by. It's always interesting to hear the designer-side input - especially for something as abstract as this.
I agree on these points, they're definitely important.
For the second part on feeling you made a mistake, or were caught off guard, it's probably requires a decent amount of PvP experience in this game to recognize.
It is more fun to feel like you put up a fight.
That's a tough obstacle to balance around, because obviously no one wants new players to feel helpless but I admit I'm sure it must feel that way to them.
Even some seasoned players, if they haven't "cracked the code" on a specific tactic will also probably feel like it's out of their control when it happens in under 5s.
In terms of abstract, ideal TTK values? For PvP in MMOs, that sweet spot is usually in the 20 sec - 2 min range, depending on the class and skill loadout matchup and the abilities used by either participant. A sitting duck totally failing to mitigate incoming damage in any way may die faster than that, but they would soon learn not to be a sitting duck and not to fail to mitigate damage. TTK for PCs has to be substantially longer than TTK for NPCs (many of whom need to die in under 20 seconds for the PCs defeating them to feel accomplishment).
That's interesting.
It's honestly my first time to even hear these kinds of abstract ideal TTK values.
It's a complex problem that's not fully solved within the industry, but those are my general thoughts on the situation. As a tangent to answer one of your later questions, the prolonged match times of 45 mins - 3 hours are a big problem for accessibility of the game to new players, but they're potentially core aspects to what the current PvP players enjoy, so any change to that would be considered risky and approached very carefully.
I should probably clarify.
45 minutes seems to be almost a standard minimum for decent Premade vs. Premades, right now, in the current meta of heavy spike - primarily through the double tap builds that inspired this thread.
With no time restrictions, the more typical (non decloak ambush strikes) Premade vs. Premade can go for an hour easy, and can hit the 3 hour mark.
While this is not "accessible" to new players, I'd say it's extremely unlikely that they will actually end up in these situations as the 1 hour plus should mostly result from two premade/pugmade teams who are evenly matched.
Honestly the 3 hour matches are probably not accessible to most PvPers in general.
I'd say that we are seeing some shorter matches in general right now, because ambush strikes do take people off guard and does score kills outside of what has long been the very tried and true method of timing APA and SNB together, and then chaining SNBs as needed.
This is actually a 90s to 120s kill cycle, but the kill actually happens in a small window of about 5 to 10s. The time in between is spent playing defense and trying to look for weakpoints, or adapt to strategy. Personally I see this as TTK = 10s or less, even though the space between another kill on the opposite team can "take" another 90s to 120s - that's only due to cooldowns.
The truth is, with evenly matched teams in this style of pvp match - you really do not usually kill someone if APA and SNB are on cooldown - you just aren't able to (newer ambush spike builds have changed this element of the meta-game).
Please don't take this post as advocating for any changes or announcing anything other than my own, personal, inner thoughts on what makes PvP tick in MMORPGs. Just trying to have some real talk - if this post gets misconstrued and twisted to fit agendas, I'll have to avoid talking theorycraft and design with you guys in the future (in this abstract sense), and that would suck - so please don't do that.
Obviously I can only speak for myself, but I don't intend to misconstrue anything ideas you've shared with us.
I have some more thoughts, but this post is already massive. I'm going to collect my thoughts and come back to ideal vs. real TTKs.
Yeah, I died a few times in matches in TD. That's how I stress test builds quickly nowadays.
To make PvP more accessible to new comers, I really do believe 1 simple solution can destroy that barrier. As soon as you go into a PvP match, make distribute shields automatic adjudicatorhawk. The survivability of new comers would drastically increase making PvP more accessible. Would also give them the possible feeling of "I shouldn't have done that" instead of "That's not fair" or "That's impossible" when they die.
Newcomers exploding the second they enter the queues is fun for no one (apart from the shallow few looking for a power trip)
Shouldnt the thought pattern be "How can I make PvP more accessible to the masses?"rather than "Should that be possible for players to accomplish?"at this low point in time for PvP.
Isn't that what we want it to be first and foremost, more accessible to the masses? Once we have the numbers, let's deal with fringe events like super kills then.
PvP Bootcamp is noble in its aims, but its a band aid to what's happening /not happening with regards to STO PvP. Devs should take time out to hear what the coaches have to say in these seminars as anonymous people and then maybe, just maybe, you might start to appreciate a PvPers point of view and develop new ideas to improve the state of PvP in ways even we didn't think of.
I really do hope that this request and information gained in this thread doesn't fall on deaf ears and something really positive comes out of it (Not a PvP rep system to begin with. Got enough power creep as it is with the current reps )
Also, a suggestion for you:
Start a thread off yourself for whatever PvP related thing is on your mind. I'm sure people people will contribute to your thoughts and questions in a positive manner.
As soon as you go into a PvP match, make distribute shields automatic adjudicatorhawk.
This is an interesting point.
I'm not sure if every cryptic game has it, but at least one former cryptic made game allowed you to choose 1 power that would automatically activate every time it's cooldown was finished.
Applied to basic distribution, that would be every 2s.
It would also allow the player to activate it, and while I think "always on" would be better for new players, it would remove the directional options from players that use it.
I never use it myself, but probably some might. I know I've seen a few video's of maikai's where he has the frontal distribute key easily accessible - probably for when he's staying on target with his 90 degree sci powers.
I like the idea of making disribute auto... but why not combine that idea with a fix for tac team.
Tac team is another reason so many of us have went to super spike builds... we know we really have a 5s window to really get to hull now that tac team is what it is.
What if tac team was changed and the shield spin was removed....
And a always on version was added that was say 50% as effective as tac team is now.
Just make shields auto distribue ala tac team by default... it would be more realistic to think of it working that way anyway. With the field naturaly filling in the gaps as they are created.
I like the idea of making disribute auto... but why not combine that idea with a fix for tac team.
Tac team is another reason so many of us have went to super spike builds... we know we really have a 5s window to really get to hull now that tac team is what it is.
What if tac team was changed and the shield spin was removed....
And a always on version was added that was say 50% as effective as tac team is now.
Just make shields auto distribue ala tac team by default... it would be more realistic to think of it working that way anyway. With the field naturaly filling in the gaps as they are created.
Yup yup yup. Brings pressure damage back in a sense. What about snb then? Back to 1 nuke kills? Tt right now is imo better than st to save someone who is nuked. How could that be balanced?
It's not really PvP when advanced players with all the advantages look for new players, specifically to score easy victories and then get rude in celebration. That's a good way to kill PvP.
It's a game. People want to have challenging fun. Not abuse.
The mechanic of the fleet shield [Adapt] modifyer should be invertet. Instead of more resistance to get over the time, these shields should give a flat bonus to resistance, which will decreases with each hit.
The mechanic of the fleet shield [Adapt] modifyer should be invertet. Instead of more resistance to get over the time, these shields should give a flat bonus to resistance, which will decreases with each hit.
Get rid of resist mods altogether and give shield heals a buff instead to compensate. Brings skill back into game
Yeah, I died a few times in matches in TD. That's how I stress test builds quickly nowadays.
To make PvP more accessible to new comers, I really do believe 1 simple solution can destroy that barrier. As soon as you go into a PvP match, make distribute shields automatic adjudicatorhawk. The survivability of new comers would drastically increase making PvP more accessible. Would also give them the possible feeling of "I shouldn't have done that" instead of "That's not fair" or "That's impossible" when they die.
Newcomers exploding the second they enter the queues is fun for no one (apart from the shallow few looking for a power trip)
Shouldnt the thought pattern be "How can I make PvP more accessible to the masses?"rather than "Should that be possible for players to accomplish?"at this low point in time for PvP.
Isn't that what we want it to be first and foremost, more accessible to the masses? Once we have the numbers, let's deal with fringe events like super kills then.
PvP Bootcamp is noble in its aims, but its a band aid to what's happening /not happening with regards to STO PvP. Devs should take time out to hear what the coaches have to say in these seminars as anonymous people and then maybe, just maybe, you might start to appreciate a PvPers point of view and develop new ideas to improve the state of PvP in ways even we didn't think of.
I really do hope that this request and information gained in this thread doesn't fall on deaf ears and something really positive comes out of it (Not a PvP rep system to begin with. Got enough power creep as it is with the current reps )
Also, a suggestion for you:
Start a thread off yourself for whatever PvP related thing is on your mind. I'm sure people people will contribute to your thoughts and questions in a positive manner.
Thanks for posting by the way.
Regarding auto shield distribute: I ll up you one. Since we are in the land of theory crafting with only a birds eye view on STO.
Just to get it out of the way: YEs tac team is poorly balanced, and needs adjustment.
With the many options we have in STO space pvp Boff/Doff/GEar/ the feeling of having a counter is largely impeded by the time it takes to switch something in order to respond to the current situations.
Example: I usually have aux2sif on my boat. BUt my team has enough hull healing, but somehow the enemy manages to make good use of stuns. OK. Switch aux2sif for aux2damp and we should be doing better.
It takes way to long (even if i have a Boff trained, and with all the desirable traits ready to go) to actually do this. Disengage -> switch Boff -> rearrange up to 4 powers on my tray -> switch doff (aux2sif doffs won't do me any good now) -> Deflectors/consoles/shields? -> Load alternative keybind file havam_damp-layout.txt etc.
And this is just for changing one power to respond to the situation. NOw shields and armor is more easily switched granted. But with the synergistic builds that are the backbone of pvp. Changing things during an engagement become so much hassle that i m pretty sure most players don't even try.
What about switching weapons: Go from BOgai toTSgai because there is a lot of spam on the field....? Even more hassle. We can switch gear when outside read alert, or during respawn. But our ability to do so effctivly are limited. MAke changing layout (the whole shebang, weapons, consoles, deflectors, Boffs, doffs,) easier and people will feel less helpless. Since you have to withdraw from the battle to do so, leaving your team one man down, i doubt will see endless rounds of remixing the cards instead of actual pew pew.
The problem is: If they could change between different leayouts and gear more easily, they might actually have a chance to do something, or at least experiment and learn.
SO while this whole debate became about TTK, we should think about time to get you counters ready as well.
Allowing us to put certain powers on auto-activate, and have them pop up in the same tray slots, no matter which boff they come from would be a great start to improve not only pvp but also pve. Using builds more taylored to the situation, afterall is good for everyone.
Sorry if I am stealing any ideas I didn?t read all the posts.
I don?t know how many other games have two health systems like STO but we have Shields and Hull both with their own resistance. I think this makes a great opportunity to have one system counter high spike damage and one counter high dps.
My idea is to make all players? hull hit points much higher say 10 times, but reduce hull healing by 10 times. However shields would stay the same with heals that can fully restore them. It would have to be balanced so one max healer could only come close to countering (even with very high resistance) all the hull damage from a max damage dealer.
This would make hull damage much more permanent and stop the kills that happen in a few seconds. This would also make pressure damage more important. Now if shields are the same then you still need the spike damage to get through the shields. One side effect of this is hull damage resistance would become much more important.
This would also allow everyone to live at least 10 times longer (instead of 2 to 3 seconds to would be 20 to 30) but it would also limit the max amount of time you live because you could never counter all the hull damage. (note a weak dps player vs a very good healer might still go one forever like it does now)
If this made matches to long you could just change the need points to 5 instead of 15.
With it taking longer to kill someone, it will give more time for players to see what is happening so they can learn from it. Not just die in 3 seconds and going WTF just happened.
It really doesn?t apply because this is a game but in Star Trek shows/movies shields are up and down but hull damage stayed.
The problem is starship combat in STO isn't like what we've seen in the series/movies at all. It's like WoW in the time of TBC. I'm sure some MMO players like the super fast paced burst and super tough heals, but I'm also sure a lot of Star Trek fans would prefer seeing a combat system reflecting something more similar to what we see in the series/movies.
What do we see on screen:
1. Shields that take a lot of damage, but regenerate very slowly.
2. System failure and minor hull damage through shields, that can be repaired during the fight.
3. When shields are down, most torpedo-based hull damage taken is catastrophic and cannot be repaired until back in spacedock.
4. Armor can stop/block energy weapons (i.e. the Hirogen vessel encountered by Voyager)
So converting this into an MMO combat, you'd end up with ships with very high shield rating. Say 100.000 per facing.
However shield renegeration should be very low, and all heals should be far, far less effective. Once your shields are down, they won't be getting back up unless you get a lot of teammember support. This will in turn also make torpedo's more dangerous as shields won't pop back up every 2 seconds. Torpedo's should also do a bit more damage to shields.
The bridge abilities should be tweaked that they provide only small benefits, but benefits that add up over a fight and tip the balance in your favour when used tactically.
Basically burst needs to become less all-powerful, but the immortal ships need to go as well. Obviously all powers would have to be rebalanced for this, and I honestly doubt it would ever happen. But imho it would be great.
The downside it it becomes less twitch-gameplay and more passive, which is something not everyone will like.
The downside it it becomes less twitch-gameplay and more passive, which is something not everyone will like.
Thing is...we've got both starships and fighters. Should the starships fight like fighters or should they fight like starships? And if folks want that twitch of fighters...aren't they there?
Tac team is another reason so many of us have went to super spike builds... we know we really have a 5s window to really get to hull now that tac team is what it is.
This is really something that can't be said enough.
TT is one of the largest contributing factors to 5s kill windows.
What if tac team was changed and the shield spin was removed....
And a always on version was added that was say 50% as effective as tac team is now.
Just make shields auto distribue ala tac team by default... it would be more realistic to think of it working that way anyway. With the field naturaly filling in the gaps as they are created.
I think this idea has a lot of merit.
Pros:
Brings up the baseline of survivability for all ships, all of the time equally.
Reduces the amount of survivability spikes - which is one of the main factors for short kill windows - yes this is good.
Reduces level of team skill required to compete at upper end PvP.*
Cons:
Reduces/removes a more advanced team play tactic.*
TT would need to be reworked to fit some useful self & team function.
*This is really two sides of a coin, overall I think this change would be an improvement.
Thing is...we've got both starships and fighters. Should the starships fight like fighters or should they fight like starships? And if folks want that twitch of fighters...aren't they there?
I think the chances of us fighting like we're in starships went out the window early in development when the ranges ships would fight at were decided.
If we wanted them to fight like starships, I think the distance scales would have needed to be much, much bigger.
The game is designed with quick use boff powers, "magic" rpg style healing and limited arc/range weapons (2km for maximum cannon effect).
I think it was pretty much written in the cards early on that this would lead to more fighter-like combat.
I pretty much expect this thread to eventually go somewhere beyond what I originally intended, but I think the specifics of fighter vs. starship combat probably has enough depth to be it's own meta-focused thread.;)
I pretty much expect this thread to eventually go somewhere beyond what I originally intended, but I think the specifics of fighter vs. starship combat probably has enough depth to be it's own meta-focused thread.;)
It's kind of inherent to the topic itself though, no? Expectations on how long somebody should be able to last - how long it should take to pop somebody - etc, etc, etc. It's about having a frame of reference for the discussion.
It goes to what Hawk said about the reasonable TTK. The reasonable TTK for a fighter is much different than a starship, imho. Some people will not see that as the case, itho.
Players are basically "hero" ships. NPCs are the background ships. Yes, the "plot armor" and so forth has to be cut down - but there should be a happy medium there.
If one watches some of the Dominion War episodes - they'll see ships getting blown to smithereens left right and center...while the various "hero" ships plod along.
To me, it's not reasonable that players get blown up as if they were NPCs while in starships. If they were in fighters, sure - they're in fighters. The expectation of survival is going to be less, again imho.
So it's just that, the reasonable TTK/survival being based on players being in starships - some of them having thousands of crew, if their survival was only a few seconds - neither side would ever launch the ships.
you want to be the hero ship? theres the easy mode setting
We're talking PvP...
Player A is fighting Player B...they're both in hero ships. It should take longer for Player A to blow up Player B or Player B to blow up Player A than it would take for either Player A or Player B to blow up a NPC.
Simple as that.
edit: And I'm going to leave it at that, because it's apparent you want the thread to go all over the place so that any actual discussion on the matter is lost. Ulti asked nicely that not happen...I think it's only fair to try to comply.
No matter what it still comes back to the simple problem.
Their is absolutely no resource mechanic. That means either damage > healing OR damage < healing. And when healing also increases EHP that just turns it into a mess.
It will always be a yo-yo that yo-yo can be tweaked but it cannot be fixed without a resource that can be exhausted. You need 'mana' that can be exhausted.
Until then things will always be one of two ways.
1) Extreme spike or good luck getting kills. Keep in mind with this CC such as sub-nuke and holds really are just a form of spike.
2) DPS is too high and everyone dies in 30 seconds or less.
Those are the only two potential outcomes. The system has no flexibility as everything is binary.
It's kind of inherent to the topic itself though, no? Expectations on how long somebody should be able to last - how long it should take to pop somebody - etc, etc, etc. It's about having a frame of reference for the discussion.
It goes to what Hawk said about the reasonable TTK. The reasonable TTK for a fighter is much different than a starship, imho. Some people will not see that as the case, itho.
If we can keep it focused on how that fits into the ideal vs. real/practical TTK in STO - then yes, absolutely.
In a way this touches back on what antonio's idea is trying to accomplish.
Reducing the binary nature of TacTeam ON (2/3rds uptime or more from teammates) vs. TacTeamOFF (1/3rd or less downtime).
When TT is up, every ship is basically a "hero" ship, able to shield tank almost ridiculous levels of incoming fire when combined with all of the other available mitigators.
When TT is down, that's when decloak alpha strikers attack, or when good escorts strike - and this can come from TT simply expiring or from a well timed SNB.
Antonio's idea would give everyone half as much of this mitigation, but it would be on all of the time and would not be removed by SNB.
Would that be a good solution to some of the binary nature of kills?
It would obviously require a lot of testing, but I do think it has a lot of merit.
yet one could be implemented right from the franchise canon.
the deuterium reserve.
have if refil through movement making the ships bussard collectors and furion reactors an upgradable & customisable component, & drain through whatever drains your subsystems.
Actually the really funny thing to me is that their already is atleast two already in the game they don't use.
1) Subsystem energy, weapons used to actually drain the subsystem. This could have been extended to AUX power for using space magic and/or shields when they are being beaten on or magically healed.
2) Crew but yeah let us not touch that with a 50ft pole.
Think if you had a 1% chance to get a debuff that gave -1 weapon power each time you fire a weapon. Extend that to using other abilities and say 1% chance to loose 1 shield power each 'tic' of regeneration. These power penalties could only be removed by exploding or being out of combat for a period of time.
That would be a crude system but it would atleast allow for an eventual attrition.
*edit addon*
An auto shield distrubtion would be the biggest improvement to the game I can think of ever happening. It would drastically reduce the gap between the average STO player and those of use who bother to make a keybind. Might also make the other two teams have a purpose in PvE.
I'm being 100% serious this game is so casual friendly for 98% of it then throws players into an ESTF where they explode in seconds in their cruiser while I fall asleep tanking the tac cube by mashing spacebar. Imagine how frustrating that must be for the new player who has no desire to put the time and effort into the game to learn the systems and just wants to play and have fun.
Their is absolutely no resource mechanic. That means either damage > healing OR damage < healing. And when healing also increases EHP that just turns it into a mess.
Well, we will not have a resource mechanic that is exhaustable but the windows for kills could be stretched out to fall somewhere in between all of the available cooldowns.
Reducing the binary feeling of yo-yo spike and healing that we have, would go a long way.
Maybe it wouldn't be a perfect system, but I don't think we need to aim for perfect.
Well, we will not have a resource mechanic that is exhaustable but the windows for kills could be stretched out to fall somewhere in between all of the available cooldowns.
Reducing the binary feeling of yo-yo spike and healing that we have, would go a long way.
Maybe it wouldn't be a perfect system, but I don't think we need to aim for perfect.
As you have stated already though your main window is 5 seconds. The second is oh wait EPtS can be up 100% of the time, 30 seconds for APO windows etc etc but that doesn't even begin to touch RSP, FBP, TSS, extends, etc etc etc. Then you have to worry about the team/player who doesn't stack 10 forms of defense compared to those who do and yeah.
Good luck with that.
The only two states PvP has ever been in, well ok three.
1) Spike or Go Home
2) Fed ball murdering anything that gets close. DPS > healing at that point.
3) Exploitable thing that gets patched (or not) like those banned in the 'have fun' tornies.
Three years of tweaks and it is still the same. Their is a reason most games have a limited resource of some sort beyond just cool downs. STO removed that resources without doing a single thing to compensate for it.
Would that be a good solution to some of the binary nature of kills?
I believe we've had the binary/yo-yo discussions in the past, and my beef then (even more so now) is just about the extremes of it. There needs to be some play there in regard to it, it allows for the actual gameplay and for one to "express" their skill/twitch/ability/knowledge - etc, etc, etc. Something along the lines of watching fencing, boxing, martial arts - there's that play that takes place. STO's more like watching anime.
No matter what it still comes back to the simple problem.
Their is absolutely no resource mechanic. That means either damage > healing OR damage < healing. And when healing also increases EHP that just turns it into a mess.
It will always be a yo-yo that yo-yo can be tweaked but it cannot be fixed without a resource that can be exhausted. You need 'mana' that can be exhausted.
Star Trek is not a simple Fantasy MMO. And it needs more than just the typical 'mana' that most games have.
No matter what it still comes back to the simple problem.
2) DPS is too high and everyone dies in 30 seconds or less.
30 seconds or less is a problem but it's not the only problem. No matter what new mechanic you put in the game be it new power levels, shields levels, or weapon DPS / burst; there will ways be a 30 seconds or less problem as long as they are putting new level 50 people in the same pvp queue as a 3 year vet. However currently I do not think there are enough PvPers to fill a multi-tier queue.
Comments
Here is the thing though at the core. In most games it becomes a race of killing the other guy before he can kill you. This is true in most MMOs and even in other genres such as ARPGs and/or MOBAs. At the end of the day someone will be killed it is simply a race of your offense vs his defense and his offense vs your defense. This extends to PvE and PvP and while CC and the like do play a role they are still offensive or defensive, sometimes both.
STO is different. In STO it is not a question of killing the NPC before they kill you. It is a question of can you survive the NPCs damage output. You can either tank it all day without dying, or you will die in 10-20 seconds. This is thanks to how the abilities work and the amount of sustain and I directly blame shield power and regeneration paired with high resistance rates for this primarily. Then since NPCs rarely or never heal it simply becomes a matter of how long it takes for it to die. The race is against the clock, not your offense/defense VS his defense/offense.
PvP simply takes this to it's natural extreme. If sustained damage < sustained healing, which it is, then burst is the only way to get kills.
At the end of the day I can restore even an escort from 0 to full in under a minute while in combat and increase my effective health via resistances at the same time. That is simply silly. A single boff ability, Emergency power to Shields, by itself doubles the amount of damage it takes to kill me over the powers duration thanks to the resistance boost and the passive regeneration boost.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Attack Pattern Alpha is overpowered and creates too much burst. Emergency power to Shields (and shield power by extension) is overpowered and creates too much sustain. The change made to Go Down Fighting helps mitigate APA a little but not enough. The change to the other EPtX powers helps make the others more desirable but their is still little to no opportunity cost to slot EPtS with another one thanks to doffs.
Now obviously nerfing such things would be a bad idea this late in the games life cycle and would likely have many far reaching consequences, and you guys love creating new systems so lets take a whack at it.
Option 1: Structure HP like in EvE. This would be very difficult to repair/restore and would take mostly bleedthrew like damage. This would allow the 'race' or attrition to be used.
Option 2: Injuries without exploding. Perhaps as a crit of a crit, perhaps as a secondary effect of some Boff abilities, or perhaps just as a really low proc rate. Obviously they should then go away on respawn.
*Please note I'm not trying to misconstrue or be hostile but the core design of STO combat doesn't even follow typical MMO structure yet it is expected to have the performance of such. It cannot.
Well, it has always felt wierd that heals are instantaneous except for HE. Shield heals are sensible, in that you are usually sending or apply power, which could be sub-second events. But hull heals should take time. Maybe 3s for A2S, or 5s for ET?
Today its easily possible for captains to fly almost any kind of ship with sustained power levels over 100% on ALL SYSTEMS, with use of equipment stacking and plasmonic leeches and doffs and what not.
Some can even cap alll their power levels at 125% for long durations at a time.
The problem is that it pretty much completely kills the entire power management system and the idea of balancing power between different subsystems.
Resource mechanics. Most MMOs have a limitation on how much healing you can do by virtue of mana systems. STO only has cool downs. This means the system remains binary in nature where DPS is either > or < the targets sustain, or ability to heal. You will never run out of 'heals' they can merely be on cool down.
So you have three simple variables.
Effective Health = amount of damage it takes to explode.
Damage per Second = damage output.
Sustain = amount of damage healed or negated.
And at the end of the day that's it. Other things can change those variables, obviously your effective health and sustain will go down after being targeted by Sub-Nuke but that isn't any different than an attack pattern alpha buffing up the DPS or a tractor beam destroying your defense score and reducing your sustain and effective health really.
There is no limited resource that you can exhaust aside from cooldowns but those are so much different that they cannot really be compared.
I will use the Tyler Durden Channel matches to make my point... at this point many of you have at least playing in a few of them.
People have gotten used to being in there premade and not dying more then 1-2 times a night tops. Those poor new players, and random pugs that some of you love to yell at for giving up and or logging when they have died 8-9 times in a match are the ones doing it for you.
Back to the TD matches... I have honestly seen a small number of Fleet/Premade players getting upset about dying 4-5 times in a match... which I found funny. I mean if you are trying to balance a match for an ideal 15 -14 score... even the winners are going to die sometimes right ? lol
Right now the biggest issue I see is NOT pressure dmg... DMG is higher then it has ever been all around... FAW is working right.. beams are in fact good and parse higher DPS in PvE then Cannons can hope to... what is really wrong as I see it is ... a TON of really really terrible design choices that have given people a TON of healing.
STO has always been a game where we all have a small amount of healing all the time.... it is one of the Few MMOs I can think of where players are constantly healing in battle. Given we are supposed to be in starships with 100s and sometimes 1000s of people on board it is logical some would be repairing in battle. HOWEVER recently (the last year or so)... we have seen passive hull repair triple in many cases... We have seen Passive Shield repair triple as well.... We have also seen the inclusion of doffs which depending on which ones you run are providing tons of extra resist, boosts to healing stats... and in some cases flat out new burst and over time heals.
Then you have a slew of new items as well... that are providing even more healing... things like On Critical hit hull and shield heal consoles... and comboed up Turn consoles that provide more armour. Ship sets that provide more power and more healing... and the Leech console has become standard Equipment pushing people to max shield power settings almost all the time... heck even on my escort a combo of Leech + EPTS 1 + the +20 shield power doff... and I am sitting at 130 shield power ALL THE TIME.
Also you can't discount the fact that we are all in ships now that are just a little bit better... who is NOT in a fleet ship or lockbox ship ? None of you right. Very few of us are flying ships that don't have at least 1.0 shield mods anymore... and likely 5-10k more hull then the ships we where in 2 years ago. Also consider the skill tree revamp.... like it or love it bottom line in a lot of cases people got things they didn't have before in the deal... we don't have to spec ship types anymore... I love that as it was stupid but in the trade most of us ended up with no need for EPS as the tree provides us right around what 2 EPS units used to do for us just by specing 6 points in elctro.... yes wise players use power settings. I think the average player likely ended up with a good amount more in terms of power provided by EPTx... and there captain skills... and even in just raw Hull and Shield numbers.
On top of all that new passive healing... throw in a bunch of possible placates that reduce incoming dmg... Tier 5 get out of trouble buttons (yes long cool down but still if you have a solid defense roll once every 10min is all you really need a oh no button).
I will end it there... my point is DMG is up... its Up by a healthy amount... the real issue is healing counting actual heal numbers / resists / and Hit point pools... are UP much more and that is the real issue. The only thing it takes any talent to survive anymore is the super high spike builds that have evolved due to the healing issue.
Hello Cryptic employee, thank you for taking an interest in the discussion.
So I've been PvPing in STO since it was released, and the game has changed in a lot of ways since then -- while in some ways being exactly the same. Which is not bad, it's good, but I think the PvP concept in STO is at least partially antiquated -- everything else is changing but it is not. There was a sizable change in the powers, cooldowns, resistances, and what not over a year ago (season 4 or 5? I can't remember now -- I don't think the dev works there anymore).
That, at the time was a bandaid fix. All this time later the same problem is still fundamental.
The problem is skills are purely cooldown based, and they tend to be resistance buffs at the same time as heals. Which means you basically stack overlapping powers and make a fire-all macro that continually pushes your buffs for you so they are up all the time. That's, sadly, one of the ways to remain competitive in the mish-mash these days.
STO PvP is a game of extremes. Extreme buffs/healing, or extreme damage. While this setup itself is not flawed, as it's a system that seeks to balance itself and teams and players would do so -- the problem is that there is then only one way to really overcome that; via windows of opportunities. Gaps in the cooldown cycle. The problem is exacerbated then when you have no matchmaking system.
Teams and players ought to be rewarded for a level of coordination and skill that requires executing a perfect attack in a window of 5-10 seconds. Instead, it's pretty much mandatory.
With any kind of support at all, the windows of opportunities to destroy a ship are simply erased, and a battle can go on and on.. and on... and on... and on....
..and on... or one team simply face rolls the other.
Attrition, as so many people bring up, has been the problem since STO was released. A game is a game, and a show is a show, but every Star Trek series ever has limits on how much a ship can do before it is destroyed, disabled, or otherwise done with the fight -- damage it can take, weapons it can fire -- power runs out, crew members get injured, subsystems fail... you get the idea.
"burst" healing doesn't exist in Star Trek canon. That's for fantasy RPGs. The fact you can go from 1% to 100% on your hull AND shields in STO is a problem. Same exists for shields. This game has (more or less) 2 health bars in most circumstances, both of which can be refilled rapidly (if not instantly with RSP, or a big hull heal), and the heals themselves provide resistances making hurting the target a compound problem that grows close to exponentially.
I'm not against the design itself. The problem isn't so much the skills themselves or any such thing. The problem is uptime on the abilities with team play in mind. The problem is that there is no limiting factor other than very, very narrow windows of opportunities that can evaporate on a whim, depending on allies and focus fire.
I don't want to punish team coordination -- no. But, again, no limiting factor once you remove time (easily done with your current cooldown/overlapping skills system).
Ships don't have a "power" pool that eventually depletes. Imagine if the new warp core item recently introduced had a value, say 10,000, and every time you fired a weapon and the power had to replenish, the pool would be deducted to put the power back into the weapon system.
Eventually you'd end up at minimal weapon power and couldn't hurt anything. Or minimal auxiliary power and couldn't heal anything. Or minimal shield power and would eventually be facing destruction. Whatever it may be, the point is, a ship, at some point, would cease to be immune to everything. That ship would either need to be destroyed/respawn and start over, or it'd have to break combat, stop firing, stop healing, stop consuming mass amounts of its power, and take time to regenerate (similar to hull repair in combat and out of combat -- power might come back quicker out of combat).
Long term battles would solve themselves either by ships simply running out of effective power -- getting destroyed, cloaking and regenerating out of combat for a while, or just straight up retreating to fight a minute later after their power has come back to reasonable levels.
I loathe the idea of adding yet more mechanics to STO or more resources to manage -- so, as I recommended years ago, you could do something more useful with the crew system (replace it with energy, or make it a partial component to what I've suggested). It is, honestly, kind of a wasted bar presently (I mean it helps a little -- but ask anyone who flies a Vo'Quv if it really matters -- they're all dead throughout the entire PvP match).
Also, adding a new "mode" might not hurt. A new map maybe? It's been the same since release day. Maybe "king of the hill" or "last man standing" style with a couple rounds per match. I don't know. Something?
I know you have to juggle pvp and pve, but I could only see PvE benefitting from this as well -- encounters would have a reason and means to resolve themselves in some kind of time frame.
Hi Hawk, thanks for stopping by. It's always interesting to hear the designer-side input - especially for something as abstract as this.
I agree on these points, they're definitely important.
For the second part on feeling you made a mistake, or were caught off guard, it's probably requires a decent amount of PvP experience in this game to recognize.
It is more fun to feel like you put up a fight.
That's a tough obstacle to balance around, because obviously no one wants new players to feel helpless but I admit I'm sure it must feel that way to them.
Even some seasoned players, if they haven't "cracked the code" on a specific tactic will also probably feel like it's out of their control when it happens in under 5s.
That's interesting.
It's honestly my first time to even hear these kinds of abstract ideal TTK values.
I should probably clarify.
45 minutes seems to be almost a standard minimum for decent Premade vs. Premades, right now, in the current meta of heavy spike - primarily through the double tap builds that inspired this thread.
With no time restrictions, the more typical (non decloak ambush strikes) Premade vs. Premade can go for an hour easy, and can hit the 3 hour mark.
While this is not "accessible" to new players, I'd say it's extremely unlikely that they will actually end up in these situations as the 1 hour plus should mostly result from two premade/pugmade teams who are evenly matched.
Honestly the 3 hour matches are probably not accessible to most PvPers in general.
I'd say that we are seeing some shorter matches in general right now, because ambush strikes do take people off guard and does score kills outside of what has long been the very tried and true method of timing APA and SNB together, and then chaining SNBs as needed.
This is actually a 90s to 120s kill cycle, but the kill actually happens in a small window of about 5 to 10s. The time in between is spent playing defense and trying to look for weakpoints, or adapt to strategy. Personally I see this as TTK = 10s or less, even though the space between another kill on the opposite team can "take" another 90s to 120s - that's only due to cooldowns.
The truth is, with evenly matched teams in this style of pvp match - you really do not usually kill someone if APA and SNB are on cooldown - you just aren't able to (newer ambush spike builds have changed this element of the meta-game).
Obviously I can only speak for myself, but I don't intend to misconstrue anything ideas you've shared with us.
I have some more thoughts, but this post is already massive. I'm going to collect my thoughts and come back to ideal vs. real TTKs.
To make PvP more accessible to new comers, I really do believe 1 simple solution can destroy that barrier. As soon as you go into a PvP match, make distribute shields automatic adjudicatorhawk. The survivability of new comers would drastically increase making PvP more accessible. Would also give them the possible feeling of "I shouldn't have done that" instead of "That's not fair" or "That's impossible" when they die.
Newcomers exploding the second they enter the queues is fun for no one (apart from the shallow few looking for a power trip)
Shouldnt the thought pattern be "How can I make PvP more accessible to the masses?"rather than "Should that be possible for players to accomplish?"at this low point in time for PvP.
Isn't that what we want it to be first and foremost, more accessible to the masses? Once we have the numbers, let's deal with fringe events like super kills then.
PvP Bootcamp is noble in its aims, but its a band aid to what's happening /not happening with regards to STO PvP. Devs should take time out to hear what the coaches have to say in these seminars as anonymous people and then maybe, just maybe, you might start to appreciate a PvPers point of view and develop new ideas to improve the state of PvP in ways even we didn't think of.
I really do hope that this request and information gained in this thread doesn't fall on deaf ears and something really positive comes out of it (Not a PvP rep system to begin with. Got enough power creep as it is with the current reps
Also, a suggestion for you:
Start a thread off yourself for whatever PvP related thing is on your mind. I'm sure people people will contribute to your thoughts and questions in a positive manner.
Thanks for posting by the way.
This is an interesting point.
I'm not sure if every cryptic game has it, but at least one former cryptic made game allowed you to choose 1 power that would automatically activate every time it's cooldown was finished.
Applied to basic distribution, that would be every 2s.
It would also allow the player to activate it, and while I think "always on" would be better for new players, it would remove the directional options from players that use it.
I never use it myself, but probably some might. I know I've seen a few video's of maikai's where he has the frontal distribute key easily accessible - probably for when he's staying on target with his 90 degree sci powers.
Tac team is another reason so many of us have went to super spike builds... we know we really have a 5s window to really get to hull now that tac team is what it is.
What if tac team was changed and the shield spin was removed....
And a always on version was added that was say 50% as effective as tac team is now.
Just make shields auto distribue ala tac team by default... it would be more realistic to think of it working that way anyway. With the field naturaly filling in the gaps as they are created.
Yup yup yup. Brings pressure damage back in a sense. What about snb then? Back to 1 nuke kills? Tt right now is imo better than st to save someone who is nuked. How could that be balanced?
It's a game. People want to have challenging fun. Not abuse.
Get rid of resist mods altogether and give shield heals a buff instead to compensate. Brings skill back into game
Regarding auto shield distribute: I ll up you one. Since we are in the land of theory crafting with only a birds eye view on STO.
Just to get it out of the way: YEs tac team is poorly balanced, and needs adjustment.
With the many options we have in STO space pvp Boff/Doff/GEar/ the feeling of having a counter is largely impeded by the time it takes to switch something in order to respond to the current situations.
Example: I usually have aux2sif on my boat. BUt my team has enough hull healing, but somehow the enemy manages to make good use of stuns. OK. Switch aux2sif for aux2damp and we should be doing better.
It takes way to long (even if i have a Boff trained, and with all the desirable traits ready to go) to actually do this. Disengage -> switch Boff -> rearrange up to 4 powers on my tray -> switch doff (aux2sif doffs won't do me any good now) -> Deflectors/consoles/shields? -> Load alternative keybind file havam_damp-layout.txt etc.
And this is just for changing one power to respond to the situation. NOw shields and armor is more easily switched granted. But with the synergistic builds that are the backbone of pvp. Changing things during an engagement become so much hassle that i m pretty sure most players don't even try.
What about switching weapons: Go from BOgai toTSgai because there is a lot of spam on the field....? Even more hassle. We can switch gear when outside read alert, or during respawn. But our ability to do so effctivly are limited. MAke changing layout (the whole shebang, weapons, consoles, deflectors, Boffs, doffs,) easier and people will feel less helpless. Since you have to withdraw from the battle to do so, leaving your team one man down, i doubt will see endless rounds of remixing the cards instead of actual pew pew.
The problem is: If they could change between different leayouts and gear more easily, they might actually have a chance to do something, or at least experiment and learn.
SO while this whole debate became about TTK, we should think about time to get you counters ready as well.
Allowing us to put certain powers on auto-activate, and have them pop up in the same tray slots, no matter which boff they come from would be a great start to improve not only pvp but also pve. Using builds more taylored to the situation, afterall is good for everyone.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
I don?t know how many other games have two health systems like STO but we have Shields and Hull both with their own resistance. I think this makes a great opportunity to have one system counter high spike damage and one counter high dps.
My idea is to make all players? hull hit points much higher say 10 times, but reduce hull healing by 10 times. However shields would stay the same with heals that can fully restore them. It would have to be balanced so one max healer could only come close to countering (even with very high resistance) all the hull damage from a max damage dealer.
This would make hull damage much more permanent and stop the kills that happen in a few seconds. This would also make pressure damage more important. Now if shields are the same then you still need the spike damage to get through the shields. One side effect of this is hull damage resistance would become much more important.
This would also allow everyone to live at least 10 times longer (instead of 2 to 3 seconds to would be 20 to 30) but it would also limit the max amount of time you live because you could never counter all the hull damage. (note a weak dps player vs a very good healer might still go one forever like it does now)
If this made matches to long you could just change the need points to 5 instead of 15.
With it taking longer to kill someone, it will give more time for players to see what is happening so they can learn from it. Not just die in 3 seconds and going WTF just happened.
It really doesn?t apply because this is a game but in Star Trek shows/movies shields are up and down but hull damage stayed.
What do we see on screen:
1. Shields that take a lot of damage, but regenerate very slowly.
2. System failure and minor hull damage through shields, that can be repaired during the fight.
3. When shields are down, most torpedo-based hull damage taken is catastrophic and cannot be repaired until back in spacedock.
4. Armor can stop/block energy weapons (i.e. the Hirogen vessel encountered by Voyager)
So converting this into an MMO combat, you'd end up with ships with very high shield rating. Say 100.000 per facing.
However shield renegeration should be very low, and all heals should be far, far less effective. Once your shields are down, they won't be getting back up unless you get a lot of teammember support. This will in turn also make torpedo's more dangerous as shields won't pop back up every 2 seconds. Torpedo's should also do a bit more damage to shields.
The bridge abilities should be tweaked that they provide only small benefits, but benefits that add up over a fight and tip the balance in your favour when used tactically.
Basically burst needs to become less all-powerful, but the immortal ships need to go as well. Obviously all powers would have to be rebalanced for this, and I honestly doubt it would ever happen. But imho it would be great.
The downside it it becomes less twitch-gameplay and more passive, which is something not everyone will like.
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Thing is...we've got both starships and fighters. Should the starships fight like fighters or should they fight like starships? And if folks want that twitch of fighters...aren't they there?
This is really something that can't be said enough.
TT is one of the largest contributing factors to 5s kill windows.
I think this idea has a lot of merit.
Pros:
Cons:
*This is really two sides of a coin, overall I think this change would be an improvement.
I think the chances of us fighting like we're in starships went out the window early in development when the ranges ships would fight at were decided.
If we wanted them to fight like starships, I think the distance scales would have needed to be much, much bigger.
The game is designed with quick use boff powers, "magic" rpg style healing and limited arc/range weapons (2km for maximum cannon effect).
I think it was pretty much written in the cards early on that this would lead to more fighter-like combat.
I pretty much expect this thread to eventually go somewhere beyond what I originally intended, but I think the specifics of fighter vs. starship combat probably has enough depth to be it's own meta-focused thread.;)
It's kind of inherent to the topic itself though, no? Expectations on how long somebody should be able to last - how long it should take to pop somebody - etc, etc, etc. It's about having a frame of reference for the discussion.
It goes to what Hawk said about the reasonable TTK. The reasonable TTK for a fighter is much different than a starship, imho. Some people will not see that as the case, itho.
Players are basically "hero" ships. NPCs are the background ships. Yes, the "plot armor" and so forth has to be cut down - but there should be a happy medium there.
If one watches some of the Dominion War episodes - they'll see ships getting blown to smithereens left right and center...while the various "hero" ships plod along.
To me, it's not reasonable that players get blown up as if they were NPCs while in starships. If they were in fighters, sure - they're in fighters. The expectation of survival is going to be less, again imho.
So it's just that, the reasonable TTK/survival being based on players being in starships - some of them having thousands of crew, if their survival was only a few seconds - neither side would ever launch the ships.
We're talking PvP...
Player A is fighting Player B...they're both in hero ships. It should take longer for Player A to blow up Player B or Player B to blow up Player A than it would take for either Player A or Player B to blow up a NPC.
Simple as that.
edit: And I'm going to leave it at that, because it's apparent you want the thread to go all over the place so that any actual discussion on the matter is lost. Ulti asked nicely that not happen...I think it's only fair to try to comply.
Their is absolutely no resource mechanic. That means either damage > healing OR damage < healing. And when healing also increases EHP that just turns it into a mess.
It will always be a yo-yo that yo-yo can be tweaked but it cannot be fixed without a resource that can be exhausted. You need 'mana' that can be exhausted.
Until then things will always be one of two ways.
1) Extreme spike or good luck getting kills. Keep in mind with this CC such as sub-nuke and holds really are just a form of spike.
2) DPS is too high and everyone dies in 30 seconds or less.
Those are the only two potential outcomes. The system has no flexibility as everything is binary.
If we can keep it focused on how that fits into the ideal vs. real/practical TTK in STO - then yes, absolutely.
In a way this touches back on what antonio's idea is trying to accomplish.
Reducing the binary nature of TacTeam ON (2/3rds uptime or more from teammates) vs. TacTeam OFF (1/3rd or less downtime).
When TT is up, every ship is basically a "hero" ship, able to shield tank almost ridiculous levels of incoming fire when combined with all of the other available mitigators.
When TT is down, that's when decloak alpha strikers attack, or when good escorts strike - and this can come from TT simply expiring or from a well timed SNB.
Antonio's idea would give everyone half as much of this mitigation, but it would be on all of the time and would not be removed by SNB.
Would that be a good solution to some of the binary nature of kills?
It would obviously require a lot of testing, but I do think it has a lot of merit.
Actually the really funny thing to me is that their already is atleast two already in the game they don't use.
1) Subsystem energy, weapons used to actually drain the subsystem. This could have been extended to AUX power for using space magic and/or shields when they are being beaten on or magically healed.
2) Crew but yeah let us not touch that with a 50ft pole.
Think if you had a 1% chance to get a debuff that gave -1 weapon power each time you fire a weapon. Extend that to using other abilities and say 1% chance to loose 1 shield power each 'tic' of regeneration. These power penalties could only be removed by exploding or being out of combat for a period of time.
That would be a crude system but it would atleast allow for an eventual attrition.
*edit addon*
An auto shield distrubtion would be the biggest improvement to the game I can think of ever happening. It would drastically reduce the gap between the average STO player and those of use who bother to make a keybind. Might also make the other two teams have a purpose in PvE.
I'm being 100% serious this game is so casual friendly for 98% of it then throws players into an ESTF where they explode in seconds in their cruiser while I fall asleep tanking the tac cube by mashing spacebar. Imagine how frustrating that must be for the new player who has no desire to put the time and effort into the game to learn the systems and just wants to play and have fun.
Well, we will not have a resource mechanic that is exhaustable but the windows for kills could be stretched out to fall somewhere in between all of the available cooldowns.
Reducing the binary feeling of yo-yo spike and healing that we have, would go a long way.
Maybe it wouldn't be a perfect system, but I don't think we need to aim for perfect.
As you have stated already though your main window is 5 seconds. The second is oh wait EPtS can be up 100% of the time, 30 seconds for APO windows etc etc but that doesn't even begin to touch RSP, FBP, TSS, extends, etc etc etc. Then you have to worry about the team/player who doesn't stack 10 forms of defense compared to those who do and yeah.
Good luck with that.
The only two states PvP has ever been in, well ok three.
1) Spike or Go Home
2) Fed ball murdering anything that gets close. DPS > healing at that point.
3) Exploitable thing that gets patched (or not) like those banned in the 'have fun' tornies.
Three years of tweaks and it is still the same. Their is a reason most games have a limited resource of some sort beyond just cool downs. STO removed that resources without doing a single thing to compensate for it.
I believe we've had the binary/yo-yo discussions in the past, and my beef then (even more so now) is just about the extremes of it. There needs to be some play there in regard to it, it allows for the actual gameplay and for one to "express" their skill/twitch/ability/knowledge - etc, etc, etc. Something along the lines of watching fencing, boxing, martial arts - there's that play that takes place. STO's more like watching anime.
Star Trek is not a simple Fantasy MMO. And it needs more than just the typical 'mana' that most games have.
30 seconds or less is a problem but it's not the only problem. No matter what new mechanic you put in the game be it new power levels, shields levels, or weapon DPS / burst; there will ways be a 30 seconds or less problem as long as they are putting new level 50 people in the same pvp queue as a 3 year vet. However currently I do not think there are enough PvPers to fill a multi-tier queue.