Space Toons ..... Ground toons..... no need no more....

shailat

So in the past all i hear from spacers is the reason they dont want to play ground is because they dont have a ground toon, with the new changes being made to traits what will be the excuse now?

adjudicatorhawk wrote: »

Hi all, QR'ing to the thread:

First off, thank all of you who have gotten on Tribble and tested out the powers changes. We are reading all your feedback and taking it seriously. Changing powers that are already live is never an easy decision to make, as it makes players have to re-learn the characters with which they are intimately familiar.

Secondly, I wanted to give you all a heads up on some changes you'll be seeing soon based on your feedback.

First, we're a little concerned about creating situations where players would want to use battlecloak in the middle of a fight to drop out of combat and change their rep traits, then de-cloak. We want these to be strategic choices, not tactical ones, lasting for "a run of an episode" rather than "a pull of a spawn group". So we're changing power slotting to be restricted to Sector Space and noncombat social zones.

However, the good news about this is that we're changing Species Traits to work the same way Reputation Traits work. That means you'll be able to change your Trait build for free without worrying about hoarding Trait Respecs. It also means you can try out new builds and explore the possibilities of gameplay at no cost other than thinking about your build. I'm hoping this makes Trait deckbuilding a lot more fun for a lot more people. This also means that if you want to spend a couple hours playing Ground content, you're able to spec out for that, then change your spec when you go back to Space later that day.

We're also making some tuning adjustments to Reputation powers based on the testing that we and players have done. Crit chance and Crit severity are getting tuned down a little bit (though still higher than Holodeck values), while a number of other traits are getting tweaked up to be more competitive with offensive options. We've added Adaptation Delay back into the Omega ground offensive kinetic proc as well based on player feedback.

Finally, I wanted to talk about the Omega "+10% damage" trait. Right now, this is a no brainer. It used to buff Weapon Skill, which was also a no-brainer but was more esoteric - so we made it +% damage to make its effect more clear. However, as many of you have pointed out, as long as this trait exists in its current form, it would be best-spec in pretty much every build for every player. We could just reduce the damage values to something that other traits could compete with, but instead, we're planning on re-imagining the core concept of this ability. I don't want to get into details before it's finished, but I did want to give you all a heads up that the +dmg trait would be changing into something else offensive that will be better in some circumstances but less of a general "you must take this" ability.

Ok, that's all for now. Thanks again for all the valuable feedback you've all provided.

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=16109801&postcount=198

majortiraomega

Now all we need is 44,000 more skill points in order to allow Space and Ground characters to max out in both areas.

nulonu

People don't play ground because they want to fly the iconic Trek ships they've always seen , and because the movement on ground is clunky and buggy. Kit revamp/trait revamp w/e. Primary ground players like myself look forward to it but idk if it'll sway people who view ground as "really? I have to leave my ship for something?" into giving ground another look. Be nice if it did. Maybe if more interesting zone come out like the Voth zone down the road.

majortiraomega

The most significant thing about this is the ability to respec traits without any cost. There won't be any more excuses as to why a team has to be running all of their science officers with that overpowered Subspace Manipulator trait.

mimey2

Even if they made it 0 issue to play a ground toon without worry, I'd still probably keep dedicated ground toons because that is what I WANT to do with them.

Besides. It still isn't exactly CHEAP to gear up. Even without having to buy trait respecs in the future, it doesn't mean that traits won't be insanely expensive to buy, it just means you can change them freely. Plus other things like DOFFs, or getting gear can still be pricy. On top of that, who knows how they will have the finished kit revamp handled as well, and how much that might cost.

virusdancer

majortiraomega wrote: »

Now all we need is 44,000 more skill points in order to allow Space and Ground characters to max out in both areas.

Still think it will be moot with the Expansion 2 changes...course, no idea what they are - Geko mentioned it and that was that...

thay8472

uhhh... so much time wasted making characters for X role.

Can you nerf everyone elses and leave my traits as they are?

eisenw0lf

mm ... I had hoped they would revamp the trait system in a way that every player is forced to take an equal number of both space and ground traits (maybe 4/4). This at least would solve some of the balancing issues when it comes to new players vs PvPers who have acquired all of the rare lockbox traits. We would be forced to make a choice and not simply stack all of the best space traits.

Also most of the ridiculous stacking of crith/critd could be solved by simply making Romulan Operatives unstackable instead of tweaking reputation traits.

deadhorse1

can't they do something better then making me switch traits everytime I move from ground to space or vise versa?

ussboleyn

majortiraomega wrote: »

Now all we need is 44,000 more skill points in order to allow Space and Ground characters to max out in both areas.

Pretty much this, you can change all your traits to ground but you are still gonna be 44k skill points down.

mustrumridcully0

ussboleyn wrote: »

Pretty much this, you can change all your traits to ground but you are still gonna be 44k skill points down.

Yes, that will always serve as a good excuse.

But the other is the same as always - I'm having more fun in space.

At least, in "Ground's defense" - The Voth Battlezone isn't too bad. Of course, that's not PvP, but I vastly prefer that to all the other ground experience I had. Even if it is with dinosaurs with frigging lasers on their head.

scurry5

As for me, it's the same as always - the lag is too big for me to play effectively on ground.

noroblad

It is a start.

But it does not solve the real problem. The real problem is that for a lot of us, myself included, ground is simply not fun. Not excuses, but on the ground with purple but not top gear, things that make it not fun include:

- sniper rifle has 0 range. It should shoot for 2500+ yards, not 20+ feet. Melee weapons and abilities are more effective than a long range headshot?!

- must spam shoot the guns. I spend all my time trying to jockey WASD and shoot while tab targeting, moving around cover, and using the mouse to hit other skills and look around. I feel like that cartoon guy that bangs the keyboard fast and faster until his arms fall off. Pistols for example are nearly unusable in a long mission because you have to spam mash the shoot button 100000 times over 5 min.

- Enemy vs player damage and health is too skewed on elite. I am not sure what you have to have to function, but I do not -- 4 shots kill me, 2 for my shield, 2 for my body, and its over. It takes me more than that to take off a shield unless I crit, which unlike space is a low chance.

- as a science main, most of my kits and skills seem to be totally worthless. I can heal other people, which is nice, except they are always zerking out of my range or line of sight, so its pointless. 85% or more of the time I click on the hurt person's picture and then cannot locate them to toss a heal. The other skills mostly seem to have 0 real effect (effect meaning: make something dead before it can kill me with its 2 shot death ray).

The only thing that seems to actually work is exploit/cheeze tactics. For example I can take out an entire army with my engineer by dropping mines and kiting things into them. Effective, but not WAI. Or I can stealth and use lunge to one-shot as a tactical. Tactical can make some big hits if I can manage to stay alive long enough to self buff, expose, and exploit a target to death.

And lets not even mention borg adaptation, which just adds more running around trying to not die while you mash your remodulators AND it limits weapon choices to big boom, slow rate of fire weapons.

The spam shooting and borg both force people to use, from a selection of over 20 weapons, about 3 are viable in practice.

Pvp is worse, obviously. Before I can even consider it I have to be able to handle elite NPCs, which again, have so far been so un-fun that I no longer even bother to try.

orondis

Sounds like a great change all round. Also it'll mean more reason to collect lockbox traits that otherwise I wouldn't have used.

wolverine595959

From my experience ground pvp is more about who can get tot he flank faster or stay out of the flank the longest oh and sniper and arcwave.

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gurugeorge

noroblad wrote: »

- must spam shoot the guns. I spend all my time trying to jockey WASD and shoot while tab targeting, moving around cover, and using the mouse to hit other skills and look around. I feel like that cartoon guy that bangs the keyboard fast and faster until his arms fall off. Pistols for example are nearly unusable in a long mission because you have to spam mash the shoot button 100000 times over 5 min.

Jeez, you are struggling unnecessarily. Ground is great fun if you switch things round as follows:-

Forget about the traditional RMB Drag MMO setup, set a key (I use Z) to toggle free mouselook, so your right hand is free to mouselook around just like in an fps, and when you want to interact with things toggle it off so your mouse is free to select things on screen. It might be confusing for a day or two, but when you get used to it it's much easier on the middle finger.

Then bind two most-used abilities to Left Press and Right Press, put zoom on SHIFT+mousewheel up/down, so that mousewheel up/down trigger other most-used abilities. Most mice have a Mouse button 4 for the thumb, use that to toggle your main weapon's main firing ability.

Set tray to have these triggers for most-used abilities.

Set main weapon to autofire, and set "Toggle, Cancel when out of combat" on Controls (note the Mousebutton 4 advice above - essentially, first mob you see, hit MB4 with your thumb, which triggers autofiring main attack, and you never have to touch it again).

This way, you steer more or less as with an FPS, i.e. free mouselook and WASD, you tab target (also you can set SHIFT+keys to target nearest, etc., worth playing around with, i.e. I have SHIFT+E for target nearest) and you are continually firing at whatever you are targeting without having to click anything continuously.

Cryptic have given absolutely tons of options to enable you to customize both Ground and Space to suit whatever style is easy; they give more options than almost any other MMO (unusually they give extensive options for mouse control, making even a standard mouse more like a game controller). Make it easy on yourself and take a few hours to explore the options, another few hours to get used to them, and voila, easy, fun Ground combat!

(You can also keep the MMO RMB Drag style if you like and work around that by mouselooking with RMB Drag and steering WASD - I just switched to mouselook toggling because I'm older and want to ease the strain on my middle finger.)

scurry5

deokkent wrote: »

Lag is everywhere. We just force our way through.

I understand, and I can handle space fine - well, most of the time. But ground.....when you're working with a 500ms ping, there's only so much you can do.

falklander1989

If cryptic guys are smart enough they would delete ground and invest all in space,ground is just waste of resources,somone should make new thread just to whine about ground and convince cryptic to remove it from game,lol ground :P

majortiraomega

wolverine595959 wrote: »

From my experience ground pvp is more about who can get tot he flank faster or stay out of the flank the longest oh and sniper and arcwave.

Alright, I'll go over all of the ground weapons:

Effective Ground Weapons

• Pulsewave Assault
  • Deals the highest damage/second and has the highest spike potential on secondary.
  • Best short range multiple or single target weapon.
  • Area of effect on both attacks and expose on secondary.
  • Extremely close range. 75% of the damage from this weapon is lost within 5 meters.
• Full Auto Rifle
  • Deals the second highest damage/second and has a medium range.
  • Best medium range pressure damage multiple target weapon.
  • Area of effect expose attack on secondary.
  • Secondary has a short animation lock and is ineffective at close range.
• Compression Pistol
  • Deals the third highest damage/second and has a medium range.
  • Best medium range pressure/spike damage single target weapon.
  • Very powerful single target instant exploit attack.
  • Weapon will typically lose out in a short range fight against a pulsewave.
• Split Beam Rifle/High Density Beam Rifle (Identical outside of secondary)
  • Deals moderately high damage and has a long range.
  • Best long range pressure damage weapon. Moderately powerful instant exploit attack.
    • High Density Beam Rifles are better against a single target.
    • Split Beam Rifles are better against multiple targets.
    • Primary fire mode is identical.
  • Weapon is greatly outclassed in short or medium range fights.
• Sniper Rifle
  • Deals moderate damage and has a long range.
  • Best long range spike damage single target weapon.
  • Secondary attack has the longest range and the highest exploit damage attack in the game.
  • Weapon is very clumsy to use in close quarters and has a significant chargeup on secondary.

Utility Ground Weapons

• Stun Pistol
  • Deals moderate damage at medium range.
  • Utility weapon ideal for disabling targets.
  • Secondary attack is capable of impeding a player's timings.
  • Weapon is typically incapable of killing another player alone.
• Blast Assault
  • Deals moderately high burst damage at medium range.
  • Utility weapon capable of delivering significant burst damage at medium range.
  • Secondary attack provides an area of effect spike attack and knockback.
  • Weapon suffers from minor chargeup and is difficult to use in close quarters.

Underperforming Ground Weapons

• Dual Pistols
  • Deals moderately high pressure damage at short range.
  • Typically outclassed by the Full Auto Rifle.
  • Weapon suffers from severe attack range limitations and a moderate animation lock.
• Wide Beam Pistol
  • Deals moderate damage at medium range. Primary fire is identical to the stun pistol.
  • Second lowest attack range (Pulsewave is the lowest).
  • Secondary attack is completely ineffective.
• Assault Minigun
  • Deals moderate damage at medium range.
  • Limited usefulness against multiple targets.
  • Chargeup on primary and secondary attacks.
  • Secondary attack has a long chargeup and a very long animation lock.

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dsaris

The excuse for space toons vs ground toons has never been about the traits... it has been about the SKILL POINTS. There simply aren't enough points available to have a well specced toon in both space and ground.

angiewilliams

I will say this again like I've said years ago space guys won't do ground for 3 reasons. 1. Their scripts and macros won't work for them in ground pvp. 2. They don't have 4 other guys getting ready to jerk them off with heals to bail them out. 3. The game is so much faster paced than space and they don't have a 60k hull to give them time to react well.

In short very few people in this game can hack it on ground at it's highest levels.

angiewilliams

dsaris wrote: »

The excuse for space toons vs ground toons has never been about the traits... it has been about the SKILL POINTS. There simply aren't enough points available to have a well specced toon in both space and ground.

Bullssssshiiiii excuse me I sneezed! Medic kits main spec is all low tier skill points You don't need any points at all in physician as that only specs the willpower portion of sci aptitude not the hot . An engy can very easily spec into enemy neut and equip tech kits. Just don't put any points in generators and turrets. Tacts are a little bit tougher but can be functional with a weak suppressing fire and fomm. And as it stands right now you don't need a single point in grenades.

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shailat

edalgo wrote: »

Ok how about this.

I play STO for the ships not the ground. There's a ton of other games I can play for ground combat. Starships is why I'm here.

if you want to play a star ship simulator go play star trek bridge commander
as that is a star ship only game

this game has ground and space, so you are only playing 50% of the game and not playing it to its full potential and i feel sorry for all you spacers that do that, im a ground pvper and i play space, and yes, i have fun because i play 100% of the game unlike you spacers that only do space

doffingcomrade

majortiraomega wrote: »

Now all we need is 44,000 more skill points in order to allow Space and Ground characters to max out in both areas.

ussboleyn wrote: »

Pretty much this, you can change all your traits to ground but you are still gonna be 44k skill points down.

Maths R hard, dudes. It's 34K down. Not 44K. 100K - 66K = 34K.

gurugeorge

I can't believe that there are some people here who think a Star Trek game without ground action would be ok. EVE is that way ->

Star Trek is iconically both ground and space, the fact that this game has both ground and space, both are quite well implemented (with a huge degree of flexibility in how you can play either, if you just take the time and explore the options), and you can switch easily between them, is its main USP for me. It's what makes this an s-f game rather than just a space shooter or a pure space MMO like EVE.

If you choose to be **** at ground because you prefer to uber-min-max space that's a choice, that's a possibility an RPG offers; but you can't then complain that ground is ****. And there are plenty skill points to min-max play in both ground and space if you focus your toon in specific areas in both aspects.

rylanadionysis

angiewilliams wrote: »

I will say this again like I've said years ago space guys won't do ground for 3 reasons. 1. Their scripts and macros won't work for them in ground pvp. 2. They don't have 4 other guys getting ready to jerk them off with heals to bail them out. 3. The game is so much faster paced than space and they don't have a 60k hull to give them time to react well.

In short very few people in this game can hack it on ground at it's highest levels.

hm, as a ground pvp veteran of SWG for 8 years it isnt about reaction time with me. Or any of your other generalizations.

It is about cats.

I dont want to play a cat. I do not want to buy a cat slot. I do not want to level another damned toon.

Theres your reason.

simeion1

The last time I was on Tribble this is the way traits was working.

You have eight normal traits....space and ground.....it does not matter which one you take if it is all ground or space.

The new trait system is from rep traits. You have 4 ground, 4 space, and 4 active. When you rep up you will choose a rep trait every tier. This will be either a ground or a space depending on what tier. But the one you choose goes into you pool of available rep traits.

Now out of the available rep traits you will choose your four ground and space traits. These traits will be the current ones you are using. The active trait area is for the tier five clickable or non-passive traits, such as tetryon cascade.

I was thinking along the same ways most of you are thinking it is going to work, until I went over their and saw spots for 8 normal traits, 4 ground ( that only had rep options), four space(that only had rep options), and four active that was from the pool of tier five non- passive, clickable abilities, or tier five rep traits.

Go play with it it took me a while to understand and figure it out.

rylanadionysis

Theyd better still have 9 spots for alien normal traits.