If you take a look at the queues and the group searches in the more popular channels (even the invite-only ones), it's always the easy, faceroll encounters, as opposed to the more difficult ones.
Rewards drive participation, difficulty is only secondary. Fact is the reward structure in the queues is ridiculously skewed in favor of eSTFs. And since all of them have the same rewards, everyone might as well do only ISE. Hive doesn't even have accolades. Why would anyone bother with it when it gives you nothing you can't get out of a milk run through ISE?
Practically everything else in the PvE queues is just for accolade hunters or people who need specific rep marks.
Just take a look at the more challenging content right now. Except for a few organized groups, no one seems to be playing them anymore. If you take a look at the queues and the group searches in the more popular channels (even the invite-only ones), it's always the easy, faceroll encounters, as opposed to the more difficult ones.
Nukara ground, hive, ground elite STFs, vault, no-win etc... seem to have been abandoned.
Since Cryptic isn't a company like Blizzard, who might have enough rescources to focus on creation of content for that top 5%, they'll probably just stick to creating "soft" content, easily and instantly doable by 95% of the player base without any frustration.
Nukara ground has been abandoned because CE and Nukara Prime have better reward:time ratio
Hive is actually popular in some channels since it gives the highest omega mark time ratio
Vault has a horrible mark:reward ratio so naturally no one wistes their time on that
No Win Scenario is very very popular and theres queues going on all day on the NWS channels due to NWS giving 2000 fleet marks / char / hour
As said before, what draws people to do pve isnt how challenging or fun it is, its the rewards
You've been horribly, misinformed. Endgame is about finding ways to keep people from leaving. Allowing the game to cheat doesn't accomplish that. It causes casual players, who are the only new people coming into this game to become discouraged and leave in droves. Some people don't want to join fleets, or groups. Although I'm in a fleet, I play solo. I deal with people all day long, the last thing I want to do is deal with people on my time. I think STFs should be made soloable and easier. If you find the game too easy, feel free to explore other options, it's your right as a player. We won't miss you, I promise.
That would work. Have a private instance of an STF scale based on number of participants. But to be fair to the PUGs you also scale the reward based on how many started the match.
I say started so that if people leave a PUG alert or STF those left behind are not penalized.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Well Capnkirk4 if you want to only be here for easy things then do the normal versions of the missions, you can get the same items either way. Elite should be for people that are actually good at the game unlike yourself, and as for you flying solo, why play an mmo when the point is there will be other people playing the game. It isn't that you have to deal with people, people probably don't want to deal with you, that is why you are solo.
Well Capnkirk4 if you want to only be here for easy things then do the normal versions of the missions, you can get the same items either way. Elite should be for people that are actually good at the game unlike yourself, and as for you flying solo, why play an mmo when the point is there will be other people playing the game. It isn't that you have to deal with people, people probably don't want to deal with you, that is why you are solo.
Come near me and get trolled.
As much as he and I argue on other threads. In this one I agree with him.
If you take a second player with you into a regular PVE mission the mission scales the number and quality of the opponents (most times) based on number involved and level.
Well do the reverse for the STFs including reward. If your game time is 2am my time you won't see me and the queues might be totally empty. Does this mean you should not be allowed to earn marks because of your work schedule or time zone? And sometimes you just want to blow stuff up because you are irked.
If the STFs got the rewards bumped. Right now on a regular stf (not elite) with optional. I get 20 marks. Divided by number of people present it is 4 marks Double the present rewards and people will return to the stfs. Make private instances capable of holding 1-5 people and scale the number of enemies accordingly along with the rewards. Incentive to group, but you don't have to in a game that till end game never required grouping.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
I understand the concern. In all fairness the STF's really aren't what they use to be.
One thing I would love to see them do is bring back the old format of STF in as close
to the original format as they possibly can. There was no cause or reason not to
leave the original build in game for players who enjoyed playing them. They could
very easily have offered players the Ground + Space Rewards and a small bonus
for doing the combined version. This would reward players for building teams that
stick together without doing so overmuch. My biggest complaint about these STF's
is that they're all 'Bite Sized' now. We're getting MMO snacks and not a proper meal.
As a player I'd like the option for a broad array of content to enjoy, something that
both suits my mind and the time I have to play at the moment.
Player Freedom is important because this is a game, a pastime, it is about fun.
This is one of the reasons that I very much dislike the way Events warp our behavior as players. Who plays Halting the Gorn Advance any more? Its not that Halting the Gorn advance is bad, the problem is that its just not worth the effort. This has been a
problem in the game for a long time. The reward system funnels player activity
down certain paths regardless of what we the player would actually want to do.
Admittedly that's life, but we aren't on a game for real life.
Challenge itself comes in a lot of varieties. If I could make any suggestion to the devs
I would say that they need to create 'combined stf's' if you will, under the new
framework of how stf's work. We need to keep the bite sized versions for everyone
who doesn't have the time to play these big missions. The reason I like the old
combined format of STF/Fleet Action was that it required the player to be a complete
player, not just a Space Captain that never got off his ship. If people want to just
play Space, or just play ground, let them. Please give us back the old option though.
Next I would suggest some missions get upgraded, more difficult or even extended
versions. Rhiiho station for instance is nice, but I find it a little amazing that the Elachi
are easier to fight in this thing than the actual Elachi missions in the storyline.
What was Cryptic thinking on that? Many of the Fleet Actions operate like this. Elachi
are a truly wasted class of enemies, because they have great equipment and tools
to fight against.
Dial up the difficulty and for goodness sake reward it (none of this 15-20 mark
business). One of the reasons I dislike a lot of the missions rewarding the Romulan
marks is that they're just boring, or their rewards are a complete letdown. Its odd,
but it seems like the most mindnumbing, spirit crushing way of earning Romulan
marks are actually the best way. Chase rabbits around with four other people?
Great way to make New Romulus happy (even if you're Romulan). Save an
armada of ships from Tholian capture - not so much. Reclaim Haakona station
and help Obisek out? Not so much. Speaking of which, what is wrong with the
Voice-overs for Obisek in that Fleet Action? Its like they just cut and pasted
whatever VO's they had for him, without any desire to make what he says have
any logic or sense to it. 'In short it is not' - What are you saying Obisek?
Mine Trap is a great mission, it actually rewards the player properly, it represents
challenge in the sense that it requires teamwork on a massive scale to get the best
rewards. The problem with it is that in the time it takes to queue Mine Trap and
finally hit 'Engage' you could go run around and do the Tau Dewa Daily. Lets
face it, because of of structural designs built into the game a lot of people use
events to earn Romulan marks and don't actually do the Romulan content unless
they -have to-. I don't know what the metrics say, but its not because people
dislike the missions, it speaks more to bad implementation.
Ultimately, there is one thing we the player has to recognize. We're going to
outlevel the content. This is the other pressure that the game faces. I'm
fine with outlevelling the content, as long as we get something new and
challenging to replace that vacuum. It has been suggested that perhaps there
should be a 'nightmare' mode added to the game. I'm not so sure that is
necessary as long as there is enough that represents a challenge to remain
interesting.
P.S.: Bring back Ds9 Fleet Action, Terradome, Gekli Rodeo and any other content that
got shelved. Don't get rid of the 'War is Good for Business' mission, its one
of my favorite and more iconic missions on the Federation Side.
First, I think from our previous debates on the subject, we agree to disagree on the antiquity of the trinity system.
However there is some validity to his statements.
First when we look at the source material I do not recall a single ship flying around just to fix another ship. So following canon the trinity system is broken as it is missing the third leg. By canon.
In STO you can build a healer and be decent. You can build a striker and be deadly. But the tank is underwhelming as they lack a fixed job.
A tank should have the ability to soak a good amount of enemy damage and keep the attention on himself. because big enemies should be able to one hit the healer and two hit the striker. So the job of the tank should be get the main's attention. The healer keeps him alive. The striker kills the big enemy.
For an elite STF this might be doable. If they make tanks tanky and able to hold aggro.
It would require coordination from a team of players to accomplish. As a group of strikers will get shot down so often as to be overly frustrating. A group of healers blasted before they do anything meaningful. And a group of tanks will live longer but still not damage the enemy seriously before they fail. So you need the mixed group to succeed.
So I think it could be done. If they adjust the system to allow it. As it is, it is a hybrid as skollulfr mentioned and one that favours dps over tactics. And possibly to be more casual friendly. I do not know.
There are some nice Embassy Consoles that help in this regard. If you get good
Embassy consoles, and raise the threat skill it will attract enemies to you I assure.
That being said, unlike a game where the Tank is often melee, there really isn't
any point to melee range so most of the time Gravity well and other containment
skills seem to win out as more useful. Still, to some degree it is very possible to
draw attention. The question is whether that is possible if you have a 30,000dps
escort and your 8,000 Dps Cruiser vying for attention. Ther nerfing of FAW
doesn't help in this regard either.
I would say this game is more Controller, Dps, Healer. It isn't as much DPS, Tank, Healer.
That's just my opinion.
Hypothetical scenario:
Nightmare mode happens, this includes more NPC dps (rather than straight damage), NPCs get more skills and the AI gets an improvement, A2B builds get rippied to shreds, other minimum defence builds get shredded, well rounded builds excel.
Thing is: People dont need to worry about their ship getting destroyed because there is next to no penalty involved. Heck, in many cases its easier and quicker to just suicide than to retreat and heal. Sacrificing firepower for survivability is just not necessary.
Therefore, regarding "elite" pve content:
If your ship gets destroyed, it remains and definitely is DESTROYED, which means you can NOT use it again for the remainder of the mission. This includes equipment and bridge officers.
You can use another ship in your line-up.
Ships are rated ("combat value" points) according to their tier, type, quality of equipment etc.
Every stf has a contingent of points each players can use.
Now the Big Example: Khitomer Space Elite has a contingent of 20 points per player.
A player uses his badass ship which does megatons of damage. This ship has a combat value of 11 points.
Which means: If he gets destroyed, he can not use this ship or another ship which is rated 11 points, but he has to use a backup ship, which is only worth 9 points.
Resulting in:
More brains over brawn. (is this asking too much?)
Elite content needs more coordination since no one wants himself or his teammate to be forced to play with an inferior ship.
Tanks and healers are more valuable.
Sweet, sweet moneys for the devs because players will need more ships, more ship slots, more boff slots and more equipment.
Keep in mind: This is just a quick concept to make end game content more challenging, details need to be fleshed out of course.
Or we could just make NPCs more player like in terms of their capabilities, where the difficulty comes from the level of skill exhibited by the AI behind the NPCs which would vary from one difficulty setting to the next, bamm, NPC get more weapons, thus more damage, they get abilities and the AI gets the upgrades to use them effectively.
Or we could just make NPCs more player like in terms of their capabilities, where the difficulty comes from the level of skill exhibited by the AI behind the NPCs which would vary from one difficulty setting to the next, bamm, NPC get more weapons, thus more damage, they get abilities and the AI gets the upgrades to use them effectively.
That would make difficulty is STO.
I disagree.
Higher difficulty does not equal better content.
Making enemies tougher by boosting their damage output or their hitpoints does not make the missions more interesting. On the contrary: Maximizing firepower would be even more important.
you can agree to disagree all you like.
simple fact of the matter is that if a tank cant deal with the focussed fire of the entire enemy team its not doing its job.
the thig there is, that if it does do its job it will either be immortal or ignored in favor of killable targets.
if npc's hit soft enough that one ship can casually absorb the incoming damage, you and your team is better off with a higher dps ship, and if the npc's are hitting hard anough to challenge that you have broken the game for anyone else because they just get skudded by some cheap TRIBBLE one hit kill.
The point of tank is not just to soak damage. It also has to pull aggro. If it can't do that then it is a fail as a tank. And if you say everyone should be able to take the same damage. Try putting a modern hydrofoil versus a battleship. Battleship soaks way more than the dinky hydrofoil. There are weapons that can one or two hit said hydrofoil. So they shouldn't be used? Or perhaps they should be used with intelligence? IE fit their role better.
The current mechanic is a bit broken if an escort can soak as much damage as a cruiser. While out running it and out gunning it. Trinity can be a force of balance. My agreement with you is that it is not here.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
I don't even think a lot of people here have any understanding (including the devs) of why STFs have turned incredibly easy.
Yes, the trinity system in STO is non-sense, it has no place here. Especially considering you have captain roles and ship roles that can be combined in any shape.
In the good old days of STFs we had a challenge, STFs were newer, ships were weaker, there was more mystery.
Over time they have released far more hybrid ships, which do a much better job of attacking while being defensive or having access to combinations that simply weren't possible.
Equipment wise we have lot of reputations, passive powers, lock box consoles/gear, fleet gear for a pretty hefty power creep. Any ship out there can use some combination of gear to reinforce their weak points while increasing their effectiveness. Its power creep to an extreme level.
There has been virtually no new real end game content, except from the Hive, in a long time. Since all mission in STO are very static, everyone has learned every spawn location, every trigger and got their timing down. It becomes trivial, boring and repetitive.
If anyone has actually taken the time to parse an STF properly, instead of looking at their amazing DPS and patting themselves on the back, they would have realized the older STFs all had one thing in common. Enemy plasma torpedos were doing stupid amounts of damage, like 90% of the total, at some point Cryptic fixed the instakill torpedos, but never shored up the remaining damage, so as STFs sit now, they are walk in the park hilariously easy.
So yes, the end game content is ridiculous, but its Cryptic's way, they don't actually maintain their own systems. I guess their moto is let it rot out, then overhaul it all and PR it as a new feature, just like the disaster they are going to create with the new event system.
Game content needs to be modified to keep up to some levels of power creep across the board. Though regular difficulty still needs to be fairly easy.
Missions need to be redesigned to be dynamic, and not the static predictable messes they are now, a single play through of any new repeatable mission and you know where everything will be every time.
That is pretty much all that they need, the reality was until the great plasma torpedo fix, ships in STFs needed some level of defense to avoid 1 shot kills, but thats out the window now and its all DPS. That one change allowed a build design that ignored healing and defense and sacrificed everything for damage without any real concern. Its a huge problem that devs don't even really get I'm sure.
Truthfully, the level 1-50 content needs a serious boost in difficulty, the largest problem to this is that there does not exist any in game information about combat, builds, or well anything. New players have no clue about anything, and have no ability to get that information except to ask another player, who will likely be wrong. The worst thing is that when you get a new ship, they are outfitted with garbage gear loadouts (not referring to quality), which makes players you are supposed have 4 torpedos on a cruiser or other non-sense.
Making enemies tougher by boosting their damage output or their hitpoints does not make the missions more interesting. On the contrary: Maximizing firepower would be even more important.
If you were to read my post properly you would realise I'm not simply suggesting a buff to NPC damage and hitpoints, that would be more of the same and that isn't difficulty, giving NPCs abilities and the skills to use them would be difficulty, imagine you bring a ship with 30k dps, your dps is your defence because you can't pack defensive measures and deal that kind of dps, the enemy drops your shield, you pop rsp, you get subnuked and then torp-ed, you die.
Content that makes you think about what you are doing, that's interesting.
Since the current elite stfs aren't really "elite", why don't we rename the current elites to advanced, and make some true elite stfs?
Put them at level 50 for entry, obviously, and put the enemie's level at at least level 54, for some difficulty.
It gets interesting from here.
Give borg starships and ground units shield's the [adapt] mod that we have on our elite fleet shields. (We all know how Borg like adapting)
Give Borg a new weapon type: "Borg Plasma". Basically the plasma weapons they have now, but also having a tetryon proc (since borg just love draining shields).
Continue the "each higher difficulty=bigger ships". (for space):
-Tac cubes guarding transformers in infected, with nanite cubes coming to repair the transformers.
-Assimilated Bortas dreadnoughts spawning out of the shipyards in the Cure
-Tac cubes at the transformers in khitomer, of course.
-And then Hive Onslaught... not sure about it. Maybe cubes helping the tac cubes instead of spheres helping the tac cubes?
If that's not enough, throw in tractor probes and regeneration probes as some additional borg frigate types instead of just probes.
Those are my ideas, until I think of more.
Edit: Almost forgot to mention: put the rewards at around double that of the current elites. If players cry "NERF IT!!!", don't nerf it one bit, just increase the rewards instead. (That last sentence was semi-sarcasm, btw)
Winning.
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tr;dr, I am winning last post wins 3.0. Thank you for your time.
hello trinity fanboy.
see, you are wrong, while almost any ship in this game can do damage, there is very much a negative effect from the trinity still afflicting this game. though this point isnt put under pressure so much in pve as it is in pvp, where the "tank" class has been utterly excluded as the useless pile of **** it is.
The only negative effect is that with some few exceptions, most of the payout in Fleet Actions and STFs take DPS into account on some level. That sucks and needs to change.
Many MMO's work on a end game repetitive, predictable, know the spawn timers format.
whether or not you like or dont like it is subjective, everyone thinks differently.
What's important here is the other information you've raised.
I agree with your points mostly, but I will go on to say, content *period* should be challenging.
But how do we implement that in game?
If you segregate the community into easy,normal,elite... you reduce the turnover of players entering the queue, doing a mission and then entering another queue after. Effectively, you slow down everyone's ability to get more done in a day.
If someone wants elite mode, to be something for veteran players (meaning very experienced at the game, having good ship builds and skill trees and traits and BOFFS, etc etc)
That's one thing. One thing that is hard to judge and changes has time goes on.
What is an effective build in STO? What is an ineffective build? Can we agree that there is such a thing as "bad builds", and if so that a person with a bad build could jeopardize the team's ability to finish the mission.
This is the real problem, trinity or otherwise.
The fact that a player can make a build that will not be combat viable in elite.
It doesn't matter if they learn the mission, timers, objectives etc... if they can't preform, they can't contribute the necessary amount.
But in saying that, how do we fix it??
Power creep will happen. We will get stronger across the board.
The only thing i can think of is smarter AI for combat, more variety in AI's (example: two borg cubes one does one set of tactics, the other another set) and a scaling system that takes a look at the players in the instance, and then adjusts the AI accordingly, and lets hope the players make good use of the BOFF's rotations and ship weapon arcs.
You are referring to something akin to diablo's "Hardcore mode" (kinda!)
Right now the way the game works... these are things i'd be worried about:
- someone dies near me, kills me too
- the lance bug on Uni-matrix 1 (or what ever that mission is called)
- I fail to kill a torpedo from a borg cube, and instantly die from it. This is because i use a cannon build combined with "tab" to target nearest enemy. I think what happens is i click by mistake somewhere on screen without knowing it, and un-target the torpedo. This is user error, and I fully own that.
- the other occasional deaths I suffer I cannot fully explain, nor can I review the combat log because it goes by with everything for myself and everyone else. Crazy amount of data.
- Sometimes the game puts "abandon ship" on my toolbar, i hit it by mistake because of its location on the bar, and die.
Basically, you want to sorta-have perma-death. Hey okay i get that. But what would happen is, you will go into a PVE queue, take 25% casualties right off the bat, then fail to complete the mission. This is because of player skill, poor builds, lag and other factors...
Basically, you cant fix one without the others.
You will be more frustrated then you are now, I believe.:(
You can't have a death MEAN anything in this game because the devs don't know what the heck they're doing in terms of gameplay balance. You should never be KILLED. You should always have an out. Be it escape, be it smarts, be it skill, you should NEVER die. If you die, the game has failed or you're absolutely a total newbie. The fact that this game repeatedly kills you with NO option to prevent it (1-hit kills with NO defense) in so many aspects of both ground and space fighting means they need to revamp the entire gameplay balance from the ground up.
That won't happen. PERIOD.
They won't even go back and fix bugs or tweak content because the folks that originally did it aren't with the company anymore. They used to not even do patch notes because (their words, not mine) they couldn't know what was in any given patch THEY were releasing.
No... Sadly you cannot have a well balanced game where death actually means something. Instead we get this kluge of a flowchart model. Heck, I heard they don't even code in-house anymore.
- Sometimes the game puts "abandon ship" on my toolbar, i hit it by mistake because of its location on the bar, and die.
You have to map the toolbar to a layout you choose. I don't recall if the default key shortcut is ctrl+p or if that's what I mapped mine to, but you can click the little button on the upper right corner of your power tray and assign skills to wherever you like (or drag them off the toolbar into space and let go to clear that skill out).
You need to do this in space -- anywhere, like around Sol or even in sector space -- and then when you go into combat it will already be set.
Comments
Practically everything else in the PvE queues is just for accolade hunters or people who need specific rep marks.
Nukara ground has been abandoned because CE and Nukara Prime have better reward:time ratio
Hive is actually popular in some channels since it gives the highest omega mark time ratio
Vault has a horrible mark:reward ratio so naturally no one wistes their time on that
No Win Scenario is very very popular and theres queues going on all day on the NWS channels due to NWS giving 2000 fleet marks / char / hour
As said before, what draws people to do pve isnt how challenging or fun it is, its the rewards
That would work. Have a private instance of an STF scale based on number of participants. But to be fair to the PUGs you also scale the reward based on how many started the match.
I say started so that if people leave a PUG alert or STF those left behind are not penalized.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Come near me and get trolled.
As much as he and I argue on other threads. In this one I agree with him.
If you take a second player with you into a regular PVE mission the mission scales the number and quality of the opponents (most times) based on number involved and level.
Well do the reverse for the STFs including reward. If your game time is 2am my time you won't see me and the queues might be totally empty. Does this mean you should not be allowed to earn marks because of your work schedule or time zone? And sometimes you just want to blow stuff up because you are irked.
If the STFs got the rewards bumped. Right now on a regular stf (not elite) with optional. I get 20 marks. Divided by number of people present it is 4 marks Double the present rewards and people will return to the stfs. Make private instances capable of holding 1-5 people and scale the number of enemies accordingly along with the rewards. Incentive to group, but you don't have to in a game that till end game never required grouping.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
I think thats asking too much but at least give them some AI and randomize the stfs so you dont know where and when which enemies will appear.
My character Tsin'xing
One thing I would love to see them do is bring back the old format of STF in as close
to the original format as they possibly can. There was no cause or reason not to
leave the original build in game for players who enjoyed playing them. They could
very easily have offered players the Ground + Space Rewards and a small bonus
for doing the combined version. This would reward players for building teams that
stick together without doing so overmuch. My biggest complaint about these STF's
is that they're all 'Bite Sized' now. We're getting MMO snacks and not a proper meal.
As a player I'd like the option for a broad array of content to enjoy, something that
both suits my mind and the time I have to play at the moment.
Player Freedom is important because this is a game, a pastime, it is about fun.
This is one of the reasons that I very much dislike the way Events warp our behavior as players. Who plays Halting the Gorn Advance any more? Its not that Halting the Gorn advance is bad, the problem is that its just not worth the effort. This has been a
problem in the game for a long time. The reward system funnels player activity
down certain paths regardless of what we the player would actually want to do.
Admittedly that's life, but we aren't on a game for real life.
Challenge itself comes in a lot of varieties. If I could make any suggestion to the devs
I would say that they need to create 'combined stf's' if you will, under the new
framework of how stf's work. We need to keep the bite sized versions for everyone
who doesn't have the time to play these big missions. The reason I like the old
combined format of STF/Fleet Action was that it required the player to be a complete
player, not just a Space Captain that never got off his ship. If people want to just
play Space, or just play ground, let them. Please give us back the old option though.
Next I would suggest some missions get upgraded, more difficult or even extended
versions. Rhiiho station for instance is nice, but I find it a little amazing that the Elachi
are easier to fight in this thing than the actual Elachi missions in the storyline.
What was Cryptic thinking on that? Many of the Fleet Actions operate like this. Elachi
are a truly wasted class of enemies, because they have great equipment and tools
to fight against.
Dial up the difficulty and for goodness sake reward it (none of this 15-20 mark
business). One of the reasons I dislike a lot of the missions rewarding the Romulan
marks is that they're just boring, or their rewards are a complete letdown. Its odd,
but it seems like the most mindnumbing, spirit crushing way of earning Romulan
marks are actually the best way. Chase rabbits around with four other people?
Great way to make New Romulus happy (even if you're Romulan). Save an
armada of ships from Tholian capture - not so much. Reclaim Haakona station
and help Obisek out? Not so much. Speaking of which, what is wrong with the
Voice-overs for Obisek in that Fleet Action? Its like they just cut and pasted
whatever VO's they had for him, without any desire to make what he says have
any logic or sense to it. 'In short it is not' - What are you saying Obisek?
Mine Trap is a great mission, it actually rewards the player properly, it represents
challenge in the sense that it requires teamwork on a massive scale to get the best
rewards. The problem with it is that in the time it takes to queue Mine Trap and
finally hit 'Engage' you could go run around and do the Tau Dewa Daily. Lets
face it, because of of structural designs built into the game a lot of people use
events to earn Romulan marks and don't actually do the Romulan content unless
they -have to-. I don't know what the metrics say, but its not because people
dislike the missions, it speaks more to bad implementation.
Ultimately, there is one thing we the player has to recognize. We're going to
outlevel the content. This is the other pressure that the game faces. I'm
fine with outlevelling the content, as long as we get something new and
challenging to replace that vacuum. It has been suggested that perhaps there
should be a 'nightmare' mode added to the game. I'm not so sure that is
necessary as long as there is enough that represents a challenge to remain
interesting.
P.S.: Bring back Ds9 Fleet Action, Terradome, Gekli Rodeo and any other content that
got shelved. Don't get rid of the 'War is Good for Business' mission, its one
of my favorite and more iconic missions on the Federation Side.
There are some nice Embassy Consoles that help in this regard. If you get good
Embassy consoles, and raise the threat skill it will attract enemies to you I assure.
That being said, unlike a game where the Tank is often melee, there really isn't
any point to melee range so most of the time Gravity well and other containment
skills seem to win out as more useful. Still, to some degree it is very possible to
draw attention. The question is whether that is possible if you have a 30,000dps
escort and your 8,000 Dps Cruiser vying for attention. Ther nerfing of FAW
doesn't help in this regard either.
I would say this game is more Controller, Dps, Healer. It isn't as much DPS, Tank, Healer.
That's just my opinion.
Azure Nebula Rescue has a scripted pattern too. :rolleyes:
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
Lifetime Subscriber since 2012 == 17,200 Accolades = RIP PvP and Vice Squad
Chief of Starfleet Intelligence Service == Praise Cheesus
Hypothetical scenario:
Nightmare mode happens, this includes more NPC dps (rather than straight damage), NPCs get more skills and the AI gets an improvement, A2B builds get rippied to shreds, other minimum defence builds get shredded, well rounded builds excel.
Yeah, I like this mode :P
Therefore, regarding "elite" pve content:
Now the Big Example: Khitomer Space Elite has a contingent of 20 points per player.
A player uses his badass ship which does megatons of damage. This ship has a combat value of 11 points.
Which means: If he gets destroyed, he can not use this ship or another ship which is rated 11 points, but he has to use a backup ship, which is only worth 9 points.
Resulting in:
More brains over brawn. (is this asking too much?)
Elite content needs more coordination since no one wants himself or his teammate to be forced to play with an inferior ship.
Tanks and healers are more valuable.
Sweet, sweet moneys for the devs because players will need more ships, more ship slots, more boff slots and more equipment.
Keep in mind: This is just a quick concept to make end game content more challenging, details need to be fleshed out of course.
That would make difficulty is STO.
I disagree.
Higher difficulty does not equal better content.
Making enemies tougher by boosting their damage output or their hitpoints does not make the missions more interesting. On the contrary: Maximizing firepower would be even more important.
The point of tank is not just to soak damage. It also has to pull aggro. If it can't do that then it is a fail as a tank. And if you say everyone should be able to take the same damage. Try putting a modern hydrofoil versus a battleship. Battleship soaks way more than the dinky hydrofoil. There are weapons that can one or two hit said hydrofoil. So they shouldn't be used? Or perhaps they should be used with intelligence? IE fit their role better.
The current mechanic is a bit broken if an escort can soak as much damage as a cruiser. While out running it and out gunning it. Trinity can be a force of balance. My agreement with you is that it is not here.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Yes, the trinity system in STO is non-sense, it has no place here. Especially considering you have captain roles and ship roles that can be combined in any shape.
In the good old days of STFs we had a challenge, STFs were newer, ships were weaker, there was more mystery.
Over time they have released far more hybrid ships, which do a much better job of attacking while being defensive or having access to combinations that simply weren't possible.
Equipment wise we have lot of reputations, passive powers, lock box consoles/gear, fleet gear for a pretty hefty power creep. Any ship out there can use some combination of gear to reinforce their weak points while increasing their effectiveness. Its power creep to an extreme level.
There has been virtually no new real end game content, except from the Hive, in a long time. Since all mission in STO are very static, everyone has learned every spawn location, every trigger and got their timing down. It becomes trivial, boring and repetitive.
If anyone has actually taken the time to parse an STF properly, instead of looking at their amazing DPS and patting themselves on the back, they would have realized the older STFs all had one thing in common. Enemy plasma torpedos were doing stupid amounts of damage, like 90% of the total, at some point Cryptic fixed the instakill torpedos, but never shored up the remaining damage, so as STFs sit now, they are walk in the park hilariously easy.
So yes, the end game content is ridiculous, but its Cryptic's way, they don't actually maintain their own systems. I guess their moto is let it rot out, then overhaul it all and PR it as a new feature, just like the disaster they are going to create with the new event system.
Game content needs to be modified to keep up to some levels of power creep across the board. Though regular difficulty still needs to be fairly easy.
Missions need to be redesigned to be dynamic, and not the static predictable messes they are now, a single play through of any new repeatable mission and you know where everything will be every time.
That is pretty much all that they need, the reality was until the great plasma torpedo fix, ships in STFs needed some level of defense to avoid 1 shot kills, but thats out the window now and its all DPS. That one change allowed a build design that ignored healing and defense and sacrificed everything for damage without any real concern. Its a huge problem that devs don't even really get I'm sure.
Truthfully, the level 1-50 content needs a serious boost in difficulty, the largest problem to this is that there does not exist any in game information about combat, builds, or well anything. New players have no clue about anything, and have no ability to get that information except to ask another player, who will likely be wrong. The worst thing is that when you get a new ship, they are outfitted with garbage gear loadouts (not referring to quality), which makes players you are supposed have 4 torpedos on a cruiser or other non-sense.
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If you were to read my post properly you would realise I'm not simply suggesting a buff to NPC damage and hitpoints, that would be more of the same and that isn't difficulty, giving NPCs abilities and the skills to use them would be difficulty, imagine you bring a ship with 30k dps, your dps is your defence because you can't pack defensive measures and deal that kind of dps, the enemy drops your shield, you pop rsp, you get subnuked and then torp-ed, you die.
Content that makes you think about what you are doing, that's interesting.
Put them at level 50 for entry, obviously, and put the enemie's level at at least level 54, for some difficulty.
It gets interesting from here.
Give borg starships and ground units shield's the [adapt] mod that we have on our elite fleet shields. (We all know how Borg like adapting)
Give Borg a new weapon type: "Borg Plasma". Basically the plasma weapons they have now, but also having a tetryon proc (since borg just love draining shields).
Continue the "each higher difficulty=bigger ships". (for space):
-Tac cubes guarding transformers in infected, with nanite cubes coming to repair the transformers.
-Assimilated Bortas dreadnoughts spawning out of the shipyards in the Cure
-Tac cubes at the transformers in khitomer, of course.
-And then Hive Onslaught... not sure about it. Maybe cubes helping the tac cubes instead of spheres helping the tac cubes?
If that's not enough, throw in tractor probes and regeneration probes as some additional borg frigate types instead of just probes.
Those are my ideas, until I think of more.
Edit: Almost forgot to mention: put the rewards at around double that of the current elites. If players cry "NERF IT!!!", don't nerf it one bit, just increase the rewards instead.
Winning.
Oh, now don't tell me you want in on all this! Well, ok. Look this that Egg Pawn hanging outside your window, pointing his laser rifle at you, waiting for my next order. He's doing his part. He helps conquer the weak-minded. He roboticizes the weak-bodied. Heck, he even helps keep the useless people from causing any trouble, but you know what? Join. Find the closest Nataran Empire roboticization center near you and join the ranks, before the ranks find you. Oh, I know, you figure it must be so satisfying to know I basically rule the world now, and you know what? It is, but do you want to know the true definition of satisfaction? Well, let me tell you a little story. One day, you see a brand new event. They're giving out boxes that give old event stuff. Your dilithium is plentiful. You buy a whole lot of Phoenix packs on your main, and open them all. You get one epic token. Then, you decide, that since you have all the Breen ships and don't give a damn about the others, you exchange it for an ultra rare, and grab yourself a Jem'Hadar Attack Ship and for the hell of it, a Voth Bulwark. You open both, leaving the Bulwark in your vast masses of starships as you jump into the bugship and deck it out, deck by deck, into the most awesome Jem'Hadar ship you can. You fly it. You enjoy it. Eventually, you get bored and leave, leaving the old Bulwark never flown... until later. Your main is long complete. Your new alt main, based off some character you pulled out of nothing just to explain away some starship being in service without the command of your dear admiral, is also complete. Mostly. Their reps and doffs are hard at work, getting you stuff. You realize the potential, and head back for your dear admiral, pull the most Voth themed build you can out of thin air, and suit up in your giant ship in the shape of you know what. You head out... and cause all sorts of havoc. Enemies scream out your name as their very life is drained away by your swarms of Aceton Assimilators. They complain to the devs of your OPness when you revive yourself from death every time you die. Do you show any form of mercy? No. After all, this isn't the United Federation of Planets, this is mother frakkin' Starfleet, where you explore strange new worlds and kick butt never kicked before. Oh, and you realize that I just wrote another speech rivaling your own signature. Cool. Oh, wait, that's just the original draft, it is part of my signature now. Oh, and yes, I am aware that I have become a Canadian Regent; one day, sooner than you'd expect, we'll suddenly decide to take over the world and declare an "alliance", and I shall become it's Regent. You know, like the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance in the mirror universe of our beloved Star Trek. Oh, who'll we be taking over with? I dunno, maybe [REDACTED], or maybe aliens from outer space. Guess you'll have to wait and find out, won't we? Until then, don't ask too many questions, or else my Breen allies on Titania might pick up on your -- [REDACTED BY BREEN CONFEDERACY FOR REASONS] Also, psst... keep an eye out for flying Tribbles! Also walls. Big, great walls, separating entire continents apart. Walls patrolled by Tribbles. Flying Tribbles. Flying Nukara Tribbles. Don't worry, it's not like they were on Venus with a herd of Tholians or anything, they just like the extreme heat and brutal weather like acid rain and hurricane force winds as the norm. Oh, and definitely keep your eye out on any two-tailed foxes, because if they ain't glowing, they're definitely an imposter. Possibly an Undine, we caught one of those once in my place once. Oh, and if you find a two-tailed fox that doesn't like the cold... most certainly ask him to say sorry. If he refuses, DESTROY HIM WITH A DOOMSDAY MACHINE, BECAUSE THERE'S NOTHING ELSE THAT WOULD BE ENOUGH AGAINST SUCH AN OVERPOWERED IMPOSTER!
tr;dr, I am winning last post wins 3.0. Thank you for your time.
The only negative effect is that with some few exceptions, most of the payout in Fleet Actions and STFs take DPS into account on some level. That sucks and needs to change.
Many MMO's work on a end game repetitive, predictable, know the spawn timers format.
whether or not you like or dont like it is subjective, everyone thinks differently.
What's important here is the other information you've raised.
I agree with your points mostly, but I will go on to say, content *period* should be challenging.
But how do we implement that in game?
If you segregate the community into easy,normal,elite... you reduce the turnover of players entering the queue, doing a mission and then entering another queue after. Effectively, you slow down everyone's ability to get more done in a day.
If someone wants elite mode, to be something for veteran players (meaning very experienced at the game, having good ship builds and skill trees and traits and BOFFS, etc etc)
That's one thing. One thing that is hard to judge and changes has time goes on.
What is an effective build in STO? What is an ineffective build? Can we agree that there is such a thing as "bad builds", and if so that a person with a bad build could jeopardize the team's ability to finish the mission.
This is the real problem, trinity or otherwise.
The fact that a player can make a build that will not be combat viable in elite.
It doesn't matter if they learn the mission, timers, objectives etc... if they can't preform, they can't contribute the necessary amount.
But in saying that, how do we fix it??
Power creep will happen. We will get stronger across the board.
The only thing i can think of is smarter AI for combat, more variety in AI's (example: two borg cubes one does one set of tactics, the other another set) and a scaling system that takes a look at the players in the instance, and then adjusts the AI accordingly, and lets hope the players make good use of the BOFF's rotations and ship weapon arcs.
Its as easy as I already mentioned:
Make player "deaths" count. If your ship gets destroyed, its destroyed. You are out. Better luck next time.
Optional:
Randomize enemy encounters and behaviour. They dont even need better AI or more weapons or more hitpoints, just mix things up a little.
Problem solved.
Right now the way the game works... these are things i'd be worried about:
- someone dies near me, kills me too
- the lance bug on Uni-matrix 1 (or what ever that mission is called)
- I fail to kill a torpedo from a borg cube, and instantly die from it. This is because i use a cannon build combined with "tab" to target nearest enemy. I think what happens is i click by mistake somewhere on screen without knowing it, and un-target the torpedo. This is user error, and I fully own that.
- the other occasional deaths I suffer I cannot fully explain, nor can I review the combat log because it goes by with everything for myself and everyone else. Crazy amount of data.
- Sometimes the game puts "abandon ship" on my toolbar, i hit it by mistake because of its location on the bar, and die.
Basically, you want to sorta-have perma-death. Hey okay i get that. But what would happen is, you will go into a PVE queue, take 25% casualties right off the bat, then fail to complete the mission. This is because of player skill, poor builds, lag and other factors...
Basically, you cant fix one without the others.
You will be more frustrated then you are now, I believe.:(
That won't happen. PERIOD.
They won't even go back and fix bugs or tweak content because the folks that originally did it aren't with the company anymore. They used to not even do patch notes because (their words, not mine) they couldn't know what was in any given patch THEY were releasing.
No... Sadly you cannot have a well balanced game where death actually means something. Instead we get this kluge of a flowchart model. Heck, I heard they don't even code in-house anymore.
You have to map the toolbar to a layout you choose. I don't recall if the default key shortcut is ctrl+p or if that's what I mapped mine to, but you can click the little button on the upper right corner of your power tray and assign skills to wherever you like (or drag them off the toolbar into space and let go to clear that skill out).
You need to do this in space -- anywhere, like around Sol or even in sector space -- and then when you go into combat it will already be set.