Difficulty of korfez was increased after the stream (coincidence? ).
Actually... some of us 30Kers had recorded a faceroll BoK a couple days before the stream. One of the devs saw the video and was a bit shocked at how easy we had found it.
Even after the buff it's still easy, 2 or 3 high DPSers can carry a team through it.
Normal diff should be the "tourist wants to see story" mode. With the appropriate rewards (slim).
Advanced and elite should be "lets actually play the game" mode.
Very good way of thinking. Speaking personally, it's bugging me somewhat that I can't get any further in some of the missions to see what else is part of them because I keep getting stuck on the ship battles.
Actually... some of us 30Kers had recorded a faceroll BoK a couple days before the stream. One of the devs saw the video and was a bit shocked at how easy we had found it.
Even after the buff it's still easy, 2 or 3 high DPSers can carry a team through it.
well raw dps can nearly tear through anything, I wonder what would happen if they would increase damage resistance to plasma for most of the delta npc... would cause a lot of butt
hurt and ruin quite a few 20k+ dps builds.
But the problem is, the average dps for is is something like 7k, and that already on channels, pure queue pugs might be even lower.
20k+ builds are rare and expensive, even when you say "elite" content you don't make it for 1% of your consumer base, especial when its some sort of benchmark how every other elite will turn out in the future.
Are these missions single player only like the last few featured episodes or can you bring teammates? If you can team I guess people with high dps scims are going to be bugged all the time to help people through it, I better put my rom back into a T'Varo before DR lol.
well raw dps can nearly tear through anything, I wonder what would happen if they would increase damage resistance to plasma for most of the delta npc... would cause a lot of butt
hurt and ruin quite a few 20k+ dps builds.
But the problem is, the average dps for is is something like 7k, and that already on channels, pure queue pugs might be even lower.
20k+ builds are rare and expensive, even when you say "elite" content you don't make it for 1% of your consumer base, especial when its some sort of benchmark how every other elite will turn out in the future.
Actually I thought they said that elite was for 1% of their base. Everyone else could do Advanced.
Except - going by what I read about Infected here - they can't.
Unless level 60 and the new shinies somehow quadruple the average pugs damage output, Advanced will be almost as empty as Elite.
Actually... some of us 30Kers had recorded a faceroll BoK a couple days before the stream. One of the devs saw the video and was a bit shocked at how easy we had found it.
Even after the buff it's still easy, 2 or 3 high DPSers can carry a team through it.
^
Exactly why Borticus can't make the argument that more HP = more difficult, and saying that giving extra abilities to NPCs just gets the same results. It doesn't.
On the other hand, giving NPCs abilities that force players to think instead as players do in PvP would be more useful. Like it has been stated before, a science captain in DR is basically forced to go for DPS like everyone else because there is no real need for support roles in PvE.
Except - going by what I read about Infected here - they can't.
Unless level 60 and the new shinies somehow quadruple the average pugs damage output, Advanced will be almost as empty as Elite.
No they can, they just need to get better. Elite should be for the 1%, Advanced for 49% and the rest can do standard until they get the resources to get better.
At least that's how it should work. No they can't right now, nor should they, but with time and effort they should be able to.
No they can, they just need to get better. Elite should be for the 1%, Advanced for 49% and the rest can do standard until they get the resources to get better.
At least that's how it should work. No they can't right now, nor should they, but with time and effort they should be able to.
experience has shown that it wont take a lot of effort for players to be ready for Advanced. The problem is that some have a serious entitlement issues and refuse to adapt.
experience has shown that it wont take a lot of effort for players to be ready for Advanced. The problem is that some have a serious entitlement issues and refuse to adapt.
I dont know enough about where you are getting your data, but since the meta game seems to be dps rules all and everything else is just roleplay nonsense, I wonder if you are just trying to brute force your way through the content with your Fawmitard etc. Before I believe anything foul is comming by way of boosting hitpoints (which seems like a pretty viable way to counter dpsdpsdpsdps) - I will have to play the content myself as a sci with acual sci toys that I use as they were intended to great effect in sto, in the face of the dps-league scrubs.
I dont know enough about where you are getting your data, but since the meta game seems to be dps rules all and everything else is just roleplay nonsense, I wonder if you are just trying to brute force your way through the content with your Fawmitard etc. Before I believe anything foul is comming by way of boosting hitpoints (which seems like a pretty viable way to counter dpsdpsdpsdps) - I will have to play the content myself as a sci with acual sci toys that I use as they were intended to great effect in sto, in the face of the dps-league scrubs.
If you're talking to me I run a science vessel that's scored top in quite a few of the Elites, and I don't use FAW or TBR.
Here's the thing, they're not hard. They just have a ton of HPs and shields, and it's not consistant. One mission you'll see an assault cruiser with 160,000 hps and the very next one without a level up you'll see the exact same assault cruiser with close to a million.
Problem is the dps doesn't ramp up between the two, it stays consistant. ADvanced gets a bit harder now, but not by much if you know what you're doing... just more HPs.
And that's the point, the challenge isn't in the mission, it's in the HPs. The missions are the same damn thing we've been fighting for years now, they just tripled and quadrupled the HPs thinking that makes it challenging.
It doesn't, it makes it boring, and I "cheat". I tend to drop their shields more often then not and totally take them out of the equation. As a sci it's what we do. And literally I can drop their energy to zero, consistantly, just sit there, and wail away with mk XIII torps and grav wells and watch their HPs kind of sorta drop. I don't need to move, I don't need dp jack.
So I tried it as pure DPS sci and no fancy drain builds, and it's the same thing, except now I have to raise my impulse to 1/4 and just spin with them and keep them trapped in GWs and TBRs.
Do I drop it quicker then when in a T5U boat rocking MK XIIs? Sure. But the fact that HPs do not equate to challenge doesn't change.
And from my experience this is a red flag for a broken argument. What are we adapting to, an inevitably positive development (ie. change be always good, **** all y'all reasons) or a more abstract gameplay change with a recongizable and tangible impact on pacing and combat design. The latter of course and you need a bit more than mere self-inflating posturing to justify it.
1%, 49%, is this all we want out of a game, to separate people out into discrete, ego boosting chunks, so something as simple and [fundamentally] effortless as stubbornly plowing through it regardless of design can take the place of a more organic appreciation of gameplay?
That's assinine. The game can completely go to pot and so long as it maintains ranks within the population it satisfies your criteria for good design.
The problem here is simply that level 60 combat is inappropriately paced for STO's combat mechanics (as has been discussed). So too was the old difficulty settings but simply because you have too short combat on the one hand you cannot indefinitely justify increasing those kill times. You can go too far, and while that extreme may satisfy your own sense of entitlement (regarding what you think you should be feeling about performance in a video game) it can still utterly fail to achieve this product's goal of making mass entertainment.
NPC health is not adding difficutly, its not adding challenge, its just grinding down the same set of actions that you would apply normally through combat that makes NO apparent consideration for when that might start to get dull (ie. lose human interest). Mechanically speaking its a stupid move. Though the intention to add more space for STO combat mechanics to play out is admirable the way it has been balanced isn't (because it exceeds the ability of power management and ship maneuverring [ie. sto gameplay] to fill a given space of gameplay without repeating themselves beyond a given point of tolerability. That is to say, there's not enough stuff built within the structure of a game to adequately occupy an encounter as they are being balanced now.).
Though of course I have no worries about making it through any part of DR, playing through arduous bull**** is not my idea of a good time. It can be better structured, it can be better built (to more appropriately match available actions to the space they're asked to occupy), because this is a mechanical entity whose function can be appreciated in its own right.
Just a little less health is all we need and we'll have a better video game. That might make it more accessible, naturally, and that would be the worst thing in the world for you but making it more tolerable to more people probably isn't a bad thing for STO. In fact I think its just what cryptic wants and was trying to create by nixing distressingly short combat times. They just haven't hit the optimum yet.
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And from my experience this is a red flag for a broken argument. What are we adapting to, an inevitably positive development (ie. change be always good, **** all y'all reasons) or a more abstract gameplay change with a recongizable and tangible impact on pacing and combat design. The latter of course and you need a bit more than mere self-inflating posturing to justify it.
1%, 49%, is this all we want out of a game, to separate people out into discrete, ego boosting chunks, so something as simple and [fundamentally] effortless as stubbornly plowing through it regardless of design can take the place of a more organic appreciation of gameplay?
That's assinine. The game can completely go to pot and so long as it maintains ranks within the population it satisfies your criteria for good design.
The problem here is simply that level 60 combat is inappropriately paced for STO's combat mechanics (as has been discussed). So too was the old difficulty settings but simply because you have too short combat on the one hand you cannot indefinitely justify increasing those kill times. You can go too far, and while that extreme may satisfy your own sense of entitlement (regarding what you think you should be feeling about performance in a video game) it can still utterly fail to achieve this product's goal of making mass entertainment.
NPC health is not adding difficutly, its not adding challenge, its just grinding down the same set of actions that you would apply normally through combat that makes NO apparent consideration for when that might start to get dull (ie. lose human interest). Mechanically speaking its a stupid move. Though the intention to add more space for STO combat mechanics to play out is admirable the way it has been balanced isn't (because it exceeds the ability of power management and ship maneuverring [ie. sto gameplay] to fill a given space of gameplay without repeating themselves beyond a given point of tolerability. That is to say, there's not enough stuff built within the structure of a game to adequately occupy an encounter as they are being balanced now.).
Though of course I have no worries about making it through any part of DR, playing through arduous bull**** is not my idea of a good time. It can be better structured, it can be better built (to more appropriately match available actions to the space they're asked to occupy), because this is a mechanical entity whose function can be appreciated in its own right.
Just a little less health is all we need and we'll have a better video game. That might make it more accessible, naturally, and that would be the worst thing in the world for you but making it more tolerable to more people probably isn't a bad thing for STO. In fact I think its just what cryptic wants and was trying to create by nixing distressingly short combat times. They just haven't hit the optimum yet.
So many strawmen i'm having a hard believing you're responding to me and not some paranoid delusion in your mind.
I'll go over my points again:
1. the advanced queues will be accessible to everyone. anyone in a T5 ship and mk11/12 green/blue gear is able to get to 20k DPS easy. it's a matter of pilot skill, not gear. this has been my experience as someone who has written guides, shared many ship builds, and coached many pilots 1on1 to get them from less than 10k to over 20k and 30k DPS.
2. Adapting is as simple as using different tactics. example:
In all the ISA runs i've done so far i've been getting a consistent 35k DPS with a Recluse in the team. Today i adjusted my tactics and used different timings for my abilities and i hit 49k DPS in a team without a Recluse.
So just by me adapting to the new content i went from 35k DPS with Recluse buffs to 49k DPS without Recluse buffs.
nothing has changed on the ship except how i fly it.
3. Good players adapt.
Bad players waste time typing excuses on the forums.
So many strawmen i'm having a hard believing you're responding to me and not some paranoid delusion in your mind.
I'll go over my points again:
1. the advanced queues will be accessible to everyone. anyone in a T5 ship and mk11/12 green/blue gear is able to get to 20k DPS easy. it's a matter of pilot skill, not gear. this has been my experience as someone who has written guides, shared many ship builds, and coached many pilots 1on1 to get them from less than 10k to over 20k and 30k DPS.
2. Adapting is as simple as using different tactics. example:
In all the ISA runs i've done so far i've been getting a consistent 35k DPS with a Recluse in the team. Today i adjusted my tactics and used different timings for my abilities and i hit 49k DPS in a team without a Recluse.
So just by me adapting to the new content i went from 35k DPS with Recluse buffs to 49k DPS without Recluse buffs.
nothing has changed on the ship except how i fly it.
3. Good players adapt.
Bad players waste time typing excuses on the forums.
I tend to agree with you in this case, to a degree. I had to totally revamp my build and how I did things in order to decrease my time in any given mission, which is a good thing. I upped my DPS a bit by cycling a few more skills I normally never use except as oh TRIBBLE buttons. So yes adapting is a good thing and people are going to have to adapt for the content.
But I see where duncan is coming from too. There's "force to adapt" and then theirs "forced to adapt and it's still boring as hell".
Currently I think we're in part two when it comes to the Vaudwaar. Now personally I love fighting the new Heirarchy ships. Increased HPs but not so many that a mission takes an hour and you never get touched. But they also have an increase in skills, some nasty skills at that. The Hierarchy are what forced me to adapt. Better hulll, more CC breakers, and some other things to counter what they had while upping my DPS to counter their increased Hull.
The Vaauduar... not so much. The only reason I needed to up my DPS is so I could actually destroy a ship before I fell asleep. I ignore the constrictors, they're boring, the only time I worry is when I see multiple of those Vaadwaar area cannon attacks coming at me, but any of my 5 hull buffs nullify that worry.
Same with the new Advanced queues. They're not harder you don't need to do anything fancy with them. Any point and click idiot with high end gear and can and do it. There's no skill in there, just pure unadulterated DPS. Step 1 get good gear. Step 2 point at target. Step 3 win.
So I don't mind adapting. What I mind is calling an arbitrarily huge HP and Shields numbers as challenging, and saying that adapting is simply making something long and boring something short and boring.
I'll pretty much say this. More difficulty to the game is badly needed no question. How they are addressing it however is rather poor.
There is a rather compressive list of abilities/consoles/weapon types/and even ships that are now all but worthless because they won't provide you with the DPS needed to succeed in the game now, and that list is growing. The types of builds in order to succeed have become very limited, require minimal thought process on what you need(once you understand you need only DPS), and will require a half decent amount of dilithium and/or EC to do so.
I honestly have no issues with needing to spend the dilithium and/or EC in order to work your way up to be successful in more difficult content, that's only fair really, players need to adopt and work on their character. But it shouldn't be in a way that only certain builds or in this case one specific aspect of the game is required and everything else is secondary or worthless all together.
For example, if I want to make a Sci build that doesn't have great firepower but instead has great ways to slow down the enemy or reduce their power and disable some of their systems etc, I shouldn't feel punished for making that build vs. one that does all DPS. The DPS build will run through the content much faster and therefore will earn quicker rewards, also, with the new difficult queue I will effectively be an anchor to my team as I would not make the "DPS requirement". To add insult to injury, I would have spent close to the same amount of dilithium and/or EC as a DPSer.
Retired. I'm now in search for that perfect space anomaly.
1. the advanced queues will be accessible to everyone. anyone in a T5 ship and mk11/12 green/blue gear is able to get to 20k DPS easy
Are you on drugs?
The most you can get out of an average player with mk11 blues or mk12 greens is 3-6-9k dps, depending on bad-average-good build.
And that is an OPTIMISTIC estimate. For average players, not bad ones.
9k used to be okey for elites, mind, but "easily 20k for everyone" is a lie, and you know it.
Stop lying.
I have seen too many rainbow cannon-beam-torpedo boats with tricobalts, quantums, tetryon cannons and antiprotons dual beams on one odyssey to believe your ridiculous claims.
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
The most you can get out of an average player with mk11 blues or mk12 greens is 3-6-9k dps, depending on bad-average-good build.
And that is an OPTIMISTIC estimate. For average players, not bad ones.
9k used to be okey for elites, mind, but "easily 20k for everyone" is a lie, and you know it.
Stop lying.
I have seen too many rainbow cannon-beam-torpedo boats with tricobalts, quantums, tetryon cannons and antiprotons dual beams on one odyssey to believe your ridiculous claims.
yep, 10k is pretty much the top with greens. I ran a chel grett with mk12 green disruptors and XI green consoles. But this was on a engie char which had no problem maintaining power (without plasmonic leech).
All the 20k+ cruiser builds are pretty much romulan plasma builds with 2 piece borg weapon set and romulan space set + PL and what ever you want stacked on +% in plasma damage and running macros to keep everything up.
For example, if I want to make a Sci build that doesn't have great firepower but instead has great ways to slow down the enemy or reduce their power and disable some of their systems etc, I shouldn't feel punished for making that build vs. one that does all DPS. The DPS build will run through the content much faster and therefore will earn quicker rewards, also, with the new difficult queue I will effectively be an anchor to my team as I would not make the "DPS requirement". To add insult to injury, I would have spent close to the same amount of dilithium and/or EC as a DPSer.
Problem is, none of the missions have another goal then kill stuff, everything is on a timer. So CC ing stuff doesn't do you any good.
The only mission where this is somewhat usefull would be CSE, where you can just keep the probes shut down, but you still lack the firepwower to get the gates down in a reasonable time.
As long as damage does the same job as any root or cc skill who needs those?
Funny thing sci captains where pretty powerful at launch, you could buff your sensor scan up to 140-150% damage debuff some made even more and GW wasn't caped at 1,2-1.4k dmg per tick, hell it was as powerful as the voth one.
Same for tyken rift, you could keep even npcs dry and dead in the water.
It back from a time when scis where actually buffers/debuffers.
The only mission where this is somewhat usefull would be CSE, where you can just keep the probes shut down, but you still lack the firepwower to get the gates down in a reasonable time.
As long as damage does the same job as any root or cc skill who needs those?
Funny thing sci captains where pretty powerful at launch, you could buff your sensor scan up to 140-150% damage debuff some made even more and GW wasn't caped at 1,2-1.4k dmg per tick, hell it was as powerful as the voth one.
I agree and that gets back to the problem at hand(or at least how I see it)by increasing difficult means just increase NPC HP, nothing more. Cryptic needs in some way, improve on the AI itself or at least give a few more abilities...it needs to be given a bone other than just, 'attack player and use available abilities ASAP'.
So lets say Cryptic could pull it off and make a player like NPC with player like abilities(would never happen, but hear me out). It's a Borg BOP for example. It sees a player over 10km on which it wishes to attack. It cloaks, speeds to the player, buffs up, de-cloaks and attacks and heals its shields and tried to focus on forward shield regain etc.
The dynamics of the game changes drastically. It's no longer of a matter of NPC with super HP sitting there doing almost nothing. You're now facing with something that has similar abilities as you do and a pure DPS build may not work as well anymore. You'll need to find a way to take away it's healing abilities, or reduce it, evade its attacks to avoid it's forward weapons, prevent it from cloaking again and fleeing etc etc.
This is just one example but you get the idea. It might be a little extreme also because it's highly unlikely Cryptic could make such an AI. But even if they could improve it slightly, like using abilities at more appropriate times rather than just use it when available, and be provided with at least a few more abilities.
What I see here isn't more difficult content IMO.
Retired. I'm now in search for that perfect space anomaly.
I see two sides of this argument, but they both seem to be missing a huge chunk of the picture. If done some testing myself on tribble, and this argument will be based solely on my results and observations.
Just so everyone is clear, I did every mission up to this point on elite difficulty, using the same exact setup in the same exact ship for each one (my ship being an upgraded fleet galaxy with all fleet equipment and weapons). So, to start off, I've only encountered the borg, malon, kazon, and vadwuar.
1) I found the Borg to be about as difficult as they are in the alpha quadrant, which is not very unless they start swarming you. But even then I found tanking through them to be rather easy. Of course it takes some time to take them all out, but that is due to being a cruiser with little firepower. Still it didn't take very long.
2) The malon were actually more difficult than the Borg, at least as far as getting their hull down. I found their abilities to be an annoyance at best, nothing a proper setup designed for most occurances can't handle.
3) The kazon are a slightly different story from the other 2 species mentioned thus far. Surprisingly, they gave me more trouble than the others, but I suspect this to be more from their numbers and tetryon based weapons, which seemed to hit their proc more often than usual. It actually actually took quite some time to get through their shields, and about twice as long to get through the hulls of some of the larger ships. They also seemed more adept at redistributing their shield power than other NPCs I've come across.
4) And finally, the vadwuar. Let me start off by saying, WTF?!?! These guys are more like the Borg in hive onslaught elite than anything else. They gave me the most trouble of all the new enemies to date. They stripped my shields almost as fast as I could bring them up again. They nearly melted through my hull, and they tractored and disabled me so much I thought I was facing uber powered tholian/romulan hybrids. On top of that, they had some very tough shields and hulls. I don't think they were quite as tough as the malon, but they were formidable nonetheless. I think, had I not been using an upgraded cruiser, I would've been destroyed multiple times. It was almost as if they were designed to take down player escorts with the tactics and weapons they used.
Now, the point of this ananysis. Increasing the HP of an NPC to make it harder is only part of the equation. As proven with the malon and kazon, it becomes more of a chore to fight them, and its not very fun, especially when you have a whole bunch of abilities to use that you won't even need most of the time. This seems to be the most basic approach that cryptic uses, and while I can understand that it may be challenging for some tac and sci captains, eng captains will have little trouble tank I g through their damage, and yawning while they oh so slowly whittle down their opponents shields and hull.
This was not the case with the vadwuar, however. They not only had a very generous amount of HP and shields, but their firepower was astounding for an NPC of with that much defensive ability. Fighting them made me really work for it. I don't think I've ever had to try so hard just to stay alive. And it wasn't just due to their raw firepower. Whatever abilities or equipment they were using really made me have to stop and think about when and how I used mine. This is the type of enemy I want to face more often. Not just the vadwuar, but I'd like to see more enemies designed like that, enemies that really push me to improve and force me to make a real effort to defeat them.
An increase in HP is just the first step required to make space battles more fun. The extra HP makes it more difficult for escorts to instakill NPCs, but an increase in overall firepower is also needed, along with a few new abilities and bits of equipment to throw you for a loop and make you adjust your strategies during the fight. Also, there needs to be a more significant gap between difficultiy levels, but more because I'm sick of posts about players claiming things are too easy or too hard.
More HP ? Good for me, i tired of insta dying regular npcs in patrol\ra like missions, its like you playing god vs ants.
I mean you can clear Tholian RA in tau deva in 3-4 minutes solo atm without even trying, lulzing in borg RA, when you limited only by full impulse speed to reach each mini encounter.
But scaling only HP is not only answer, scale damage same way, power creep of player ships is out of hand, so throw brick in our face to wake us up.
i have said a long time ago one quick fix is to bump up health 35% and make TAC CONSOLES HAVE DIMINISHING RETURNS come on bort and apa apo effect only beams cannon and torp damage ..say what you want but this will fix a ton of stuff real fast ....crunch the numbers you will see there is no other way to halt power creep dead in it tracks and thats with all the crazy traits and boffs sure we will still put out heavy damage but the OMFG WTF number will dissapear
I was just doing the "Alliance" mission after beefing up my ship (Antiproton Dual Beam Banks, Antiproton Omni-Beam, Antiproton Beam Arrays, consoles that deal extra Antiproton damage, Fleet Shield, Fleet Warp Core, Borg Engines, 8472 Deflector) and I was able to eventually get through the first act of the mission where you face off against the Vaadwaur, I opted to help Captain Kim with the Kazon next. That went okay [easier than the Vaadwaur...lol] and then I went to help The Doctor with the Hierarchy.
They wanted me to prove my worth. I was thinking, "Fine, no problem."
They brought out a Voth battleship [something like that, I can't remember the exact name for it].
First off, it's got more HP than the Vaadwaur does (300 and something for the Voth compared to 200 and something for the Vaadwaur); I thought the VAADWAUR were supposed to be the [if you'll pardon the mixing of series with this term] "Big Bad" of the expansion.
Secondly, the first time I tried to prove myself to the Hierarchy, it was going well. I even had The Doctor's assistance and he got the ship down to about 25%. Then, out of NOWHERE, the ship jumps back up to 100%! It's not like I died, respawned and had to creep back over to the ship. It jumped up in health when I waited for...maybe ten seconds, if that.
Add that to the fact that, for whatever reason, I was receiving Ship Injuries...on Normal Difficulty! :mad:
It got to the point where I just said, "TRIBBLE it" and aborted the mission.
Fact of the matter is I was eager to try this mission to see if I could kill the Vaadwaur since I've got my new weapons and the like. I did, but if every other alliance (Harry, The Doctor, Neelix, Seven of Nine) is going to result in a battle, I wouldn't try it again and I'm sure a lot of other people feel the same way.
Now, with the ability to have abilities stated differently depending on players or npcs, i think they should massively DE NERF science and engineering abilities that yield damage.
Warp plasma, Grav well, tykens, charged particles, tachyon, tractors should all deal sufficient damage to make engineers and scis a force to recon with in pve, even if they are flying archetypical ships that do not lend themselves well to weapons damage.
Have attack pattern alpha increase weapons and weapon like ability's only, and then buff the damage for all those powers that do not involve guns, or weapon like things (thalaron is a weapon, vesta focused phaser is a weapon etc).
This whole debacle can be easily averted by giving scis their SCIENCE teeth back and giving engineers aceton beams that do not suck and warp plasma that can either detonate or at least hurts like a truck.
Make a clear cut of damage dealt by weapons and what affects that, and damage dealt by rending subspace a new a**hole and shoving some dood into it!
Comments
Actually... some of us 30Kers had recorded a faceroll BoK a couple days before the stream. One of the devs saw the video and was a bit shocked at how easy we had found it.
Even after the buff it's still easy, 2 or 3 high DPSers can carry a team through it.
Very good way of thinking.
well raw dps can nearly tear through anything, I wonder what would happen if they would increase damage resistance to plasma for most of the delta npc... would cause a lot of butt
hurt and ruin quite a few 20k+ dps builds.
But the problem is, the average dps for is is something like 7k, and that already on channels, pure queue pugs might be even lower.
20k+ builds are rare and expensive, even when you say "elite" content you don't make it for 1% of your consumer base, especial when its some sort of benchmark how every other elite will turn out in the future.
Actually I thought they said that elite was for 1% of their base. Everyone else could do Advanced.
Unless level 60 and the new shinies somehow quadruple the average pugs damage output, Advanced will be almost as empty as Elite.
^
Exactly why Borticus can't make the argument that more HP = more difficult, and saying that giving extra abilities to NPCs just gets the same results. It doesn't.
On the other hand, giving NPCs abilities that force players to think instead as players do in PvP would be more useful. Like it has been stated before, a science captain in DR is basically forced to go for DPS like everyone else because there is no real need for support roles in PvE.
No they can, they just need to get better. Elite should be for the 1%, Advanced for 49% and the rest can do standard until they get the resources to get better.
At least that's how it should work. No they can't right now, nor should they, but with time and effort they should be able to.
experience has shown that it wont take a lot of effort for players to be ready for Advanced. The problem is that some have a serious entitlement issues and refuse to adapt.
So very very true.
If you're talking to me I run a science vessel that's scored top in quite a few of the Elites, and I don't use FAW or TBR.
Here's the thing, they're not hard. They just have a ton of HPs and shields, and it's not consistant. One mission you'll see an assault cruiser with 160,000 hps and the very next one without a level up you'll see the exact same assault cruiser with close to a million.
Problem is the dps doesn't ramp up between the two, it stays consistant. ADvanced gets a bit harder now, but not by much if you know what you're doing... just more HPs.
And that's the point, the challenge isn't in the mission, it's in the HPs. The missions are the same damn thing we've been fighting for years now, they just tripled and quadrupled the HPs thinking that makes it challenging.
It doesn't, it makes it boring, and I "cheat". I tend to drop their shields more often then not and totally take them out of the equation. As a sci it's what we do. And literally I can drop their energy to zero, consistantly, just sit there, and wail away with mk XIII torps and grav wells and watch their HPs kind of sorta drop. I don't need to move, I don't need dp jack.
So I tried it as pure DPS sci and no fancy drain builds, and it's the same thing, except now I have to raise my impulse to 1/4 and just spin with them and keep them trapped in GWs and TBRs.
Do I drop it quicker then when in a T5U boat rocking MK XIIs? Sure. But the fact that HPs do not equate to challenge doesn't change.
And from my experience this is a red flag for a broken argument. What are we adapting to, an inevitably positive development (ie. change be always good, **** all y'all reasons) or a more abstract gameplay change with a recongizable and tangible impact on pacing and combat design. The latter of course and you need a bit more than mere self-inflating posturing to justify it.
1%, 49%, is this all we want out of a game, to separate people out into discrete, ego boosting chunks, so something as simple and [fundamentally] effortless as stubbornly plowing through it regardless of design can take the place of a more organic appreciation of gameplay?
That's assinine. The game can completely go to pot and so long as it maintains ranks within the population it satisfies your criteria for good design.
The problem here is simply that level 60 combat is inappropriately paced for STO's combat mechanics (as has been discussed). So too was the old difficulty settings but simply because you have too short combat on the one hand you cannot indefinitely justify increasing those kill times. You can go too far, and while that extreme may satisfy your own sense of entitlement (regarding what you think you should be feeling about performance in a video game) it can still utterly fail to achieve this product's goal of making mass entertainment.
NPC health is not adding difficutly, its not adding challenge, its just grinding down the same set of actions that you would apply normally through combat that makes NO apparent consideration for when that might start to get dull (ie. lose human interest). Mechanically speaking its a stupid move. Though the intention to add more space for STO combat mechanics to play out is admirable the way it has been balanced isn't (because it exceeds the ability of power management and ship maneuverring [ie. sto gameplay] to fill a given space of gameplay without repeating themselves beyond a given point of tolerability. That is to say, there's not enough stuff built within the structure of a game to adequately occupy an encounter as they are being balanced now.).
Though of course I have no worries about making it through any part of DR, playing through arduous bull**** is not my idea of a good time. It can be better structured, it can be better built (to more appropriately match available actions to the space they're asked to occupy), because this is a mechanical entity whose function can be appreciated in its own right.
Just a little less health is all we need and we'll have a better video game. That might make it more accessible, naturally, and that would be the worst thing in the world for you but making it more tolerable to more people probably isn't a bad thing for STO. In fact I think its just what cryptic wants and was trying to create by nixing distressingly short combat times. They just haven't hit the optimum yet.
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So many strawmen i'm having a hard believing you're responding to me and not some paranoid delusion in your mind.
I'll go over my points again:
1. the advanced queues will be accessible to everyone. anyone in a T5 ship and mk11/12 green/blue gear is able to get to 20k DPS easy. it's a matter of pilot skill, not gear. this has been my experience as someone who has written guides, shared many ship builds, and coached many pilots 1on1 to get them from less than 10k to over 20k and 30k DPS.
2. Adapting is as simple as using different tactics. example:
In all the ISA runs i've done so far i've been getting a consistent 35k DPS with a Recluse in the team. Today i adjusted my tactics and used different timings for my abilities and i hit 49k DPS in a team without a Recluse.
So just by me adapting to the new content i went from 35k DPS with Recluse buffs to 49k DPS without Recluse buffs.
nothing has changed on the ship except how i fly it.
3. Good players adapt.
Bad players waste time typing excuses on the forums.
I tend to agree with you in this case, to a degree. I had to totally revamp my build and how I did things in order to decrease my time in any given mission, which is a good thing. I upped my DPS a bit by cycling a few more skills I normally never use except as oh TRIBBLE buttons. So yes adapting is a good thing and people are going to have to adapt for the content.
But I see where duncan is coming from too. There's "force to adapt" and then theirs "forced to adapt and it's still boring as hell".
Currently I think we're in part two when it comes to the Vaudwaar. Now personally I love fighting the new Heirarchy ships. Increased HPs but not so many that a mission takes an hour and you never get touched. But they also have an increase in skills, some nasty skills at that. The Hierarchy are what forced me to adapt. Better hulll, more CC breakers, and some other things to counter what they had while upping my DPS to counter their increased Hull.
The Vaauduar... not so much. The only reason I needed to up my DPS is so I could actually destroy a ship before I fell asleep. I ignore the constrictors, they're boring, the only time I worry is when I see multiple of those Vaadwaar area cannon attacks coming at me, but any of my 5 hull buffs nullify that worry.
Same with the new Advanced queues. They're not harder you don't need to do anything fancy with them. Any point and click idiot with high end gear and can and do it. There's no skill in there, just pure unadulterated DPS. Step 1 get good gear. Step 2 point at target. Step 3 win.
So I don't mind adapting. What I mind is calling an arbitrarily huge HP and Shields numbers as challenging, and saying that adapting is simply making something long and boring something short and boring.
There is a rather compressive list of abilities/consoles/weapon types/and even ships that are now all but worthless because they won't provide you with the DPS needed to succeed in the game now, and that list is growing. The types of builds in order to succeed have become very limited, require minimal thought process on what you need(once you understand you need only DPS), and will require a half decent amount of dilithium and/or EC to do so.
I honestly have no issues with needing to spend the dilithium and/or EC in order to work your way up to be successful in more difficult content, that's only fair really, players need to adopt and work on their character. But it shouldn't be in a way that only certain builds or in this case one specific aspect of the game is required and everything else is secondary or worthless all together.
For example, if I want to make a Sci build that doesn't have great firepower but instead has great ways to slow down the enemy or reduce their power and disable some of their systems etc, I shouldn't feel punished for making that build vs. one that does all DPS. The DPS build will run through the content much faster and therefore will earn quicker rewards, also, with the new difficult queue I will effectively be an anchor to my team as I would not make the "DPS requirement". To add insult to injury, I would have spent close to the same amount of dilithium and/or EC as a DPSer.
Are you on drugs?
The most you can get out of an average player with mk11 blues or mk12 greens is 3-6-9k dps, depending on bad-average-good build.
And that is an OPTIMISTIC estimate. For average players, not bad ones.
9k used to be okey for elites, mind, but "easily 20k for everyone" is a lie, and you know it.
Stop lying.
I have seen too many rainbow cannon-beam-torpedo boats with tricobalts, quantums, tetryon cannons and antiprotons dual beams on one odyssey to believe your ridiculous claims.
yep, 10k is pretty much the top with greens. I ran a chel grett with mk12 green disruptors and XI green consoles. But this was on a engie char which had no problem maintaining power (without plasmonic leech).
All the 20k+ cruiser builds are pretty much romulan plasma builds with 2 piece borg weapon set and romulan space set + PL and what ever you want stacked on +% in plasma damage and running macros to keep everything up.
Problem is, none of the missions have another goal then kill stuff, everything is on a timer. So CC ing stuff doesn't do you any good.
The only mission where this is somewhat usefull would be CSE, where you can just keep the probes shut down, but you still lack the firepwower to get the gates down in a reasonable time.
As long as damage does the same job as any root or cc skill who needs those?
Funny thing sci captains where pretty powerful at launch, you could buff your sensor scan up to 140-150% damage debuff some made even more and GW wasn't caped at 1,2-1.4k dmg per tick, hell it was as powerful as the voth one.
Same for tyken rift, you could keep even npcs dry and dead in the water.
It back from a time when scis where actually buffers/debuffers.
I agree and that gets back to the problem at hand(or at least how I see it)by increasing difficult means just increase NPC HP, nothing more. Cryptic needs in some way, improve on the AI itself or at least give a few more abilities...it needs to be given a bone other than just, 'attack player and use available abilities ASAP'.
So lets say Cryptic could pull it off and make a player like NPC with player like abilities(would never happen, but hear me out). It's a Borg BOP for example. It sees a player over 10km on which it wishes to attack. It cloaks, speeds to the player, buffs up, de-cloaks and attacks and heals its shields and tried to focus on forward shield regain etc.
The dynamics of the game changes drastically. It's no longer of a matter of NPC with super HP sitting there doing almost nothing. You're now facing with something that has similar abilities as you do and a pure DPS build may not work as well anymore. You'll need to find a way to take away it's healing abilities, or reduce it, evade its attacks to avoid it's forward weapons, prevent it from cloaking again and fleeing etc etc.
This is just one example but you get the idea. It might be a little extreme also because it's highly unlikely Cryptic could make such an AI. But even if they could improve it slightly, like using abilities at more appropriate times rather than just use it when available, and be provided with at least a few more abilities.
What I see here isn't more difficult content IMO.
Just so everyone is clear, I did every mission up to this point on elite difficulty, using the same exact setup in the same exact ship for each one (my ship being an upgraded fleet galaxy with all fleet equipment and weapons). So, to start off, I've only encountered the borg, malon, kazon, and vadwuar.
1) I found the Borg to be about as difficult as they are in the alpha quadrant, which is not very unless they start swarming you. But even then I found tanking through them to be rather easy. Of course it takes some time to take them all out, but that is due to being a cruiser with little firepower. Still it didn't take very long.
2) The malon were actually more difficult than the Borg, at least as far as getting their hull down. I found their abilities to be an annoyance at best, nothing a proper setup designed for most occurances can't handle.
3) The kazon are a slightly different story from the other 2 species mentioned thus far. Surprisingly, they gave me more trouble than the others, but I suspect this to be more from their numbers and tetryon based weapons, which seemed to hit their proc more often than usual. It actually actually took quite some time to get through their shields, and about twice as long to get through the hulls of some of the larger ships. They also seemed more adept at redistributing their shield power than other NPCs I've come across.
4) And finally, the vadwuar. Let me start off by saying, WTF?!?! These guys are more like the Borg in hive onslaught elite than anything else. They gave me the most trouble of all the new enemies to date. They stripped my shields almost as fast as I could bring them up again. They nearly melted through my hull, and they tractored and disabled me so much I thought I was facing uber powered tholian/romulan hybrids. On top of that, they had some very tough shields and hulls. I don't think they were quite as tough as the malon, but they were formidable nonetheless. I think, had I not been using an upgraded cruiser, I would've been destroyed multiple times. It was almost as if they were designed to take down player escorts with the tactics and weapons they used.
Now, the point of this ananysis. Increasing the HP of an NPC to make it harder is only part of the equation. As proven with the malon and kazon, it becomes more of a chore to fight them, and its not very fun, especially when you have a whole bunch of abilities to use that you won't even need most of the time. This seems to be the most basic approach that cryptic uses, and while I can understand that it may be challenging for some tac and sci captains, eng captains will have little trouble tank I g through their damage, and yawning while they oh so slowly whittle down their opponents shields and hull.
This was not the case with the vadwuar, however. They not only had a very generous amount of HP and shields, but their firepower was astounding for an NPC of with that much defensive ability. Fighting them made me really work for it. I don't think I've ever had to try so hard just to stay alive. And it wasn't just due to their raw firepower. Whatever abilities or equipment they were using really made me have to stop and think about when and how I used mine. This is the type of enemy I want to face more often. Not just the vadwuar, but I'd like to see more enemies designed like that, enemies that really push me to improve and force me to make a real effort to defeat them.
An increase in HP is just the first step required to make space battles more fun. The extra HP makes it more difficult for escorts to instakill NPCs, but an increase in overall firepower is also needed, along with a few new abilities and bits of equipment to throw you for a loop and make you adjust your strategies during the fight. Also, there needs to be a more significant gap between difficultiy levels, but more because I'm sick of posts about players claiming things are too easy or too hard.
i have said a long time ago one quick fix is to bump up health 35% and make TAC CONSOLES HAVE DIMINISHING RETURNS come on bort and apa apo effect only beams cannon and torp damage ..say what you want but this will fix a ton of stuff real fast ....crunch the numbers you will see there is no other way to halt power creep dead in it tracks and thats with all the crazy traits and boffs sure we will still put out heavy damage but the OMFG WTF number will dissapear
They wanted me to prove my worth. I was thinking, "Fine, no problem."
They brought out a Voth battleship [something like that, I can't remember the exact name for it].
First off, it's got more HP than the Vaadwaur does (300 and something for the Voth compared to 200 and something for the Vaadwaur); I thought the VAADWAUR were supposed to be the [if you'll pardon the mixing of series with this term] "Big Bad" of the expansion.
Secondly, the first time I tried to prove myself to the Hierarchy, it was going well. I even had The Doctor's assistance and he got the ship down to about 25%. Then, out of NOWHERE, the ship jumps back up to 100%!
Add that to the fact that, for whatever reason, I was receiving Ship Injuries...on Normal Difficulty! :mad:
It got to the point where I just said, "TRIBBLE it" and aborted the mission.
Fact of the matter is I was eager to try this mission to see if I could kill the Vaadwaur since I've got my new weapons and the like. I did, but if every other alliance (Harry, The Doctor, Neelix, Seven of Nine) is going to result in a battle, I wouldn't try it again and I'm sure a lot of other people feel the same way.
Warp plasma, Grav well, tykens, charged particles, tachyon, tractors should all deal sufficient damage to make engineers and scis a force to recon with in pve, even if they are flying archetypical ships that do not lend themselves well to weapons damage.
Have attack pattern alpha increase weapons and weapon like ability's only, and then buff the damage for all those powers that do not involve guns, or weapon like things (thalaron is a weapon, vesta focused phaser is a weapon etc).
This whole debacle can be easily averted by giving scis their SCIENCE teeth back and giving engineers aceton beams that do not suck and warp plasma that can either detonate or at least hurts like a truck.
Make a clear cut of damage dealt by weapons and what affects that, and damage dealt by rending subspace a new a**hole and shoving some dood into it!