Honestly, I think Geko wants to turn this game into some mindless action RPG somebody's puppy could play on an iPhone...
In his last "interview" he said he wants to make more new people come play the game.Of course his head can't even imagine that there is a point when yes new people will come in but at that point the game will be so changed that everyone in game at that point will leave.
What he'll do with his "sto players are casuals players who can't use their brain ,we only need spacebar type of gameplay" .First will be everyone who plays now the game will slowly leave .All those free beta testers (aka pvp players) will also leave (everyone can check their friends list to see how many friends they have who no longer play).
Cryptic why the TRIBBLE can't you get it right!? You've had 4 years. I just watched a sci vessel completely outdamage every escort in a CnH with over 1 million damage. The rest of the escorts had 600K tops.
Seriously... what is wrong with you people! Get rid of FAW all together if you can't get it right! I'm really tired of it!
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
Cryptic why the TRIBBLE can't you get it right!? You've had 4 years. I just watched a sci vessel completely outdamage every escort in a CnH with over 1 million damage. The rest of the escorts had 600K tops.
Seriously... what is wrong with you people! Get rid of FAW all together if you can't get it right! I'm really tired of it!
yeah man i hear you.
had a pug match yesterday where some nobody (edit: ok, at least i didnt know him....and i know pretty much everybody) was calling me out in zone chat talking about how my damage sucked and thats why we lost.
he was a sci something or other spamming a2b faw and i was in my dhc/dbb scort.
of course all his damage was faw aoe and landed him on every kill...yet funny how he neglected to mention that i had to come in and spike to take down everyone we managed to kill.
actually the whole interaction was quite odd. i mean, the community is quite small...so, we all know one another...or at least have heard of one another and...welll...game recognize game and all that....
either way....seems some non pvp guys are out there catching on to how you can run faw in anything and come into pvp and land massive numbers. to them it actually means they are doing well.... yet...they don't know they are really hurting their team....in this case at least.... by not being a sci control/heal focused build.
I watched a faw/dem/eptw scimi in ker'rat yesterday and he was taking down tac cubes in 2 shot cycles. I really can't believe we are still dealing with these faw issues after 4 years.
At least when faw didn't crit, it was half way decent and fair in PvP given that cruisers can still overcap their beams by 150% or more compared to escorts which can't get that high.
That in itself is constant crit even if faw didn't crit.
I am so tired of them not getting it right that I don't even want to log in and see a damned faw cruiser!
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
either way....seems some non pvp guys are out there catching on to how you can run faw in anything and come into pvp and land massive numbers. to them it actually means they are doing well.... yet...they don't know they are really hurting their team....in this case at least.... by not being a sci control/heal focused build.
Being unexperienced can lead to wrong (self-)assesments. Due to certain unfortunate design properties of STO the "quota" of people affected by that psychological effect seems to be higher than in other online games.
2 main "facilitators" can be easily identified:
First, the severe disconnect in this game between PVE and PVP. You can plow through 99% of the PVE content with only a very superficial understanding of the game and its underlying mechanics. This in turn strenghtens a false assumption of competency, leading to all the undesired ramifications that we here are all aware about.
But fixing this problem would be tough. If you want to "harmonize" the difficulty level of PVE/PVP, you either severly dumb down PVP (and how would you PVP'ers like that lol), or to make PVE more demanding. But harder PVE would trigger less the reward center of peoples brain. They would hate it.
I mean, everybody started from the beginning at one point. The first 2 months playing STO I was still exploring the PVE part of the game. I got some tipps from PVE'rs and eventually was able to beat comfortably any of the STF's and story missions. So I thought I figured everything out the game has to offer and was ready to move on to other games. Imagine my surprise when I first met people like Yoda and MT haha. Luckily I then got picked up by intelligent PVP'ers who mentored me, so I stayed.
Secondly, and this is more specific, the god-awful pvp score display. You'll find 5 columns: name, kills, deaths, damage output, heal output. With the exception of the name and the death column, the values that are displayed are simply distorted, rendering the whole score display useless for true performance assessment. Lets say, the pvp score shows a damage output of 1.376.699 for a certain player. Sounds very precise, doesn't it? A lot of unexperienced players base their assessments on these numbers, reinforcing their belief in their own competency or bad builds / tactics, and dismissing objections and advice from more knowledgeable players.
"Fixing" the combatlog and/or PVP score display won't create a direct revenue stream for Cryptic, so it is probably unlikely that anything will be done about that in the near future. Unless they sell an advanced combatlog for ZEN or something lol. 3rd-party parsing software alleviate the problem somewhat, but even the majority of PVP'ers aren't taking advantage of it, and even if they do, most use outdated software or have trouble interpreting the data correctly.
With the exception of the Subnuke-DOFF version 1.0 (which was conceptually such a failure since it attacked the basic foundations of how the game works*), every unbalanced stuff, like certain consoles, trics, vapers, you name it, was countered by experience or skill or pre-planning. Since I am not really active anymore, I haven't looked too deep into the whole current FAW affair, but it would surprise me if experienced people won't be able to counter it by developing some counter strategies.
However, the possibility of countering unbalanced mechanics doesn't mean that everything is all right. In the long run, if the developer doesn't adress those issues, the overall health of the PVP community will take a beating. It happened a couple of times already.
Unexperienced players are not required to actually learn the game to become succesful, and will eventually develop inflated self-assessments. They will take it personally if the current state will ever be fixed.
If experience and skill doesn't matter any more, veteran players will also become frustrated. Why bother working hard, if greater success can be achieved by not working at all?
* wanna recreate the experience? Remove all your powers from your tray and all your binds that activate powers, and enter an arena now. Report your findings in the forum for some vintage forum PVP.
With the exception of the Subnuke-DOFF version 1.0 (which was conceptually such a failure since it attacked the basic foundations of how the game works*), every unbalanced stuff, like certain consoles, trics, vapers, you name it, was countered by experience or skill or pre-planning. Since I am not really active anymore, I haven't looked too deep into the whole current FAW affair, but it would surprise me if experienced people won't be able to counter it by developing some counter strategies.
However, the possibility of countering unbalanced mechanics doesn't mean that everything is all right. In the long run, if the developer doesn't adress those issues, the overall health of the PVP community will take a beating. It happened a couple of times already.
Unexperienced players are not required to actually learn the game to become succesful, and will eventually develop inflated self-assessments. They will take it personally if the current state will ever be fixed.
If experience and skill doesn't matter any more, veteran players will also become frustrated. Why bother working hard, if greater success can be achieved by not working at all?
* wanna recreate the experience? Remove all your powers from your tray and all your binds that activate powers, and enter an arena now. Report your findings in the forum for some vintage forum PVP.
had a pug match yesterday where some nobody (edit: ok, at least i didnt know him....and i know pretty much everybody) was calling me out in zone chat talking about how my damage sucked and thats why we lost.
he was a sci something or other spamming a2b faw and i was in my dhc/dbb scort.
of course all his damage was faw aoe and landed him on every kill...yet funny how he neglected to mention that i had to come in and spike to take down everyone we managed to kill.
actually the whole interaction was quite odd. i mean, the community is quite small...so, we all know one another...or at least have heard of one another and...welll...game recognize game and all that....
either way....seems some non pvp guys are out there catching on to how you can run faw in anything and come into pvp and land massive numbers. to them it actually means they are doing well.... yet...they don't know they are really hurting their team....in this case at least.... by not being a sci control/heal focused build.
rough waters ahead.
I feel you man. I have been so disgusted by it all I havent been in a match in over a month and only played a few hours total. I may have finally reached my limit after 4 years. I can only be the battered spouse for so long
I feel you man. I have been so disgusted by it all I havent been in a match in over a month and only played a few hours total. I may have finally reached my limit after 4 years. I can only be the battered spouse for so long
Fine... then don't fix faw.. just give escorts the 65/75/85% or whatever it is on their CSV and widen the attack arcs.
TRIBBLE fixing faw!!!!.. just make cannon abilities the same as faw
Then.. give tac ships a hull and shield increase since we are again going down in just a few seconds when faw/dem3/eptw/APA/APB is being used with weapons/beam power overcap.
Lets make it season 1 again!!!!!
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
Fine... then don't fix faw.. just give escorts the 65/75/85% or whatever it is on their CSV and widen the attack arcs.
TRIBBLE fixing faw!!!!.. just make cannon abilities the same as faw
Then.. give tac ships a hull and shield increase since we are again going down in just a few seconds when faw/dem3/eptw/APA/APB is being used with weapons/beam power overcap.
Lets make it season 1 again!!!!!
FAW is only a very small part of my disgust, should've made that clear. Sorry about that.
It's not just PvP that is getting screwy due to FAW (which may mean that we'll have a better chance of it getting fixed? :P)
I had an Elite Conduit run that lasted barely more than 2 minutes start-to-finish, due to three FAW spamming Scimitars. Their DPS over the course of the entire STF, minus the first cube that evaporated before I started logging, ranged from 24,694 to 41,392, with the lion's share of damage coming from FAW. Though it's nice to get through that STF so fast, especially after I've done it so many times already, such numbers shouldn't be possible given the current hull/shield strengths out there. And while they won't reach those same numbers in PvP, it'd still be over the top.
I feel you man. I have been so disgusted by it all I havent been in a match in over a month and only played a few hours total. I may have finally reached my limit after 4 years. I can only be the battered spouse for so long
but you will get new pve.You mean you dont want to use your expensive ships against npcs?
you could try grind (and short your grind with some cash if possible) for a romulan if that pve is so hard ....if possible do it for me too because I will never do it
the game is the most expensive chat.you log in to chat with your friends you still have left in game lol
but you will get new pve.You mean you dont want to use your expensive ships against npcs?
you could try grind (and short your grind with some cash if possible) for a romulan if that pve is so hard ....if possible do it for me too because I will never do it
the game is the most expensive chat.you log in to chat with your friends you still have left in game lol
Yup, its that pve grind and milking every single thing that finally pushed me over the edge. I log in and just look at the list of things that I have available to do and almost literally become nauseous.
Not trying to be a drama queen or a "look at me" type here. A few folks around here know me and for me to say these things would hopefully indicate to the Powers that Be how bad it's getting. No more whining from me in this thread
SS has a 60s cool down... not counting perhaps an A2B sci or running 2 copies which puts it at 30s best case.
SS is one level higher... meaning SS 1 is LT in comparison to FAW 2 at that level.
Really even if you spread the faw dmg around a little bit... your still likely to die before the SS FAW does much of anything to the targets team mates.
It was perhaps viable when FAW wasn't frying people in under 10s.
Cranked up FBP isn't even enough to combat 2-3 ships running faw.
SS has a 60s cool down... not counting perhaps an A2B sci or running 2 copies which puts it at 30s best case.
SS is one level higher... meaning SS 1 is LT in comparison to FAW 2 at that level.
Really even if you spread the faw dmg around a little bit... your still likely to die before the SS FAW does much of anything to the targets team mates.
It was perhaps viable when FAW wasn't frying people in under 10s.
Cranked up FBP isn't even enough to combat 2-3 ships running faw.
everything you said and the retardedly over powered cleanse doff
So then the best solution would be to make Scramble Sensors comparable down time wise, perhaps give FaW a charge up so there's time to disrupt. Even with the cleanse, don't they have to burn Emergency Power to X for that to activate? Essentially they would lose two skills to your one activation. Still a win.
I personally wouldn't mind seeing FaW raised to Lt. Commander. I think in combination with everything else, the access to it is a large part of the problem.
So then the best solution would be to make Scramble Sensors comparable down time wise, perhaps give FaW a charge up so there's time to disrupt. Even if someone needs to cleanse it means they've burned two skills to your one and that's still an advantage.
Um no thanks... instead of one annoying skill we have 2.
TRIBBLE that... we all remember old broken SS no one wants to be scrambled an entire match again.. forget that noise. I am more likely to PvP with people running broken faw teams then oerma scramble.
Best fix is just to delete faw ... its terrible game mechanic... that any self respecting MMO developer should be ashamed to be associated with.
Um no thanks... instead of one annoying skill we have 2.
TRIBBLE that... we all remember old broken SS no one wants to be scrambled an entire match again.. forget that noise. I am more likely to PvP with people running broken faw teams then oerma scramble.
Best fix is just to delete faw ... its terrible game mechanic... that any self respecting MMO developer should be ashamed to be associated with.
They're unlikely to ever "delete" FAW, we'll always have some iteration of it.
Here are some concepts to balance it:
1) Balance around drain.
FAW was always a power hog, it cleared spam and did AoE damage but lost efficiency in damage due to drain. This was by design, and then that design was allowed to be circumvented.
> Weapon subsystem overcapping-cap is too high.
> Drain resistance options are plentiful and are extremely overpowered in terms of scale. Omega Weapons Amp is a huge contributor here.
> At different times in its life EPS helped and did not help with weapon power efficiency. It currently helps, and probably shouldn't.
2) Should require a target.
You should require at least one target with this.
3) Make it a cone, and not a discoball.
This one is self explanatory, you shouldn't be able to shoot everything within 10km at full power, while not even needing target lock or physically see any targets.
This would be cool as a broadsiding power, specifically requiring you to broadside and keep a target in that broadside arc - even if that arc needs to be wider than the standard 70 degree overlap.
No idea if the tech for this even exists, but CSV is probably a better example even if they want to give FAW a higher target cap and a 140 broadside ARC when you use it.
*The main issue with this mechanic is that it screws DBB, and would require a total re-write of FAW.
I think it would be fine FAW
A) Required a target lock Did +X% damage to that target
C) Did -X% to additional targets, max Y targets (3 to 5)
Then it would be a useful single target power, would still clear spam, would require you to actually pilot the ship a little but it wouldn't allow you to overload an entire team's shields by have 4 to 5 completely blind spacebar mashers flying in circles.
They're unlikely to ever "delete" FAW, we'll always have some iteration of it.
Here are some concepts to balance it:
1) Balance around drain.
FAW was always a power hog, it cleared spam and did AoE damage but lost efficiency in damage due to drain. This was by design, and then that design was allowed to be circumvented.
> Weapon subsystem overcapping-cap is too high.
> Drain resistance options are plentiful and are extremely overpowered in terms of scale. Omega Weapons Amp is a huge contributor here.
> At different times in its life EPS helped and did not help with weapon power efficiency. It currently helps, and probably shouldn't.
2) Should require a target.
You should require at least one target with this.
3) Make it a cone, and not a discoball.
This one is self explanatory, you shouldn't be able to shoot everything within 10km at full power, while not even needing target lock or physically see any targets.
This would be cool as a broadsiding power, specifically requiring you to broadside and keep a target in that broadside arc - even if that arc needs to be wider than the standard 70 degree overlap.
No idea if the tech for this even exists, but CSV is probably a better example even if they want to give FAW a higher target cap and a 140 broadside ARC when you use it.
*The main issue with this mechanic is that it screws DBB, and would require a total re-write of FAW.
I think it would be fine FAW
A) Required a target lock Did +X% damage to that target
C) Did -X% to additional targets, max Y targets (3 to 5)
Then it would be a useful single target power, would still clear spam, would require you to actually pilot the ship a little but it wouldn't allow you to overload an entire team's shields by have 4 to 5 completely blind spacebar mashers flying in circles.
Easiest solution go back to a hard cap, even unseen hard cap of 135 would fix many of the problems the only class that it would not affect is Engies. It is soo stupid that only BFAW takes advantage of overcap can you imagine if BOL took advantage of overcapping the forums would flood with tears.
Hey I Used to be Captain Data, well I guess I still am in game but the account link really screwed everything up :rolleyes:
I don't know I think they are fairly likely to just delete faw.
We all know there are multiple reasons the skill is unbalanced and it will NEVER ever be balanaced.
100% target aquasition... 100% of any equipped weapon arc applied... means it will always always be unbalanced. IMO power overcap has nothing to do with the problem. The nature of the skill means any little bump in any stat effects FAW the most as it is finding the most targets (pretty much 100% of possible targets are covered... and every single beam cycle is being used somewhere). So an item that gives 10% dmg boost is going to effect FAW 100% of the time 10%... other skills that require targets and time on target are not going to get 100% of the buff... as there will always be wasted buff.
Any new item added to the game ever that improves Drain for a player... or improves base dmg... will always boost faw the most.
If they balanced it perfectly right now... the next power creep anything that is released will instantly unbalance it and make it once again more powerful then other skills. (Like wise not likely but any reduction to anything will effect faw the other way)
There is only one solution... and I don't doubt that Bort and a few of the other devs already know it. (and I am sorry I really don't mean to speak for anyone).
I believe its a case of getting support internally to get the order to do the work. I would hope at some point, and I think we must be getting there... that the people that make those decisions.. Will understand that tinkering with FAW every second patch is bad mojo for the game... it will always be broken one way or the other and drive Paying customers away. Its the nature of the skill.... as I described already.
The solution is to make beams work with Scatter Volley... and rename Scatter Volley Fire at Will. Its that simple. Of course it isn't... as I understand it the main issue would be the art department ..... which seems hilarious to me... but it was explained that way in a Opvp chat by one of the devs.
Well I think its time we all Tell our fearless cash grabbers.... errr leaders that is. It is time to invest some of our money so the art department can figure it out and. Do the work now instead of costing your self constant negative player experience. They can no longer just say the only people that complain about being able to wipe NPCS in seconds are the PvP people... because 50% of the FAW bugs go the other way... and annoy the even larger PvE crowd when there Awsome guns stop working. Fix it right and be done with it.
The scatter Mechanic is NOT broken and works just fine... it will still lay waste to PvE perhaps even more so, it would fix the PvP wine.... and it would also put it in a place where every power creep item would effect one skill more then others due to 100% up time on target issues... with a skill that requires no player selected target.
Easiest solution go back to a hard cap, even unseen hard cap of 135 would fix many of the problems the only class that it would not affect is Engies. It is soo stupid that only BFAW takes advantage of overcap can you imagine if BOL took advantage of overcapping the forums would flood with tears.
I tend to agree, but it needs to include passive weapon drain resistance, especially Omega Weapon Amp.
It adds both weapon power (+10 per stack), and drain resistance (+500 per stack, an number that is so high I think it actually makes the stacking pointless - this number should be more like +50 per stack).
+500 is so high, they probably gave the proc a second proc to increase the cap of drain resistance just to accommodate the +500 they are giving you!
Could you imagine having +500 inertial dampners or +500 power insulators on a proc that could stack on itself?
The only way to get a similar number of weapons drain resistance would be to triple stack Marion for +600 - something no one does because 1 Marion at +200 is sufficient.
So one stack of OWAmp = 2.5x Marion's worth for 3s, that can stack on itself and procs passively while you just fire any energy weapons.
Overcapping and drain resistance are two sides of the same coin really, as you don't gain higher damage % from having weapons power above 125, the benefit is the drain cushion that leads to higher damage output (as opposed to a flat boost like going from 124 weapons power to 125 weapons power would be an additional 2%).
EDIT: They could also just turn OWAmp "on" all of the time. And give it a much lower value, so you have constant benefit but not periods where you are negating all drain.
A value of +75 or +100 would still be a lot, assuming +100 is about 50% weapon drain resistance and would still be 2x higher than Weapon's System Efficiency Cruiser command (25% WDR).
There is actually precedence for this with the Mogai/Valdore 2 piece console set bonus, that grants a "measly" +25 WDR.
Comments
In his last "interview" he said he wants to make more new people come play the game.Of course his head can't even imagine that there is a point when yes new people will come in but at that point the game will be so changed that everyone in game at that point will leave.
What he'll do with his "sto players are casuals players who can't use their brain ,we only need spacebar type of gameplay" .First will be everyone who plays now the game will slowly leave .All those free beta testers (aka pvp players) will also leave (everyone can check their friends list to see how many friends they have who no longer play).
Seriously... what is wrong with you people! Get rid of FAW all together if you can't get it right! I'm really tired of it!
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
yeah man i hear you.
had a pug match yesterday where some nobody (edit: ok, at least i didnt know him....and i know pretty much everybody) was calling me out in zone chat talking about how my damage sucked and thats why we lost.
he was a sci something or other spamming a2b faw and i was in my dhc/dbb scort.
of course all his damage was faw aoe and landed him on every kill...yet funny how he neglected to mention that i had to come in and spike to take down everyone we managed to kill.
actually the whole interaction was quite odd. i mean, the community is quite small...so, we all know one another...or at least have heard of one another and...welll...game recognize game and all that....
either way....seems some non pvp guys are out there catching on to how you can run faw in anything and come into pvp and land massive numbers. to them it actually means they are doing well.... yet...they don't know they are really hurting their team....in this case at least.... by not being a sci control/heal focused build.
rough waters ahead.
At least when faw didn't crit, it was half way decent and fair in PvP given that cruisers can still overcap their beams by 150% or more compared to escorts which can't get that high.
That in itself is constant crit even if faw didn't crit.
I am so tired of them not getting it right that I don't even want to log in and see a damned faw cruiser!
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
I can totally hear you.
It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect. For anyone interested in some reading here is the complete article.
Being unexperienced can lead to wrong (self-)assesments. Due to certain unfortunate design properties of STO the "quota" of people affected by that psychological effect seems to be higher than in other online games.
2 main "facilitators" can be easily identified:
First, the severe disconnect in this game between PVE and PVP. You can plow through 99% of the PVE content with only a very superficial understanding of the game and its underlying mechanics. This in turn strenghtens a false assumption of competency, leading to all the undesired ramifications that we here are all aware about.
But fixing this problem would be tough. If you want to "harmonize" the difficulty level of PVE/PVP, you either severly dumb down PVP (and how would you PVP'ers like that lol), or to make PVE more demanding. But harder PVE would trigger less the reward center of peoples brain. They would hate it.
I mean, everybody started from the beginning at one point. The first 2 months playing STO I was still exploring the PVE part of the game. I got some tipps from PVE'rs and eventually was able to beat comfortably any of the STF's and story missions. So I thought I figured everything out the game has to offer and was ready to move on to other games. Imagine my surprise when I first met people like Yoda and MT haha. Luckily I then got picked up by intelligent PVP'ers who mentored me, so I stayed.
Secondly, and this is more specific, the god-awful pvp score display. You'll find 5 columns: name, kills, deaths, damage output, heal output. With the exception of the name and the death column, the values that are displayed are simply distorted, rendering the whole score display useless for true performance assessment. Lets say, the pvp score shows a damage output of 1.376.699 for a certain player. Sounds very precise, doesn't it?
"Fixing" the combatlog and/or PVP score display won't create a direct revenue stream for Cryptic, so it is probably unlikely that anything will be done about that in the near future. Unless they sell an advanced combatlog for ZEN or something lol. 3rd-party parsing software alleviate the problem somewhat, but even the majority of PVP'ers aren't taking advantage of it, and even if they do, most use outdated software or have trouble interpreting the data correctly.
With the exception of the Subnuke-DOFF version 1.0 (which was conceptually such a failure since it attacked the basic foundations of how the game works*), every unbalanced stuff, like certain consoles, trics, vapers, you name it, was countered by experience or skill or pre-planning. Since I am not really active anymore, I haven't looked too deep into the whole current FAW affair, but it would surprise me if experienced people won't be able to counter it by developing some counter strategies.
However, the possibility of countering unbalanced mechanics doesn't mean that everything is all right. In the long run, if the developer doesn't adress those issues, the overall health of the PVP community will take a beating. It happened a couple of times already.
Unexperienced players are not required to actually learn the game to become succesful, and will eventually develop inflated self-assessments. They will take it personally if the current state will ever be fixed.
If experience and skill doesn't matter any more, veteran players will also become frustrated. Why bother working hard, if greater success can be achieved by not working at all?
* wanna recreate the experience? Remove all your powers from your tray and all your binds that activate powers, and enter an arena now. Report your findings in the forum for some vintage forum PVP.
The Xperienced ppl will embrace it!!!
what the..... theres a medical term for nooby now lol
I feel you man. I have been so disgusted by it all I havent been in a match in over a month and only played a few hours total. I may have finally reached my limit after 4 years. I can only be the battered spouse for so long
Fine... then don't fix faw.. just give escorts the 65/75/85% or whatever it is on their CSV and widen the attack arcs.
TRIBBLE fixing faw!!!!.. just make cannon abilities the same as faw
Then.. give tac ships a hull and shield increase since we are again going down in just a few seconds when faw/dem3/eptw/APA/APB is being used with weapons/beam power overcap.
Lets make it season 1 again!!!!!
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
FAW is only a very small part of my disgust, should've made that clear. Sorry about that.
I had an Elite Conduit run that lasted barely more than 2 minutes start-to-finish, due to three FAW spamming Scimitars. Their DPS over the course of the entire STF, minus the first cube that evaporated before I started logging, ranged from 24,694 to 41,392, with the lion's share of damage coming from FAW. Though it's nice to get through that STF so fast, especially after I've done it so many times already, such numbers shouldn't be possible given the current hull/shield strengths out there. And while they won't reach those same numbers in PvP, it'd still be over the top.
Nothing left to say....
Greetz Siegfried
but you will get new pve.You mean you dont want to use your expensive ships against npcs?
you could try grind (and short your grind with some cash if possible) for a romulan if that pve is so hard ....if possible do it for me too because I will never do it
the game is the most expensive chat.you log in to chat with your friends you still have left in game lol
Yup, its that pve grind and milking every single thing that finally pushed me over the edge. I log in and just look at the list of things that I have available to do and almost literally become nauseous.
Not trying to be a drama queen or a "look at me" type here. A few folks around here know me and for me to say these things would hopefully indicate to the Powers that Be how bad it's getting. No more whining from me in this thread
In theory
In reality faw is up 66% of the time.
SS has a 60s cool down... not counting perhaps an A2B sci or running 2 copies which puts it at 30s best case.
SS is one level higher... meaning SS 1 is LT in comparison to FAW 2 at that level.
Really even if you spread the faw dmg around a little bit... your still likely to die before the SS FAW does much of anything to the targets team mates.
It was perhaps viable when FAW wasn't frying people in under 10s.
Cranked up FBP isn't even enough to combat 2-3 ships running faw.
everything you said and the retardedly over powered cleanse doff
I personally wouldn't mind seeing FaW raised to Lt. Commander. I think in combination with everything else, the access to it is a large part of the problem.
Um no thanks... instead of one annoying skill we have 2.
TRIBBLE that... we all remember old broken SS no one wants to be scrambled an entire match again.. forget that noise. I am more likely to PvP with people running broken faw teams then oerma scramble.
Best fix is just to delete faw ... its terrible game mechanic... that any self respecting MMO developer should be ashamed to be associated with.
I'd rather see other skills be viable counters then remove FaW all together. To me it doesn't feel like that's a practical solution.
They're unlikely to ever "delete" FAW, we'll always have some iteration of it.
Here are some concepts to balance it:
1) Balance around drain.
FAW was always a power hog, it cleared spam and did AoE damage but lost efficiency in damage due to drain. This was by design, and then that design was allowed to be circumvented.
> Weapon subsystem overcapping-cap is too high.
> Drain resistance options are plentiful and are extremely overpowered in terms of scale. Omega Weapons Amp is a huge contributor here.
> At different times in its life EPS helped and did not help with weapon power efficiency. It currently helps, and probably shouldn't.
2) Should require a target.
You should require at least one target with this.
3) Make it a cone, and not a discoball.
This one is self explanatory, you shouldn't be able to shoot everything within 10km at full power, while not even needing target lock or physically see any targets.
This would be cool as a broadsiding power, specifically requiring you to broadside and keep a target in that broadside arc - even if that arc needs to be wider than the standard 70 degree overlap.
No idea if the tech for this even exists, but CSV is probably a better example even if they want to give FAW a higher target cap and a 140 broadside ARC when you use it.
*The main issue with this mechanic is that it screws DBB, and would require a total re-write of FAW.
I think it would be fine FAW
A) Required a target lock
C) Did -X% to additional targets, max Y targets (3 to 5)
Then it would be a useful single target power, would still clear spam, would require you to actually pilot the ship a little but it wouldn't allow you to overload an entire team's shields by have 4 to 5 completely blind spacebar mashers flying in circles.
Easiest solution go back to a hard cap, even unseen hard cap of 135 would fix many of the problems the only class that it would not affect is Engies. It is soo stupid that only BFAW takes advantage of overcap can you imagine if BOL took advantage of overcapping the forums would flood with tears.
We all know there are multiple reasons the skill is unbalanced and it will NEVER ever be balanaced.
100% target aquasition... 100% of any equipped weapon arc applied... means it will always always be unbalanced. IMO power overcap has nothing to do with the problem. The nature of the skill means any little bump in any stat effects FAW the most as it is finding the most targets (pretty much 100% of possible targets are covered... and every single beam cycle is being used somewhere). So an item that gives 10% dmg boost is going to effect FAW 100% of the time 10%... other skills that require targets and time on target are not going to get 100% of the buff... as there will always be wasted buff.
Any new item added to the game ever that improves Drain for a player... or improves base dmg... will always boost faw the most.
If they balanced it perfectly right now... the next power creep anything that is released will instantly unbalance it and make it once again more powerful then other skills. (Like wise not likely but any reduction to anything will effect faw the other way)
There is only one solution... and I don't doubt that Bort and a few of the other devs already know it. (and I am sorry I really don't mean to speak for anyone).
I believe its a case of getting support internally to get the order to do the work. I would hope at some point, and I think we must be getting there... that the people that make those decisions.. Will understand that tinkering with FAW every second patch is bad mojo for the game... it will always be broken one way or the other and drive Paying customers away. Its the nature of the skill.... as I described already.
The solution is to make beams work with Scatter Volley... and rename Scatter Volley Fire at Will. Its that simple. Of course it isn't... as I understand it the main issue would be the art department ..... which seems hilarious to me... but it was explained that way in a Opvp chat by one of the devs.
Well I think its time we all Tell our fearless cash grabbers.... errr leaders that is. It is time to invest some of our money so the art department can figure it out and. Do the work now instead of costing your self constant negative player experience. They can no longer just say the only people that complain about being able to wipe NPCS in seconds are the PvP people... because 50% of the FAW bugs go the other way... and annoy the even larger PvE crowd when there Awsome guns stop working. Fix it right and be done with it.
The scatter Mechanic is NOT broken and works just fine... it will still lay waste to PvE perhaps even more so, it would fix the PvP wine.... and it would also put it in a place where every power creep item would effect one skill more then others due to 100% up time on target issues... with a skill that requires no player selected target.
I tend to agree, but it needs to include passive weapon drain resistance, especially Omega Weapon Amp.
It adds both weapon power (+10 per stack), and drain resistance (+500 per stack, an number that is so high I think it actually makes the stacking pointless - this number should be more like +50 per stack).
+500 is so high, they probably gave the proc a second proc to increase the cap of drain resistance just to accommodate the +500 they are giving you!
Could you imagine having +500 inertial dampners or +500 power insulators on a proc that could stack on itself?
The only way to get a similar number of weapons drain resistance would be to triple stack Marion for +600 - something no one does because 1 Marion at +200 is sufficient.
So one stack of OWAmp = 2.5x Marion's worth for 3s, that can stack on itself and procs passively while you just fire any energy weapons.
Overcapping and drain resistance are two sides of the same coin really, as you don't gain higher damage % from having weapons power above 125, the benefit is the drain cushion that leads to higher damage output (as opposed to a flat boost like going from 124 weapons power to 125 weapons power would be an additional 2%).
EDIT: They could also just turn OWAmp "on" all of the time. And give it a much lower value, so you have constant benefit but not periods where you are negating all drain.
A value of +75 or +100 would still be a lot, assuming +100 is about 50% weapon drain resistance and would still be 2x higher than Weapon's System Efficiency Cruiser command (25% WDR).
There is actually precedence for this with the Mogai/Valdore 2 piece console set bonus, that grants a "measly" +25 WDR.