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.
The fallacy is yours. The fact that in organized teams, tacs need support, doesn't mean that in the remaining 99.9% of the game they largely don't. support is the name of the game in organized pvp, so every team member requires it, even sci.
Not enough glass, too much cannon, still holds true, imv. The GDF nerf, unpleasant as it was, was a step in the right direction. However, that was quickly compensated by Rommie BOs and battle cloak so that tacs/birds require less healing. Compared to bops all warbird stats bring alot of cannon with very little glass.
At the end of the day the PvP metagame is gonna be what it is and frankly, whatever we say is not going to influence it in any major way.
So what is the aim of the game? Plain and simple, adapting to the latest trends to possibly dictate the metagame.Those who do it the quickest, remain on top of their game and die less. Those who don't become history and start to die a lot.
So what are the choices? Adapt and stay competitive or sadly get stuck in a rut and die a lot. At this point in time, your next level choice is to quit the game completely, take a leave and come back to the game with a fresh outlook or just keep blowing up.
Granted, there are fringe elements like a2b cooled emp bursts or the black hole of old. At this junction you choose to use it or not as there are no rules in queues but rule them out in pre arranged fights with both parties agreeing.
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.
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'm not saying the system is perfect, or that neither or your ideas (both of yours) lack merit.
They do, you guys often have a lot of great points and good ideas.
I'm a realist.
I believe that we will never, ever, (queue the annoying Taylor Swift) have the kind of grand, sweeping revisions to this game's combat mechanics like some of yours and other players (good, and interesting) concepts contain.
Cryptic would be shooting themselves in the foot, you don't mess that much with a good thing and risk crashing the Arc that's housing your gilded calves (did I mix enough metaphors?:o)
So I'm focusing on the right now, what's doable with what we have and what we are likely to get.
Not enough glass, too much cannon, still holds true, imv. The GDF nerf, unpleasant as it was, was a step in the right direction. However, that was quickly compensated by Rommie BOs and battle cloak so that tacs/birds require less healing. Compared to bops all warbird stats bring alot of cannon with very little glass.
I won't argue that we have seen a ton of power creep, but tbh I'm also tired of people ignoring the fact that Sci and Eng can also use warbirds, can also use battlecloaks, and have more +Crit% & CritD available to them than even Tac's had with APA right up until LoR launched - might just tempt me to finally repping out my Reman Sci and letting loose. :P
Have you faced any well built Engineers in the queues recently? They are idiotically hard to kill, and sometimes even coordinated efforts (like the one's that kill Tacs) are just a massive waste of time.
None of us really want the constant influx of powercreep pushing the extremes of mitigation and damage further out.
Most of it is here to stay, the best we can look forward are to tweaks.
When I've finally had enough of the game, and can no longer do anything but rant or be angry in basically every post I ever make - instead of doing that I'll just move on.
Until then, I'll make threads like these and try to get some positive outcomes, with a goal of lessening the extremes a bit (on both ends of the mitigation vs. damage conversation).
I believe that we will never, ever, (queue the annoying Taylor Swift) have the kind of grand, sweeping revisions to this game's combat mechanics...
I believe that too. I'm pretty sure that's what Hawk came out and told folks.
At the same time though, I do not believe that any little tweaks will fix anything - if anything, the little tweaks will just end up making things worse as we end up with a cascade of tweaks that need to be made - are slowly made - because something was overlooked with the little tweak...and that it would end up making things worse in the end.
Take the simplest change. Then consider everything that direct affects that. Then consider everything that indirectly affects that. Then consider everything it directly affects. Then consider everything that it indirectly affects. Then consider any future things that it may directly or indirectly be affected by and anything it may directly or indirectly affect. Then consider that some enterprising player is likely to use it to affect directly or indirectly affect something you did not consider - as well as the things that they may use directly or indirectly to affect it.
It's like playing Jenga with a plate of spaghetti...
...little changes aren't going to cut it, that meatball's going to roll off the plate - off the table - and drop down to the floor.
might just tempt me to finally repping out my Reman Sci and letting loose. :P
With the Reman being able to take Infiltrator, you don't have to trade in a Sup Op for the Inf...which means you can get a better Op from the BOFF than the OP you get from the Rom Captain - depending on what you're looking at doing with the overall build.
depending on what you're looking at doing with the overall build.
I'm thinking I'll stack as much Crit % chance as I can, find a ship/build that makes me hard to ignore and reasonably difficult to kill and then try to squeeze as much pain out of Conservation of Energy as the game mechanics will allow.
(He's Reman, mostly because I wanted one and because the +DEF would be better to fall back on if the above build doesn't work out as planned).
I believe that too. I'm pretty sure that's what Hawk came out and told folks.
At the same time though, I do not believe that any little tweaks will fix anything - if anything, the little tweaks will just end up making things worse as we end up with a cascade of tweaks that need to be made - are slowly made - because something was overlooked with the little tweak...and that it would end up making things worse in the end.
Take the simplest change. Then consider everything that direct affects that. Then consider everything that indirectly affects that. Then consider everything it directly affects. Then consider everything that it indirectly affects. Then consider any future things that it may directly or indirectly be affected by and anything it may directly or indirectly affect. Then consider that some enterprising player is likely to use it to affect directly or indirectly affect something you did not consider - as well as the things that they may use directly or indirectly to affect it.
It's like playing Jenga with a plate of spaghetti...
...little changes aren't going to cut it, that meatball's going to roll off the plate - off the table - and drop down to the floor.
Well, in some respects we do need a bit of a broader approach when it comes to PvP directly.
I just don't see the humongously complicated overhauls like the ones people often suggest, "multiply hull x4" for example or "only able to use a few BOFF powers at once".
Those are massive mechanics revisions that I don't think would ever happen.
Now, how about:
Diminishing returns on heal-stacking (who would actually notice this in PvE?)
or
Antonio's TT revision, which grants perma-shield rebalancing at 50% strength of current TT and TT would do...something else.
This are "tweaks" imo, but they would have fairly large effects in the change of the metagame.
Something like the above could be followed with some method of then toning down spike and at least start to mellow out the extremes a bit.
I believe that we will never, ever, (queue the annoying Taylor Swift) have the kind of grand, sweeping revisions to this game's combat mechanics like some of yours and other players (good, and interesting) concepts contain.
I dont agree with that at all, for several reasons. At a basic level, they already made grand sweeping changes before, which is evidence that they are willing to do it, so really it is a question of motivation.
Change is coming whether STO wants it or not. Right now, STO is the #2 space MMO behind Eve (way behind), especially for the hard-core comitted players (they still pay subs for their space ships). What will happen if/when Star Citizen comes out and draws the PVP monkeys out of this game? Cryptic has to choose now, are they going to invest to keep those players and attract more of them, or are they going to narrow the focus onto the core player community and write off PVP entirely. STO can handle being #2, can they handle being #3, especially when they are focused on churning? The Star Trek franchise will keep drawing people in but being #3 is tough, and puts the game closer to being a maintenance title.
The game combat systems need to be remade with PVP balance as the main design point. PVE combat can be scaled to PVP from there. Either that, or commit to a player base that likes the current single-player focus, and forget about PVP entirely. Either way is a radical change.
What if damage resistance was made to be inversely proportional to healing? So that someone who maintained high damage resist would have reduced heals, and if you wanted strong spike heals, you would have to sacrifice res, and maybe even defense?
Or maybe have a separate 'heal resistance' stat - which you could debuff so that heals and resistance would be less effective, or buff so that the opposite happened?
What if damage resistance was made to be inversely proportional to healing? So that someone who maintained high damage resist would have reduced heals, and if you wanted strong spike heals, you would have to sacrifice res, and maybe even defense?
Or maybe have a separate 'heal resistance' stat - which you could debuff so that heals and resistance would be less effective, or buff so that the opposite happened?
Just tossing ideas out.
You can't touch heals without looking at resistances and damage as well. They're not isolated...
We've seen increases in all three...imho, mostly in damage because of CrtH/CrtD. There are no Critical Heals, but Critical Damage is becoming all that much more common.
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 like this concept, some sort of a pool of ability power is a great idea.
EVE and STO are not competitors. SC's not going to be a competitor for either game either.
They will compete for players, especially players who like flying space ships, especially players who enjoy simulated space combat. Where is STO in that
They will compete for players, especially players who like flying space ships, especially players who enjoy simulated space combat. Where is STO in that
That's like saying people that like eating meat view a fine steakhouse, a fast food joint, and a hot dog cart as competitors...
That's like saying people that like eating meat view a fine steakhouse, a fast food joint, and a hot dog cart as competitors...
Well they are competitors, just like MMOs compete with books and heavy drinking as forms of escapism, but I'm not talking at that kind of broad level. I'm not even talking about COD vs STO, or space arcade vs STO, I am talking about the very small sector of immersive space adventure/combat games that people will spend money in some form to continue playing. People who have a preference for that form of entertainment have very few choices right now, they will have another choice in a couple of years, and there will be some player movement as a result. EVE will lose some players too, just like they lost some to STO.
Well they are competitors, just like MMOs compete with books and heavy drinking as forms of escapism, but I'm not talking at that kind of broad level. I'm not even talking about COD vs STO, or space arcade vs STO, I am talking about the very small sector of immersive space adventure/combat games that people will spend money in some form to continue playing. People who have a preference for that form of entertainment have very few choices right now, they will have another choice in a couple of years, and there will be some player movement as a result. EVE will lose some players too, just like they lost some to STO.
No doubt there are people that prefer EVE to STO and those that prefer STO to EVE. There will be those that prefer SC to either. There are also going to be folks that play all three, since all three provide a different gameplay experience. They might be in the mood for X, so they play the game with X - in the mood for Y or Z and they will play the game with Y or Z.
Some may feel that game X does ABC better than game Y...but there's going to be folks that feel game Y does ABC better than game X.
IMHO, it's more akin to trying to decide which model Ford or Chevy to buy than whether to buy a Ford or Chevy. They're all substantially different enough, that they're not competitors like trying to decide between a Ford or a Chevy...they're more like trying to decide which model after having selected Ford or Chevy.
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.
Eh, its more relevant to the subject than insisitng that Cryptic will never change STO
USSUltimatum has a point. The topic, I believe, was spike damage in PvP and how long it should take to 'splode somebody.
Please stay on topic, thanks.
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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.
sounds like you have some cool ideas about perssistant damage ( persisstant visual damage should be there too , as it is, it seem your engineers had time to polish the hull while they were patching up the holes)
Id go even further NO RESPAWNS you break it you bought it
everybody should be thougher, but you don't get to come back from the dead
i also support the ideas one poster had about crew mechanics being tied to the combat capabilities
additionally , torpedos need to be worth using. infact they should be VERY effective, but you can't just fire forever, we should have depleting torpedo stocks
The idea of a warp core power reserve whcih depeltes over time is one i like also, with bigger ships benifitting from their physically larger cores
Think of a PvP vet that can kill 3 or 4 people before he/she gets enough injuries to be removed from combat. So they let themselves be killed and are back in the fight in 30 seconds, just to kill another 3 or 4 and repeat. Versus, them having to step back from the fight and heal their injuries for a minute or two before getting back in the fight. Giving the other team a change to get caught up.
However I do not like the whole respawn system anyway.
as seen above i agree, don't like the respawns either
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I know that I'm late to the party on this thread, but IMO, what constitutes "too fast" is when the guy getting hammered does not have a reasonable chance to react (i.e. he has to have key shortcuts set up for any countermeasures in order to have a reasonable hope of hitting them in time to do him any good). It should definitely be feasible to kill an opponent before his heals have cooled down for a second use, but having him be dead before he can even press the "Tactical Team" button is essentially a one-hit kill. I would say five seconds would be long enough.
If he's late to the party than I showed up at last call. I just followed Ulti's sig.
Anyway, great ideas here. I'm a big supporter of the ship injuries in combat before dying idea, it's just far more logical. Disabling ships also makes a lot of sense.
While drastically increasing hull hit points may not be feasible, it is more true to canon.
On the subject of shield distribution I have an idea of active traits for Boffs. Boffs all have traits that are passives, but a trait that actively does something, like automatically balances shields because that's what the boff studied in the academy, or a boff that gains extra damage with a sniper rifle because they're marksman etc. could be useful and add a different flavor to what we look for in our boffs.
But if something like shield distribution were to be made automatic (because lets be honest if our engineer or tactical officer left a hole in the shield coverage he'd be fired the next day, if you lived), then that could leave the arrow keys (by default for shield distribution) for something else.
I vote subsystem targeting. Every ship we've seen in Star Trek could target subsystems it's a little weird for it to be a tactical officer and science ship restricted ability. It was practically the Enterprise-D's primary mode of fire, but you can't use it on a Galaxy in this game. Just like we can bind a button to shift around our power levels I believe we should be able to select which subsystem we're going to target with our weapons. It would still require a cool down, but it should also work in conjunction with other abilities, like fire at will or beam overload. I'm not sure whether or not it should be uncoupled from just being beam or also apply to cannons as well. Let me know if it would be Overpowered.
Why? To make combat less burst damage related and more tactical and targeted. And on a more personal note to stop annoying runaway Borg spheres. (That said, in a way Borg ships shouldn't be available for true subsystem targeting.)
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
There is way too much spike damage in this game, as it stands. Only a handful of ships in Trek have been seen to perform the kind of spike damage we see on a regular basis.
The power of skills must be reduced, both damage and heal, the +% they add to damage or healing is to big.
Also doffs and procs have to much influence on skill power numbers.
Absolutely agreed.
Too much stacking and too large bonuses make every system impossible to balance. Because min and max are so far apart.
5x 30% damage consoles? Just to name an example. And fleet tac consoles are around the corner. Oh joy. Where do you set the 'middle ground' to start balancing?
Other games have smaller bonuses AND stacking penalty. Guess why.
A 400 base damage becomes a 50k critical hit. That's insane. I wouldn't touch the current system with a ten foot pole, if the task was to balance it without any fundamental changes.
Right now the pvp is more like League of Legends or Starcraft, than anything resembling Star Trek. It's twitch gameplay, Rock-Paper-Scissor style, with the requirement of being wealthy and 'in the know' of all the little loopholes and game mechanic flaws. That's not exactly beginner friendly.
Same skill, same ressources groups can compete on an equal level, fun and challenge included. But in random matches the amplitude of participants is so huge, from clueless newbie with bad to average setup, to elitist min-maxing spreadsheet powermonger fleet premade.
It almost calls for some sort of ELO or whatever matchmaking system.
Apart from a complete balance overhaul.
Comments
The fallacy is yours. The fact that in organized teams, tacs need support, doesn't mean that in the remaining 99.9% of the game they largely don't. support is the name of the game in organized pvp, so every team member requires it, even sci.
Not enough glass, too much cannon, still holds true, imv. The GDF nerf, unpleasant as it was, was a step in the right direction. However, that was quickly compensated by Rommie BOs and battle cloak so that tacs/birds require less healing. Compared to bops all warbird stats bring alot of cannon with very little glass.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
So what is the aim of the game? Plain and simple, adapting to the latest trends to possibly dictate the metagame.Those who do it the quickest, remain on top of their game and die less. Those who don't become history and start to die a lot.
So what are the choices? Adapt and stay competitive or sadly get stuck in a rut and die a lot. At this point in time, your next level choice is to quit the game completely, take a leave and come back to the game with a fresh outlook or just keep blowing up.
Granted, there are fringe elements like a2b cooled emp bursts or the black hole of old. At this junction you choose to use it or not as there are no rules in queues but rule them out in pre arranged fights with both parties agreeing.
I'm not saying the system is perfect, or that neither or your ideas (both of yours) lack merit.
They do, you guys often have a lot of great points and good ideas.
I'm a realist.
I believe that we will never, ever, (queue the annoying Taylor Swift) have the kind of grand, sweeping revisions to this game's combat mechanics like some of yours and other players (good, and interesting) concepts contain.
Cryptic would be shooting themselves in the foot, you don't mess that much with a good thing and risk crashing the Arc that's housing your gilded calves (did I mix enough metaphors?:o)
So I'm focusing on the right now, what's doable with what we have and what we are likely to get.
I won't argue that we have seen a ton of power creep, but tbh I'm also tired of people ignoring the fact that Sci and Eng can also use warbirds, can also use battlecloaks, and have more +Crit% & CritD available to them than even Tac's had with APA right up until LoR launched - might just tempt me to finally repping out my Reman Sci and letting loose. :P
Have you faced any well built Engineers in the queues recently? They are idiotically hard to kill, and sometimes even coordinated efforts (like the one's that kill Tacs) are just a massive waste of time.
None of us really want the constant influx of powercreep pushing the extremes of mitigation and damage further out.
Most of it is here to stay, the best we can look forward are to tweaks.
When I've finally had enough of the game, and can no longer do anything but rant or be angry in basically every post I ever make - instead of doing that I'll just move on.
Until then, I'll make threads like these and try to get some positive outcomes, with a goal of lessening the extremes a bit (on both ends of the mitigation vs. damage conversation).
I believe that too. I'm pretty sure that's what Hawk came out and told folks.
At the same time though, I do not believe that any little tweaks will fix anything - if anything, the little tweaks will just end up making things worse as we end up with a cascade of tweaks that need to be made - are slowly made - because something was overlooked with the little tweak...and that it would end up making things worse in the end.
Take the simplest change. Then consider everything that direct affects that. Then consider everything that indirectly affects that. Then consider everything it directly affects. Then consider everything that it indirectly affects. Then consider any future things that it may directly or indirectly be affected by and anything it may directly or indirectly affect. Then consider that some enterprising player is likely to use it to affect directly or indirectly affect something you did not consider - as well as the things that they may use directly or indirectly to affect it.
It's like playing Jenga with a plate of spaghetti...
...little changes aren't going to cut it, that meatball's going to roll off the plate - off the table - and drop down to the floor.
With the Reman being able to take Infiltrator, you don't have to trade in a Sup Op for the Inf...which means you can get a better Op from the BOFF than the OP you get from the Rom Captain - depending on what you're looking at doing with the overall build.
I'm thinking I'll stack as much Crit % chance as I can, find a ship/build that makes me hard to ignore and reasonably difficult to kill and then try to squeeze as much pain out of Conservation of Energy as the game mechanics will allow.
(He's Reman, mostly because I wanted one and because the +DEF would be better to fall back on if the above build doesn't work out as planned).
Well, in some respects we do need a bit of a broader approach when it comes to PvP directly.
I just don't see the humongously complicated overhauls like the ones people often suggest, "multiply hull x4" for example or "only able to use a few BOFF powers at once".
Those are massive mechanics revisions that I don't think would ever happen.
Now, how about:
Diminishing returns on heal-stacking (who would actually notice this in PvE?)
or
Antonio's TT revision, which grants perma-shield rebalancing at 50% strength of current TT and TT would do...something else.
This are "tweaks" imo, but they would have fairly large effects in the change of the metagame.
Something like the above could be followed with some method of then toning down spike and at least start to mellow out the extremes a bit.
R'Mor are more better than Wells/Korath because of the BOFFs.
Change is coming whether STO wants it or not. Right now, STO is the #2 space MMO behind Eve (way behind), especially for the hard-core comitted players (they still pay subs for their space ships). What will happen if/when Star Citizen comes out and draws the PVP monkeys out of this game? Cryptic has to choose now, are they going to invest to keep those players and attract more of them, or are they going to narrow the focus onto the core player community and write off PVP entirely. STO can handle being #2, can they handle being #3, especially when they are focused on churning? The Star Trek franchise will keep drawing people in but being #3 is tough, and puts the game closer to being a maintenance title.
The game combat systems need to be remade with PVP balance as the main design point. PVE combat can be scaled to PVP from there. Either that, or commit to a player base that likes the current single-player focus, and forget about PVP entirely. Either way is a radical change.
What if damage resistance was made to be inversely proportional to healing? So that someone who maintained high damage resist would have reduced heals, and if you wanted strong spike heals, you would have to sacrifice res, and maybe even defense?
Or maybe have a separate 'heal resistance' stat - which you could debuff so that heals and resistance would be less effective, or buff so that the opposite happened?
Just tossing ideas out.
You can't touch heals without looking at resistances and damage as well. They're not isolated...
We've seen increases in all three...imho, mostly in damage because of CrtH/CrtD. There are no Critical Heals, but Critical Damage is becoming all that much more common.
I like this concept, some sort of a pool of ability power is a great idea.
Top 10 Best Sci-Fi MMORPG http://blog.games.com/2013/03/07/top-10-best-sci-fi-mmorpgs/
Lol, Scarlet TRIBBLE...
...and seriously, some of the games on that list are hardly Sci-Fi much less actual MMOs.
EVE and STO are not competitors. SC's not going to be a competitor for either game either.
That's like saying people that like eating meat view a fine steakhouse, a fast food joint, and a hot dog cart as competitors...
It put Battlestar Galactica at #5 over STO. I was thinking more like not on the list...
It does have Ace Online though. I forgot that game even existed. That was my first MMO back when it was called Space Cowboy lol
Well they are competitors, just like MMOs compete with books and heavy drinking as forms of escapism, but I'm not talking at that kind of broad level. I'm not even talking about COD vs STO, or space arcade vs STO, I am talking about the very small sector of immersive space adventure/combat games that people will spend money in some form to continue playing. People who have a preference for that form of entertainment have very few choices right now, they will have another choice in a couple of years, and there will be some player movement as a result. EVE will lose some players too, just like they lost some to STO.
No doubt there are people that prefer EVE to STO and those that prefer STO to EVE. There will be those that prefer SC to either. There are also going to be folks that play all three, since all three provide a different gameplay experience. They might be in the mood for X, so they play the game with X - in the mood for Y or Z and they will play the game with Y or Z.
Some may feel that game X does ABC better than game Y...but there's going to be folks that feel game Y does ABC better than game X.
IMHO, it's more akin to trying to decide which model Ford or Chevy to buy than whether to buy a Ford or Chevy. They're all substantially different enough, that they're not competitors like trying to decide between a Ford or a Chevy...they're more like trying to decide which model after having selected Ford or Chevy.
Do some people call it the 'gangster of love'? Or do some people call it 'Maurice'? :P
(Couldn't resist)
USSUltimatum has a point. The topic, I believe, was spike damage in PvP and how long it should take to 'splode somebody.
Please stay on topic, thanks.
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sounds like you have some cool ideas about perssistant damage ( persisstant visual damage should be there too , as it is, it seem your engineers had time to polish the hull while they were patching up the holes)
Id go even further NO RESPAWNS you break it you bought it
everybody should be thougher, but you don't get to come back from the dead
i also support the ideas one poster had about crew mechanics being tied to the combat capabilities
additionally , torpedos need to be worth using. infact they should be VERY effective, but you can't just fire forever, we should have depleting torpedo stocks
The idea of a warp core power reserve whcih depeltes over time is one i like also, with bigger ships benifitting from their physically larger cores
as seen above i agree, don't like the respawns either
Anyway, great ideas here. I'm a big supporter of the ship injuries in combat before dying idea, it's just far more logical. Disabling ships also makes a lot of sense.
While drastically increasing hull hit points may not be feasible, it is more true to canon.
On the subject of shield distribution I have an idea of active traits for Boffs. Boffs all have traits that are passives, but a trait that actively does something, like automatically balances shields because that's what the boff studied in the academy, or a boff that gains extra damage with a sniper rifle because they're marksman etc. could be useful and add a different flavor to what we look for in our boffs.
But if something like shield distribution were to be made automatic (because lets be honest if our engineer or tactical officer left a hole in the shield coverage he'd be fired the next day, if you lived), then that could leave the arrow keys (by default for shield distribution) for something else.
I vote subsystem targeting. Every ship we've seen in Star Trek could target subsystems it's a little weird for it to be a tactical officer and science ship restricted ability. It was practically the Enterprise-D's primary mode of fire, but you can't use it on a Galaxy in this game. Just like we can bind a button to shift around our power levels I believe we should be able to select which subsystem we're going to target with our weapons. It would still require a cool down, but it should also work in conjunction with other abilities, like fire at will or beam overload. I'm not sure whether or not it should be uncoupled from just being beam or also apply to cannons as well. Let me know if it would be Overpowered.
Why? To make combat less burst damage related and more tactical and targeted. And on a more personal note to stop annoying runaway Borg spheres. (That said, in a way Borg ships shouldn't be available for true subsystem targeting.)
Absolutely agreed.
Too much stacking and too large bonuses make every system impossible to balance. Because min and max are so far apart.
5x 30% damage consoles? Just to name an example. And fleet tac consoles are around the corner. Oh joy. Where do you set the 'middle ground' to start balancing?
Other games have smaller bonuses AND stacking penalty. Guess why.
A 400 base damage becomes a 50k critical hit. That's insane. I wouldn't touch the current system with a ten foot pole, if the task was to balance it without any fundamental changes.
Right now the pvp is more like League of Legends or Starcraft, than anything resembling Star Trek. It's twitch gameplay, Rock-Paper-Scissor style, with the requirement of being wealthy and 'in the know' of all the little loopholes and game mechanic flaws. That's not exactly beginner friendly.
Same skill, same ressources groups can compete on an equal level, fun and challenge included. But in random matches the amplitude of participants is so huge, from clueless newbie with bad to average setup, to elitist min-maxing spreadsheet powermonger fleet premade.
It almost calls for some sort of ELO or whatever matchmaking system.
Apart from a complete balance overhaul.