You guys are throwing out a ton of detailed and complex ideas, and it's really interesting to read through them all. A little advice - whenever you're thinking "What if this mechanic were like this other mechanic instead?", you should also think of a one-sentence response to the question "Why would we make that change?" - while being as thorough in your consideration of the effects of that change as possible. Focus less on specifics of "what to change to fix a thing" and more on "this thing should be changed and here's why" and you'll find your suggestions stay as in-touch as possible with the core of the game.
1. Start the rep system sooner (at least as far as ability access goes), why? To lower the extreme power difference between a new max level toon and vet toons.
2. Buff kdf Heavy Raiders, why? They're greatly surpassed by the Rommy Warbirds.
3. Raise the rate of shield manual shield distribution significantly, why? It'd help slower ships and and make TT less needed.
4. Generally Variety = good power creep, just jacking up #s = bad power creep, why? The 1st option allows for more choices and things to try, the 2nd just makes other options obsolete.
(gonna break your 1 sentence rule now) Also, just jacking up #s creates the extremes you want to avoid if the idea is to balance a fight based on TTK. For example, if using a Rommy Warbird w/Boffs et al gives a flat boost of say 50% more damage in the same time frame than a Raider the time it takes to kill a target vs the Raider's time will be that much different.
5. Stop handing out power like crazy, or add much high power caps, why? What's the point of having the ability to change power levels and have presets if most of the time 3 or more can be near max?
6. Stop w/adding significant passives, why? They take no though/skill if you will to use. They're crutches. If you're gonna put something in the game it shouldn't be a no brainer, it's just not engaging.
7. Add more non-combat style ships to Captain and things to do w/them, why? It'd set up a more in depth Territorial Control PvP Environment.
8. Think of TKK in various environments, eg seek and destroy vs massive fleet engagments,why? This would allow for a line of ships that specialize in a manner they're thought of the best tool for the job in a environment where they're are a variety of jobs to do. Then it's just a matter of balancing ships w/in that niche w/each other. STO Fedside started like that, but too easy to do too many things well w/the same ship now.
Meh I could go on for much longer ...
[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
You guys are throwing out a ton of detailed and complex ideas, and it's really interesting to read through them all. A little advice - whenever you're thinking "What if this mechanic were like this other mechanic instead?", you should also think of a one-sentence response to the question "Why would we make that change?" - while being as thorough in your consideration of the effects of that change as possible. Focus less on specifics of "what to change to fix a thing" and more on "this thing should be changed and here's why" and you'll find your suggestions stay as in-touch as possible with the core of the game.
"Why would we make that change?"
Ok, here is my answer for that in regards to changing torpedoes/all kinetic damage:
Torpedoes for the most part are highly underused in all parts of the game due to the huge innate kinetic resists all shields have; if that was changed, it would be good for all parts of the game, because people would feel that torpedoes would be a lot less of a liability, and more worth using, both in PvE content and PvP.
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.
Wow two consecutive posts on topic. Thanks for trying to participate in an actual conversation.
1) Introduce a shield distro mod to all ships. Adjust Tac team so its boosts that mod with TT 3 producing results similar to what TT 1 does now, the rest is weaker (either in distro or duration). this mod scales with turn rate. Low turn rate = high mod.
Why?
Hammering away a single facing is more of a problem to slow turners. Fast turners not only get high Def, but also the better damage mitigation to their shields because of their movement. Thus the distro mod should be higher on slow turners. This would introduce oportunty cost to Tac Team, while bringing it in line with other team skills. St3 and ET3 have uses TT3 does not.
On top. Slow turners have litte tac slots, so that the obligation to bring TT1 has a siginificant higher opportunity cost for them then for 3 tac ens scorts. Giving them some innate benefit to redistribution would also make BO one shoots more difficult, without taking double-tapping away from tac skills. Double tapping requires practice, timing, and knowledge of the system. TT1 in its current from does not.
2) Fix Eng.
Why?
They are useless in space. NO band-aid fixes will produce anything without fixing the core issues of the trinity. People have abandoned characters because of power creep. How is this making cryptic money, or new players engaging with pvp, if their one and only toon is uninvited from coordinated end-game pve and pvp????
My current favorite is slight changes to Cpt skills to become castable. And using something like the injury system (maybe in combination with crew) to introduce a wear and tare elements. Giving eng the ability to repair these, makes sense thematically and introduce a team role for them. End-game pve could use this as well. Making engs no longer and objective to overcome for optionals but an integral part of the process.
3) Make adapting to a situation easier by storing and loading a limited number of layouts, or even ship + layout (we are admirals after all) that are picked with on click
why?
Back in S5 stahl wanted to make switching from ship to shuttle easier. It didn't go far enough. just check your numbers. We have a lot of ships, skills, items, to our disposal. But changing between PvE and PvP builds according to mission is very tiresome. I often don't know which queue will pop. Hurray i m doing NWS with my heal boat. Allowing palyers to try out and experiment with counters, or make use of taylored build to specific enemies and scenarios can only increase the level of quality across the board. There is a potential for services and the sell of these in here.
4) Reconsider your QnA and Development of new items.
Why?
Thats were powercreep came from. Uni-consoles should never be more powerful cc then their fully buffed, trained, and timed cmdr sci skill euqivalent. GEko says no to mudflation. Yet every release contains tons of it, even when ignoring the obviously broken.
Use tribble, use the still active bae of pvp'ers to help you test and evaluate items. Borts expectatinos on how the last console was supposed to be used as opposed to how it was actually used min after release serves to show: (With all due respect) You guys don't get it. Let us help.
TL;dr:
Fix PvP.
Why
Crytpic makes money in the short and long term, and we all have more fun.
Y'all are getting into some complex game theory sh** that goes way over my head. But I'll just say this;
We played an awesome match against RE last night (thanks again, guys!). What it ended up being was literally 100% spike kills - waiting for Attack Pattern Alpha to come up and landing BO crits.
There was no "Hey, this guy's at 50%, let's finish him off!" because unless there was an Alpha ready, people were back up to 100% in the blink of an eye. There were SO many times when we had someone down to like 10-20%, but then couldn't land the kill because there wasn't another source of spike to finish it off before all of the Hazards/TSS pulled the guy back up.
My damage (coming from a Sci ship) was useless - yeah, I put out a lot of AoE DPS, but that literally doesn't count for squat in the current state of the game. Unless I somehow manage to land a 30K crit with my Transphasics, all of my damage is just there to maybe scare someone into accidentally using an Aux to SIF.
There were even times when I'd get decloak Alpha'd (followed by a second Alpha from a non-cloaking Escort) and he'd knock off a shield facing and like half my hull. And by the time I reacted with my own buffs, I was already nearly fully topped off due to the other Pandas throwing me a million and a half heals.
I guess what I'm trying to say that burst applies to both healing and damage. Maybe we ended up being so reliant on burst damage because of yo-yo healing. Maybe incoming heals should face diminishing returns just as stacking sources of damage buffs.
Edit: I'll round it out by saying this: There was a point, back in the day, where loading up Beams on my Intrepid actually meant that I could distract someone to the point where a healer would have to throw a heal their way when they didn't expect to, or force them to evasive/break off for a minute. Now, I'm useless since I can't burst
Edit: I'll round it out by saying this: There was a point, back in the day, where loading up Beams on my Intrepid actually meant that I could distract someone to the point where a healer would have to throw a heal their way when they didn't expect to, or force them to evasive/break off for a minute. Now, I'm useless since I can't burst
yup hence all my favorite ships and characters from back in the day...are in cold storage now.
You guys are throwing out a ton of detailed and complex ideas, and it's really interesting to read through them all. A little advice - whenever you're thinking "What if this mechanic were like this other mechanic instead?", you should also think of a one-sentence response to the question "Why would we make that change?" - while being as thorough in your consideration of the effects of that change as possible. Focus less on specifics of "what to change to fix a thing" and more on "this thing should be changed and here's why" and you'll find your suggestions stay as in-touch as possible with the core of the game.
This is a really good, point, I always try to keep this in mind because Bort mentioned something similar quite a long time ago but it does bear repeating.
TBH I've had a hard time absorbing all of what everyone has written.
It's easy enough to keep your own idea, and maybe 1 or 2 other poster's ideas in your mind in full detail - but I find when there are several long posts in a row that it starts to meander and I can only really keep the primary gist in focus.
This isn't bad, everyone should have their say and I'm really impressed with the amount of constructive posts in this thread - but I can imagine it does feel a bit of a deluge to any dev reading.:P
Uni-consoles should never be more powerful cc then their fully buffed, trained, and timed cmdr sci skill euqivalent.
I think we need to look at this from all sides of a coin.
And I'll start off the bat saying I use very, very few actual 'special power' consoles in PvP.
Uni-consoles have always had a low opportunity cost for what they do.
On the other hand, they do take up an entire console slot and are usually on 120 to 180s cooldowns - longer than any BOFF power.
Saying they should never be more powerful than BOFF skills is just being unrealistic due to their fairly long CDs - in essence, no one would use them.
Yes some pvpers would love that, but not all.
We need to find the place between "useful/interesting/competitive" and "useless".
I already posted on this, but I'll go ahead and touch on what exactly goes wrong in PvP with uni consoles (or other special gear).
1) They can be stacked and used consecutively with a bit of coordination.
2) The force multipliers tend to be the problematic consoles, effectively anything that has some kind of a debuff or control effect, or is an AoE.
3) They often ignore, or bend the rules surrounding other in-game systems. For example, they might ignore typical player resistances, or are allowed to be buffed in ways no other power is (See my thread on Grav Pulse Generator).
If these three things can be kept in mind with their design, it would make them a whole lot less problematic but would also allow for interesting powers to be itemized.
It's easy to ask "why" and give our own personal answer, but we need to keep in mind that this is a company that is owned by PWE which is publicly traded.
So the why should also include itemization, and customer appeal. Items need to appeal to customers to sell, to generate revenue, pays for new development and pays out to shareholders (in the big scheme of things).
Why don't we revamp the crew mechanic in STO to provide this "combat fatigue" we're looking for? Tying crew levels in to combat performance would provide an excellent way of enforcing "combat endurance", as well as resurrecting a heretofore neglected mechanic. Here's what I'd suggest:
Crew levels are directly tied into the combat performance of your ship. When your crew gets disabled or is killed off, you will feel the impact on your ship. These are examples of how this penalty could be implemented:
Crew acts as a multiplier for the damage and healing put out by your ship.
When your crew is all active (crew is all white), you hit and heal for 100% of your normal values.
When your crew is all disabled (crew is all orange), your damage and healing is cut by 50%.
When your crew is all dead (crew is all black), you are nearly crippled and only hit/heal for 25% of your normal values.
(Of course, there's a sliding scale between these values. e.g. if 1/2 of the crew bar is white, 1/4 of the crew bar is orange, and 1/4 of the crew bar is black, then you'd be operating at 50% * 100% + 25% * 50% + 25% * 25% = 68.75% effectiveness.)
Crew acts as a multiplier for the power levels of your ship.
When your crew is all active, your power levels function at 100% of your normal values.
When your crew is all disabled, your effective power levels are cut in half.
When your crew is all dead, your effective power levels are only 25% of what they normally are.
This would leave projectile weapons and aux-independent heals open as options, while also tying shield regeneration and ship speed in to crew levels.
On respawn, your crew is completely healthy and ready to go. (Alternatively, your crew is like they were when you died; however, if you died by using Abandon Ship, then your crew is completely recovered.)
Projectile and energy weapons now both have a chance to disable/kill crew on the target ship; this chance is "X% chance to kill Y% or Z number of crew on the target ship, whichever is lesser". Projectile weapons have a significantly higher chance than energy weapons, and hitting exposed hull increases this chance for both projectile and energy weapons.
Emergency Force Fields continue their current behavior of providing crew death/disable resist.
Biofunction Monitors now serve to more quickly restore disabled crew to active status. They, however, cannot raise crew members from the dead.
Crew values for ships would be looked over, but the general trend will still be that cruisers get the most crew, escorts get the least, with science ships somewhere in the middle.
Theta Radiation would be reworked so that it's not a crew instakill method.
(There are probably a few other things I forgot to mention here, but you get the gist of how this crew revamp would work.)
If we implement combat endurance/fatigue via the crew mechanic like this, what do we get? Lots of good things!
First and foremost, there's a very clear way to see how your combat performance is affected as you continue in combat. Crew status is already a part of the ship health UI; you can get a sense of how well you're doing at a glance, instead of having to hover over injury icons and remember what each of them does.
This mechanic encourages people to take pauses from combat and escape red alert. Because dead crew can only be revived when out of red alert, people will have to actively break combat instead of just slugging it out forever; if they don't, they'll be operating at lower efficiency.
This mechanic also encourages players to avoid taking damage during combat, even if they can't exit red alert. When players are taking damage, their crew will become disabled far faster than they'll be killed; if they manage to not be focused for a while, they're disabled crew will eventually be restored to active status, restoring some of their performance even if they don't exit red alert.
This mechanic also gives higher endurance to the ships that are supposed to be the better tanks and the masters of long-duration combat:
Cruisers and other ships with high crew pools will be able to stay at peak performance in combat far longer than escorts and other ships with tiny crew numbers; their combat style will usually be to stay in the thick of it and keep pressure on the enemies to capitalize on the fact that they can keep going while others can't.
Escorts and other ships with small crew pools will see their combat performance drop much faster. This will enforce a hit-and-run combat style for the escorts, going in for the hit and then retreating to recover disabled/dead crew.
Of course, because low-crew ships are usually far more maneuverable than high-crew ships, this can lead to interesting combat tactics: a pair of escorts can tag-team a cruiser, keeping the cruiser in red alert while they swap in and out of combat, slowly wearing down the cruiser while keeping themselves at high effectiveness.
This mechanic improves the incentive for cross-healing and support. When a player is the subject of focused fire, his crew will be rapidly disabled and more slowly killed, reducing his own healing effectiveness and causing him to rely more on heals from his teammates. Of course, if the enemy team decides to fire on a different target, his disabled crew will recover and he'll be able to support his teammates.
Because projectile weapons would have a significantly higher chance to disable/kill, this will give them more value and encourage people to run torpedoes/mines more.
This provides a definite "pressure damage" mechanic that everyone in a team can contribute to; because it's proc-based and not related to how much damage an attack is actually doing, hitting more often is valued more than hitting harder, and the crew deaths sustained from these attacks cannot be recovered while in combat.
It also makes sense from an RP perspective. Your crew is actually necessary for the proper functioning of your ship; while minor injuries can be healed while the ship is in combat, more serious injuries will have to wait until the fighting is over to be treated.
I really think that tying crew in to effectiveness would provide a great combat endurance system, one that's easy to see and understand while in combat while providing interesting tactical opportunities and strategies to exploit. Plus, it would rescue a long-neglected mechanic and make it function prominently in the the ebb and flow of battles.
Great ideas here, i really think crew affecting the ship's performance is the way to go.
But as said, a lot of mechanisms would require a major overhaul.
You guys are throwing out a ton of detailed and complex ideas, and it's really interesting to read through them all. A little advice - whenever you're thinking "What if this mechanic were like this other mechanic instead?", you should also think of a one-sentence response to the question "Why would we make that change?" - while being as thorough in your consideration of the effects of that change as possible. Focus less on specifics of "what to change to fix a thing" and more on "this thing should be changed and here's why" and you'll find your suggestions stay as in-touch as possible with the core of the game.
Cleanses should be changed to reflect a return on investment from both the target and the attacker. Such a change could lead to an increase in the variety of builds as well as a sense of return on one's investment.
Currently, TT1-ET1-ST1-HE1 provide the same cleanse that TT3-ET3-ST3-HE3 provide. While those abilities also provide other things and those other things are better at a higher rank, the cleanse portion does not scale for some reason.
If TT1 can cleanse multiple damage resist debuffs from both weapons and abilities (Nan-Dis, Pol-Dis, Pla-Dis, Dis, Destabilized Torp, APB, APD, FoMM, etc, etc, etc) - there is little need to slot TT2 or TT3. Not only does it reduce the value of the higher ranked cleanses, it reduces the value of the abilities/gear that would apply the debuff in the first place. The same applies to the other cleanses, what they cleanse and the value of the abilities/gear that applies the debuff in the first place.
This goes far beyond just build variety and any sense of return on investment though. It directly leads to a variety of other complaints that exist about the state of PvP in the game.
One of the complaints is about the difficulty in taking a target down - resists/etc are too high. Were a ship to have a mix of buffs/debuffs on it, would it not be more balanced? It's as if the debuffs were created to deal with the buffs - to balance them - but the debuffs are so easily removed, that one is just left with the buffs and that sense of an imbalance. (Which, imho, makes that new WCE DOFF all the more confusing.)
This in turn has led to two common methods of eliminating a target. One that's been around a wee bit longer than the other (even though the other has been around) and one that's become more possible because of the mudflation taking place in the game.
The first would be the common 2x Tac/3x Sci - where the Sci are able to remove the buffs with SNB, create that gap where the Tac are able to deliver damage before buffs can be reapplied. This scenario may never have arisen if it were not so easy to remove debuffs. The "need" would not have existed.
The second is simply delivering massive amounts of damage in the shortest amount of time possible - the decloak alpha. One need concern themselves that much less with their own survival, if they are able to eliminate the target in a few seconds.
Now to be fair, even if the cleanse system were changed - these two obviously would not disappear. The first would still have its place and the second is a symptom of other issues in the game. However, without the ease of access to cleanses - one might be forced to examine their builds once more...and...one might see more balanced builds. If somebody can't clear that Stealth debuff as easily and thus risk becoming the target, in turn they may have to sacrifice some of their own offense for defense.
Much like the cleanses have led to a cascade of other issues, it's possible that a change would lead to a cascade of resolutions of other issues...
...just my 2 EC (and a wee bit longer than one sentence).
/snip
Saying they should never be more powerful than BOFF skills is just being unrealistic due to their fairly long CDs - in essence, no one would use them.
/snip
1) not what i m saying:
cmd boff. that is 4-5 sci consoles, capt skill points, the only commander slot on your boat, a fitting deflector, and matching doffs.
The opportunity cost for this is not even on the same page as the opportunity cost for a single console slot.
Uni consoles, should never be better at cc then the corresponding cc cmd power.
2) As you pointed out, the cd issues is a mute point.
3min cd x5 per team member, means that it is available at random. Still there are many way sto have a once every 3min power synergise with different builds, Giving yor disbales, holds, stuns, scrambles..etc that little extra ooomph once every 3 min is fine.
Buffing sci cc powers goes from meh to bleh. Bufffing consoles goes from omg to ZOMGPAWN.
Why not spread the love, more tanking consoles, and especially more tac consoles" APO3cumAPA3 console which is not cleared by TT1, anyone? Why do they always have to tread on sci toes. Why is 3second disable (with counters) OP for a cmdr. sci skill. but totally ok for a friggin uni console?? Uni consoles CC should be a nice addition, with pretty visuals. Not the strongest CC available in the game at virtually no cost.
As a rule of thumb: If its too strong for a fully (exceeding design) buffed sci cmd attack. Its too strong for a frigging universal console.
3) Being a company, doesn't mean everything has to be OP at the cost of one skilltree element exclusively.
There are many aspects a consoles can buff that aren't even battle related or if they are battle related, give inbuild immunities to prevent stacking them in team sport fashion.
There are many reasons for people to buy consoles. Obsoleting science powers has nothing to do with the economics.
what good are consoles that are banned in most serious PvP? How much buyers remorse and frustration is created because people don't know better and get ridiculed for using something that they innocently thought would be cool and spend ****loads of money to get? How many people leave the game or stop going for stuff because of the poor balancing. I know i have.
If PWE wants people to sink money into this game beyond their first loi purchase. How does people getting screamed at and shamed into not using their latest toys (Often by 5 man preamdes pugstomping in 5 lockbox ships, with a doff contigent worht 200mio EC and more) help htem achieve that or make money.
You guys are throwing out a ton of detailed and complex ideas, and it's really interesting to read through them all. A little advice - whenever you're thinking "What if this mechanic were like this other mechanic instead?", you should also think of a one-sentence response to the question "Why would we make that change?" - while being as thorough in your consideration of the effects of that change as possible. Focus less on specifics of "what to change to fix a thing" and more on "this thing should be changed and here's why" and you'll find your suggestions stay as in-touch as possible with the core of the game.
Change: Make science boff powers less binary with secondary effects that have a variable effect. Why: Science boff powers have historically been either too strong or too weak. Example: Tachyon Beam drains shields but it used to drain far too much and now drains far too little. Add a secondary effect that inflicts a shield resistance penalty on the target as well. This secondary effect will always be useful and its actual measurable damage will depend upon other mechanics and the situation.
Additional Targets for such a Change
All exotic damage (change to %), charged particle burst (add defense penalty), aceton beam (change from effecting base to effecting final values), energy drains (?add a minimum % drained that does not stack?) etc.
Forgive me if what I am going to post has been said a million times or is completely unrealistic, but I am quite new to STO PvP (But liking it)
The issue from what I am seeing is the power-creep from lockbox/Fleet/Rep ships/gear/abilities leading to bloated heals and the need for spike to kill.
How about combatting the power creep by introducing dedicated PvP-gear? And I know this is taking a leaf out of WoW's book, but it would help prevent PvE-gear from unbalancing PvP.
I.e Have weapons/shields/Deflectors/engines/consoles with a modifier like "Increases/decreases damage done/taken to/from players by x%". That way you could fiddle with the PvP-gear's powers and stats freely without affecting PvE because the PvP-stat would be the governing stat. Basically the first consideration in damage would be "How much of his PvP-resistance can my PvP-penetration beat".
Someone in PvE-endgame gear would be useless in PvP as he has no penetration, so no matter how much DPS he puts out on PvE, he wouldn't even scratch a properly geared PvPer. And since the PvP-stats would be useless in PvE, it would make no sense to use them there.
And to help create an attrition-based system, introduce a debuff like the one found in WoW called Necrotic Strike. I.e Each attack would stack a healing absorb on the target, meaning that everytime you heal the afflicted, you need to fight through a certain amount of healing absorb. Make the debuff auto-apply on all PvP-weapons and be unclearable and you got a way to prevent people to just outheal your damage ad infinitum.
Also, to prevent the gear from being an another obstacle like it can be over at WoW, make the baseline sets easy to archieve, for example give the players a free basic set once they hit lvl50 and create a reputation for the gear, where you get marks for every PvP-match you play, more for win and less for losing etc, to be able to buy better gear once you gain enough marks etc.
That way not only would you be able to keep the playing field RELATIVELY even between hardcores and newbies gearwise, keep PvE-stuff from upsetting PvP AND give PvP a sense of progression it now lacks.
The only thought I've had to try to reduce spike damage is to redirect it, in a way.
Give the cruiser the ability to mark a target. If marked, the target will switch IT'S target to the cruiser. For a spike damage based ship, having your target swapped before a full shot load is handed out would be likely enough to disrupt the attack. Giving cruisers the ability, with their already large hull pools, means they would be appealing to Engineers because any ability they get would only improve their survival when several, or even ALL of the opponent ships around them are suddenly marked and forced to attack it.
Would burst strikes still kill? Yes. Would teamwork be more likely to limit it the power and effectiveness of it? Oh hell yes. In the process, cruisers would be worth flying vs escorts, and engineers, even as they are now, would be more useful and desirable on a team.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
You guys are throwing out a ton of detailed and complex ideas, and it's really interesting to read through them all. A little advice - whenever you're thinking "What if this mechanic were like this other mechanic instead?", you should also think of a one-sentence response to the question "Why would we make that change?" - while being as thorough in your consideration of the effects of that change as possible. Focus less on specifics of "what to change to fix a thing" and more on "this thing should be changed and here's why" and you'll find your suggestions stay as in-touch as possible with the core of the game.
Make Hull hit points 5 to 10 times higher. Why? Increase the shortest life span in PVP (currently few seconds).
Make Hull heals 2 to 5 times smaller (only the heal not any resistance). Why? To counter higher hit points and decrease the longest life span in PVP (currently forever).
Pros-
No instant death with no idea what happened.
No one can live forever
Still need spike damage
Need more pressure damage
Damage resistance is more valuable(more value in eng consoles than universal one)
Shield bypass powers are still powerful but not so overpowered
Pugs can see who the weak target is because being at 50% hull is a big deal
Slows down the fight so newer players can see what is going on more
I do have one question about this. Could it only apply to PVP and not PVE? I think it would be a lot of work to change all the NPCs so they work with 10 times more hit points on player.
Also how hard would it be to test this on Tribble?
I like to think that this follows the KISS principle well. With one buff to hull hit points and a few nuffs to ET, AtSif, and HE hull heals.
In short:
What: Percentage based healing.
Why: To put an end to spike healing and make healing regulation easier by reducing the variables to 4 numbers.
More detailed explanation: See below
I know lots of people complain about healing vs damage and I know that you have to try to balance healing across multiple ship classes with varying resistance, health, etc capabilities and for this reason you included auxiliary power in multiple heals, I would suggest (and have explained in multiple threads) using percentages in all heals. (Formula for Aux2SIF shown below)
A= Max hull (1000)
B= Percentage of max hull (in this case 10%)
C= Aux mod (0.02)
D= Aux Power (25)
E= Base heal (100)
F= Aux bonus (50%)
G= End Heal (150)
So; E=A*B and F=C*D
Heal formula: G=E+(E*F)
This would take some tweaking I think in the base percentage and in the auxiliary power modifier to finalise the balancing of the heals themselves but it would make life a lot easier, you can apply the formula to shields heals as well as hull, you could repurpose the skill table repair skills to boost the percentages that dictate the base figures. Due to healboats this should use the caster's stats to calculate the heal rather than the target.
This has the power to make healing very easy to regulate and remove the spike healing that results in 10% to 100% HP
In short:
What: Percentage based healing.
Why: To put an end to spike healing and make healing regulation easier by reducing the variables to 4 numbers.
More detailed explanation: See below
I know lots of people complain about healing vs damage and I know that you have to try to balance healing across multiple ship classes with varying resistance, health, etc capabilities and for this reason you included auxiliary power in multiple heals, I would suggest (and have explained in multiple threads) using percentages in all heals. (Formula for Aux2SIF shown below)
A= Max hull (1000)
B= Percentage of max hull (in this case 10%)
C= Aux mod (0.02)
D= Aux Power (25)
E= Base heal (100)
F= Aux bonus (50%)
G= End Heal (150)
So; E=A*B and F=C*D
Heal formula: G=E+(E*F)
This would take some tweaking I think in the base percentage and in the auxiliary power modifier to finalise the balancing of the heals themselves but it would make life a lot easier, you can apply the formula to shields heals as well as hull, you could repurpose the skill table repair skills to boost the percentages that dictate the base figures. Due to healboats this should use the caster's stats to calculate the heal rather than the target.
This has the power to make healing very easy to regulate and remove the spike healing that results in 10% to 100% HP
I know you could balance the numbers in your formula but with my current hull hit points and aux bonus AtSIF would be around 16k. that is without any skills points being used. Right now my AtSif III heals about 10k.
I don't know if it will help you or not but here is how I think the current math works behind AtSIF hull heal
=(600*(1+(ability lvl-1)/3))*(skill points in hull repair/200+1)*(ship tier*0.5+0.5)*(((aux power-50)*0.01)+1)
some of this could be fixed by removing the "move only to this direction" I have problems killing somebody because they fly above me, and I cannot aim above me, I have to circle up and then I can shoot, and then at that point he went more up and up and then they QQ about being in the end of the map. I hate to say this but one of the reasons is abusing the targetting system to avoid damage and therefore allowing more time for healing.
Say the word, it saves the world. CUUCUUMBEER!"-With slight partigen with it." Proud member or DPS-800"-We kill dem mines with our scitter turrets."
One thing that seems to be a recurring theme whether people are proposing new power mechanics or crew mechanics or changes to cooldowns or whatever, is that we need to reduce how much people can do at once. This is also at the heart of the "escorts online" argument, since a Tac captain in an escort is able to maintain enough healing to keep himself alive while also maintaining the highest spike and DPS potential possible. This is a consequence of being able to use almost all of your active powers simultaneously, stacking both damage output as well as healing/resist.
What if we simply limit how many active powers you can run at once? Not a shared cooldown, because it doesn't affect CD. Just how many can be in active status at once. Let's just call the currency for this "action points" to keep it as generic as possible for now, and look at just Boff powers. Let's say captain Tac/Scort is coming in for an alpha and has 12 AP to work with, and he's got it broken down as such:
That's a pretty typical arrangement. He's got his constant buff cycle of two EPtX powers, and he's prebuffed BO3 going for the double tap. He's in good shape. As he swoops in to make this attack, he hits his CRF and APO to get them going, but he's been noticed by the other guy's team. He gets focused by the other guy's team mates who saw it coming. He goes for his RSP2 but... oh **** he's got no AP until something wears off. His BO fires, freeing 3 AP, so he hits RSP2. His AP is all in use again, locking out his second BO3 even though the CD is done. His double tap spike kill is ruined. He's also taking bleedthrough damage despite the RSP. Once his APO and CRF finish, he's freed 7 AP. He can either go for broke and use that AP to trigger some more tactical buffs and try to finish his target, or try to heal, but not both.
In this case, there would need to be some standard/minimum lockout on AP when you use the ability, otherwise "instant" abilities like Aux2SIF or BO become OP compared to abilities that last over time like HE or CRF. Enough to force people to make choices about what they want to use when, but not to feel like they aren't able to get max performance when they want it. Am I offensive or defensive right now? Can I keep this attack up, or do I need to pull away and heal? Right now, you can do all of that at once, maybe you shouldn't.
Now, take the pool of "action points", and imagine it's the maximum output of your warp/singularity core. You can't draw more power than you can generate at one time. This mechanic we already have, in ship's power levels. Make all Boff powers draw ship's power from the associated subsystem. Remove power drain from weapons and remove passive bonuses related to current power level. Power levels are only there to run your Boff abilities. 125 weapon power gives you a lot of flexibility to drop damage buff after damage buff, but if your Shield power is only 50 it's gonna be a tight squeeze trying to heal your shields consistently. Powers with multiple effects may drain multiple subsystems, like APO drawing part of its power from weapons and part from engines.
We'd also need a balance pass on how much power people are generating, because if you can push most of your systems up near 100 with passive boosts, leech, etc this won't be much hindrance to you.
Anyway, just kinda spitballing. Maybe ship's power isn't the best way to implement it, but some finite limitation on how many active powers you can pile up at once would go a long way to solving these problems. Captain and ship/console powers should probably be included in the system as well, not just Boffs. I was just trying to keep the example simple.
I have more simultaneous powers running on my engi cruiser than I do on my tac escort. I am cycling 2x EPtS/EPtW plus 2x Aux2ID, plus running BO and whatever else I have available, while my escort is just using APA/FOMM and one cannon and one torp ability.
The real missing limits in the game are (broadly) opportunity cost sinks. Not many abilities have a built-in penalty, so all of the negatives come in the form of taking an ability at the expense of not being able to take some other ability. EG, you take EPtS1, what is the penalty? There isnt one, except that you cannot take EPtW1 in the same slot.
BUT ... and this is the real problem ... the game has a whole bunch of different pools where they will give you another opportunity to do something. Captain abilities, BOFF abilities, skill points, species traits, rep passives, rep abilities, weapon modifiers, equipment modifiers, ship modifiers, set modifiers, normal console modifiers, lockbox console modifiers, ..., ..., ...., Too many damn opportunity pools have completely eliminated opportunity costs from the game, and now its just about min-maxing over who can get the most trees the highest. Oh and player X can even have more trees than player Y just as a reward for running through a mill. Hard limits on skill points and modifiers, that is how you fix it, only then will opportunity costs mean something.
This is also at the heart of the "escorts online" argument, since a Tac captain in an escort is able to maintain enough healing to keep himself alive while also maintaining the highest spike and DPS potential possible.
This is a fallacy.
Only people who never play on organized teams think this.
As for your suggestion I really think it cuts too far, and too deep and is too much of a revamp of the entire game and how it works.
Not that it's a bad idea, but we don't need to revolutionize the game.
What would be best is a solution that tones down the extremes while keeping the middle enjoyable and allow for variance in builds & tactics.
There were even times when I'd get decloak Alpha'd (followed by a second Alpha from a non-cloaking Escort) and he'd knock off a shield facing and like half my hull. And by the time I reacted with my own buffs, I was already nearly fully topped off due to the other Pandas throwing me a million and a half heals.
I guess what I'm trying to say that burst applies to both healing and damage. Maybe we ended up being so reliant on burst damage because of yo-yo healing. Maybe incoming heals should face diminishing returns just as stacking sources of damage buffs.
Yet another reason why I dislike the idea of "magic space heals" that can be used on someone else. I shouldn't be able to heal somebody else's hull or remove their debuffs at a distance and more or less instantaneously. That's why those ships have an engineering crew?
Remote heals, if at all, should be more like Boarding Party in reverse... sending repair teams that reduce your own crew (with appropriate ramifications) and aren't instant fix.
But that's the way the game works and it's not likely to change so now we need another way to deal with it. Diminishing returns for heals might be one way, but then burst damage would have to be toned down across the board to compensate.
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
But that's the way the game works and it's not likely to change so now we need another way to deal with it. Diminishing returns for heals might be one way, but then burst damage would have to be toned down across the board to compensate.
Well to be honest this thread when adjudicatorhawk mentioned in another thread that he didn't like a particular mechanic.
I'm not 100% sure which mechanics he is going to take a look at, and I have a conflicted opinion on the mechanic in question.
However the important part not to be lost is that it is very much a two sided coin and that burst healing, passive healing, passive mitigation have all ballooned and increased at the same rate as burst damage.
So builds have evolved to the point to deal the most burst in the least amount of time possible to cut down on the opposing team's chance to save the target - which if they do could literally see the target go from 2% hull to full hull and shields in the space of seconds.
This was a tactic that was used with some success by some, and much less success by others - until Romulans and their battlecloaks came and made this available to all.
So we have quite a conundrum, and to be very clear a lot of it is due to at least 1 full year or more of pretty consistent power creep in items, consoles & ship designs.
We could find a way out of this, but toning down burst and burst a lone is not the solution to all of our woes.
Toning down "double tap" beam overload builds that work well on escorts without being guaranteed kills but then get a huge power boost when you can battle cloak to protect your alpha and add more damage bonus.
I can tell you that against any kind of real, coordinated opposition just using 4x DHCs is certainly not enough to have a high rate of success every APA+SNB cycle.
I can also say that while it's fun tactically at times, at other times having to multi-chain SNBs on targets gets tiring, and draws fights out longer than I think PvP matches really need to be.
The backlash against this is because this game has long coddled the player, lapping mitigation layer on top of mitigation layer. Healing has long been the dominant force in this game's PvP.
Now, that all players are faced with much quicker deaths, we're seeing complaints about spike damage.
Yet another reason why I dislike the idea of "magic space heals" that can be used on someone else.
About magic space heals.
Magic space heals are OK, imo.
It allows for the creation of ship roles, it allows for an interesting level of teamwork beyond "shoot that guy".
If we have a problem with magic space heals, then we have to have a problem with magic space control that summons Gravity Elementals and Rays of Tractor Beams.
If all we had was run around frag fests, I could save myself the endless nights of PvE grinding and just go play something like Borderlands 2.
i really wish that the PvP AND PvE was more to the pacing of star trek bridge commander, where you never had any of those magic instant heals or " GTFO of dodge" ability's and you made use with what you had and co-ordinated with your team to get the job done and had a great time doing it.
It allows for the creation of ship roles, it allows for an interesting level of teamwork beyond "shoot that guy".
If we have a problem with magic space heals, then we have to have a problem with magic space control that summons Gravity Elementals and Rays of Tractor Beams.
If all we had was run around frag fests, I could save myself the endless nights of PvE grinding and just go play something like Borderlands 2.
Tbh, I'd prefer a mechanic where shields have high regen and cap w/low bleed through, but modest resists, and shield transfers/extends would be effective based on the senders power, cap, and distance from the target.
On the other hand hull repairs would be much lower and longer, but hulls/plating can have much higher resists (I'd go as high as the 90s depending on the stacking). Remote hull repairs would also be much less effective. Tbh, I'm liking the crew costs for remote hull repairs, though an established transporter range would be better than shuttle transfers. It would give high crew ships extra value for remote repairs. Potential for remote re-enforcement of hull resists based on similar mechanics of shield reps.
While I'm at it, might as well add ship injuries both mandatory and chance based based on current damage taken w/TSSx type skills doing the chance based injuries.
[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 really wish that the PvP AND PvE was more to the pacing of star trek bridge commander, where you never had any of those magic instant heals or " GTFO of dodge" ability's and you made use with what you had and co-ordinated with your team to get the job done and had a great time doing it.
To be fair gtfo of dodge was used a storyline mechanic and not just cloaking, warp outs weren't uncommon. Also, shield extending was used as a "magic" damage immunity.
[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 allows for the creation of ship roles, it allows for an interesting level of teamwork beyond "shoot that guy".
If we have a problem with magic space heals, then we have to have a problem with magic space control that summons Gravity Elementals and Rays of Tractor Beams.
But there's the Sci-Fi Magic and there's the Fantasy Magic. It's a Sci-Fi game, thus one would expect Sci-Fi Magic to take place. It's not a Fantasy game, thus some are taken aback by the amount of Fantasy Magic in the game.
Teamwork could easily exist without all the Fantasy Magic in the game. I think the bigger issue for folks, imho, would be the change of pacing that removing the Magic Healing would entail. It would "upset" folks from multiple angles. Folks would lose out on their vapes. Folks would lose out on their bragging about being invincible. Folks would have to adapt on a larger scale, rather than trying to work-in the latest that Cryptic's added.
Not everybody wants epic space battles...some folks are fine with their Elves flying around in starship armor and pew pewing with their magic wands. To them, that is epic. To others, they might as well just be playing a FPS/TPS...why bother with all the PvE grind?
Only people who never play on organized teams think this.
As for your suggestion I really think it cuts too far, and too deep and is too much of a revamp of the entire game and how it works.
Not that it's a bad idea, but we don't need to revolutionize the game.
What would be best is a solution that tones down the extremes while keeping the middle enjoyable and allow for variance in builds & tactics.
Sounds easy, is not easy.
I realize an organized team can put down an escort, but it shouldn't require coordination. It should be possible to play 1v1 where between players of equal skill, somebody will ultimately prevail. Currently, regardless who you pit against each other 1v1, if the players are equally skilled it'll be a stalemate. I'm sort of notorious among my fleet for being able to tank any 3 of them when we do PvP. Granted they're mostly PvE players who aren't built for spike, but come on. That's ridiculous in itself.
I agree my suggestion probably goes too far, but this idea of having a finite resource to limit how much one can do has been a consistent theme. I don't know if we'd ever be able to implement it because the rage from the PvE crowd would be immense, as would be the need to rebalance existing content. Can you clear ISE within the time limit if you can't tank the gateway indefinitely? If you have to break off and recover? That would be a problem nomatter how we go about this. Gimp resists and healing and the minute the PvE crowd starts blowing up again they'll flip.
Comments
1. Start the rep system sooner (at least as far as ability access goes), why? To lower the extreme power difference between a new max level toon and vet toons.
2. Buff kdf Heavy Raiders, why? They're greatly surpassed by the Rommy Warbirds.
3. Raise the rate of shield manual shield distribution significantly, why? It'd help slower ships and and make TT less needed.
4. Generally Variety = good power creep, just jacking up #s = bad power creep, why? The 1st option allows for more choices and things to try, the 2nd just makes other options obsolete.
(gonna break your 1 sentence rule now) Also, just jacking up #s creates the extremes you want to avoid if the idea is to balance a fight based on TTK. For example, if using a Rommy Warbird w/Boffs et al gives a flat boost of say 50% more damage in the same time frame than a Raider the time it takes to kill a target vs the Raider's time will be that much different.
5. Stop handing out power like crazy, or add much high power caps, why? What's the point of having the ability to change power levels and have presets if most of the time 3 or more can be near max?
6. Stop w/adding significant passives, why? They take no though/skill if you will to use. They're crutches. If you're gonna put something in the game it shouldn't be a no brainer, it's just not engaging.
7. Add more non-combat style ships to Captain and things to do w/them, why? It'd set up a more in depth Territorial Control PvP Environment.
8. Think of TKK in various environments, eg seek and destroy vs massive fleet engagments,why? This would allow for a line of ships that specialize in a manner they're thought of the best tool for the job in a environment where they're are a variety of jobs to do. Then it's just a matter of balancing ships w/in that niche w/each other. STO Fedside started like that, but too easy to do too many things well w/the same ship now.
Meh I could go on for much longer ...
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
"Why would we make that change?"
Ok, here is my answer for that in regards to changing torpedoes/all kinetic damage:
Torpedoes for the most part are highly underused in all parts of the game due to the huge innate kinetic resists all shields have; if that was changed, it would be good for all parts of the game, because people would feel that torpedoes would be a lot less of a liability, and more worth using, both in PvE content and PvP.
(Longer post here, I know it kinda isn't what you are wanting, but it's there for reference at least: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=12067501&postcount=86 )
1) Introduce a shield distro mod to all ships. Adjust Tac team so its boosts that mod with TT 3 producing results similar to what TT 1 does now, the rest is weaker (either in distro or duration). this mod scales with turn rate. Low turn rate = high mod.
Why?
Hammering away a single facing is more of a problem to slow turners. Fast turners not only get high Def, but also the better damage mitigation to their shields because of their movement. Thus the distro mod should be higher on slow turners. This would introduce oportunty cost to Tac Team, while bringing it in line with other team skills. St3 and ET3 have uses TT3 does not.
On top. Slow turners have litte tac slots, so that the obligation to bring TT1 has a siginificant higher opportunity cost for them then for 3 tac ens scorts. Giving them some innate benefit to redistribution would also make BO one shoots more difficult, without taking double-tapping away from tac skills. Double tapping requires practice, timing, and knowledge of the system. TT1 in its current from does not.
2) Fix Eng.
Why?
They are useless in space. NO band-aid fixes will produce anything without fixing the core issues of the trinity. People have abandoned characters because of power creep. How is this making cryptic money, or new players engaging with pvp, if their one and only toon is uninvited from coordinated end-game pve and pvp????
My current favorite is slight changes to Cpt skills to become castable. And using something like the injury system (maybe in combination with crew) to introduce a wear and tare elements. Giving eng the ability to repair these, makes sense thematically and introduce a team role for them. End-game pve could use this as well. Making engs no longer and objective to overcome for optionals but an integral part of the process.
3) Make adapting to a situation easier by storing and loading a limited number of layouts, or even ship + layout (we are admirals after all) that are picked with on click
why?
Back in S5 stahl wanted to make switching from ship to shuttle easier. It didn't go far enough. just check your numbers. We have a lot of ships, skills, items, to our disposal. But changing between PvE and PvP builds according to mission is very tiresome. I often don't know which queue will pop. Hurray i m doing NWS with my heal boat. Allowing palyers to try out and experiment with counters, or make use of taylored build to specific enemies and scenarios can only increase the level of quality across the board. There is a potential for services and the sell of these in here.
4) Reconsider your QnA and Development of new items.
Why?
Thats were powercreep came from. Uni-consoles should never be more powerful cc then their fully buffed, trained, and timed cmdr sci skill euqivalent. GEko says no to mudflation. Yet every release contains tons of it, even when ignoring the obviously broken.
Use tribble, use the still active bae of pvp'ers to help you test and evaluate items. Borts expectatinos on how the last console was supposed to be used as opposed to how it was actually used min after release serves to show: (With all due respect) You guys don't get it. Let us help.
TL;dr:
Fix PvP.
Why
Crytpic makes money in the short and long term, and we all have more fun.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
We played an awesome match against RE last night (thanks again, guys!). What it ended up being was literally 100% spike kills - waiting for Attack Pattern Alpha to come up and landing BO crits.
There was no "Hey, this guy's at 50%, let's finish him off!" because unless there was an Alpha ready, people were back up to 100% in the blink of an eye. There were SO many times when we had someone down to like 10-20%, but then couldn't land the kill because there wasn't another source of spike to finish it off before all of the Hazards/TSS pulled the guy back up.
My damage (coming from a Sci ship) was useless - yeah, I put out a lot of AoE DPS, but that literally doesn't count for squat in the current state of the game. Unless I somehow manage to land a 30K crit with my Transphasics, all of my damage is just there to maybe scare someone into accidentally using an Aux to SIF.
There were even times when I'd get decloak Alpha'd (followed by a second Alpha from a non-cloaking Escort) and he'd knock off a shield facing and like half my hull. And by the time I reacted with my own buffs, I was already nearly fully topped off due to the other Pandas throwing me a million and a half heals.
I guess what I'm trying to say that burst applies to both healing and damage. Maybe we ended up being so reliant on burst damage because of yo-yo healing. Maybe incoming heals should face diminishing returns just as stacking sources of damage buffs.
Edit: I'll round it out by saying this: There was a point, back in the day, where loading up Beams on my Intrepid actually meant that I could distract someone to the point where a healer would have to throw a heal their way when they didn't expect to, or force them to evasive/break off for a minute. Now, I'm useless since I can't burst
yup hence all my favorite ships and characters from back in the day...are in cold storage now.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
This is a really good, point, I always try to keep this in mind because Bort mentioned something similar quite a long time ago but it does bear repeating.
TBH I've had a hard time absorbing all of what everyone has written.
It's easy enough to keep your own idea, and maybe 1 or 2 other poster's ideas in your mind in full detail - but I find when there are several long posts in a row that it starts to meander and I can only really keep the primary gist in focus.
This isn't bad, everyone should have their say and I'm really impressed with the amount of constructive posts in this thread - but I can imagine it does feel a bit of a deluge to any dev reading.:P
I think we need to look at this from all sides of a coin.
And I'll start off the bat saying I use very, very few actual 'special power' consoles in PvP.
Uni-consoles have always had a low opportunity cost for what they do.
On the other hand, they do take up an entire console slot and are usually on 120 to 180s cooldowns - longer than any BOFF power.
Saying they should never be more powerful than BOFF skills is just being unrealistic due to their fairly long CDs - in essence, no one would use them.
Yes some pvpers would love that, but not all.
We need to find the place between "useful/interesting/competitive" and "useless".
I already posted on this, but I'll go ahead and touch on what exactly goes wrong in PvP with uni consoles (or other special gear).
1) They can be stacked and used consecutively with a bit of coordination.
2) The force multipliers tend to be the problematic consoles, effectively anything that has some kind of a debuff or control effect, or is an AoE.
3) They often ignore, or bend the rules surrounding other in-game systems. For example, they might ignore typical player resistances, or are allowed to be buffed in ways no other power is (See my thread on Grav Pulse Generator).
If these three things can be kept in mind with their design, it would make them a whole lot less problematic but would also allow for interesting powers to be itemized.
It's easy to ask "why" and give our own personal answer, but we need to keep in mind that this is a company that is owned by PWE which is publicly traded.
So the why should also include itemization, and customer appeal. Items need to appeal to customers to sell, to generate revenue, pays for new development and pays out to shareholders (in the big scheme of things).
You introduced new combat pet system (the more the pets are alive the more dmg they will do)
But this is worthless since the pets die just when you spawn them leaving us with 0 pets for the bigger duration of the fight.
I say your carriers-pet system is BROKEN.
So much AoE so much shield penetration the pets die like flies i wonder not why the carriers that i see has been greatly reduced the last months.
You want feedback here is my feedback YOU ARE FAILING.
You gave all the power to the romulans and leave the rest of us to rust in the dark.
Great ideas here, i really think crew affecting the ship's performance is the way to go.
But as said, a lot of mechanisms would require a major overhaul.
Cleanses should be changed to reflect a return on investment from both the target and the attacker. Such a change could lead to an increase in the variety of builds as well as a sense of return on one's investment.
Currently, TT1-ET1-ST1-HE1 provide the same cleanse that TT3-ET3-ST3-HE3 provide. While those abilities also provide other things and those other things are better at a higher rank, the cleanse portion does not scale for some reason.
If TT1 can cleanse multiple damage resist debuffs from both weapons and abilities (Nan-Dis, Pol-Dis, Pla-Dis, Dis, Destabilized Torp, APB, APD, FoMM, etc, etc, etc) - there is little need to slot TT2 or TT3. Not only does it reduce the value of the higher ranked cleanses, it reduces the value of the abilities/gear that would apply the debuff in the first place. The same applies to the other cleanses, what they cleanse and the value of the abilities/gear that applies the debuff in the first place.
This goes far beyond just build variety and any sense of return on investment though. It directly leads to a variety of other complaints that exist about the state of PvP in the game.
One of the complaints is about the difficulty in taking a target down - resists/etc are too high. Were a ship to have a mix of buffs/debuffs on it, would it not be more balanced? It's as if the debuffs were created to deal with the buffs - to balance them - but the debuffs are so easily removed, that one is just left with the buffs and that sense of an imbalance. (Which, imho, makes that new WCE DOFF all the more confusing.)
This in turn has led to two common methods of eliminating a target. One that's been around a wee bit longer than the other (even though the other has been around) and one that's become more possible because of the mudflation taking place in the game.
The first would be the common 2x Tac/3x Sci - where the Sci are able to remove the buffs with SNB, create that gap where the Tac are able to deliver damage before buffs can be reapplied. This scenario may never have arisen if it were not so easy to remove debuffs. The "need" would not have existed.
The second is simply delivering massive amounts of damage in the shortest amount of time possible - the decloak alpha. One need concern themselves that much less with their own survival, if they are able to eliminate the target in a few seconds.
Now to be fair, even if the cleanse system were changed - these two obviously would not disappear. The first would still have its place and the second is a symptom of other issues in the game. However, without the ease of access to cleanses - one might be forced to examine their builds once more...and...one might see more balanced builds. If somebody can't clear that Stealth debuff as easily and thus risk becoming the target, in turn they may have to sacrifice some of their own offense for defense.
Much like the cleanses have led to a cascade of other issues, it's possible that a change would lead to a cascade of resolutions of other issues...
...just my 2 EC (and a wee bit longer than one sentence).
1) not what i m saying:
cmd boff. that is 4-5 sci consoles, capt skill points, the only commander slot on your boat, a fitting deflector, and matching doffs.
The opportunity cost for this is not even on the same page as the opportunity cost for a single console slot.
Uni consoles, should never be better at cc then the corresponding cc cmd power.
2) As you pointed out, the cd issues is a mute point.
3min cd x5 per team member, means that it is available at random. Still there are many way sto have a once every 3min power synergise with different builds, Giving yor disbales, holds, stuns, scrambles..etc that little extra ooomph once every 3 min is fine.
Buffing sci cc powers goes from meh to bleh. Bufffing consoles goes from omg to ZOMGPAWN.
Why not spread the love, more tanking consoles, and especially more tac consoles" APO3cumAPA3 console which is not cleared by TT1, anyone? Why do they always have to tread on sci toes. Why is 3second disable (with counters) OP for a cmdr. sci skill. but totally ok for a friggin uni console?? Uni consoles CC should be a nice addition, with pretty visuals. Not the strongest CC available in the game at virtually no cost.
As a rule of thumb: If its too strong for a fully (exceeding design) buffed sci cmd attack. Its too strong for a frigging universal console.
3) Being a company, doesn't mean everything has to be OP at the cost of one skilltree element exclusively.
There are many aspects a consoles can buff that aren't even battle related or if they are battle related, give inbuild immunities to prevent stacking them in team sport fashion.
There are many reasons for people to buy consoles. Obsoleting science powers has nothing to do with the economics.
what good are consoles that are banned in most serious PvP? How much buyers remorse and frustration is created because people don't know better and get ridiculed for using something that they innocently thought would be cool and spend ****loads of money to get? How many people leave the game or stop going for stuff because of the poor balancing. I know i have.
If PWE wants people to sink money into this game beyond their first loi purchase. How does people getting screamed at and shamed into not using their latest toys (Often by 5 man preamdes pugstomping in 5 lockbox ships, with a doff contigent worht 200mio EC and more) help htem achieve that or make money.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Change: Make science boff powers less binary with secondary effects that have a variable effect.
Why: Science boff powers have historically been either too strong or too weak.
Example: Tachyon Beam drains shields but it used to drain far too much and now drains far too little. Add a secondary effect that inflicts a shield resistance penalty on the target as well. This secondary effect will always be useful and its actual measurable damage will depend upon other mechanics and the situation.
Additional Targets for such a Change
All exotic damage (change to %), charged particle burst (add defense penalty), aceton beam (change from effecting base to effecting final values), energy drains (?add a minimum % drained that does not stack?) etc.
The issue from what I am seeing is the power-creep from lockbox/Fleet/Rep ships/gear/abilities leading to bloated heals and the need for spike to kill.
How about combatting the power creep by introducing dedicated PvP-gear? And I know this is taking a leaf out of WoW's book, but it would help prevent PvE-gear from unbalancing PvP.
I.e Have weapons/shields/Deflectors/engines/consoles with a modifier like "Increases/decreases damage done/taken to/from players by x%". That way you could fiddle with the PvP-gear's powers and stats freely without affecting PvE because the PvP-stat would be the governing stat. Basically the first consideration in damage would be "How much of his PvP-resistance can my PvP-penetration beat".
Someone in PvE-endgame gear would be useless in PvP as he has no penetration, so no matter how much DPS he puts out on PvE, he wouldn't even scratch a properly geared PvPer. And since the PvP-stats would be useless in PvE, it would make no sense to use them there.
And to help create an attrition-based system, introduce a debuff like the one found in WoW called Necrotic Strike. I.e Each attack would stack a healing absorb on the target, meaning that everytime you heal the afflicted, you need to fight through a certain amount of healing absorb. Make the debuff auto-apply on all PvP-weapons and be unclearable and you got a way to prevent people to just outheal your damage ad infinitum.
Also, to prevent the gear from being an another obstacle like it can be over at WoW, make the baseline sets easy to archieve, for example give the players a free basic set once they hit lvl50 and create a reputation for the gear, where you get marks for every PvP-match you play, more for win and less for losing etc, to be able to buy better gear once you gain enough marks etc.
That way not only would you be able to keep the playing field RELATIVELY even between hardcores and newbies gearwise, keep PvE-stuff from upsetting PvP AND give PvP a sense of progression it now lacks.
But, I could be talking out of my TRIBBLE.
Give the cruiser the ability to mark a target. If marked, the target will switch IT'S target to the cruiser. For a spike damage based ship, having your target swapped before a full shot load is handed out would be likely enough to disrupt the attack. Giving cruisers the ability, with their already large hull pools, means they would be appealing to Engineers because any ability they get would only improve their survival when several, or even ALL of the opponent ships around them are suddenly marked and forced to attack it.
Would burst strikes still kill? Yes. Would teamwork be more likely to limit it the power and effectiveness of it? Oh hell yes. In the process, cruisers would be worth flying vs escorts, and engineers, even as they are now, would be more useful and desirable on a team.
Make Hull hit points 5 to 10 times higher. Why? Increase the shortest life span in PVP (currently few seconds).
Make Hull heals 2 to 5 times smaller (only the heal not any resistance). Why? To counter higher hit points and decrease the longest life span in PVP (currently forever).
Pros-
No instant death with no idea what happened.
No one can live forever
Still need spike damage
Need more pressure damage
Damage resistance is more valuable(more value in eng consoles than universal one)
Shield bypass powers are still powerful but not so overpowered
Pugs can see who the weak target is because being at 50% hull is a big deal
Slows down the fight so newer players can see what is going on more
I do have one question about this. Could it only apply to PVP and not PVE? I think it would be a lot of work to change all the NPCs so they work with 10 times more hit points on player.
Also how hard would it be to test this on Tribble?
I like to think that this follows the KISS principle well. With one buff to hull hit points and a few nuffs to ET, AtSif, and HE hull heals.
What: Percentage based healing.
Why: To put an end to spike healing and make healing regulation easier by reducing the variables to 4 numbers.
More detailed explanation: See below
I know lots of people complain about healing vs damage and I know that you have to try to balance healing across multiple ship classes with varying resistance, health, etc capabilities and for this reason you included auxiliary power in multiple heals, I would suggest (and have explained in multiple threads) using percentages in all heals. (Formula for Aux2SIF shown below)
A= Max hull (1000)
B= Percentage of max hull (in this case 10%)
C= Aux mod (0.02)
D= Aux Power (25)
E= Base heal (100)
F= Aux bonus (50%)
G= End Heal (150)
So; E=A*B and F=C*D
Heal formula: G=E+(E*F)
This would take some tweaking I think in the base percentage and in the auxiliary power modifier to finalise the balancing of the heals themselves but it would make life a lot easier, you can apply the formula to shields heals as well as hull, you could repurpose the skill table repair skills to boost the percentages that dictate the base figures. Due to healboats this should use the caster's stats to calculate the heal rather than the target.
This has the power to make healing very easy to regulate and remove the spike healing that results in 10% to 100% HP
I know you could balance the numbers in your formula but with my current hull hit points and aux bonus AtSIF would be around 16k. that is without any skills points being used. Right now my AtSif III heals about 10k.
I don't know if it will help you or not but here is how I think the current math works behind AtSIF hull heal
=(600*(1+(ability lvl-1)/3))*(skill points in hull repair/200+1)*(ship tier*0.5+0.5)*(((aux power-50)*0.01)+1)
CUUCUUMBEER! "-With slight partigen with it."
Proud member or DPS-800 "-We kill dem mines with our scitter turrets."
What if we simply limit how many active powers you can run at once? Not a shared cooldown, because it doesn't affect CD. Just how many can be in active status at once. Let's just call the currency for this "action points" to keep it as generic as possible for now, and look at just Boff powers. Let's say captain Tac/Scort is coming in for an alpha and has 12 AP to work with, and he's got it broken down as such:
EPtE1 - 1AP
EPtS2 - 2AP
CRF1 - 2AP
BO3 - 3AP
APO3 - 4AP
That's a pretty typical arrangement. He's got his constant buff cycle of two EPtX powers, and he's prebuffed BO3 going for the double tap. He's in good shape. As he swoops in to make this attack, he hits his CRF and APO to get them going, but he's been noticed by the other guy's team. He gets focused by the other guy's team mates who saw it coming. He goes for his RSP2 but... oh **** he's got no AP until something wears off. His BO fires, freeing 3 AP, so he hits RSP2. His AP is all in use again, locking out his second BO3 even though the CD is done. His double tap spike kill is ruined. He's also taking bleedthrough damage despite the RSP. Once his APO and CRF finish, he's freed 7 AP. He can either go for broke and use that AP to trigger some more tactical buffs and try to finish his target, or try to heal, but not both.
In this case, there would need to be some standard/minimum lockout on AP when you use the ability, otherwise "instant" abilities like Aux2SIF or BO become OP compared to abilities that last over time like HE or CRF. Enough to force people to make choices about what they want to use when, but not to feel like they aren't able to get max performance when they want it. Am I offensive or defensive right now? Can I keep this attack up, or do I need to pull away and heal? Right now, you can do all of that at once, maybe you shouldn't.
Now, take the pool of "action points", and imagine it's the maximum output of your warp/singularity core. You can't draw more power than you can generate at one time. This mechanic we already have, in ship's power levels. Make all Boff powers draw ship's power from the associated subsystem. Remove power drain from weapons and remove passive bonuses related to current power level. Power levels are only there to run your Boff abilities. 125 weapon power gives you a lot of flexibility to drop damage buff after damage buff, but if your Shield power is only 50 it's gonna be a tight squeeze trying to heal your shields consistently. Powers with multiple effects may drain multiple subsystems, like APO drawing part of its power from weapons and part from engines.
We'd also need a balance pass on how much power people are generating, because if you can push most of your systems up near 100 with passive boosts, leech, etc this won't be much hindrance to you.
Anyway, just kinda spitballing. Maybe ship's power isn't the best way to implement it, but some finite limitation on how many active powers you can pile up at once would go a long way to solving these problems. Captain and ship/console powers should probably be included in the system as well, not just Boffs. I was just trying to keep the example simple.
The real missing limits in the game are (broadly) opportunity cost sinks. Not many abilities have a built-in penalty, so all of the negatives come in the form of taking an ability at the expense of not being able to take some other ability. EG, you take EPtS1, what is the penalty? There isnt one, except that you cannot take EPtW1 in the same slot.
BUT ... and this is the real problem ... the game has a whole bunch of different pools where they will give you another opportunity to do something. Captain abilities, BOFF abilities, skill points, species traits, rep passives, rep abilities, weapon modifiers, equipment modifiers, ship modifiers, set modifiers, normal console modifiers, lockbox console modifiers, ..., ..., ...., Too many damn opportunity pools have completely eliminated opportunity costs from the game, and now its just about min-maxing over who can get the most trees the highest. Oh and player X can even have more trees than player Y just as a reward for running through a mill. Hard limits on skill points and modifiers, that is how you fix it, only then will opportunity costs mean something.
This is a fallacy.
Only people who never play on organized teams think this.
As for your suggestion I really think it cuts too far, and too deep and is too much of a revamp of the entire game and how it works.
Not that it's a bad idea, but we don't need to revolutionize the game.
What would be best is a solution that tones down the extremes while keeping the middle enjoyable and allow for variance in builds & tactics.
Sounds easy, is not easy.
Yet another reason why I dislike the idea of "magic space heals" that can be used on someone else. I shouldn't be able to heal somebody else's hull or remove their debuffs at a distance and more or less instantaneously. That's why those ships have an engineering crew?
Remote heals, if at all, should be more like Boarding Party in reverse... sending repair teams that reduce your own crew (with appropriate ramifications) and aren't instant fix.
But that's the way the game works and it's not likely to change so now we need another way to deal with it. Diminishing returns for heals might be one way, but then burst damage would have to be toned down across the board to compensate.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Well to be honest this thread when adjudicatorhawk mentioned in another thread that he didn't like a particular mechanic.
I'm not 100% sure which mechanics he is going to take a look at, and I have a conflicted opinion on the mechanic in question.
However the important part not to be lost is that it is very much a two sided coin and that burst healing, passive healing, passive mitigation have all ballooned and increased at the same rate as burst damage.
So builds have evolved to the point to deal the most burst in the least amount of time possible to cut down on the opposing team's chance to save the target - which if they do could literally see the target go from 2% hull to full hull and shields in the space of seconds.
This was a tactic that was used with some success by some, and much less success by others - until Romulans and their battlecloaks came and made this available to all.
So we have quite a conundrum, and to be very clear a lot of it is due to at least 1 full year or more of pretty consistent power creep in items, consoles & ship designs.
We could find a way out of this, but toning down burst and burst a lone is not the solution to all of our woes.
Toning down "double tap" beam overload builds that work well on escorts without being guaranteed kills but then get a huge power boost when you can battle cloak to protect your alpha and add more damage bonus.
I can tell you that against any kind of real, coordinated opposition just using 4x DHCs is certainly not enough to have a high rate of success every APA+SNB cycle.
I can also say that while it's fun tactically at times, at other times having to multi-chain SNBs on targets gets tiring, and draws fights out longer than I think PvP matches really need to be.
The backlash against this is because this game has long coddled the player, lapping mitigation layer on top of mitigation layer. Healing has long been the dominant force in this game's PvP.
Now, that all players are faced with much quicker deaths, we're seeing complaints about spike damage.
But, it is PvP. Someone has to die.
About magic space heals.
Magic space heals are OK, imo.
It allows for the creation of ship roles, it allows for an interesting level of teamwork beyond "shoot that guy".
If we have a problem with magic space heals, then we have to have a problem with magic space control that summons Gravity Elementals and Rays of Tractor Beams.
If all we had was run around frag fests, I could save myself the endless nights of PvE grinding and just go play something like Borderlands 2.
Tbh, I'd prefer a mechanic where shields have high regen and cap w/low bleed through, but modest resists, and shield transfers/extends would be effective based on the senders power, cap, and distance from the target.
On the other hand hull repairs would be much lower and longer, but hulls/plating can have much higher resists (I'd go as high as the 90s depending on the stacking). Remote hull repairs would also be much less effective. Tbh, I'm liking the crew costs for remote hull repairs, though an established transporter range would be better than shuttle transfers. It would give high crew ships extra value for remote repairs. Potential for remote re-enforcement of hull resists based on similar mechanics of shield reps.
While I'm at it, might as well add ship injuries both mandatory and chance based based on current damage taken w/TSSx type skills doing the chance based injuries.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
To be fair gtfo of dodge was used a storyline mechanic and not just cloaking, warp outs weren't uncommon. Also, shield extending was used as a "magic" damage immunity.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
But there's the Sci-Fi Magic and there's the Fantasy Magic. It's a Sci-Fi game, thus one would expect Sci-Fi Magic to take place. It's not a Fantasy game, thus some are taken aback by the amount of Fantasy Magic in the game.
Teamwork could easily exist without all the Fantasy Magic in the game. I think the bigger issue for folks, imho, would be the change of pacing that removing the Magic Healing would entail. It would "upset" folks from multiple angles. Folks would lose out on their vapes. Folks would lose out on their bragging about being invincible. Folks would have to adapt on a larger scale, rather than trying to work-in the latest that Cryptic's added.
Not everybody wants epic space battles...some folks are fine with their Elves flying around in starship armor and pew pewing with their magic wands. To them, that is epic. To others, they might as well just be playing a FPS/TPS...why bother with all the PvE grind?
I realize an organized team can put down an escort, but it shouldn't require coordination. It should be possible to play 1v1 where between players of equal skill, somebody will ultimately prevail. Currently, regardless who you pit against each other 1v1, if the players are equally skilled it'll be a stalemate. I'm sort of notorious among my fleet for being able to tank any 3 of them when we do PvP. Granted they're mostly PvE players who aren't built for spike, but come on. That's ridiculous in itself.
I agree my suggestion probably goes too far, but this idea of having a finite resource to limit how much one can do has been a consistent theme. I don't know if we'd ever be able to implement it because the rage from the PvE crowd would be immense, as would be the need to rebalance existing content. Can you clear ISE within the time limit if you can't tank the gateway indefinitely? If you have to break off and recover? That would be a problem nomatter how we go about this. Gimp resists and healing and the minute the PvE crowd starts blowing up again they'll flip.