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Time To Challenge Players
genada
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
We keep getting more and more power. Better and better gear. Better ships. Better abilities. Yet the content stays the same. At a certain point you begin to ask yourself why bother with new things? Why bother getting and becoming more powerful when all it does is make the content more eazy.
It's time for new content and it should be content that provides a real challenge to players. It's time that content came out that can and will be failed. Failing is not the worst of things that can happen in a mmo. Failing is a good thing, it teaches to play better and work with each other better to overcome common goals.
I realize that the current content is old but it's the content we have and it's the end game we have. I realize that you can downgrade to make it harder. You shouldn't need to downgrade to provide challenge. Content should be coming out that provides you a challenge to test all that new stuff you have gotten.
Hopefully with season 9 we see somethings that are a challenge to players. I hope that it does and I hope content comes out that we can and will fail on from time to time.
It's time for new content and it should be content that provides a real challenge to players. It's time that content came out that can and will be failed. Failing is not the worst of things that can happen in a mmo. Failing is a good thing, it teaches to play better and work with each other better to overcome common goals.
I realize that the current content is old but it's the content we have and it's the end game we have. I realize that you can downgrade to make it harder. You shouldn't need to downgrade to provide challenge. Content should be coming out that provides you a challenge to test all that new stuff you have gotten.
Hopefully with season 9 we see somethings that are a challenge to players. I hope that it does and I hope content comes out that we can and will fail on from time to time.
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What would be more appropriate in MY opinion: Normal has the exact same objectives as Elite, just weaker enemies. Put more Objectives into 'Optionals' that can individually 'fail', so that a 'bad' normal run gives half of the current payout, a 'flawless' one gives something between normal now and elite now.
And rework the current 'Elite' into something that deserves the designations. Also, one should keep in mind that content with 'Elite' difficulty is usually linked to a Reputation line. Link Elite to 'Automatically unlocked once you unlock T3 Reputation', but also put said unlock to the 'Sponsorship' Project rewards.
Check out my sig to see if you might be interested.
Our Battles
Lack of player education
Lack of any real difficulty
Lack of education
Kinda speaks for itself, there aren't any missions where the player is forced to think about what they are doing with their ship, no enemies that can beat the player if they make a wrong move (aside from the Defender D'D, though staying away from it is the easiest thing in the world) if more missions focussed on teaching the player the strengths and weaknesses of their given ships and there was more emphasis put on teaching about boff and doff skills and such, a lot more players would be a lot more competent.
Lack of real difficulty
In short, there is no balance in this game anymore, only dps and hps. If there was a complete revamp of boff skills, ship stats and consoles etc to make sure each one was balanced against the others in a pvp setting it would go a long way towards fixing that aspect of the game, it would also lay the foundations for fixing the dps race in pve.
PvE could be redesigned from the ground up on this new balance, it would virtually balance itself, provided the AI got a rebuild to make it intelligent, the devs could give NPCs the same number of skills the equivalent player ship would have, with the same boff setup and a random captain class to go with. this would open the possibility for the devs to make truely challenging encounters, where the difference between difficulty levels would be how well the AI fights.
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Back to this topic...
I suppose one could debate the idea of difficulty and what it is, some would say difficulty is burning through as many NPCs as humanly possible as fast as humanly possible, I disagree, I think that real difficulty is where the game works against you to impede your progress through more than simple DPS?HPS, imagine if you came across an NPC that locked your ship down, if you can't clear the debuffs you get killed, most of these things can be cleared with engineering or science teams but the game doesn't teach this so any such encounter would be a serious problem for a lot of players. It's stuff like that...
The trend Cryptic seems to be religiously following says otherwise, that the game should be focused on becoming more friendly to Farmville and Candy Crush "Saga" players.
Now which plan do you suppose they'll follow- yours or Cryptic's?
Good luck with that.
Star Trek Battles channel was made with that in mind on top of trying to make it fun.
There have been some STB groups where we really had to work hard for the optional and sometimes finishing things with seconds to spare.
I think what people have to do is adjust their dps output or not use end game sets such as the borg set.
The power creep will be there... if you want to change it then take it into your own hands.
I invite anyone to the Star Trek Battles channel to give it a shot, it is ONE way you can fight the power creep but I'm sure there are many other ways one can make it more "challenging".
The Voth content is different from the same old boring ISE Special Task Force.
The Tholian ground stuff was somewhat different from the Borg ground stuff, and very different from the same old boring ISE Special Task Force.
Epohh tagging was the single most different thing from the same boring ISE Special Task Force.
They have made different content.
It's just the players keep running the same old boring ISE.
For a few reasons:
1- It's stupid easy.
2- It gives high rewards.
Combining those two things means people do that mission. A lot.
But if you look at the actual development of the game, the devs have moved forward since the Borg STFs. The Undine stuff is yet another grind. For sure. But the content itself is different.
Not for nothing but Stahl once left STO to work for Zynga on Farmville.
Just sayin'
Im not really sure why all that constant demand "give us harder content"... or even in its current form "make existing content harder".
There's harder content in game right now, trust me. All you have to do is take unrepped sci toon in that new dsd ship ("free" one will do), pack it with white weapons, and go pug CSE and KASE. And make sure you do it continuously over 40 days. Then come back to us and share your experiences for I would pretty much like to hear what you'll say afterwards.
And lets not forget that everytime you lot scream for "harder content", devs respond with giving us moar grindy content with somewhat unbalanced npc and timegated completion on top of it. So go figure...
Personally I get instant gratification from blowing stuff up in space. The quicker I blow them up, the more instant gratification is. Also pretty explosions makes it moar gratifying. Prob is current pattern of game design forces me to do the same bloody thing from 20 to 40 days. EVERY BLOODY DAY. So when I hear "harder content" I usually respond with "no bloody way! this one is good enuff".
If you're bored and you're looking for a challenge, try PvP. If you like going solo, go to Ker'rat. If you're more into teamwork, join a channel like Tyler Durden and do that.
I guarantee that any bored min/maxed PvEer will die instantly and often until you learn and tweak your build enough that you regularly survive. That's at least a few solid months, then they'll release something else and you'll have to adjust, etc.
Or if you're bored and you want to save yourself the trouble of PvPing in a dead and imbalanced environment, you could always play a different game. I was gone for nearly a year and it was all still here waiting for me.
That's very easy to explain and understand. People do all of this "work" to get special gear. Then they look around and see others have it too. So now they want to feel special again and push for "harder" content that only they can do easily. And then want even more special reward from that harder content. But couch it (or rationalize it) in the language that assuages their sense of self by saying they just want a harder challenge.
At the end of the day, what they really want is special items that only a few people have so they can feel like they conquered a part of the game others didn't.
I simply use Phaser Beam Arrays Mk XI and the most exotic gear I have is from the "A Step Between Stars" mission which I have 2 of 4 pieces of Solonae gear; the only purple gear on my ship. I also have basic Quantum and Chroniton torpedoes.
I have some marks (like around 4K Omega marks), and "bonus stuff" like around 130 Borg Neural Processors, but I have not bothered with learning the ropes for the many rep systems for better gear. For now I simply play those types of missions for fun and to collect stuff.
To keep things challenging all my Doff station slots are empty.
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The only time I really felt my ship was under powered was during the Borg Infected Conduit Elite mission where I got stuck with the duty of destroying the probes before they entered the gate. Since everyone rushed off to destroy the Borg generators, I got stuck trying to destroy the stupid probes. That was 1st time I ever failed that elite mission.
I could probably have taken out the probes if I had devised a good strategy, but that takes a couple of play throughs to do and will probably result in a couple of failures...
the game is horrible at explaining mechanics to its playerbase, much like most MMOs, you need to look around on the forums to learn how to do something, and to make things worse, you have quite a few idiots who (either on purpose or ignorance), explain things incorrecitly as well.
this is why you have like 80% of the playerbase completely unaware of how power levels work(gotta love cruisers doing 200-300 dmg per hit with beams), players who don't get that using different kinds of weapons at the same time, is also a bad idea.
and then you have the fact of how the game is balanced(it isn't), are beams currently good? hell yes they are, does the average player have any clue of the fact they require very specific builds to make them work? no.
does the average player knows that [dmg] is a bad weapon modifier? no, if anything they'll likely assume its a good one, since it means "more damage".
does the average player realises that mines are horribly nerfed? considering how many you see still using them, probably no.
and those are just a few examples.
its very easy to blame "lack of difficulty" when the game is horribly imbalanced and poorly explained, a person who knows how to play, in perfect conditions is going to do 60k+ DPS and beyond(abusing the hell out of certain mechanics), easily crushing every kind of content, the average player who doesn't know a damn thing about the game, will likely pull 2k(and that is if you're lucky).
i honestly think cryptic should balance the game in a manner, that dimishes the "distance" between the top players and the average players from each other(kinda like league of legends does), you'll still have top players, but it won't be a completely day and night difference.
I call it, the Stoutes paradox.
Thanks for taking what I said and putting it in more detail :P
I think they do need to put a mission in early on that forces you to play to the strengths of your ship, i.e for an escort you should be taking at least one target out as fast as possible, science ships using debuffs to weaken the enemy or put it in a compromising position, while cruisers should be making use of their extra defence to wear the enemy down. The missions leading up to it should explain the styles of each class and how bridge officer training works so that the player can prepare their ship in advance (or learn the hard way when they get wiped out by the NPC).
As of that mission all NPCs should behave in the same manner, getting better at trying to open up and exploit weaknesses in your defences as your level increases and both you and them gain access to more abilities.
Why I'm repeating myself I don't know...
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=15917091&postcount=4
For my opinions on balance (or the existing lack of it) see the second section of the linked post.
i've been getting a bug every now and then in which i quote someone, but instead it shows another completely different person in the quote.
or sometimes it shows 2 different people in the same quote, its weird, anyway its fixed.
Either we will move on to new stuff or at least old stf's will be looked at and brought into balance with the new levels.
While the "special item" argument is sensible and makes a lot of sense, I don't really see "special item" part mentioned either directly or indirectly in "(give us new)/(make the current) harder content" demands.
And I couldn't help but wonder why. Is it because folks simply don't know what they want, or is there a deeper reason? Occam's razor dictates to pick the first, so this is probably what we should do.
What really bugs me however, that devs see these demands and then "selectively" use them to back their game decisions as in: "folks complained that dyson rep was too easy and too fast, so we decided to adress it", read "make it harder and longer".
Research for the direction they intended to take STO in. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Okay, I'll bite... How are mines horribly nerfed? I ask 'cuz I use 'em.
I know they are not awesome weapons, but I have found them to be useful like the following:
1. Lay out mines then have your enemies fly into them.
2. Timing attack run on enemy so that you launch mines extremely close to your target when shields are down.
3. Mines can go after plasma torpedoes and fighters. If I see a mine going after a plasma torp, then I don't have to break my attack to destroy the torp. I find fighters to be annoying 'cuz they are small which makes them hard to see and target.
I would say the 20 second cool down is a big drag.
A mine launcher was more or less a standard weapon for my Fed toon for a long time, but somewhat recently I decided to all beam weapon, then more recently I decided to a fore and aft torpedo launcher. However, my KDF toon currently does have a mine launcher.
The problem of STO is, that everything is based on power creep. Cryptic, instead of making items with different purposes and skills, they make items with more powerful procs and capabilities. So, this will be always the same story.
Mines nerfed?? ow, then my transphasic build will be really amazing if the mines were not nerfed.. seriously xD. They already deal A LOT of damage, so i cant imagine the hell that will be if they were not nerfed.. xD. And when i use dispersal pattern beta III, its even crazier.. not only that, recently i adquired the special trait "hot pursuit" and now my mines pursuit my target wherever he goes, lol, instead of being still.
Mines are not really powrful, but wth you expect? they are various projectiles, not just 1. Besides, they act as distraction, they can target mobile projectiles, they are really annoying when u use a mine attack pattern, and a huge etc. Sure, the damage is low on every mine, but that is how it needs to be. Still, as i said, with the right build, they can be very dangerous xD.
The average person is an idiot. We can't handle challenges.