Can you imagine the amount of qq the forums would be filled with if they released something like a wow raid where you need an optimized fully geared char and a competent team to beat. It'd probably bring down the servers with the weight of the tears.
That is basically how the STFs originally were. Long missions, and hard as hell at the time. Mix of ground and space. Everyone had to know EXACTLY what you were doing or else you would be stuck there for a long time. Becky, Armek, and Donatra were all really and truly challenges back then.
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.
If you've been playing for more then a year I don't even have make a long complicated case. Things like the borg task forces used to mean you had to follow inviolate rules handed down by God himself. If you were really good and help little old ladies across the street you might get the optional every third attempt.
Now? How many people even remember what the 10% rule is or having to do more then tap space to defend the kang?
Now? It's just zoom in, shoot, and win.
QED
Edit: In point of fact I've seen lone proof of concept builds blow up the gates _without_ even sniffing in the direction of the nanite generators. Though that was a long time ago.
Yes, but not just for the reason's stated thus far.
The classification of ship's was the start of it. Science. Engineer. Tactical. All these thing's or present on every Federation ship. Galaxy, Constitution, Excel, Miranda, and so on and so forth to some degree have these strengths. Miranda's explored the Galaxy for Starfleet long before the Galaxy came along. They never sent in the Enterprise B to just go Tank for a Science ship. In actual Star Trek Cannon the one use ship like the Defiant, Nova, Oberth, and etc.. or rare breeds. Even in DS9 they still used Defiant for more than just fighting. Most Federation ships can explore, attack/defend on some level, and have some sort of science station's/labs.
The worst offender of this flawed system if you ask me is the Escort. The Defiant was a tiny warship meant for war. This mean's a lot of firepower and maneuverability without comfort and science labs. Toss in the ablative armor and despite her size she could take some serious blows. That being said I am now going to say this. Not every Escort should have Defiant level power! Just because a Saber class is considered and Escort doesn't mean it's has the ability of the Defiant! However, by STO logic all small ships not called science ship's or shuttle's must be able to equip cannon's and handle like a pure warship while putting out more damage than two Cruiser's.
Now all of this doesn't just apply to the Federation but to all the Faction's. Unlike other Sci-fi Universe's Star Trek ship's do more than just one thing. However, this seems to have been overlooked.
Now, someone is going to say this is a game not the show. I agree. However, it's a reason why these OP build's or around. If you want a glass cannon that can put out 30'000 DPS go get an Escort, BoP, or raptor and load down as needed.
(Haven't played the Romulan side as of yet so I can't list a Rom Ship in particular.)
You want to go do nothing but exotic damage? Get yourself a Science ship. I mean, clearly Intrepid and the Nebula class our only good for cataloging Nebula's, scanning planet's, and lacked any tactical ability despite being a small long term explorer's.
You need to Tank? Why go get you a Galaxy, Sovereign, Excelsior because clearly the flagships of the fleet are only good for drawing fire and helping out all the Defiant wannabe's to stay alive.
Do you want to Tank and Over Kill? Well, go get you a Carrier because despite being a slow moving target they can launch enough fighter's/shuttle's to wipe you off the map while you target the carrier.
Honestly, the Scimitar is the best portrayed ship in the game. A giant weapon of death meant to kill as many people as possible in one massive go. I don't even like the thing but I'll give it it's due.
The Vesta is a Multi-mission ship that despite being overkill does what it should do in book and game. People complain about Vesta's but fail to realize just how hard they are to play. I bought one with some Christmas Cash and can willingly admit I am not able to handle it as they should be. Its why I don't play one and for that matter any carrier.
None of the ships or accurate to their real armaments or abilities and often more than not or classified well under or way above the ability of what they can really do. I say, until this issue is fixed Damage and DPS score's or going to keep going higher. It's easy enough to make build's geared towards DPS/Damage when the ship class system's or so tightly bound in the game.
I say, instead of putting these ships in set determined classes such as Dwarf Over Kill Ship, Moving Shield, and Mage make them more complicated by making them more diverse as they should be. Give each strength's and weakness in each Officer class. An Example being that say a Galaxy Class while not a maneuverable ship is good all around for a Science/Tactical/Engineer captain. However, because it's an all around she isn't as effective as say a Nova. Another Example could be the Prometheus Class that while not most effective by a Science officer, given it never had a Science lean on it at all, has more use to an Engineer or Tactical Officer.
Also, make the mission's more diverse with one favoring more Science skills than Tactical ability. How about making Fleet PvE's more than just a grind. Make them complicated and have some kind of lean to one type of Captain whether they or Science, Tactical, or Engineer. I don't know..maybe a mission were you have to hack Borg Nodes and while anyone can do it Engineer Toon's can do it best and faster than the other class. So, Tactical and Science Captain's can run Defense/Offense as they hack them.
Point being, PvE action's in general or bland. Go and blow this up. You don't need to work hard. Just make a OP build and blow through it in ten minutes. Get your reward and go grind another PvE Fleet action. That's why DPS is so high and is only going to get higher. No need to work together when four Tac Captain's can do it all. Ships need to be more complicated to use and and max out, user friendly be damned.
I am a casual player and I welcome it if this game was harder. It would force people to work together instead of toss in random Avenger, Scimitar, or other offender and let them blow through all the target's as quick as possible.
NOTE: Also, yes I know Cryptic is never going to change the current ship class system. However, it's worth making note that if they hadn't focused on the three ship class system this sort of DPS issue might not have come about.
That's not a good idea. Make resist debuffs stronger than resist buffs? We already have that. Honestly, resistance shouldn't fall below 0%. The problem with it is the damage multipliers (like APA). You have consoles that multiply damage, skill trees that multiply, and you have abilities that multiply damage. Damage is multiplied by several different systems, all at the same time.
Make resist debuffs stronger then resist buffs? I think you misunderstood what i was aiming at or don't understand the current debuffing. Negative resist currently has no DR. You can stack 5 APB3's and have -200 resist. And with no DR this means 200% extra damage. Where as positive resist has a fairly heavy DR. For negative resist i think it's best to either cap this at a given value ie -100 or use diminishing returns similar to what positive resist uses. It would look like this if using the same DR as positive resist.
Using Attack Pattern Beta III with 99 points into the skill
1 APB3=-40 resist=equates to you doing 28.3% extra damage vs 40% extra damage previously
2 APB3's=-80 resist=equates to you doing 43.1% extra damage vs 80% extra damage previously
3 APB3's=-120 resist=equates to you doing 51.9% extra damage vs 120% extra damage previously
4 APB3's=-160 resist=equates to you doing 57.4% extra damage vs 160% extra damage previously
5 APB3's=-200 resist=equates to you doing 61.2% extra damage vs 200% extra damage previously
Using Attack Pattern Beta III with 99 points into the skill
1 APB3=-40 resist=equates to you doing 28.3% extra damage vs 40% extra damage previously ^--- 39.4%, not 40%
2 APB3's=-80 resist=equates to you doing 43.1% extra damage vs 80% extra damage previously ^--- 75.7%, not 80%
3 APB3's=-120 resist=equates to you doing 51.9% extra damage vs 120% extra damage previously ^--- 107.7%, not 120%
4 APB3's=-160 resist=equates to you doing 57.4% extra damage vs 160% extra damage previously ^--- 135.0%, not 160%
5 APB3's=-200 resist=equates to you doing 61.2% extra damage vs 200% extra damage previously ^--- 157.9%, not 200%
The diminishing returns formula for debuffs is not the same as for buffs...but again, DR/DRR itself resists the debuffs.
With the above numbers vs. that equivalent of a blue Mk XI Neut (+17.5 DRR)...
There shouldn't be negative resistances that magnifies the damage it takes beyond what the attacker is putting out, it just doesn't make sense. All weapons use some form of energy to damage the target. If we are to accept negative resistance, then we must accept that somehow the weapons gained more power when they hit that weakened target. Let's say that DPS is now measured in Gigawatts per second. You can't create more watts from rendering a target less resistant to it. It's insane. If your weapons have a capacity of 10 GPS, that's the most you can apply, end of story. You can't suddenly have 30 GPS because the resistance is now a negative value. That's more power where there shouldn't be any.
There also shouldn't be damage multipliers either. It's power from nowhere again. You turn on your space magic and suddenly, that 1 Gigawatt beam array becomes a 3 Gigawatt array, with the same amount of power being fed into it. So, that shouldn't be possible. A 1 gigawatt array is a 1 gigawatt array. The only way it could get any more is if you pushed more power through it. That would require a sacrifice somewhere else.
I can see negative damage resist debuffs...but not Tac debuffs. Sci/Eng debuffs - things that would weaken shield damage reduction/increase bleedthrough or things that would affect the hull and make them more susceptible to damage...sure. Tac though? Nope. For that matter, I don't see Tac DR buffs. So APB, APD, and that aspect of APO would be out. Accuracy buffs? Yep. Defense buffs? Yep. Increased RoF? Yep. Targeting multiple folks with an attack? Sure. Combinations of increased RoF, multiple folks, multiple weapons? Sure.
While I'm obviously not a fan of damage multipliers, I can see static damage boosts. Skill-based boosts would reflect simple things as overall knowledge of the weapons - better being able to use them. If you're better with something, you're better with it. Kind of like with archery - sure, you might hit the target - but the better guy's going to hit the bullseye sort of thing.
I can also see various gear items providing an increase to damage - through increased efficiency. Much like a better weapon can perform better, a better overall system for said weapon could make it perform better.
Again though, they wouldn't be percentage increases as we have now...lends itself too much to getting way out of control (like I believe it has).
So many things in STO are based around percentages - there are ratios - and within a fixed range, sure...they might be fine...but we're well beyond them being fine in so many cases that it all needs a revamp.
There also shouldn't be damage multipliers either. It's power from nowhere again. You turn on your space magic and suddenly, that 1 Gigawatt beam array becomes a 3 Gigawatt array, with the same amount of power being fed into it. So, that shouldn't be possible. A 1 gigawatt array is a 1 gigawatt array. The only way it could get any more is if you pushed more power through it. That would require a sacrifice somewhere else.
Yeah, now you're moving into hard-simulationist gameplay. That is just not what STO is.
I think a valid point is sort of being made in that tactical stations not only buff RoF, accuracy, defense, hit multiple targets, it also applies weakness and damage buffs. I wonder if these were instead moved to lt/lt.commander science and engineering so while heavy tactical ships got the increase in weapon versatility only the buffs/debuffs and force multipliers were on other classes of ship.
Having said that another good point was raised about percentage increases being bad, I also think generally stacking in this game is very poor with damage, science abilities and many other things.
But that's kind of the point - yep, ships will do more damage...but this is too much damage already. I mean, this is without taking into account any Critical Hits and the Critical Severity that's out there. There's no Omega Weapon Training, there's no [AMP], there's no potential set bonuses, they're VR Mk XII consoles instead of UR Mk XII Vulnerabiltiy consoles, buffs haven't been stripped, debuffs haven't been stacked...
...so it is precisely a problem.
well, i never said it isn't too much, i was just saying that there were no errors in what he noticed.
Okay, I had to LOL at calling somebody a coward for attacking while shields are down. On one hand, because if the object is to destroy the target...well...uh...and on the other hand, with all the bleed - folks die easily enough with 100% shields on four facings.
Reading the Zone chat is probably the funniest thing going on in Ker'rat...imho.
also, well, that was a troll (I'm one of thoose cowards who attacks while shields are down ahahah), but I was trying to say that everyone can be killed in a warzone, but this doesn't implies that the same would happen in a normal pvp, when you are ready to face enemies
Yeah, now you're moving into hard-simulationist gameplay. That is just not what STO is.
That's not even close to a simulation. The difference between simulation and arcade is the basis of the numbers. Arcade uses arbitrary numbers while simulations use real world numbers. Star Trek is not real world, so the numbers are all arbitrary. What I'm asking for is simplified mechanics, like finite damage that doesn't multiply. If a weapon does X damage, that is the most it can do to a target. Period. Then, ships could just have increased hull HP in place of resistance (i.e. armor and alloy consoles simply increase base hull HP linearly), which is far more simple. The same goes for shields. More field generators means more shield HP, in a linear progression. Damage consoles would be the same, a fixed amount of bonus damage applied to the weapon, not percentage multipliers. So weapon power would have to change too. The weapon subsystem would be treated like a capacitor. You can fire so long as there is power to use. More power means more shots. If your power hits zero, you can't fire until the main weapons capacitor recharges.
Rate of fire can be controlled by how much power you apply to each weapon as well. For faster rates of fire, set the weapon's capacitor to fire at 50% to cut the recharge time in half or 30% for one third of the recharge time. You'll do the same damage per shot, but you'll have shorter recharge times as well as shorter volleys. That will mean you'll have a weapon ready to fire more often when the target is in your arc instead of firing one large volley and having to wait even longer to land the next volley because the recharge is longer. So CRF simply fires your weapons when their respective capacitor is at X% capacity to reduce waiting time for the next volley at a cost of not being able to fire as many shots per volley. Setting weapon power to a setting below 100% would decrease how many weapons can recharge at once, but it will reduce how long all of your weapons are waiting for power.
Torpedoes could have a quantity limit like the Omega torpedo. You can fire X number of them at once before a reload is required. High yield would have a pre-fire delay (to prep a higher yield payload) and TS would simply fire a volley up to the quantity currently loaded (e.g. 5 loaded torpedoes would be a spread of 5, 3 loaded would be a spread of 3). Adding a flat resistance to energy weapons against hull would also make a torpedo a mandatory weapon and prevent energy weapons from being the universal tool for taking out ships.
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I don't think damage has gotten as out of control as much as defense has gone neglected by the power creep.
We get more and more crit worshiping, acc increasing stuff every season, but evasion is still poorly tracked and explained in game, and there's much less diversity in speed tanking builds than there is for supercritdpsalphasniper builds. 2 examples of this that come to mind are aegis and dyson rep engineering consoles, which are OK, but just OK, compared to the attention dps gets in this game.
All the % damage bonus abilities where tuned back when it was difficult to get very rare XII gear. Now ultra rare Mk XII gear is handed out like candy, but to the best of my knowledge none of the damage abilities bonus or resistance debuff abilities have ever been revisited!
I have a BoP pilot and in all honesty, there really isn't that much "skill" involved. All you do is blow all your cooldowns and unload on 1 target, maybe pick off a 2nd one that is half dead if it's nearby. Then you cloak up and wait for your cooldowns to clear up again.
There really is no "skill" or "learn to adapt" involved. I volley a ship. How is he supposed to adapt to that when I have total control on my side? I'm cloaked, I decide when and where I attack from and right when I zoom past his wreck I'll probably go evasive, dodge behind an asteroid and cloak up again.
The problem in my opinion is stacking buffs / debuffs. Raw damage is alright. You can only do so much. But when you can stack that many damage modifying buffs and debuffs (across multiple players even), it gets out of control.
I'm new to STO (so new in fact it's still downloading). I have played many MMO's in my life though and I can with some degree of certainty explain the DPS issue. I will list a few of the most probable causes and you decide which ones are most suiting.
1. David vs Goliath - It happens in every MMO. Some new kid is happily going about his business feeling good about his setup and his improving skills until he bumps into an OP player, gets his TRIBBLE wupped and then cries foul because he suddenly realized he's rather bad at his favorite game.
2. It's a Cash Shop Jim, we gotta have it - I'll bet a lot of these DPS issues creeped up on y'all so gradually you never even realized it until it was too late. And I'm also willing to bet that it started the day the Cash Shop opened. Simple economics would dictate that players would need a reason to spend money on a otherwise free game. What better reason could you give them than releasing "must have" new tech, weapons and what not that would be so popular people would swipe those credit cards and sell that zen to buy it?
3. The next generation - Again a sadly all too common phenomena. New game opens, old school players flock to it and love it and tell everyone else to play it. Eventually the younger players come aboard because "hey it's free man". Not long after than people start complaining how hard it is to do this or how hard it is to do that and before you know it they've dumb-ed it down because some of those brats have rich daddies with credit cards.
So yeah, those are some very generic reasons I can think of. Like I said I'm still waiting on my download so if you feel I have no clue what I'm talking about you're probably right. There is some truth in there though. If you want and MMO done right do not make it F2P or at the very least do not dumb it down to accommodate whatever passes for the youth of today.
2. It's a Cash Shop Jim, we gotta have it - I'll bet a lot of these DPS issues creeped up on y'all so gradually you never even realized it until it was too late. And I'm also willing to bet that it started the day the Cash Shop opened. Simple economics would dictate that players would need a reason to spend money on a otherwise free game. What better reason could you give them than releasing "must have" new tech, weapons and what not that would be so popular people would swipe those credit cards and sell that zen to buy it?
3. The next generation - Again a sadly all too common phenomena. New game opens, old school players flock to it and love it and tell everyone else to play it. Eventually the younger players come aboard because "hey it's free man". Not long after than people start complaining how hard it is to do this or how hard it is to do that and before you know it they've dumb-ed it down because some of those brats have rich daddies with credit cards.
Sadly it's a mix of these two.
It's a case now due to the Borg at endgame having standard torps with the crit severity of high yields which leads to the 'invisi-torp of doom' phenomenon as it is the only way for the NPCs to kill good players due to the dumbing down of content.
Oh... and on a more positive note, welcome to STO, I hope you enjoy your stay
3. The next generation - Again a sadly all too common phenomena. New game opens, old school players flock to it and love it and tell everyone else to play it. Eventually the younger players come aboard because "hey it's free man". Not long after than people start complaining how hard it is to do this or how hard it is to do that and before you know it they've dumb-ed it down because some of those brats have rich daddies with credit cards.
I haven't really played STO since a month or so after Legacy of Romulus. I logged in for the events and did my dailies for the ships, but for many months I haven't really played.
All the shiny new things in the current dev blogs made me mildly excited again though. I'll play and enjoy the anniversary episode at least either way. But this time I thought I'd actually play the game again for a few weeks at least. Making a new char, a new build, trying to squeeze a good performance out of it.
But man, this thread. It reminded me of everything that led me to switch to account maintenance mode in the first place. Still no new STF type content, power creep that makes the current STFs as exciting as pressing a big red "You win" button once, science-ships still being an unneeded 3rd wheel and generally no hope for the future gameplay-wise.
I guess it's better to just enjoy the anniversary and then go back to lurking until the next Featured Episode. Thanks for reminding me of the realities in the game.
I do agree damage has gotten way out of hand in this game. I have read though many of the posts where people are giving their reasons as to why. I also agree that many of these mega dpsers are no longer playing the game just trying to break old records. You arent really playing an STF when you spam 1 button and finish it 2 minutes.
I do agree that resistance debuff stacking is an issue. I think the bigger issue is the way you can spam BFaW and AuxtBat. You are basically spamming constant AoE damage to every target within 10 km of you. I have played a number of MMOs in the past decade (CoH, GW1&2, WoW, Rift, STO, SWTOR, FF14, and tried other ftp ones) and this is the only MMO I have ever encountered where you can spam AoE attacks an entire mission with no real penalty. Every other MMO puts in mechanics (cooldowns, resource draining, lower damage,...) that make spamming AoEs impractical except in given situations. Here a perfect spot would be when a grav well is used to bunch up probes/spheres or if a cruiser need it to gain aggro on a bunch of spheres. Thanks to doffs you can now spam them nonstop and still keep your energy levels high.
Aside from making content trivial (and its already easy compared to the endgame of many MMOs) it is sooner or later going to lead to alienation of players who dont want to follow the flavor of the month or cant get the one button keybind to work right. The only good thing that I have seen from it is that the price on cannons and torpedoes is considerably lower than beams for those who want a cannon or torpedo boat.
The simplest fix would be to double the cooldown on BFaW so even with doffs and duplicating it you couldnt spam it. Another thing would be to up the damage of single target abilities like CRF and HY so that its better to use them on big single targets like the cubes. I would also make every object take 0 damage till you can actually kill it. Right now some groups are actually able to do enough AoE dps that they can bypass the reheal and kill probes and transformers before what they are linked to is dead. At teh very least it would make their meters not give them credit for wasted dps and stuff that is rehealing 1-2 sec later.
It's worth mentioning they actually DID lengthen the duplicate ability cooldown of FAW to 20s. It used to be 15s and had the same uptime as CRF/CSV (66%) but now has a much lower uptime (50%). This is why you need more doffs to get things properly in sync with cannon skills than with FAW.
Doesn't that kinda alienate EVERYONE who either can't afford the doffs or refuses to run things like A2B/duplicate abilities?
I did say that was the simple version. Obviously you would need to balance it out. Possibly make the tech doffs not affect tactical abilities and then balance the cooldowns around that. The basics would be to end the constant 1 button AoE spam, and actually make people think during an stf. Knowing an AoE situation is close you would do more single target attacks and save the aoe for when you will need it in the next few seconds.
Possibly make the tech doffs not affect tactical abilities and then balance the cooldowns around that.
While I know some people would get behind that idea it does remove their primary use, a better idea would be to make A2B to aux as cloak is to shields, that way an A2B boat has to rely on non-aux heals aside from the 5 seconds of downtime, so you can have your stupid high dps ship but the cost is real.
The basics would be to end the constant 1 button AoE spam, and actually make people think during an stf.
This is another good goal however I feel your means are wrong, see above (and/or below :P) I posted an idea earlier in the thread, see here: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=14482301&postcount=3 the idea would make constant high dps AOE a bad idea as you would end up dealing damage to yourself rather than any targets that are instantly healing to full.
While I know some people would get behind that idea it does remove their primary use, a better idea would be to make A2B to aux as cloak is to shields, that way an A2B boat has to rely on non-aux heals aside from the 5 seconds of downtime, so you can have your stupid high dps ship but the cost is real.
This is another good goal however I feel your means are wrong, see above (and/or below :P) I posted an idea earlier in the thread, see here: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=14482301&postcount=3 the idea would make constant high dps AOE a bad idea as you would end up dealing damage to yourself rather than any targets that are instantly healing to full.
Perhaps disabling aux power for the duration and adding additional CD time for abilities affected by the technician Doff would help? So when you use A2B, you get that reduced cool down at the cost of a longer cool down on abilities (and longer shared/duplicate CD's so you can't chain 2 BFAW to bypass it) after you use them.
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Perhaps disabling aux power for the duration and adding additional CD time for abilities affected by the technician Doff would help? So when you use A2B, you get that reduced cool down at the cost of a longer cool down on abilities (and longer shared/duplicate CD's so you can't chain 2 BFAW to bypass it) after you use them.
The problem is NOT A2B per say. I can run my A2B ships (only 2 atm) without it if I could get the doffs for it, problem is those doffs are expensive. The only thing A2B allows is for a cheap way to run it.
My Jem Hadar Dreadnought Carrier is one of my highest DPS ships at 28.5k with a decent GDF and that does not use A2B, most of if not the top DPSers do not use it either. Once again A2B is not a problem, the only problem with it is that those who make a killing off doffs that reduce cooldowns have had to lower prices a bit.
The way things stack in this game is silly, always has been, you can constantly stack damage buffs and debuffs and it ain't hard to do to get a solid 10-20k, higher requires better piloting and a bit of creativity in what you trade off in survivability.
The first thing is to allow only one doff per passive, right now many are like that, you can stack conn officers but the passives they offer have to be different. Each faction should have something similar to the Rommie Boffs not the exact passives but similar KDF has nausicaans that have pirate with a slight damage boost how about giving them a space ambush passive that augments the capt abilities, Feds coul dget something similar from either Kling Boffs or Andorian Boffs
Hey I Used to be Captain Data, well I guess I still am in game but the account link really screwed everything up :rolleyes:
Get a team at that output and you're basically parsing spike damage - not sustained - just because there's no content that can sustain it long enough. After that, the only thing left to try is to one-shot STF's.
Comments
That is basically how the STFs originally were. Long missions, and hard as hell at the time. Mix of ground and space. Everyone had to know EXACTLY what you were doing or else you would be stuck there for a long time. Becky, Armek, and Donatra were all really and truly challenges back then.
If you've been playing for more then a year I don't even have make a long complicated case. Things like the borg task forces used to mean you had to follow inviolate rules handed down by God himself. If you were really good and help little old ladies across the street you might get the optional every third attempt.
Now? How many people even remember what the 10% rule is or having to do more then tap space to defend the kang?
Now? It's just zoom in, shoot, and win.
QED
Edit: In point of fact I've seen lone proof of concept builds blow up the gates _without_ even sniffing in the direction of the nanite generators. Though that was a long time ago.
Yes, but not just for the reason's stated thus far.
The classification of ship's was the start of it. Science. Engineer. Tactical. All these thing's or present on every Federation ship. Galaxy, Constitution, Excel, Miranda, and so on and so forth to some degree have these strengths. Miranda's explored the Galaxy for Starfleet long before the Galaxy came along. They never sent in the Enterprise B to just go Tank for a Science ship. In actual Star Trek Cannon the one use ship like the Defiant, Nova, Oberth, and etc.. or rare breeds. Even in DS9 they still used Defiant for more than just fighting. Most Federation ships can explore, attack/defend on some level, and have some sort of science station's/labs.
The worst offender of this flawed system if you ask me is the Escort. The Defiant was a tiny warship meant for war. This mean's a lot of firepower and maneuverability without comfort and science labs. Toss in the ablative armor and despite her size she could take some serious blows. That being said I am now going to say this. Not every Escort should have Defiant level power! Just because a Saber class is considered and Escort doesn't mean it's has the ability of the Defiant! However, by STO logic all small ships not called science ship's or shuttle's must be able to equip cannon's and handle like a pure warship while putting out more damage than two Cruiser's.
Now all of this doesn't just apply to the Federation but to all the Faction's. Unlike other Sci-fi Universe's Star Trek ship's do more than just one thing. However, this seems to have been overlooked.
Now, someone is going to say this is a game not the show. I agree. However, it's a reason why these OP build's or around. If you want a glass cannon that can put out 30'000 DPS go get an Escort, BoP, or raptor and load down as needed.
(Haven't played the Romulan side as of yet so I can't list a Rom Ship in particular.)
You want to go do nothing but exotic damage? Get yourself a Science ship. I mean, clearly Intrepid and the Nebula class our only good for cataloging Nebula's, scanning planet's, and lacked any tactical ability despite being a small long term explorer's.
You need to Tank? Why go get you a Galaxy, Sovereign, Excelsior because clearly the flagships of the fleet are only good for drawing fire and helping out all the Defiant wannabe's to stay alive.
Do you want to Tank and Over Kill? Well, go get you a Carrier because despite being a slow moving target they can launch enough fighter's/shuttle's to wipe you off the map while you target the carrier.
Honestly, the Scimitar is the best portrayed ship in the game. A giant weapon of death meant to kill as many people as possible in one massive go. I don't even like the thing but I'll give it it's due.
The Vesta is a Multi-mission ship that despite being overkill does what it should do in book and game. People complain about Vesta's but fail to realize just how hard they are to play. I bought one with some Christmas Cash and can willingly admit I am not able to handle it as they should be. Its why I don't play one and for that matter any carrier.
None of the ships or accurate to their real armaments or abilities and often more than not or classified well under or way above the ability of what they can really do. I say, until this issue is fixed Damage and DPS score's or going to keep going higher. It's easy enough to make build's geared towards DPS/Damage when the ship class system's or so tightly bound in the game.
I say, instead of putting these ships in set determined classes such as Dwarf Over Kill Ship, Moving Shield, and Mage make them more complicated by making them more diverse as they should be. Give each strength's and weakness in each Officer class. An Example being that say a Galaxy Class while not a maneuverable ship is good all around for a Science/Tactical/Engineer captain. However, because it's an all around she isn't as effective as say a Nova. Another Example could be the Prometheus Class that while not most effective by a Science officer, given it never had a Science lean on it at all, has more use to an Engineer or Tactical Officer.
Also, make the mission's more diverse with one favoring more Science skills than Tactical ability. How about making Fleet PvE's more than just a grind. Make them complicated and have some kind of lean to one type of Captain whether they or Science, Tactical, or Engineer. I don't know..maybe a mission were you have to hack Borg Nodes and while anyone can do it Engineer Toon's can do it best and faster than the other class. So, Tactical and Science Captain's can run Defense/Offense as they hack them.
Point being, PvE action's in general or bland. Go and blow this up. You don't need to work hard. Just make a OP build and blow through it in ten minutes. Get your reward and go grind another PvE Fleet action. That's why DPS is so high and is only going to get higher. No need to work together when four Tac Captain's can do it all. Ships need to be more complicated to use and and max out, user friendly be damned.
I am a casual player and I welcome it if this game was harder. It would force people to work together instead of toss in random Avenger, Scimitar, or other offender and let them blow through all the target's as quick as possible.
NOTE: Also, yes I know Cryptic is never going to change the current ship class system. However, it's worth making note that if they hadn't focused on the three ship class system this sort of DPS issue might not have come about.
Make resist debuffs stronger then resist buffs? I think you misunderstood what i was aiming at or don't understand the current debuffing. Negative resist currently has no DR. You can stack 5 APB3's and have -200 resist. And with no DR this means 200% extra damage. Where as positive resist has a fairly heavy DR. For negative resist i think it's best to either cap this at a given value ie -100 or use diminishing returns similar to what positive resist uses. It would look like this if using the same DR as positive resist.
Using Attack Pattern Beta III with 99 points into the skill
1 APB3=-40 resist=equates to you doing 28.3% extra damage vs 40% extra damage previously
2 APB3's=-80 resist=equates to you doing 43.1% extra damage vs 80% extra damage previously
3 APB3's=-120 resist=equates to you doing 51.9% extra damage vs 120% extra damage previously
4 APB3's=-160 resist=equates to you doing 57.4% extra damage vs 160% extra damage previously
5 APB3's=-200 resist=equates to you doing 61.2% extra damage vs 200% extra damage previously
Per the math...
-200 DRR debuffs vs. 0 DRR results in +157.9% damage.
-200 DRR debuffs vs. 17.5 DRR (blue Neut Mk XI) results in +99.6% damage.
The diminishing returns formula for debuffs is not the same as for buffs...but again, DR/DRR itself resists the debuffs.
With the above numbers vs. that equivalent of a blue Mk XI Neut (+17.5 DRR)...
1x APB3: 13.7%
2x APB3: 40.1%
3x APB3: 63.2%
4x APB3: 83.0%
5x APB3: 99.6%
There shouldn't be negative resistances that magnifies the damage it takes beyond what the attacker is putting out, it just doesn't make sense. All weapons use some form of energy to damage the target. If we are to accept negative resistance, then we must accept that somehow the weapons gained more power when they hit that weakened target. Let's say that DPS is now measured in Gigawatts per second. You can't create more watts from rendering a target less resistant to it. It's insane. If your weapons have a capacity of 10 GPS, that's the most you can apply, end of story. You can't suddenly have 30 GPS because the resistance is now a negative value. That's more power where there shouldn't be any.
There also shouldn't be damage multipliers either. It's power from nowhere again. You turn on your space magic and suddenly, that 1 Gigawatt beam array becomes a 3 Gigawatt array, with the same amount of power being fed into it. So, that shouldn't be possible. A 1 gigawatt array is a 1 gigawatt array. The only way it could get any more is if you pushed more power through it. That would require a sacrifice somewhere else.
@virusdancer
This is what irritates me about STO's mechanics. It's stupidly complex, thus very exploitable.
While I'm obviously not a fan of damage multipliers, I can see static damage boosts. Skill-based boosts would reflect simple things as overall knowledge of the weapons - better being able to use them. If you're better with something, you're better with it. Kind of like with archery - sure, you might hit the target - but the better guy's going to hit the bullseye sort of thing.
I can also see various gear items providing an increase to damage - through increased efficiency. Much like a better weapon can perform better, a better overall system for said weapon could make it perform better.
Again though, they wouldn't be percentage increases as we have now...lends itself too much to getting way out of control (like I believe it has).
So many things in STO are based around percentages - there are ratios - and within a fixed range, sure...they might be fine...but we're well beyond them being fine in so many cases that it all needs a revamp.
I think a valid point is sort of being made in that tactical stations not only buff RoF, accuracy, defense, hit multiple targets, it also applies weakness and damage buffs. I wonder if these were instead moved to lt/lt.commander science and engineering so while heavy tactical ships got the increase in weapon versatility only the buffs/debuffs and force multipliers were on other classes of ship.
Having said that another good point was raised about percentage increases being bad, I also think generally stacking in this game is very poor with damage, science abilities and many other things.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
well, i never said it isn't too much, i was just saying that there were no errors in what he noticed.
also, well, that was a troll (I'm one of thoose cowards who attacks while shields are down ahahah), but I was trying to say that everyone can be killed in a warzone, but this doesn't implies that the same would happen in a normal pvp, when you are ready to face enemies
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
That's not even close to a simulation. The difference between simulation and arcade is the basis of the numbers. Arcade uses arbitrary numbers while simulations use real world numbers. Star Trek is not real world, so the numbers are all arbitrary. What I'm asking for is simplified mechanics, like finite damage that doesn't multiply. If a weapon does X damage, that is the most it can do to a target. Period. Then, ships could just have increased hull HP in place of resistance (i.e. armor and alloy consoles simply increase base hull HP linearly), which is far more simple. The same goes for shields. More field generators means more shield HP, in a linear progression. Damage consoles would be the same, a fixed amount of bonus damage applied to the weapon, not percentage multipliers. So weapon power would have to change too. The weapon subsystem would be treated like a capacitor. You can fire so long as there is power to use. More power means more shots. If your power hits zero, you can't fire until the main weapons capacitor recharges.
Rate of fire can be controlled by how much power you apply to each weapon as well. For faster rates of fire, set the weapon's capacitor to fire at 50% to cut the recharge time in half or 30% for one third of the recharge time. You'll do the same damage per shot, but you'll have shorter recharge times as well as shorter volleys. That will mean you'll have a weapon ready to fire more often when the target is in your arc instead of firing one large volley and having to wait even longer to land the next volley because the recharge is longer. So CRF simply fires your weapons when their respective capacitor is at X% capacity to reduce waiting time for the next volley at a cost of not being able to fire as many shots per volley. Setting weapon power to a setting below 100% would decrease how many weapons can recharge at once, but it will reduce how long all of your weapons are waiting for power.
Torpedoes could have a quantity limit like the Omega torpedo. You can fire X number of them at once before a reload is required. High yield would have a pre-fire delay (to prep a higher yield payload) and TS would simply fire a volley up to the quantity currently loaded (e.g. 5 loaded torpedoes would be a spread of 5, 3 loaded would be a spread of 3). Adding a flat resistance to energy weapons against hull would also make a torpedo a mandatory weapon and prevent energy weapons from being the universal tool for taking out ships.
We get more and more crit worshiping, acc increasing stuff every season, but evasion is still poorly tracked and explained in game, and there's much less diversity in speed tanking builds than there is for supercritdpsalphasniper builds. 2 examples of this that come to mind are aegis and dyson rep engineering consoles, which are OK, but just OK, compared to the attention dps gets in this game.
All the % damage bonus abilities where tuned back when it was difficult to get very rare XII gear. Now ultra rare Mk XII gear is handed out like candy, but to the best of my knowledge none of the damage abilities bonus or resistance debuff abilities have ever been revisited!
There really is no "skill" or "learn to adapt" involved. I volley a ship. How is he supposed to adapt to that when I have total control on my side? I'm cloaked, I decide when and where I attack from and right when I zoom past his wreck I'll probably go evasive, dodge behind an asteroid and cloak up again.
The problem in my opinion is stacking buffs / debuffs. Raw damage is alright. You can only do so much. But when you can stack that many damage modifying buffs and debuffs (across multiple players even), it gets out of control.
@f4tamy | Sad Pandas
I'm new to STO (so new in fact it's still downloading). I have played many MMO's in my life though and I can with some degree of certainty explain the DPS issue. I will list a few of the most probable causes and you decide which ones are most suiting.
1. David vs Goliath - It happens in every MMO. Some new kid is happily going about his business feeling good about his setup and his improving skills until he bumps into an OP player, gets his TRIBBLE wupped and then cries foul because he suddenly realized he's rather bad at his favorite game.
2. It's a Cash Shop Jim, we gotta have it - I'll bet a lot of these DPS issues creeped up on y'all so gradually you never even realized it until it was too late. And I'm also willing to bet that it started the day the Cash Shop opened. Simple economics would dictate that players would need a reason to spend money on a otherwise free game. What better reason could you give them than releasing "must have" new tech, weapons and what not that would be so popular people would swipe those credit cards and sell that zen to buy it?
3. The next generation - Again a sadly all too common phenomena. New game opens, old school players flock to it and love it and tell everyone else to play it. Eventually the younger players come aboard because "hey it's free man". Not long after than people start complaining how hard it is to do this or how hard it is to do that and before you know it they've dumb-ed it down because some of those brats have rich daddies with credit cards.
So yeah, those are some very generic reasons I can think of. Like I said I'm still waiting on my download so if you feel I have no clue what I'm talking about you're probably right. There is some truth in there though. If you want and MMO done right do not make it F2P or at the very least do not dumb it down to accommodate whatever passes for the youth of today.
Live long and prosper. :cool:
Sadly it's a mix of these two.
It's a case now due to the Borg at endgame having standard torps with the crit severity of high yields which leads to the 'invisi-torp of doom' phenomenon as it is the only way for the NPCs to kill good players due to the dumbing down of content.
Oh... and on a more positive note, welcome to STO, I hope you enjoy your stay
I'd say that this was misplaced...
All the shiny new things in the current dev blogs made me mildly excited again though. I'll play and enjoy the anniversary episode at least either way. But this time I thought I'd actually play the game again for a few weeks at least. Making a new char, a new build, trying to squeeze a good performance out of it.
But man, this thread. It reminded me of everything that led me to switch to account maintenance mode in the first place. Still no new STF type content, power creep that makes the current STFs as exciting as pressing a big red "You win" button once, science-ships still being an unneeded 3rd wheel and generally no hope for the future gameplay-wise.
I guess it's better to just enjoy the anniversary and then go back to lurking until the next Featured Episode. Thanks for reminding me of the realities in the game.
I do agree that resistance debuff stacking is an issue. I think the bigger issue is the way you can spam BFaW and AuxtBat. You are basically spamming constant AoE damage to every target within 10 km of you. I have played a number of MMOs in the past decade (CoH, GW1&2, WoW, Rift, STO, SWTOR, FF14, and tried other ftp ones) and this is the only MMO I have ever encountered where you can spam AoE attacks an entire mission with no real penalty. Every other MMO puts in mechanics (cooldowns, resource draining, lower damage,...) that make spamming AoEs impractical except in given situations. Here a perfect spot would be when a grav well is used to bunch up probes/spheres or if a cruiser need it to gain aggro on a bunch of spheres. Thanks to doffs you can now spam them nonstop and still keep your energy levels high.
Aside from making content trivial (and its already easy compared to the endgame of many MMOs) it is sooner or later going to lead to alienation of players who dont want to follow the flavor of the month or cant get the one button keybind to work right. The only good thing that I have seen from it is that the price on cannons and torpedoes is considerably lower than beams for those who want a cannon or torpedo boat.
The simplest fix would be to double the cooldown on BFaW so even with doffs and duplicating it you couldnt spam it. Another thing would be to up the damage of single target abilities like CRF and HY so that its better to use them on big single targets like the cubes. I would also make every object take 0 damage till you can actually kill it. Right now some groups are actually able to do enough AoE dps that they can bypass the reheal and kill probes and transformers before what they are linked to is dead. At teh very least it would make their meters not give them credit for wasted dps and stuff that is rehealing 1-2 sec later.
Doesn't that kinda alienate EVERYONE who either can't afford the doffs or refuses to run things like A2B/duplicate abilities?
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
I did say that was the simple version. Obviously you would need to balance it out. Possibly make the tech doffs not affect tactical abilities and then balance the cooldowns around that. The basics would be to end the constant 1 button AoE spam, and actually make people think during an stf. Knowing an AoE situation is close you would do more single target attacks and save the aoe for when you will need it in the next few seconds.
While I know some people would get behind that idea it does remove their primary use, a better idea would be to make A2B to aux as cloak is to shields, that way an A2B boat has to rely on non-aux heals aside from the 5 seconds of downtime, so you can have your stupid high dps ship but the cost is real.
This is another good goal however I feel your means are wrong, see above (and/or below :P) I posted an idea earlier in the thread, see here: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=14482301&postcount=3 the idea would make constant high dps AOE a bad idea as you would end up dealing damage to yourself rather than any targets that are instantly healing to full.
Perhaps disabling aux power for the duration and adding additional CD time for abilities affected by the technician Doff would help? So when you use A2B, you get that reduced cool down at the cost of a longer cool down on abilities (and longer shared/duplicate CD's so you can't chain 2 BFAW to bypass it) after you use them.
The problem is NOT A2B per say. I can run my A2B ships (only 2 atm) without it if I could get the doffs for it, problem is those doffs are expensive. The only thing A2B allows is for a cheap way to run it.
My Jem Hadar Dreadnought Carrier is one of my highest DPS ships at 28.5k with a decent GDF and that does not use A2B, most of if not the top DPSers do not use it either. Once again A2B is not a problem, the only problem with it is that those who make a killing off doffs that reduce cooldowns have had to lower prices a bit.
The way things stack in this game is silly, always has been, you can constantly stack damage buffs and debuffs and it ain't hard to do to get a solid 10-20k, higher requires better piloting and a bit of creativity in what you trade off in survivability.
Needless to say Romulans have all this covered.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
Also updated the OP with the DPS channel thread and a link to the combatlog reader that they use which can be used to authenticate the above log file
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.