We can't do that anymore. Good players can beat it together, but they can't carry the weaker players now. This is extremely bad for communities like ours. It forces the good players to retreat behind the walls of the DPS channels while the weak players go to pug hell, with its demeaning rewards.
Geko, you guys just don't seem to get it.
*echoes above statement*
Advance STFs are now being used by experienced and inexperienced players. As a result of the slightly higher rewards, while also the abandoned norm stfs, new players currently have no choice in playing advanced. Experienced players are having a hard time teaching and progressing, for the advanced stfs do not anticipate the influx of new players.
So, when veteran players are confronted with low rewards, due to the failure of advanced stfs, the end result creates a sense of frustration. Do we play for the low rewards? Do we abandon new players entirely? Do we abandon STFs entirely? Its a conundrum.
Second, the reward system is not equal to the time invested into stfs.
How I would have handled the rewards:
Normal = 650 dilithium + 150 Marks
Advanced = 1,200 dilithium + 250 Marks + 1-5 Processors
Elite = 1,800 dilithium + 400 Marks + 3-6 Processors
If the reward system is boosted, while the difficulty settings are slightly lowered, players will feel a sense of accomplishment and achievement. New and veteran players will be enticed by the normal and advanced queues.
Now, Advanced and Norm queues should not have time limits for completing the main mission. While I can understand why they may be used in Elite stfs, the presence of the overall mission timers can cause new players to get anxious. Frustration builds when things instant fail.
Another note... When people play through missions, they do so to reach the end battle. If a mission fails to reach the end, due to a timer hitting zero, players will end up moving onto other missions. People want to feel a sense of accomplishment.
Low rewards + Not being able to completing a mission = Not playing the mission.
I knew this new difficulty was coming but it's very poorly done and without properly balanced endgames queues to do, STO will die fast as players just leave. Normal should be a basic, low reward mode that helps teach new players how to do the mission and test out/starting on new endgame builds.
Advanced should be what the old Elite was. For proven players who have got solid builds, understand the game dynamics but aren't DPS monsters. Elite should be what it is now - nightmare mode for true highend players.
All this has done is make the queues unplayable. New players will never get anywhere with such intense difficulty and even the decent players have hit a total brickwall. Disasterous balancing. Cryptic want this fixed within the next two weeks or DR will be flopping hard once players are done with the new story content.
We used to run many, many STFs every day. Perhaps we were running them faster than Cryptic intended, but we're not a DPS channel, and our teams often mixed players with the full range of skill. The better players could carry the weaker players and it was all good because everyone had fun and got a reward that allowed them to advance and improve.
We can't do that anymore. Good players can beat it together, but they can't carry the weaker players now. This is extremely bad for communities like ours. It forces the good players to retreat behind the walls of the DPS channels while the weak players go to pug hell, with its demeaning rewards.
Actually my problem isn't with the difficulty itself. My issue is with how the queues deal with the difficulty.
This is all exactly true. And very important.
Now, look outside the queue for the worst case scenario. Check this screenshot. Notice what mission, what enemy, and how many HP. How is this supposed to be winnable?
Normal is fine, but Advanced is truly insane - nothing close to the old Elite! Advanced should be a challenge for good T5 ship builds but do-able.
I don't mind a challenge, but please take Advanced down close to what the old Elite was.
Make the new Elite mode be the Nightmare mode.
Star Trek Battles Channel - Play Star Trek like they did in the series!Avatar: pinterest-com/pin/14003448816884219Are you sure it isn't time for a "colorful metaphor"? --Spock in 'The Voyage Home' SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.
Can't earn dilithium with STF's in any reasonable quantites so i'd better be in battlezone all day long and they're boring and low on DPM (dilithium per minute) because of camper overload
Can't advance reputation because marks given on basic level are what you'd give to a beggar
Can't earn materials for R&D (because even if i could have a chance to finish an advanced STF, so many players quit half-way through that it becomes impossible)
Can't craft to earn EC
So what exactly is left here? Why not just terminate free to play and be done with it because that is the goal from what we get after this expansion.
I call shenanigans on everything here.
Do one ONE Borg disconnected normal, boom 85 marks. Before you hit tier 5 you'll have 700 extra unless you waste them on the hourly rep project. Then you claim tier 5 and get 500 more. If you're casual why are you grinding? Get 5 daily bonus boxes instead of running the same thing 5 times. Use unwanted ones for dilithium. Which leads to the next item.
There are many ways to earn dil, see the vast number of threads asking for the refining cap to be increased to get some ideas how. Of all the methods, exactly one has been nerfed, all the rest are unchanged.
R&d materials can be earned in missions, doffing, via the academy mission, and via normal queues. For doffing, try the sphere for the double reward missions, and especially focus on the "artifact" explore and marauding missions, these give components and purples far more often and you use three doffs for higher crit rates. All of these but the normal queue boxes have a chance for purple mats, but even without that, you can also sell or use the greens and blues and buy the purples you need. Which gets to my next point.
Get crafting to 2. Make engineering and science rank 2 consoles. Sell the lucky ones with opposite mods (sci console with engineering mod, etc). Get crafting to rank 5, make the components people need for crafting upgrade kits. Get crafting to rank 10, make blue upgrade kits. Get crafting to rank 15 make aegis sets and that tr###b gun. Profit.
Or skip to the profit and just sell crafting mats without using them.
Then you'd just have empty queues and people who want to do elite waiting for hours for enough people to join. This game is about resources and what you can do with them and i've already seen Radiogenic particle price quadruple in two days because new Crystaline Catastrophe Advanced is unwinable even with 6 DPS buster T5-U ships, i don't know what kind of ship or new skills would be necessary for the Elite version.
The new difficulty for STFs is pure evil. Ending Rh'ihho station and Infected: The conduit because optional goals haven't been met is a thing for Elite not Advanced. Now it's impossible to finish half of the "Advanced" STF's and many people, including myself, won't play along.
...
I have spent certain amount of real money and a lot of play time to obtain the TR-116B rifle that has been made completly useless by this expansion.
I'm going to disagree with you on this one; the TR-116B is not made useless by DR. Just the opposite - the TR-116B is now MANDATORY for Borg ground elites and DRSA. I took a team through DRSA last night and we got all six engineers with only a few seconds to spare. Every member of the team had a 116B. I couldn't imagine getting it without a full TR-116B team.
Now, Advanced and Norm queues should not have time limits for completing the main mission. While I can understand why they may be used in Elite stfs, the presence of the overall mission timers can cause new players to get anxious. Frustration builds when things instant fail.
And this is what my issue with DRSA and BDA is: the "optionals"/"timers". They are entirely too low. A pug that knows what its doing; even if not properly geared, should have a strong chance to beat the mission and obtain the Advanced VR R&D material, the APC/BNP/VCI/II token, and a token amount of marks. Right now, the timers and automatic failures are too unforgiving. I don't think that's a good system for advanced.
I want all these failure conditions and tight timelines in Elite. I love the feeling of winning by a second or two. That's fun! The issue I have with it being in Advanced is that in Advanced; I want a challenge that can be reliably farmed for materials so I can have a chance in Elite. Right now, that doesn't exist. And thus when an advanced queue fails, I and other experienced players get frustrated and it tends to leave an overall worse player experience.
,,Low rewards + Not being able to completing a mission = Not playing the mission."
How about... good rewards + not being able to complete? I wonder what happened if we had the best rewards reserved for those missions. Im pretty sure, people still would be complaining about how they cant get the top-end gear, because their current gear doesnt allow it.
Tbh, you dont need that much gear to do most of the missions, especially advanced clearly can be done.
People just dont adept because they never were forced into a mindset of... "Oh my gawd, we are getting obliterated... how can we possibly beat this?!"
instead of "oh, i want to fly this and that and equip torpedos all over the place coZ them shiny"
It might not be the "mah playstyle approach" but thats what we need to establish real "endgame". Unless somehow everything would become balanced
I want to fly the mission, and do whats required to get the job done. Do i like the Scimitar? No. Is it the best ship currently? Yes.
Get your stuff together and go beat the STFs, they are a challenge, not a place to farm dilithium at.
We might need more incentive though to make the average player think about their builds outside the box of:,, i feel like this build should work! And if it doesnt... I ... I will go to the forums and tell everyone what an horrible job they did balancing!"
Thats just what I know what works, there might be another system though.
best regards
RyanSTO
No Win Scenario 2 Men - DPS Prime
Oh please, do share how to earn 15x Argonite gas needed for ONE cannon weapon with the methods described above, i'd really like to know what am i not doing right.
The fast way is to sell other stuff and buy them.
The casual way is to get a pair of rom-kdf alts and run 3 or 4 marauding "plunder artifact" missions the one explore ruins/artifact mission that nearly always up on the new Romulus command, two assist with r&d materials (ROM command & qonos), plus as many explore artifact and spire sci and explore dual mat missions as you can find (one sector north of qonos and Regulus are good, my favorite area is near ds9 and in the three explore clusters there).
I had been pulling between 3 and 12 purple mats a day of random types from two characters combined. Not counting advanced queue boxes which I've stopped opening and am now just selling from my stockpile. That's fast enough for me. Currently I spend more time in the tailor than playing so most of my earning is floored but I did get 3 plekton yesterday.
Edit: be sure to have a purple astrometric doff on active duty with the bonus r&d mat special. That helps more with blues than purps, but it adds up.
Edit the edit: I never looked how many were needed to craft, I just saw prices and sold my mats as I earned them while stockpiling a few for later. Wow 15 is nuts o.o; no wonder I'm earning a ton of ec... Imma start undercutting more, that rough on peeps using them.
A normal frigate has 30k hp
An advanced frigate has 66k hp
An elite frigate has 76k hp
I see this as a problem
The jump from I'm a casual, for fun fluffy bunny difficulty to average is an extra 120%. The difference between average and best of the best is an extra 13%?!? Really? Whoever thought this scaling made sense needs to be fire...right now because they obviously doesn't have a brain. For this player base, if you reversed it, it could possibly make sense...but yeah...this scaling is silly stupid. This is irrespective of the 51-60 scaling issue.
Its worse than that. Go replay an early mission. I posted a screenshot from the federation mission shariens swords of a ddridex with 303,000 HP.
I agree with most posts we say wait a few weeks for players to upgrade their gear and, more importantly, adjust their play style. I haven't started DR yet as i just started my 2nd toon with all of the new crafting and upgrade systems in place. I have in the past avoided higher difficulties because it was just too tedious and boring.
The only difference between fighting a ship on normal and killing them in 5 seconds and playing the same enemy on elite and killing them in 5 minutes is time. I understand upping NPC HP and shields because a player can virtually keep their shields up indefinitely (unless you are mobbed).
Saying that I have decided to play on advanced after DR and, maybe it's just me, but its seems like damage output from the NPCs isn't scaled that much higher and not comparable with the increase of HP. I would suggest going in the other direction. Scale down the HP/shields but increase the damage output. Then give NPC's access to defensive abilities.
This way a battle can last a few seconds either way (if an NPC gets a lucky shot or if i do) or it can last a few minutes if its a stale mate. The one way I can think of how to implement this is adaptable AI. So as you progress the AI will outfit their ship to counter how you destroyed the last batch. And you somewhat have this in place already. I've used an attack run where I use a tachyon beam with target shields III and a barage of torpedos with sensor scan and analysis along with attack pattern alpha. Boom your dead or near death. After a few runs I've seen NPC's put all of their shield strength to the shield thats facing me being able to survive the attack. It looks like they are using Tac Team but no ability icon shows up for their character. So they already use defensive abilities and have some AI, you've just kind of hidden it from us.
My personal suggestion, I've always thought it would be interesting to have ship injuries occur during battle rather than after being destroyed. That could also force us as players to be more cautious during battle.
I just want to be able to beat an opponent in a timely fashion if I choose the right tactic and surprise them with it. But when its 90k HP time and again all the time from little dinky ships to behemoths its not hard...it's boring. I just fly around in circles with beam weapons in auto. That's less fun to me than one shotting NPC's.
At least if I one shot an NPC I can continue on with what I was doing.
EDIT: This isn't really a Cryptic problem, this is a programming in general problem with games. The only game I've every played where the AI was competitive and the difficultly was fun was Halo. Every other game i've played is always the same. Normal is a cake walk and then then next level of difficultly is ridiculous.
game difficulty is fine looks like im now lvl 55 and advance stfs are not so hard as they used to be when was lvl 50 only thing which should changes is hp of spheres they got way to much hp
Getting to level 60 and gearing up to mk xiv golds all around is not gonna multiply your DPS by 10. In fact, the 50-60 transition in DPS is probably going to be SMALLER than any of the other 10 level rank transitions. This is due to the fact that previous increases saw new ships with much more equipment slots and bridge officer stations. The t5-t5u/t6 difference is nowhere near that drastic. Also, the stated intent of the advanced queues was in fact not to be for top of the line ships, builds, equips, and players. That was the stated job of the new elite queues. Advanced was supposed to be a close approximation to the original elite. It's not even remotely close. It's giant HP sacks that you can't PUG because if one or two people don't make the DPS cut, you fail. Not because the opponents are too hard, or some strategy wasn't followed, it's because the entire team needs to maintain a high minimum DPS or you lose. There are strategies like the 10% rule and crowd control to help lighten the load, but if you do not have high DPS to seize upon the relief they provide, you lose. This is not something a PUG can do unless you happen to get lucky. And being near-impossible to PUG was not the intent of advanced queues, that was the elite difficulty's job.
I wanted to leave some specific feedback regarding changes to 2 of my favorite missions.
Defend Rhiho Station. I have played this about 100 times - maybe a bit more since it was re-introduced with craylon gas. I would estimate the success rate on getting all 6 guys freed in part 2 is about 5%. Why not instead make the optional in part 1 - say you have to get 30 devices instead? Otherwise you are effectively removing craylon gas from the game again. Already it is around 1 million EC. For those with lots of canons to upgrade this is highly unpleasant.
Undine Infiltration. Making the elite optional get all 10 clear or quarantine right effectively makes it unpuggable. And since I only pug this will be a sad thing for me. I have played this also well over 100 times - likely over 200. I have seen a number of perfect scores. I would estimate around 10%. However that's still pretty low. Someone will go through and just guess. Also it's a huge opportunity for grief.
Additionally, I just did an ISA with a strong group. It went as well as possible I would say but still was 30-35 minutes. With the final cube over 5 minutes alone. This is clearly a best case pug scenario.
I don't really see why there will be a magical increase in dps between 50 and 60. For Tac captains - maybe 10% ? For Sci and Eng it's zero with the 4 ship thingies. And close to zero with specializations.
It's unrealistic to expect gold 14 gear. I would say a mix of 13 and 14 purple is more reasonable for these Advanced level queues. Will getting a group up all to 14 bring the mission time under 20 min? I guess we'll see but it doesn't look like it to me so far.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I'm taking it easy through Delta Rising, I want to savor it, so the only PvE Queue I've done was Crystalline Catastrophe Advanced, I'm at level 50, Tier 5 U ship, Mk XII weapons.
I cannot in any way comprehend the rationale behind this.
The old Crystalline Entity Elite the entity had what? 2 million hp?
The Advanced Entity has 21 million HP!
That by itself isn't that bad, it just takes longer...except that if you aren't pouring on the fire power it regenerates. The PUG I was in we got it down to 32 %...then the other problem kicked in again.
Why does a Tholian Orb Weaver, a cruiser have 600,000 HP? The Mesh weaver has 300,000. The Crystalline fragments had something like 180,000 hp.
That is NOT comparable to the old Elite, not anywhere near. Is the actual gap between level 50 and 60 really that steep that this will become doable?
My main is a engineer in a cruiser, I'm not gonna get 20K+ DPS over the entire course of the battle.
So it was taken way too far.
Didn't even notice the optional until halfway through.
The PUG was abandoned for the record.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
Taking away the Purple Mk XI / XII Rewards from the STFs, Cutting their Dill Reward by Half?! (While at the same time bringing more Dill Sinks into the Game) rising up the Dificulty to a ABSURD Level? Many People asked for more Challenging STFs......so the best thing to do would be LEAVE Normale as it is, Rename the old Elite to the new Advanced and other than that also LEAVE IT as it was, and add the new Elite with much higher Difficulty, THERE YOU GO, Everyone is happy!
WHY DO YOU HAVE TO DESTROY THE GAME THAT WE LOVE BIT BY BIT?!!!!!! I started the Game a little before Season 7, and Since than, Spend a Tremendous Amount of Time Playing it (around 16 Hours per day, 32 LEVEL50 Chars) and some good Money (Just Spend 50€ a few weeks agoo for the Bortasque 3 Pack and iam a Lifer) Star Trek Online is my Favourite Game and the Favourite Game of many of my Contacts ( Including my Fiancee that i meet in this Game from Canada i Live in Germany!)
Yea with Delta Rising (also Called Dilithium Rising by many People) you gave us some nice new Story Missions, and other Nice Goodys = GOOD, but on the other Hand you NERF the Game and take away things from us = BAD, i ask you again WHY?!
Dont you Realize that you Drive more and more Players away from the Game?
Bring back the old STF's difficulties. But also leave the new Advanced difficulty. This way you have three levels to choose to play. With that, the Advanced loot will need to be raised.
OUTSIDE the box? No, the way it is now, you have to be in the box...very solidly in the box and build your ship for roxor DPS. You have to follow a few templates with a few ships...that is not about thinking outside the box...sorry but you can't have the saying. Also the fact that you used that term to discribe the exact opposite shows how much in the box your way of thinking actually is. Or even using that term at all. People who actually think outside the box don't think they are...or other people who are doing it are. We tend to just accept what other do as their own thing...it's a side effect of actually thinking outside the box (I really hate that term).
I very specifically named the box in which the cat was.
If you dont see that cat i can not be held responsible, i am sorry.
We arent thinking "outside the box" to beat current STFs, thats pretty much standart PvE... some thinking required on beating No win with 2 players though.
Its so funny how every guy on these forums sees a sentence here and there where he thinks he can pick upon you, while its so much out of context, that you can just see how he didnt understand what has been presented. Almost like watching people play Advanced Queues.
Oh and by the way of Boxthinking. I just pulled 29k DPS against hull (top dps in that regard) out of an ISA, ahead of two Fire at Will Scimitars on a Vesta, with one omnidirectional beam array equipped as the only energy Weapon...
Can i get that boxed please?
I very specifically named the box in which the cat was.
If you dont see that cat i can not be held responsible, i am sorry.
We arent thinking "outside the box" to beat current STFs, thats pretty much standart PvE... some thinking required on beating No win with 2 players though.
Its so funny how every guy on these forums sees a sentence here and there where he thinks he can pick upon you, while its so much out of context, that you can just see how he didnt understand what has been presented. Almost like watching people play Advanced Queues.
Oh and by the way of Boxthinking. I just pulled 29k DPS against hull (top dps in that regard) out of an ISA, ahead of two Fire at Will Scimitars on a Vesta, with one omnidirectional beam array equipped as the only energy Weapon...
Can i get that boxed please?
best regards still ;D
RyanSTO
Pretty sweet, I've got a new sci and was looking at running her as a torpedo boat, any Boff abilities I should really focus on?
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
The RNG needs to go away when leveling up gear. I'm already sinking a ludicrous and ridiculous amount into this thing so having my "great" stats get changed to ACC or other stats I do not want is mind blowing and frustrating.
This leads into.
TIME SINK
The sheer amount and cost of upgrading my gear is absolutely staggering. It's made me want to simply hang up my uniform and walk away. This is terrible. Solution? My Set gear, dyson, maco, undine whatever. SHOULD get an option to be upgraded VIA the repstore. Say, tier 5 needed, spend 600 marks, some dilithium and Special items(isometric thingies, neural processsors) whatever and upgrade your grinded out space/ground set to mark 14.
this leads into
CATCH 22
I need to do advanced instances to get crafting mats, rep mats, dilthium and other thingas. But I need better gear to do these as MK XII doesn't cut it. But to get better gear, I need to craft it. But to craft i need the mats. To get the mats I need to do advanced instances...to do advanced instances i need better gear....you see where im going with this?
I very specifically named the box in which the cat was.
If you dont see that cat i can not be held responsible, i am sorry.
We arent thinking "outside the box" to beat current STFs, thats pretty much standart PvE... some thinking required on beating No win with 2 players though.
Its so funny how every guy on these forums sees a sentence here and there where he thinks he can pick upon you, while its so much out of context, that you can just see how he didnt understand what has been presented. Almost like watching people play Advanced Queues.
Oh and by the way of Boxthinking. I just pulled 29k DPS against hull (top dps in that regard) out of an ISA, ahead of two Fire at Will Scimitars on a Vesta, with one omnidirectional beam array equipped as the only energy Weapon...
Can i get that boxed please?
best regards still ;D
RyanSTO
Youre just thinking in this selfish "I can do it, so TRIBBLE you guys" attitude. Its not required to create new strategy to beat more hit points. It doesnt require "out of the box thinking". This was supposed to be a reward for waiting years for an update. I agree there should have been a new level of difficulty but not at the cost of everything else. I can do and have done the advanced but I was looking forward to helping others level up in the "old elites" while getting decent rewards. This BS we got is an insult. I just paid 3000 zen for a new ship, that is really just my old ship with a paint job? Even you Hardcore difficulty kids have to see this, you are removing the step system you used to gear up.
We all need to band together, this expansion is awful for what they did to older content. Its not refreshing its repulsive. I have a friend that is an attorney and he says we could have a case to at least get refunds as they altered established content. I think 10,000 refund request could get PWE and Cryptic to wake up. I say we give them one week and if they dont fix this, we who have paid for content and feel wronged put in for refunds!!!!
Comments
Advance STFs are now being used by experienced and inexperienced players. As a result of the slightly higher rewards, while also the abandoned norm stfs, new players currently have no choice in playing advanced. Experienced players are having a hard time teaching and progressing, for the advanced stfs do not anticipate the influx of new players.
So, when veteran players are confronted with low rewards, due to the failure of advanced stfs, the end result creates a sense of frustration. Do we play for the low rewards? Do we abandon new players entirely? Do we abandon STFs entirely? Its a conundrum.
Second, the reward system is not equal to the time invested into stfs.
How I would have handled the rewards:
Normal = 650 dilithium + 150 Marks
Advanced = 1,200 dilithium + 250 Marks + 1-5 Processors
Elite = 1,800 dilithium + 400 Marks + 3-6 Processors
If the reward system is boosted, while the difficulty settings are slightly lowered, players will feel a sense of accomplishment and achievement. New and veteran players will be enticed by the normal and advanced queues.
Now, Advanced and Norm queues should not have time limits for completing the main mission. While I can understand why they may be used in Elite stfs, the presence of the overall mission timers can cause new players to get anxious. Frustration builds when things instant fail.
Another note... When people play through missions, they do so to reach the end battle. If a mission fails to reach the end, due to a timer hitting zero, players will end up moving onto other missions. People want to feel a sense of accomplishment.
Low rewards + Not being able to completing a mission = Not playing the mission.
Advanced should be what the old Elite was. For proven players who have got solid builds, understand the game dynamics but aren't DPS monsters. Elite should be what it is now - nightmare mode for true highend players.
All this has done is make the queues unplayable. New players will never get anywhere with such intense difficulty and even the decent players have hit a total brickwall. Disasterous balancing. Cryptic want this fixed within the next two weeks or DR will be flopping hard once players are done with the new story content.
Now, look outside the queue for the worst case scenario. Check this screenshot. Notice what mission, what enemy, and how many HP. How is this supposed to be winnable?
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=19925741&postcount=19
I don't mind a challenge, but please take Advanced down close to what the old Elite was.
Make the new Elite mode be the Nightmare mode.
SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.
I was thinking:
Norm = T4-T5 Ships & MK X - MK XI Ground Gear
Advance = T5-T5.5 Ships & MK XI - MK XII Ground Gear
Elite = T6 Ships & MK XIII - MKXIV Ground Gear
I call shenanigans on everything here.
Do one ONE Borg disconnected normal, boom 85 marks. Before you hit tier 5 you'll have 700 extra unless you waste them on the hourly rep project. Then you claim tier 5 and get 500 more. If you're casual why are you grinding? Get 5 daily bonus boxes instead of running the same thing 5 times. Use unwanted ones for dilithium. Which leads to the next item.
There are many ways to earn dil, see the vast number of threads asking for the refining cap to be increased to get some ideas how. Of all the methods, exactly one has been nerfed, all the rest are unchanged.
R&d materials can be earned in missions, doffing, via the academy mission, and via normal queues. For doffing, try the sphere for the double reward missions, and especially focus on the "artifact" explore and marauding missions, these give components and purples far more often and you use three doffs for higher crit rates. All of these but the normal queue boxes have a chance for purple mats, but even without that, you can also sell or use the greens and blues and buy the purples you need. Which gets to my next point.
Get crafting to 2. Make engineering and science rank 2 consoles. Sell the lucky ones with opposite mods (sci console with engineering mod, etc). Get crafting to rank 5, make the components people need for crafting upgrade kits. Get crafting to rank 10, make blue upgrade kits. Get crafting to rank 15 make aegis sets and that tr###b gun. Profit.
Or skip to the profit and just sell crafting mats without using them.
Your answer was posted two weeks ago here:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1229421
Here's a couple specific posts from the thread:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=19417311&postcount=48
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=19418131&postcount=52
Hint: beams/cannons CAN do it, but they are the hard way. Get some sci ships with 300+ particle gen.
I'm going to disagree with you on this one; the TR-116B is not made useless by DR. Just the opposite - the TR-116B is now MANDATORY for Borg ground elites and DRSA. I took a team through DRSA last night and we got all six engineers with only a few seconds to spare. Every member of the team had a 116B. I couldn't imagine getting it without a full TR-116B team.
And this is what my issue with DRSA and BDA is: the "optionals"/"timers". They are entirely too low. A pug that knows what its doing; even if not properly geared, should have a strong chance to beat the mission and obtain the Advanced VR R&D material, the APC/BNP/VCI/II token, and a token amount of marks. Right now, the timers and automatic failures are too unforgiving. I don't think that's a good system for advanced.
I want all these failure conditions and tight timelines in Elite. I love the feeling of winning by a second or two. That's fun! The issue I have with it being in Advanced is that in Advanced; I want a challenge that can be reliably farmed for materials so I can have a chance in Elite. Right now, that doesn't exist. And thus when an advanced queue fails, I and other experienced players get frustrated and it tends to leave an overall worse player experience.
thats what most ppl in this game need
,,Low rewards + Not being able to completing a mission = Not playing the mission."
How about... good rewards + not being able to complete? I wonder what happened if we had the best rewards reserved for those missions. Im pretty sure, people still would be complaining about how they cant get the top-end gear, because their current gear doesnt allow it.
Tbh, you dont need that much gear to do most of the missions, especially advanced clearly can be done.
People just dont adept because they never were forced into a mindset of... "Oh my gawd, we are getting obliterated... how can we possibly beat this?!"
instead of "oh, i want to fly this and that and equip torpedos all over the place coZ them shiny"
It might not be the "mah playstyle approach" but thats what we need to establish real "endgame". Unless somehow everything would become balanced
I want to fly the mission, and do whats required to get the job done. Do i like the Scimitar? No. Is it the best ship currently? Yes.
Get your stuff together and go beat the STFs, they are a challenge, not a place to farm dilithium at.
We might need more incentive though to make the average player think about their builds outside the box of:,, i feel like this build should work! And if it doesnt... I ... I will go to the forums and tell everyone what an horrible job they did balancing!"
Thats just what I know what works, there might be another system though.
best regards
RyanSTO
No Win Scenario 2 Men - DPS Prime
The casual way is to get a pair of rom-kdf alts and run 3 or 4 marauding "plunder artifact" missions the one explore ruins/artifact mission that nearly always up on the new Romulus command, two assist with r&d materials (ROM command & qonos), plus as many explore artifact and spire sci and explore dual mat missions as you can find (one sector north of qonos and Regulus are good, my favorite area is near ds9 and in the three explore clusters there).
I had been pulling between 3 and 12 purple mats a day of random types from two characters combined. Not counting advanced queue boxes which I've stopped opening and am now just selling from my stockpile. That's fast enough for me. Currently I spend more time in the tailor than playing so most of my earning is floored but I did get 3 plekton yesterday.
Edit: be sure to have a purple astrometric doff on active duty with the bonus r&d mat special. That helps more with blues than purps, but it adds up.
Edit the edit: I never looked how many were needed to craft, I just saw prices and sold my mats as I earned them while stockpiling a few for later. Wow 15 is nuts o.o; no wonder I'm earning a ton of ec... Imma start undercutting more, that rough on peeps using them.
Its worse than that. Go replay an early mission. I posted a screenshot from the federation mission shariens swords of a ddridex with 303,000 HP.
The only difference between fighting a ship on normal and killing them in 5 seconds and playing the same enemy on elite and killing them in 5 minutes is time. I understand upping NPC HP and shields because a player can virtually keep their shields up indefinitely (unless you are mobbed).
Saying that I have decided to play on advanced after DR and, maybe it's just me, but its seems like damage output from the NPCs isn't scaled that much higher and not comparable with the increase of HP. I would suggest going in the other direction. Scale down the HP/shields but increase the damage output. Then give NPC's access to defensive abilities.
This way a battle can last a few seconds either way (if an NPC gets a lucky shot or if i do) or it can last a few minutes if its a stale mate. The one way I can think of how to implement this is adaptable AI. So as you progress the AI will outfit their ship to counter how you destroyed the last batch. And you somewhat have this in place already. I've used an attack run where I use a tachyon beam with target shields III and a barage of torpedos with sensor scan and analysis along with attack pattern alpha. Boom your dead or near death. After a few runs I've seen NPC's put all of their shield strength to the shield thats facing me being able to survive the attack. It looks like they are using Tac Team but no ability icon shows up for their character. So they already use defensive abilities and have some AI, you've just kind of hidden it from us.
My personal suggestion, I've always thought it would be interesting to have ship injuries occur during battle rather than after being destroyed. That could also force us as players to be more cautious during battle.
I just want to be able to beat an opponent in a timely fashion if I choose the right tactic and surprise them with it. But when its 90k HP time and again all the time from little dinky ships to behemoths its not hard...it's boring. I just fly around in circles with beam weapons in auto. That's less fun to me than one shotting NPC's.
At least if I one shot an NPC I can continue on with what I was doing.
EDIT: This isn't really a Cryptic problem, this is a programming in general problem with games. The only game I've every played where the AI was competitive and the difficultly was fun was Halo. Every other game i've played is always the same. Normal is a cake walk and then then next level of difficultly is ridiculous.
Are you serious? Ha ha ha!
Is the full team dependent on me flying high DPS? HA HA HA!!
Defend Rhiho Station. I have played this about 100 times - maybe a bit more since it was re-introduced with craylon gas. I would estimate the success rate on getting all 6 guys freed in part 2 is about 5%. Why not instead make the optional in part 1 - say you have to get 30 devices instead? Otherwise you are effectively removing craylon gas from the game again. Already it is around 1 million EC. For those with lots of canons to upgrade this is highly unpleasant.
Undine Infiltration. Making the elite optional get all 10 clear or quarantine right effectively makes it unpuggable. And since I only pug this will be a sad thing for me. I have played this also well over 100 times - likely over 200. I have seen a number of perfect scores. I would estimate around 10%. However that's still pretty low. Someone will go through and just guess. Also it's a huge opportunity for grief.
Additionally, I just did an ISA with a strong group. It went as well as possible I would say but still was 30-35 minutes. With the final cube over 5 minutes alone. This is clearly a best case pug scenario.
I don't really see why there will be a magical increase in dps between 50 and 60. For Tac captains - maybe 10% ? For Sci and Eng it's zero with the 4 ship thingies. And close to zero with specializations.
It's unrealistic to expect gold 14 gear. I would say a mix of 13 and 14 purple is more reasonable for these Advanced level queues. Will getting a group up all to 14 bring the mission time under 20 min? I guess we'll see but it doesn't look like it to me so far.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I cannot in any way comprehend the rationale behind this.
The old Crystalline Entity Elite the entity had what? 2 million hp?
The Advanced Entity has 21 million HP!
That by itself isn't that bad, it just takes longer...except that if you aren't pouring on the fire power it regenerates. The PUG I was in we got it down to 32 %...then the other problem kicked in again.
Why does a Tholian Orb Weaver, a cruiser have 600,000 HP? The Mesh weaver has 300,000. The Crystalline fragments had something like 180,000 hp.
That is NOT comparable to the old Elite, not anywhere near. Is the actual gap between level 50 and 60 really that steep that this will become doable?
My main is a engineer in a cruiser, I'm not gonna get 20K+ DPS over the entire course of the battle.
So it was taken way too far.
Didn't even notice the optional until halfway through.
The PUG was abandoned for the record.
WHY DO YOU HAVE TO DESTROY THE GAME THAT WE LOVE BIT BY BIT?!!!!!! I started the Game a little before Season 7, and Since than, Spend a Tremendous Amount of Time Playing it (around 16 Hours per day, 32 LEVEL50 Chars) and some good Money (Just Spend 50€ a few weeks agoo for the Bortasque 3 Pack and iam a Lifer) Star Trek Online is my Favourite Game and the Favourite Game of many of my Contacts ( Including my Fiancee that i meet in this Game from Canada i Live in Germany!)
Yea with Delta Rising (also Called Dilithium Rising by many People) you gave us some nice new Story Missions, and other Nice Goodys = GOOD, but on the other Hand you NERF the Game and take away things from us = BAD, i ask you again WHY?!
Dont you Realize that you Drive more and more Players away from the Game?
This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Perfect World Entertainment Community Rules and Policies . ~Bluegeek
I very specifically named the box in which the cat was.
If you dont see that cat i can not be held responsible, i am sorry.
We arent thinking "outside the box" to beat current STFs, thats pretty much standart PvE... some thinking required on beating No win with 2 players though.
Its so funny how every guy on these forums sees a sentence here and there where he thinks he can pick upon you, while its so much out of context, that you can just see how he didnt understand what has been presented. Almost like watching people play Advanced Queues.
Oh and by the way of Boxthinking. I just pulled 29k DPS against hull (top dps in that regard) out of an ISA, ahead of two Fire at Will Scimitars on a Vesta, with one omnidirectional beam array equipped as the only energy Weapon...
Can i get that boxed please?
best regards still ;D
RyanSTO
The RNG needs to go away when leveling up gear. I'm already sinking a ludicrous and ridiculous amount into this thing so having my "great" stats get changed to ACC or other stats I do not want is mind blowing and frustrating.
This leads into.
TIME SINK
The sheer amount and cost of upgrading my gear is absolutely staggering. It's made me want to simply hang up my uniform and walk away. This is terrible. Solution? My Set gear, dyson, maco, undine whatever. SHOULD get an option to be upgraded VIA the repstore. Say, tier 5 needed, spend 600 marks, some dilithium and Special items(isometric thingies, neural processsors) whatever and upgrade your grinded out space/ground set to mark 14.
this leads into
CATCH 22
I need to do advanced instances to get crafting mats, rep mats, dilthium and other thingas. But I need better gear to do these as MK XII doesn't cut it. But to get better gear, I need to craft it. But to craft i need the mats. To get the mats I need to do advanced instances...to do advanced instances i need better gear....you see where im going with this?
Youre just thinking in this selfish "I can do it, so TRIBBLE you guys" attitude. Its not required to create new strategy to beat more hit points. It doesnt require "out of the box thinking". This was supposed to be a reward for waiting years for an update. I agree there should have been a new level of difficulty but not at the cost of everything else. I can do and have done the advanced but I was looking forward to helping others level up in the "old elites" while getting decent rewards. This BS we got is an insult. I just paid 3000 zen for a new ship, that is really just my old ship with a paint job? Even you Hardcore difficulty kids have to see this, you are removing the step system you used to gear up.
We all need to band together, this expansion is awful for what they did to older content. Its not refreshing its repulsive. I have a friend that is an attorney and he says we could have a case to at least get refunds as they altered established content. I think 10,000 refund request could get PWE and Cryptic to wake up. I say we give them one week and if they dont fix this, we who have paid for content and feel wronged put in for refunds!!!!