We are fully cognizant that there will be complaints that it's too hard. We have no intention of going back on Elite and making it easier to achieve. This is the brass ring for you all to aspire to.
If anything our worry is that one or two might be too easy compared to the rest. We'll take steps to remedy those situations asap.
This is great. I'll admit that I've always been kind of lazy when it comes to my ships. I always think "Eh, I can already blow away the elite queues with the gear/boff setup I have. Why bother getting better stuff?" I hope I can take that line of thinking and throw it out the window. I like the sound of all of this.
We are fully cognizant that there will be complaints that it's too hard. We have no intention of going back on Elite and making it easier to achieve. This is the brass ring for you all to aspire to.
If anything our worry is that one or two might be too easy compared to the rest. We'll take steps to remedy those situations asap.
Awesome
Will a gearscore type system be setup for these new queues? To stop players that are not well enough geared for the new content from queuing for it? Would help a ton, and help further to make players want to improve more.
Are they adding 3 difficulties of lv 60 content, or are they having a lv 40 easy, lv50, and a lv 60 content?
Normal is level 50-60, with enemies and players scaled to level 50 in terms of "sidekicking".
Advanced is level 50-60, with enemies and players scaled up to level 60 in terms of "sidekicking", and enemies all use the Advanced difficulty adjustments.
Elite is level 60 only, and all enemies use the Elite difficulty adjustments.
I'm glad to hear about the upcoming changes. A lot of this content was just way too easy. However, please do not implement these changes with out a "KICK" option! If you don't then be prepared for a lot of player rage when some of these teams fail. You know its gonna happen. lol
I'm talking about the people who insist on you having about 20k dps despite only needing about a third of that (or less) in practice, the people who will give you hell if you can't basically solo the content. These are the same people who make up most of the easy to find regular players. I'm well aware that a great number of players are competent enough to do the content and aren't *******s, but actually finding them to play the game with is another matter entirely.
Oh and I have a decent fleet with good people in it, but due to time zone issues there's rarely a great amount of them online when I am, and even then we might not want to all play the same content at the same time.
I've never seen this happen once. And I play all the time. I think you are making this up.
I'm talking about the people who insist on you having about 20k dps despite only needing about a third of that (or less) in practice, the people who will give you hell if you can't basically solo the content. These are the same people who make up most of the easy to find regular players. I'm well aware that a great number of players are competent enough to do the content and aren't *******s, but actually finding them to play the game with is another matter entirely.
Oh and I have a decent fleet with good people in it, but due to time zone issues there's rarely a great amount of them online when I am, and even then we might not want to all play the same content at the same time.
I think overall your perception of the player base seems to be one of gross generalisation and absolutes. There is a full spectrum of players from the lows of troll awful and inexperienced to the tactically minded advanced players and the elitist fraternity. Im a casual advanced player, so dont pump for max dps, but i do focus heavily on tactics, and would never sit back and allow others to do the work for me, even if extreme dps in the group means i could. There are multiple channels for grouping for eSTFs and not all focus on maxdps, some of the best instances Ive played have been steady, tactic based runs with folk shooting from 3-9k dps.
My advice to you - Look harder and dont expect cryptic to hold your hand or police the content when there are alternative options that we as players can all utilise.
I'm glad to hear about the upcoming changes. A lot of this content was just way too easy. However, please do not implement these changes with out a "KICK" option! If you don't then be prepared for a lot of player rage when some of these teams fail. You know its gonna happen. lol
Game has a KICK option, but it's non-functional in "auto grouped" parties, such as those find by queueing via the PVE Queue. It's been this way forEVER, and I have yet to see any mention of actually working on fixing it. So my assumption is, it's currently "Working as intended".
We are fully cognizant that there will be complaints that it's too hard. We have no intention of going back on Elite and making it easier to achieve. This is the brass ring for you all to aspire to.
If anything our worry is that one or two might be too easy compared to the rest. We'll take steps to remedy those situations asap.
Normal is level 50-60, with enemies and players scaled to level 50 in terms of "sidekicking".
Advanced is level 50-60, with enemies and players scaled up to level 60 in terms of "sidekicking", and enemies all use the Advanced difficulty adjustments.
Elite is level 60 only, and all enemies use the Elite difficulty adjustments.
My main gripe is that most likely the KDF will be forced out of these *elite* missions do to the power creep/being left out of the mold created by the newer federation and romulan ships as well as lockbox ones it seems will be our only way to do these. So far for the KDF we have been told one one ships stats which isn't really any better than the fleet negh'var we already have. So don't mean to come off as unproductive but the situation still exists with our ships being pretty much underpowered atm.
I'm glad to hear about the upcoming changes. A lot of this content was just way too easy. However, please do not implement these changes with out a "KICK" option! If you don't then be prepared for a lot of player rage when some of these teams fail. You know its gonna happen. lol
Not near as much rage as will come when players get kicked from teams right before the loot drop at the end. The current leaver penalty system, flawed as it might be, is about as far as it should go.
My main gripe is that most likely the KDF will be forced out of these *elite* missions do to the power creep/being left out of the mold created by the newer federation and romulan ships as well as lockbox ones it seems will be our only way to do these. So far for the KDF we have been told one one ships stats which isn't really any better than the fleet negh'var we already have. So don't mean to come off as unproductive but the situation still exists with our ships being pretty much underpowered atm.
Don't worry, a KDF player in a T5 ship = T8. lol :P :P
So NPCs are just bags of hit points, with OHKO attacks. sigh... That isn't difficult, it is just annoying.
Remember No Win Scenario? You guys said then that it was intended to be impossible. Could not be done, worthy of the name. Now you only need 2 ships to do it, and it is now a Fleet Mark grind queue.
Well, as you remember, realise that at some point, as surely as a river flows downhill and the sun rises and sets, a 2 man team will do new No Win Scenario, one player will solo new ISE, and power creep will make a group of Connies able to do new ESTFs.
I look forward to someone coming back and digging up this post when these events come to pass.
So uhh, anything about punishment for those who purposely sabotage these yet? Hopefully something taken into consideration when these changes were decided on? Something anyone with an ounce of common sense would have looked into??
So uhh, anything about punishment for those who purposely sabotage these yet? Hopefully something taken into consideration when these changed were decided on? Something anyone with an ounce of common sense would have looked into??
I would like to see them implement a mechanic within the ignore function to prevent being placed in future pugs with said saboteurs.
I would like to see them implement a mechanic within the ignore function to prevent being placed in future pugs with said saboteurs.
I don't remember exactly if had been implemented in WOW, but if I remember right, when I quit there was talk of a similar system.. that might be an outstanding option to consider here.
does anybody really think that tactics and teamwork refers to anything other then 5x tac groups going pew pew pew?
This could be great, but looking at past attempts of increasing difficulty levels consisted of more hull more shields magic one shoot powers combined with magical cc immunities makes me not very optimistic about this
... there was talk of anyone on your ignore list you would never be put in games with in their queue system.. that might be an outstanding option to consider here.
We're gonna need a bigger ignore list... /Scheider
"You Iconians just hung a vacancy sign on your asses and my foot's looking for a room!"
--Red Annorax
Not near as much rage as will come when players get kicked from teams right before the loot drop at the end. The current leaver penalty system, flawed as it might be, is about as far as it should go.
Yeah, a kick would be too easy to abuse.
Look at it this way. In STFs I've seen the following dysfunctional behaviors:
Leeching, when a player will just stand there and do NOTHING in an queue (and in the Dyson battlezone, you see them just sit by the Silos).
Quitting, when a player will drop out early in an STF after telling everyone else they suck. My guess is that they look at the DPS ratings and determine the group is not up to speed so they leave.
Trolling, when players will just be mean to people in the STFs or purposefully mess up the game.
Genuine Newbies (I do not have a verb for this one), players who don't really know the mission and may have actually queued for it by accident but are there to try and fumble through.
Projecting Failure, players who do not actually know how to play the mission but insist everyone else is getting it wrong.
Rushing in, when players will forego any known strategy or discussion just to go right to the fight. (Like in Undine Infiltration, when people will just rush through the interviews and ignore the optional and we lose marks for quarantining innocents/clearing Undine)
Assuming, when players who are actually pretty good who know the mission and are used to doing it one way assume everyone else does it that way and there's actually other ways to do the STF.
Nothing suggested would take care of all of these:
A kick option would take care of Leeches, those who Rush In and Genuine Newbies, but it would be abused by Trolls and Projectors. It would penalize players who are acting in good faith and breed bullying.
Unlocking the Advanced and Elite versions from success on the Normal would keep out Genuine Newbies and Projectors (and possibly those who rush in without thinking) but do nothing about the other dysfunctions. Still, it wouldn't penalize players who are acting in good faith.
The Leaver Penalty takes care of Quitters and only minimally penalizes players acting in good faith. Changing the cooldowns to be based on how well you do (I forget who suggested that) would do something about the types of people who are just playing badly at least and it won't give bullies any ammo.
My suggestion is keeping the leaver penalty, adding an unlock, and not implementing anything like a Kick. It doesn't fix everything but it doesn't make things worse.
My suggestion is keeping the leaver penalty, adding an unlock, and not implementing anything like a Kick.
That is probably the best option, a kick feature is nothing more than putting power in the hands of one kind of troll in a vain attempt to stop another, and it never ever ends well. A streamlined report system with actual action taken on those who violate monitored by a careful group of company employees is the only true option.
And when it comes to those with low DPS it has to be taken into account that sometimes people leave games, and leave them for a very long time, and at times even top tier strategists need resources to build back up, again, it's a fact of the gaming life. If someone's ship is at least moving and shooting and actively trying to advance a game in the right direction that is the baseline people need.
Worst part is for a game like this, when someone is new or has been gone a while, the overly gated currency systems here can make getting back up to speed something of a unnecessary nightmare! Why in the world does T5 rep Dil rewards come in the form of ore??? If we are supposed to have access to that for the suggested purpose of buying the T5 piece of gear we need let us without waiting 6 more days!!
We're gonna need a bigger ignore list... /Scheider
it's probably the mechanic that is least open to abuse, almost like a metered strikeout system, the more you leech, troll or abuse the system the smaller the pool of players you can pug with, you will start to conform or end up lonely, friendless and lacking the resources for shiny shiny and dilithium.
Let me guess... you were able to attenuate a concentrated beam of your anti-matter powers through a high level tachyon field creating a temporal convergence in the space-time continuum which opened a temporal rift in space that transferred your consciousness into an alien body somewhere in the Delta Quadrant? Amirite???
So great to have you here working on STO and I look forward trying out all the new story content you've all been working on.
P.S. Not a day goes by since November 30, 2012 that I don't miss CoH. Thank you for many years of great memories.
dear god I miss that game
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
does anybody really think that tactics and teamwork refers to anything other then 5x tac groups going pew pew pew?
This could be great, but looking at past attempts of increasing difficulty levels consisted of more hull more shields magic one shoot powers combined with magical cc immunities makes me not very optimistic about this
Exactly. The one shot mechanic needs to die, preferably in a fire.
Torp Spread 3's that are a guaranteed 1shot even when using Brace For Impact was never an elegant solution to increased difficulty, hopefully they've learned this by now...
If there is still an unavoidable (baring taking multiple subnukes -- and should that be necessary? From a balance and design standpoint -- hell no) mechanic that does more than a player's health in a single ability, with full shields and full hull, the design is simply bad, and the designer should probably feel bad.
I'm hopeful that they've learned from past mistakes, but not exactly holding my breath.
Comments
This is great. I'll admit that I've always been kind of lazy when it comes to my ships. I always think "Eh, I can already blow away the elite queues with the gear/boff setup I have. Why bother getting better stuff?" I hope I can take that line of thinking and throw it out the window. I like the sound of all of this.
Mine Trap Supporter
Awesome
Will a gearscore type system be setup for these new queues? To stop players that are not well enough geared for the new content from queuing for it? Would help a ton, and help further to make players want to improve more.
Normal is level 50-60, with enemies and players scaled to level 50 in terms of "sidekicking".
Advanced is level 50-60, with enemies and players scaled up to level 60 in terms of "sidekicking", and enemies all use the Advanced difficulty adjustments.
Elite is level 60 only, and all enemies use the Elite difficulty adjustments.
I've never seen this happen once. And I play all the time. I think you are making this up.
I think overall your perception of the player base seems to be one of gross generalisation and absolutes. There is a full spectrum of players from the lows of troll awful and inexperienced to the tactically minded advanced players and the elitist fraternity. Im a casual advanced player, so dont pump for max dps, but i do focus heavily on tactics, and would never sit back and allow others to do the work for me, even if extreme dps in the group means i could. There are multiple channels for grouping for eSTFs and not all focus on maxdps, some of the best instances Ive played have been steady, tactic based runs with folk shooting from 3-9k dps.
My advice to you - Look harder and dont expect cryptic to hold your hand or police the content when there are alternative options that we as players can all utilise.
Game has a KICK option, but it's non-functional in "auto grouped" parties, such as those find by queueing via the PVE Queue. It's been this way forEVER, and I have yet to see any mention of actually working on fixing it. So my assumption is, it's currently "Working as intended".
My main gripe is that most likely the KDF will be forced out of these *elite* missions do to the power creep/being left out of the mold created by the newer federation and romulan ships as well as lockbox ones it seems will be our only way to do these. So far for the KDF we have been told one one ships stats which isn't really any better than the fleet negh'var we already have. So don't mean to come off as unproductive but the situation still exists with our ships being pretty much underpowered atm.
--Red Annorax
I waited a long time this, thx
very promising
Don't worry, a KDF player in a T5 ship = T8. lol :P
Remember No Win Scenario? You guys said then that it was intended to be impossible. Could not be done, worthy of the name. Now you only need 2 ships to do it, and it is now a Fleet Mark grind queue.
Well, as you remember, realise that at some point, as surely as a river flows downhill and the sun rises and sets, a 2 man team will do new No Win Scenario, one player will solo new ISE, and power creep will make a group of Connies able to do new ESTFs.
I look forward to someone coming back and digging up this post when these events come to pass.
After the complicated mess that is the T5U system, this queue revamp gives me warm fuzzies. A decent challenge and better rewards? Yummy.
Then please fill out my dissertation survey on feline attachment, it'd be a massive help (-:
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/87XKSGH
no thanks; it's just discriminatory. players must learn to fail.
hardcore gamers can have their chat channel for creating team.
i would have an average ship, i don't want to be kicked from an elite stf, just because i can't have, mega/supra gears.
I would like to see them implement a mechanic within the ignore function to prevent being placed in future pugs with said saboteurs.
I don't remember exactly if had been implemented in WOW, but if I remember right, when I quit there was talk of a similar system.. that might be an outstanding option to consider here.
This could be great, but looking at past attempts of increasing difficulty levels consisted of more hull more shields magic one shoot powers combined with magical cc immunities makes me not very optimistic about this
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
--Red Annorax
Yeah, a kick would be too easy to abuse.
Look at it this way. In STFs I've seen the following dysfunctional behaviors:
Leeching, when a player will just stand there and do NOTHING in an queue (and in the Dyson battlezone, you see them just sit by the Silos).
Quitting, when a player will drop out early in an STF after telling everyone else they suck. My guess is that they look at the DPS ratings and determine the group is not up to speed so they leave.
Trolling, when players will just be mean to people in the STFs or purposefully mess up the game.
Genuine Newbies (I do not have a verb for this one), players who don't really know the mission and may have actually queued for it by accident but are there to try and fumble through.
Projecting Failure, players who do not actually know how to play the mission but insist everyone else is getting it wrong.
Rushing in, when players will forego any known strategy or discussion just to go right to the fight. (Like in Undine Infiltration, when people will just rush through the interviews and ignore the optional and we lose marks for quarantining innocents/clearing Undine)
Assuming, when players who are actually pretty good who know the mission and are used to doing it one way assume everyone else does it that way and there's actually other ways to do the STF.
Nothing suggested would take care of all of these:
A kick option would take care of Leeches, those who Rush In and Genuine Newbies, but it would be abused by Trolls and Projectors. It would penalize players who are acting in good faith and breed bullying.
Unlocking the Advanced and Elite versions from success on the Normal would keep out Genuine Newbies and Projectors (and possibly those who rush in without thinking) but do nothing about the other dysfunctions. Still, it wouldn't penalize players who are acting in good faith.
The Leaver Penalty takes care of Quitters and only minimally penalizes players acting in good faith. Changing the cooldowns to be based on how well you do (I forget who suggested that) would do something about the types of people who are just playing badly at least and it won't give bullies any ammo.
My suggestion is keeping the leaver penalty, adding an unlock, and not implementing anything like a Kick. It doesn't fix everything but it doesn't make things worse.
That is probably the best option, a kick feature is nothing more than putting power in the hands of one kind of troll in a vain attempt to stop another, and it never ever ends well. A streamlined report system with actual action taken on those who violate monitored by a careful group of company employees is the only true option.
And when it comes to those with low DPS it has to be taken into account that sometimes people leave games, and leave them for a very long time, and at times even top tier strategists need resources to build back up, again, it's a fact of the gaming life. If someone's ship is at least moving and shooting and actively trying to advance a game in the right direction that is the baseline people need.
Worst part is for a game like this, when someone is new or has been gone a while, the overly gated currency systems here can make getting back up to speed something of a unnecessary nightmare! Why in the world does T5 rep Dil rewards come in the form of ore??? If we are supposed to have access to that for the suggested purpose of buying the T5 piece of gear we need let us without waiting 6 more days!!
it's probably the mechanic that is least open to abuse, almost like a metered strikeout system, the more you leech, troll or abuse the system the smaller the pool of players you can pug with, you will start to conform or end up lonely, friendless and lacking the resources for shiny shiny and dilithium.
dear god I miss that game
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
I would be nice to do them when ever I want, but numbers may be better if only a few are open at a time...
Exactly. The one shot mechanic needs to die, preferably in a fire.
Torp Spread 3's that are a guaranteed 1shot even when using Brace For Impact was never an elegant solution to increased difficulty, hopefully they've learned this by now...
If there is still an unavoidable (baring taking multiple subnukes -- and should that be necessary? From a balance and design standpoint -- hell no) mechanic that does more than a player's health in a single ability, with full shields and full hull, the design is simply bad, and the designer should probably feel bad.
I'm hopeful that they've learned from past mistakes, but not exactly holding my breath.