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Difficulty Feedback (was "Terrible Elite Mode")

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  • edited October 2014
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  • pigeonofclaypigeonofclay Member Posts: 142 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Will queues become more sparsely populated as people decide not to waste their time? It was hard enough getting one started previously. Now...

    *looks at the old enemy contacts in sector space* I wonder... :cool:
  • edited October 2014
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  • oneratsonerats Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    I kinda gotta laugh at people saying they lost in Fleet Alert. I'll grant you that ISE (or rather ISA now.. blargh) is retardedly difficult - but mainly due to the mechanics of the fight not being balanced to the new HP levels and the loss of the optional leading to instant loss of the fight. In terms of actual combat, the damage and HP of the foes is fairly perfectly balanced to my T5-U Fleet Assault Cruiser that pulls around 20-25k dps. I'm well balanced in terms of offense and defense, and so long as I'm careful I will stay alive (while tanking every damn thing in the place as an Aux2Batt FAW cruiser..). It's a challenge, but not an obscenely difficult one. Just enough to keep me on the edge of my seat.. at level 50. With MK XIII.

    Fleet Alert though? Went in there with my 23k, a fleet member's 15k, and pugs doing 10, 5, and 2. We pulled it off easily. There wasn't ever any real danger to my boat, and I was taking most of the fire. The vast majority of the problem (aside from HP bars and mechanics not being balanced to each other), is that very, very few players actually know how to play the game. They set up terrible ships, and go into an advanced encounters expecting to get by with one tenth of what they're actually capable of. And I'm not talking massive P2Win head either.. my rommy can pull 16k in an average run in a scimitar with bloody mk xi green arrays and tac consoles.

    Granted, my view is a little skewed. If I'm in a run, it's already being carried by a very high dps ship. I don't see those runs where everyone is doing 5k dps each. I can't imagine a run like that ending well. Which is exactly what should happen. Normals exist for those types. Advanced and elite are for those trying to learn and improve, something very few seem to do - mainly because the game makes it very hard to know what is good, and also because there has been little reason to improve when everything is clearable in whites doing 5k or less.

    Not trying to be elitist or anything like that. I'm just putting it out there that many of the changes were very necessary, and that at least of few of the supposedly impossible queues are actually quite doable with a ship that's set up properly. If you're packing torps fore and aft, single cannons fore, and beam banks aft.. with most of your dps coming from gravity well 1, then yeah.. you'll have trouble.
  • gorrbagggorrbagg Member Posts: 80 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    onerats wrote: »
    I kinda gotta laugh at people saying they lost in Fleet Alert. I'll grant you that ISE (or rather ISA now.. blargh) is retardedly difficult - but mainly due to the mechanics of the fight not being balanced to the new HP levels and the loss of the optional leading to instant loss of the fight. In terms of actual combat, the damage and HP of the foes is fairly perfectly balanced to my T5-U Fleet Assault Cruiser that pulls around 20-25k dps. I'm well balanced in terms of offense and defense, and so long as I'm careful I will stay alive (while tanking every damn thing in the place as an Aux2Batt FAW cruiser..). It's a challenge, but not an obscenely difficult one. Just enough to keep me on the edge of my seat.. at level 50. With MK XIII.

    Fleet Alert though? Went in there with my 23k, a fleet member's 15k, and pugs doing 10, 5, and 2. We pulled it off easily. There wasn't ever any real danger to my boat, and I was taking most of the fire. The vast majority of the problem (aside from HP bars and mechanics not being balanced to each other), is that very, very few players actually know how to play the game. They set up terrible ships, and go into an advanced encounters expecting to get by with one tenth of what they're actually capable of. And I'm not talking massive P2Win head either.. my rommy can pull 16k in an average run in a scimitar with bloody mk xi green arrays and tac consoles.

    Granted, my view is a little skewed. If I'm in a run, it's already being carried by a very high dps ship. I don't see those runs where everyone is doing 5k dps each. I can't imagine a run like that ending well. Which is exactly what should happen. Normals exist for those types. Advanced and elite are for those trying to learn and improve, something very few seem to do - mainly because the game makes it very hard to know what is good, and also because there has been little reason to improve when everything is clearable in whites doing 5k or less.

    Not trying to be elitist or anything like that. I'm just putting it out there that many of the changes were very necessary, and that at least of few of the supposedly impossible queues are actually quite doable with a ship that's set up properly. If you're packing torps fore and aft, single cannons fore, and beam banks aft.. with most of your dps coming from gravity well 1, then yeah.. you'll have trouble.

    You are no longer allowed to speak here sir as you use reason and that is unacceptable on these forumns!
  • aelfwin1aelfwin1 Member Posts: 2,896 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    darkdog13 wrote: »
    It really has become more obvious since season 7 (where they nerfed alot of dilithium farming and doffing for dilithium) nerfs to estf dilithium i remember getting nearly 2k per run plus chances for tokens you could turn in for even more sure they took longer then these days but not by too much. R&D system where if you want to get to even level 15 without paying to skip the timegate you have to wait 4 months and for level 20 a year.

    And now a new upgrade gear dilithium sink and pay to upgrade tier 5 ships or buy new tier 6 ships on top of another dilithium nerf to Stf which now really make them a waste of time if your after dilithium.

    From a spreadsheet i looked at for the cost of upgrading gear to take you ship from tier 12 rares to tier 14 is gonna cost you 356,000 dilithium and 331 superior tech upgrades (at the current exchange price of around 1 million per you gonna need nearly 330 million unless you craft them yourself. That figure assumes that you don't even skip the timegates.

    This expansion is such a money obvious money grab i can't see how anyone could defend them after this.

    Nice summery .

    STO "end game" has become the place for folks who have the billions of Dil , the hundreds of millions of EC and thousands of Lobi .

    The rest can look for the 'EXIT' sign ... .
  • betayuyabetayuya Member Posts: 1,059 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    I have not played DR yet, and already this kinda post scares the *** out of me :S lol

    #1 are the lockboxes epic cash cow?

    #2 are the fees even higher? (crafting/upgrades/gothas)

    #3 what is the win % in normals? Ive been known to throw down a mean punch and a clean getaway from time to time lol

    #4 is STO worth playing now? or are we seeing post launch rough edges?
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  • longasclongasc Member Posts: 490
    edited October 2014
    It's not too hard, you are just too weak. Bad builds and lack of knowledge and mechanics no longer work on ADVANCED or ELITE and that is absolutely okay.

    Damn. So hard to swallow that.. :D
  • mustrumridcully0mustrumridcully0 Member Posts: 12,963 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    We did warn you that Elite is not for everyone. Its pretty extreme. Seriously, most players should not be able to do it.

    But please note, that have already had some pretty well organized fleets blazing through Elite with apparent ease. It kinda blows me away honestly. We have a lot of diversity on skill in STO, so finding the right balance point may take time. We want to make a real challenge for our top players, so if players are succeeding easily (and they are), expect it to probably get harder.

    Is it just skill, or is it also that you have too many underpowered abilities and ships? Sure, skill helps finding the right tools, but I think it's a problem if there are too many "traps" and too many must-haves.

    If you do your levelling missions, you'll likely have a TRIBBLE mixture of gear and BO abilities. And you experienced nothing to teach you that it is bad.
    Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
  • rickpaaarickpaaa Member Posts: 637 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Fleet Assault Cruiser T5 U?

    That cruiser may be just the thing, because you can park it safely, or broadside total beams. A destroyer or escort is only good while keeping the prey in the narrow arc. So the Mat'Ha with both Counter Command space sets, two elite and two advanced fleet DHCs, and a bio molecular torpedo up front. cutting beam and bio disruptor turret in back backed with 5 fleet tac consoles is a rather weak setup. I am thinking a 15 turn rate and fleet RCS are not enough, there is too much time outside of my arc for those 500k hull BoPs. The set up makes for a great evasion tank, but park and fire is what it takes to win this content.

    Oh... that torpedo up front. I love a HY3 coup de grace plus the CC set bonus, but I am aware that total cannons are what the really cool kids run.

    So onerats, do you run dual beams, or beam arrays on that Assault Cruiser with A2B & FAW? If I am going to make this stupid thread, I might as well try to learn something. Did Cryptic decide not to nerf you when the rest of us got hammered?

    onerats wrote: »
    IFleet Alert though? Went in there with my 23k, a fleet member's 15k, and pugs doing 10, 5, and 2. We pulled it off easily.
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    Member since December 2009


  • moonshadowdarkmoonshadowdark Member Posts: 1,899 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    nxoo1 wrote: »
    If something is not broke, don't try and fix it. Change should enhance the overall gaming experience not frak the whole thing up. Just because someone is not satisified with service that they have paid for does not mean that they are a better or worse player then anyone else. There is not one person who would not return a faulty piece of equipment to the store they bought it from or return a bad meal to the kitchen that served it. My friends we have just been served a mud pie, and when someone has a legit comment what happens? They are accused of not being skillfull enough and that they are whining like a child. A surgeon is skillfull, a military sniper is skillfull ... this my friends is a computer game about a fantasy sci-fi world and yes there should be an "I frakkin Win button".

    Some people play this game to escape and unwind from a real world that is scary, and yes there is room at the table for you power players and your egos, so if sci-fi writers can bring Voyager back from the Gamma Quadrant then Cryptic writers and programmers should be able to let us in on that kind of fantasy winning as well. As it is, the game I knew on 10/14 is gone and something vastly different has taken its place. I will continue to play but please do not take my money and whiz down my back and say it's rain.

    Generally, yeah, when people complain about the difficulty of a game, it is because they got a slap of reality and learned they are terrible.

    And no, the game should not give you an "I frakkin Win" button because then you get accustomed to winning and, as you so eloquently showed us, crumble under the prospect of using actual skill and whine like babies.

    No one is whizing on your back. That's the gaping hole where your spine should be collapsing while that whiz from your own bladder spews down your pant leg at the thought that the Kazon might be coming for you.

    Delta isn't for the weak. Either adapt and get some skill or stay in the Beta Quadrant with the Tribbles and hide like cowards.

    Your choice.

    *hops in Oddy and warps out to fight the Vaadwuar*
    "A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP"

    -Leonard Nimoy, RIP
  • rickpaaarickpaaa Member Posts: 637 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    One more thing that I am taking away from this. This is the end of PUGs. I have always done PUGs, and I PUGed the fails. Did a nice normal new Borg STF with fleet mates. It seemed much like an old elite in difficulty, and was pretty easy.

    The old content on elite, except ground and The Hive... was easy. Even Cure Found Elite! :D


    Again my point. New purchases were made so I could be weaker.
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  • cncshadecncshade Member Posts: 30 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    semalda226 wrote: »
    Ok i knew that a beefing of STFs was coming but this is crazy! ran a 5-man fleet ISA we got to the tac cube with 1:12 left and hadnt even scratched the gateway and the tac cube popped BFAW and wiped our whole team! WTF! i could see this in Elite but Advanced? OMG! I go on to note we had 3 scimitars a Scryer and a Palisade. This may wanna be rethought cryptic.

    The type of ships you have don't matter the builds do.
  • shadowwraith77shadowwraith77 Member Posts: 6,395 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Well therein lies the problem, advanced and elite stfs are not meant for low dps teams, it's fine to have some lower dps team mates if they are providing alternative support, such as soaking up damage and healing, or debuffing and holding in grav wells, but to send an entire team of low dps players into the most challenging event in the game is simply stupid.

    You are right, they aren't meant for low dps teams, in fact they aren't even meant for teams who already exceeded the old elites by a factor of x2 or, even x3, heck even x4 for that matter.

    No they are meant for people who are only focused on the highest possible dps in this game, which is something the vast majority of player's are not really interested in.

    PUG groups, are not meant to naturally perform at these levels and, now they cannot even accomplish advanced with any degree of 25% surety.

    It completely robs the diversity out of the game and, drives off potential customers, is all it is doing really.
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    Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!

  • shadowwraith77shadowwraith77 Member Posts: 6,395 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    cncshade wrote: »
    The type of ships you have don't matter the builds do.

    Tell that to the failaxy or, any other number of crutch requiring ships!
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    Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!

  • johnstewardjohnsteward Member Posts: 1,073 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    If its too hard switch to normal. There is no reason to complain about something being to hard when you can play on a lower setting. Leave the harder stuff to those who can do. The only reason then for still crying about it would be to get cryptic to increase rewards on normal and advanced.
  • gpgtxgpgtx Member Posts: 1,579 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    because there is no other way to get the higher grade R&D mats or rep specific items for the rep gear


    but no there is no reason to play advance


    i do not care how hard they make elite they can make it so you die 1 second after warp in but at least make advance on par to how the old elite was
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  • shadowwraith77shadowwraith77 Member Posts: 6,395 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    trelane87 wrote: »
    I'd be curious to see the builds and ships these so called 'top players' were using... I can guess they were all tacs and in escorts and beam boats, this mean I should just throw out all my characters that aren't tacs and mothball all my science ships? What point is there being a healer or a drainboat? The rewards for queues suck now, a lot of things are bugged and laggy, and to be honest I'd rather just be more of a casual player now then really put any more effort into the game. Games need to be fun and have some kind of goal... right now these queues aren't fun, and if the only goal in this game is to do more damage than everyone else and then rub this fact into the faces of the 95% of people that can't make that mark then I guess this really isn't a Star Trek game because that's not what Trek is about...

    I am using one of these supposed 25k builds and, granted I do not have everything as far as gear listed but, still it only nets around 13k and, imo is quite literally the most boring build.

    Still gets fed its butt in advanced, because it focuses to much on dps, with little survivability in the way of heals.

    So, even being slightly behind the average dps required for advanced, it is quite literally imo not fun to play, no challenge other than beating on way overboard bags of hp.

    The only thing they did do right, was actually change the strategy involved and, added some changes to the optionals requirements, other than that the TRIBBLE literally sucks.
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    Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!

  • prierinprierin Member Posts: 7 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Erp - I haven't lowered my setting to advanced yet... although, I may leave it on elite for episodes, as I am having success there, but will def NOT join an elite STF quiet yet...
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  • darkssidebobdarkssidebob Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Only did one STF last night which was 'Cure found', did it on advance because I was under the impression the adv was essentially old elite with a few changes + compulsory objectives, 4 eng + sci capt no tac's in the drop which shouldn't off been much of problem just meant it would be a bit slower.

    Usually plan that everyone seems to do we split 2/2 with 1 killing borg as they spawn..........this happened for about 30seconds before we were all defending kang against BOP's with stupid amount of HP none of us could kill these things fast enough to focus on the cubes, failed, waste of time. The one cube we did kill died fast :confused: but not the BOP only a fraction of the size.

    I don't know what gear the rest of the group had but from the affects on the ships all of us had rep gear at least, I don't have access to fleet gear as of this moment but my stuff is all mk12 /rep and sure everyone else did as well.

    The whole thing in the end felt pointless, it wasn't hard at all it was frustrating boring and with the reduced rewards it, again, its completely pointless.

    I'm sure once I can be bothered to spending silly amounts of time getting gold gear (which tbh i don't plan to do because I have no interest in doing pvp or the super hard stuff which at this stage is adv :/ )

    Rant over bla bla bla.
  • smokeybacon90smokeybacon90 Member Posts: 2,252 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Well therein lies the problem, advanced and elite stfs are not meant for low dps teams, it's fine to have some lower dps team mates if they are providing alternative support, such as soaking up damage and healing, or debuffing and holding in grav wells, but to send an entire team of low dps players into the most challenging event in the game is simply stupid.

    It should be equally stupid to send an entire team of ships devoid of any crowd control sci powers, or an entire team of ships with very little tanking and healing capability.

    Except it's not, because the devs' idea of increasing difficulty is apparently just to throw in a huge DPS check and forget about every other mechanic.

    Also, "soaking up damage", a novel idea if threat generation worked how it should.
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  • nightkennightken Member Posts: 2,824 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    so I made a good choice just hoping in my breen cruiser I spent 10 minute throwing together last night.and not upgrading any gear?

    if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
  • shadowwraith77shadowwraith77 Member Posts: 6,395 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    If its too hard switch to normal. There is no reason to complain about something being to hard when you can play on a lower setting. Leave the harder stuff to those who can do. The only reason then for still crying about it would be to get cryptic to increase rewards on normal and advanced.

    Being at a level equivalent to X2-X4 over the old elites, should be technically on par with something named advanced for, which could be defined as mid-par.

    But, instead requires even greater than that, eliminating all but maybe 1-2 possible builds per ship and, this doesn't account for every ship in game rated tier4-5.

    It eliminates diversity of builds, it promotes frustration to the majority of player's and, quite honestly does little to improve the quality of game experience for, the people who are new or, really don't want to have to play such a narrow minded dps arms race.
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    Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!

  • nesomumi2nesomumi2 Member Posts: 359 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    rickpaaa wrote: »
    Many of us have paid over $100 for the Delta Pack, and as you can see on the forums, our first experiences with our new tier 6 ships, and tier 5 upgrades is failure after failure. Even in regular fleet alerts! Please do go ahead and make elite truly elite, but let those of us who were happy playing STO up to now have a decent shot at advanced content just like we did until yesterday with elite content.

    I hope PvE is adjusted with an emergency patch very soon. No one wants to pay to lose. Nobody!

    bought the pack, driving the guardian, sci. character, 10k dps, no problems whit the missions or stf. dont know what are you talking about.
  • cbrjwrrcbrjwrr Member Posts: 2,782 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    rickpaaa wrote: »
    Fleet Assault Cruiser T5 U?

    That cruiser may be just the thing, because you can park it safely, or broadside total beams. A destroyer or escort is only good while keeping the prey in the narrow arc. So the Mat'Ha with both Counter Command space sets, two elite and two advanced fleet DHCs, and a bio molecular torpedo up front. cutting beam and bio disruptor turret in back backed with 5 fleet tac consoles is a rather weak setup. I am thinking a 15 turn rate and fleet RCS are not enough, there is too much time outside of my arc for those 500k hull BoPs. The set up makes for a great evasion tank, but park and fire is what it takes to win this content.

    Oh... that torpedo up front. I love a HY3 coup de grace plus the CC set bonus, but I am aware that total cannons are what the really cool kids run.

    So onerats, do you run dual beams, or beam arrays on that Assault Cruiser with A2B & FAW? If I am going to make this stupid thread, I might as well try to learn something. Did Cryptic decide not to nerf you when the rest of us got hammered?

    TBH, an FACR-U isn't worth it. As a Tac Cruiser it is beaten by Avenger and Oddy, and matched by the Excelsior and Guardian. (especially Fleet Guardian when it arrives)


    Assuming you have it as you talk about buying the pack, for a Guardian DR throws a curve ball here, but look up a decent A2B FACR build and copy it, the two ships are close enough to make it work. (the higher DPS but fragile non-A2B builds cant be done on a Guardian, not enough Tac Boff slots, but you do gain a Lt. Cm. Sci, so slot a Grav Well there for crowd control)
  • grayfoxjamesgrayfoxjames Member Posts: 1,516 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Have a think about what you wrote and then wonder if you could do it another way, here's a hint, the Kang now has 3.5 million hit points ;)

    I did notice that as well which is why I broke off from the group and went to kill a whole side by myself.

    Still for the optional it means Kang can't go below 2.6 million. It seems the only builds that matter now are massive DPS builds. My Oddy won't and didn't die but with 8,000 DPS (that was my old DPS, I don't know exact numbers on what it is now with Mk XIV gear) it was slow in killing things in Advanced.

    I'm not level 60 yet but do have T5U Oddy with full Mk XIV fleet gear...could reaching level 60 be that much more of a game changer?
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  • crappynamerulescrappynamerules Member Posts: 146 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    thecosmic1 wrote: »
    I am not blowing smoke on anything. My point still stands. The Content can still be played using existing T5 ships - you simply cannot do it on Advanced unless you are marginally skilled. On Elite you need to have the best gear and ships available to you - which was made clear even in the Podcasts. But that is not stopping anyone from doing it even on Regular difficulty while they get better.

    You need to play on advanced or better to get a lot of that best gear. No purple mats, damn near no neural processors, and much more limited avenues for the neural processor equivalents.

    What's funny to me, as that the episode content actually did start to provide some real gameplay difficulty. I've gotten up to the vaadwaur, and they actually start to act like they have strategies. The episode stuff is actually much more fun than the new queue and the revamped "slightly harder" old queues.
  • rickpaaarickpaaa Member Posts: 637 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    The Guardian is set up, and looks great. I was just all excited about the stupid Mat'Ha. Could the day of Escorts Online be over? I have yet to see a happy post by an escort/raider/destroyer captain... T5U or T6. I better look some more.
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  • eldarion79eldarion79 Member Posts: 1,679 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    rickpaaa wrote: »
    The Guardian is set up, and looks great. I was just all excited about the stupid Mat'Ha. Could the day of Escorts Online be over? I have yet to see a happy post by an escort/raider/destroyer captain... T5U or T6. I better look some more.

    Given that they are so few at the moment, I would say patience. It is still Escorts Online, just need to re-figure out those builds once again.
  • seansamurai1seansamurai1 Member Posts: 634 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    I assume people are forgetting that fleet red alert was made to be inclusive of lower ranked players.
    The one I did last night was way beyond sensible.
    A full fleet team of non noobs (2 being PvPers in well spec' ships) yet even the smallest, weakest of the enemy was hitting 350k-400k hulls.
    Each and every ship required focus fire, thus slowing the run and running out of time.
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