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A quick thought about STO and the trinity of MMOs
draltai
Member Posts: 17 Arc User
I think this game is more similar to a Hack & Slash RPG than an MMORPG, more Diablo than WoW.
with Eng/cruiser as Tank, Sci/sci as Healer, and Tac/escort as DPS
Sci/escort, Tac/sci pairs make no sense, but in the game they could be made to work.
If we look at them as Eng/cruiser as Strength, Sci/sci as Intelligence, and Tac/escort as Dexterity
The weird pairings become hybrid classes, much like in Path of Exile.
I think the great DPS race could be made more balanced if instead of making Engineers, and cruisers survive more,
science captains and science ships heal more, engineers could be made like a barbarian: slow but hard hitting, and hard to kill
tacticals in escorts could be like rogues, fast and precise.
Science captains are like mages already, and in a carrier they are like a necromancer.
So my proposal is to try to balance the whole game this way, like a Hack & Slash with more types of weapons with various range, firing speed
and damage (space and ground) and rebalance the skills a bit to supplement them.
Even without a skill rebalance at least weapons with more varied stats would be great.
with Eng/cruiser as Tank, Sci/sci as Healer, and Tac/escort as DPS
Sci/escort, Tac/sci pairs make no sense, but in the game they could be made to work.
If we look at them as Eng/cruiser as Strength, Sci/sci as Intelligence, and Tac/escort as Dexterity
The weird pairings become hybrid classes, much like in Path of Exile.
I think the great DPS race could be made more balanced if instead of making Engineers, and cruisers survive more,
science captains and science ships heal more, engineers could be made like a barbarian: slow but hard hitting, and hard to kill
tacticals in escorts could be like rogues, fast and precise.
Science captains are like mages already, and in a carrier they are like a necromancer.
So my proposal is to try to balance the whole game this way, like a Hack & Slash with more types of weapons with various range, firing speed
and damage (space and ground) and rebalance the skills a bit to supplement them.
Even without a skill rebalance at least weapons with more varied stats would be great.
Post edited by draltai on
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Comments
The more options given to you with proper information to help with your choices, the more stronger the game developed.
Holy Trinity is MMO 101. To remain competitive MMOs may have that as an early foundation to the build and then evolved out from that to broaden the depth and increase the motivation of return playability.
Also STO does tend to "Shoot to KIll" around here before saying we "Come in Peace!" Kill X of this and Y of that is the bread and butter of this universe. I blame the Iconians.
Except for the last pair you're pretty wrong. First the captain doesn't determine role the ship and boff skills do. Second, whatever people think of him as a person, the cryptic CEO jack Emmert is pretty opposed to the trinity. All the games he had a hand in show this clearly with complete freedom to build anything you imagine. And the sto dev team share his opinion on it. Even here you can mix and match far beyond any trinity.
Your best bet is to pretend the trinity doesn't exist. There's a reason why champions characters are basically all tankmages, and why plenty of characters here in sto can tank a tactical cube in an escort that can heal an ally plus dish out 20k+ dps.
wow have i ever been wrong i thought it was about story arcs and lock boxes :eek:
All joking aside i agree
The two of you are saying the same thing... Lockboxes are where you get the dps and story arcs are one of two places you use the dps.
New to Season 10.5
Mission content now in lockboxes.
Character Bound
In the beginning tanking was nearly impossible due to how threat works in this game. It didn't matter how much damage you could take if the tac/escorts always had agro because they did better damage. Recently though, they have added more threat increase mechanics and cruiser dps has gotten better allowing for the possibility of actual tanks. Even so, you aren't going to have tanks lokie in WoW where everything sticks to you like glue (given and well geared/skilled team) but they can be quite helpful in harder content like VCE. The problem now is if you spec/build for tanking there is no way to turn off the threat skill if a situation arises where tanking isn't needed.
BULL FCKN SHIITE!!!!
They themselves said it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysw1s11xfWs&list=UUMEDvptXpYjxA6Y_ASwK8rg
Cruisers are tanky, escorts are squishy, science does control.
Crusiers arent tanky and escorts sure as fck aren't squishy.
There is a difference between saying the game does/doesnt have the trinity and saying that a ship is and isnt tanky. Just because they said the word "tank" doesnt mean that the trinity system is also implied. EVE online doesnt have a trinity system, but people use the term "tank" in a generic sense to refer to any ships defensive capabilities. Ohh you have a mining ship that easily gets popped while you mine veldspar? what kind of tank do you have on it?
EDIT: also how squishy were escorts back in the day? when was that youtube clip made? back in 2009? could an escort back then, with the gear they had back then go up against an elite tac cube alone with relative ease? Actually dont bother answering that, cause i'm sure someone will come in here and claim how in 4 years ago they were able to kill an elite cube in 5 seconds in a connie with nothing but a plastic spork.
hahaha...you have no idea what you are talking about...hahaha
My character Tsin'xing
I dont think its that easy
I mean take away the trinity ok, but then what do you do with boss aggro? i think that if you take away the trinity you should also take away fixed boss aggro. By that i mean that aggro should not be determined by who is doing the most damage or who has the highest threat modifier. Give the mobs random aggro where they focus on player 1 for ten seconds with attacks, then they move to player 4 for ten seconds then they go to player 3 for ten seconds. Say a 5 man group...if a player is currently getting focused on then on the next aggro switch the system looks at the 4 other players and each one of them has a 25% chance that the mob will switch to them. Maybe even make that roll chance modified by your ship size! if you are in a tiny BoP you have a 25% chance with a modifier of -15%, if in an escort you have a 25% chance with a modifier of -10%. If you are in a Cruiser that is small then 25% chance +5% if in a really big cruiser then 25% +10%. Something like that i dunno...
With a system like the above though it kinda forces people to cooperate with each other since some ships arent very self sufficient. Right now a lot of players are pretty selfish...just in the past few days i've been in some elite Khitomer runs where people would pop the two nanites, summon the cube and they would not fight the cube. Even if there are two players there and one goes to engage the cube the other will just keep on ignoring it. Why? because they are afraid of dying. I think part of the reason people think they can do that is because there is no wipe mechanic and instead we have respawns. Player A and B are next to a tac cube that spawn, player A engages cube player B ignores it. Player A dies cube roams the map and heads to player C who is 30 km away and ignores player B who is 5km away and managed to escape proximity aggro. Player B doesnt give a TRIBBLE because their inaction wont lead to a wipe and them (all of them) having to redo to fight all over again.
Adding in a wipe mechanic to every fight in their current state would be a bad idea. They would have to change every fight so that they are done in steps or something. Like in Cure you kill the left cube first and that is kinda like killing boss 1. If you wipe on boss 1 then you all respawn and try to kill him again. If you kill him then you move on to the middle cube which would be boss 2. If you wipe on the middle cube then you all respawn BUT you only have to go back and kill the middle cube, the first one you killed stays dead. Of course even if they were to change the fights to that way i dont know how popular the change would be.
Sadly this is the case until Fleet Actions with rewards grade on something else besides damage dealt. CE is going that direction, but it's not enough.
The easy part is just taking away the aggro and making it random. The hard part is doing it so that random scrubs in pug queues dont start popping left and right cause they dont know how to self heal or they have crappy defenses AND because there is no incentive for their team members to help them out.
EDIT: and also when i talk about cooperation i dont necessarily mean being able to communicate. In trinities the roles are pretty easy to figure out right? tank grabs mobs, dps kills and healers heal. In a non trinity situation there are no clearly defined goals. But if you see someone in trouble you dont really need to be able to communicate with them in their language to know that they need help. Some people are actually pretty perceptive like that...but then again some people arent so you are kinda right haha. For example I can take my BoP into Khitomer Elite and flank 2-4 probes and kill them in like 3-4 seconds. Some players might see this and help me the first time and then the second wave they wont bother cause they see that i can melt them so fast. But then other players will see me lining up on the second wave, they know that i can kill them fast, but yet they will always come to help out.
The same way i did when i was a random scrub? by observing better players, incorporating their tactics into mine, and even improving them if i saw a better way to do things. With no scoring system that's pretty much all i do is observe, copy and improve. I mean... a score feedback system isnt going to teach somebody how to tank a cube is it? i can tell if my defenses are worse then someone elses by using a watch or counting one-one thousand hehe. A score feedback system might tell someone how well they are in terms of dps vs the other people in the group. But i've been doing that without parsers for a long time now. Of course you have to know *where* to look. For me i just look for people who are attempting to do things alone. Like people who can do a whole side of Khitomer elite on their own, or people who do a whole cube in cure elite on their own.
STO is a lot more flexable. You can have a ground healer who can dish it out almost as well as a Tac, you can have Engies building nests or going demoman...
Perhaps this is an oppertunity to revise how Boss enemy aggro is figured out. Have a more intelligent system that deliberately attacks players who are on cooldown or have weaker defenses
Might be a lot harder if your defensive abilities, which give you a dmg ressit bonus, Also attracted the attention of the Boss, who with your ability on cooldown sees an upcomming tactical disadvantage.
Or the boss could be programed to engage targets that have the weakest shield/hull ressitances, It seems silly to me that a defensive tank doing limited damage could artificially increase its threat level and thus attract attention.
In my opinion they should be targeting weak links, If those happen to be small escorts then they need to get used to being in cross healing teams, Or retreat, and hope the "tanks" can hold out long enough for them to repair and rejoin the battle
I'll admit thats not the best thought out method, But I'd prefer it to one of arbitrary Aggro consoles/abilities myself
Enemy Boss's should in my opinion be seeking the weaker enemies to deal that killing blow
If you like turn based strategy games, there's one called galactic civilizations by stardock where the ai will place your strengths into a few categories then focus on taking out what it thinks is your biggest strength. So if you are out manufacturing it, it will send planet killers not after your military but your factory worlds if all your resourcescome from trade it might ignore you and cripple your allies first etc. Pretty fun ai.
Something like that here could be fun. It'd have to start by knowing how and when to use powers though.
That might make sense, and that might also be how animals actually hunt IRL. But this is a game, and there has to be some level of fairness. Lets not forget that weaker ships, with weaker resists also tend to be played by newer players. It would be unfair to penalize them by having them get focused on just because they have a weaker ship.
I think that random aggro and equal chance across all players in the group would be better. If a weaker player gets focused on that they need need to only focus on staying alive long enough until the mob re-focuses on someone else. If you are lucky it will retarget on a Cruiser or someone else who can take the hits. In which case the group sorta gets a breather when a strong player gets focused.
Thats pretty sound reasoning, and directing more of a challenge to those with stronger builds is more satisfying, Most people who build tanks I imagine want the enemy to throw everything at them.
Though if I had my way, Elite difficulty modes would have far crueler AI coding, But thats double the work to balance two different sets of coded behavior and on some level its wise as a designer not to create more work for yourself.
Needless to say the AI could stand to be far more advanced in using its Abilities all together of course