Its not required to create new strategy to beat more hit points. It doesnt require "out of the box thinking".
<- No one ever said that. Basically you resaid what i wrote, thanks.
The way they handled rewards is not in favor of the system (as i said earlier as well)
The direction the games difficulty is going is clearly good in the long run. Might have been a little to rough for the average random Queue player... But hey, why dont you step it up, and improve? Because you never had to.. (you as in 95% of the random Queue)
We all need to band together, this expansion is awful for what they did to older content.
<- its actually quite the same, just takes 5 minutes again. So if the rewards would actually reflect that, i am all down for that.
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?
<-- I am currently running APO I, APB1, TBR 2,3, HY 1,2... rest is defensive. Its actually quite durable. But a work in progress
best Regards
I am out for the weekend, so if you guys feel like you have to respond... I will not clarify the first post for a couple of days. but if you feel like reading it again, please do so. Most questions should answer themselves if you actually read it from top to bottom.
Just adding my 2 cents here. I think regular missions are just a -touch- too hard. I'm using Elite Fleet gear and weapons, and I'm hitting Kazon ships for only DOUBLE-DIGIT damage per shot; meanwhile, they're melting my shields like butter. I haven't died yet, I can still mange, it just takes longer than I'm used to. It just feels idiotic to have to shoot at something the size of a DELTA FLIER for like 5 minutes before it finally dies.
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?
And where do we get this magical other stuff to sell? They took away the drops from STFs, and the gear on normal anything was always meh anyway. Craft it? You need mats from Advanced. Or you can do Advanced... in order to get the gear you need to sell to get the gear you need to do Advanced.
See the issue? It's not that hard. They cut the rewards out or in the best case halved it, then gated the rest behind a difficulty that is impossible to do unless you already have the gear needed to do that difficulty. Yeah that makes sense.
Simply put, as I and others have been saying, you need the gear now to do advanced, but to get the gear you need to do advanced.
Fortunatly I personally already have the gear, and a fleet. But for anyone who doesn't have the gear or the fleet you might as well kiss either good bye.
They need to do something about this fast. Very fast. Most of the queues are now dead and what ones people do even attempt, they either fail or people leave through the tedious boredom they've turned them into now.
Essentially, Cryptic have utterly annihilated the whole endgame structure for all but the most superhuman of STO players. The game will shed players in the thousands.
They need to do something about this fast. Very fast. Most of the queues are now dead and what ones people do even attempt, they either fail or people leave through the tedious boredom they've turned them into now.
Essentially, Cryptic have utterly annihilated the whole endgame structure for all but the most superhuman of STO players. The game will shed players in the thousands.
I wouldn't expect a change for a few more weeks at least. Cryptic is in no rush as long as people are spending money hand over fist. Once people start to bail because of this, then it'll get fixed. Until then, expect the same of the same.
Oh and once they do "fix it" they'll nerf it into oblivion or break the hell out of it and make it truely unplayable.
Its not required to create new strategy to beat more hit points. It doesnt require "out of the box thinking".
<- No one ever said that. Basically you resaid what i wrote, thanks.
The way they handled rewards is not in favor of the system (as i said earlier as well)
The direction the games difficulty is going is clearly good in the long run. Might have been a little to rough for the average random Queue player... But hey, why dont you step it up, and improve? Because you never had to.. (you as in 95% of the random Queue)
We all need to band together, this expansion is awful for what they did to older content.
<- its actually quite the same, just takes 5 minutes again. So if the rewards would actually reflect that, i am all down for that.
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?
<-- I am currently running APO I, APB1, TBR 2,3, HY 1,2... rest is defensive. Its actually quite durable. But a work in progress
best Regards
Once again this is you and YOUR opinion. No matter how many videos you post, the general attitude of the community is outrage. You want to play harder versions of the same STFs im cool with that, they should have added two more tiers not taken away what was there.
And where do we get this magical other stuff to sell? They took away the drops from STFs, and the gear on normal anything was always meh anyway. Craft it? You need mats from Advanced. Or you can do Advanced... in order to get the gear you need to sell to get the gear you need to do Advanced.
See the issue? It's not that hard. They cut the rewards out or in the best case halved it, then gated the rest behind a difficulty that is impossible to do unless you already have the gear needed to do that difficulty. Yeah that makes sense.
Simply put, as I and others have been saying, you need the gear now to do advanced, but to get the gear you need to do advanced.
Fortunatly I personally already have the gear, and a fleet. But for anyone who doesn't have the gear or the fleet you might as well kiss either good bye.
Lots of ways, gotta find what works for you. But every time you try for a purple and get something else, sell it.
I doff for ec. I sell masses of whites and a few blues and purples. I farm crafting mats and sell them. I take advantage of once of a kind opportunities (bought aegis mk12, upgraded and resold first day of the giveaway event, by the second market was flooded).
Craft mark 2 purple consoles or blue upgrade kits and sell them, you don't need purple mats for that. Or craft components instead of the final product.
Ec farming is still viable, just slower. I recommend ambush missions not foundry farms.
Contraband never goes out of style.
I made 28 million leveling a romulan to 45 and selling drops, doffs, and doff by products plus boffs with operative. That's my personal record, I usually get 10 to 12 million, my low was two.
There's a million was to play the game and a million ways to sell what those other 999,999 people want that you have.
Edit: it's like keys, takes 200 on average to drop a ship, or just 65 to sell for the ec to buy one. Don't be the guy "opening boxes" with the crafting system unless it's what you enjoy.
There is a stunning irony to the notion that, in order to defeat the Borg, you must fall acquiesce to the collective's conventional thought on how to pull it off.
There's no room for individuality when resisting the collective, I guess.
Didnt someone from the Dev team mentioning that some gear was not working as intended and was reflecting stats as if it was Levle 80 gear a few weeks ago (Though its fixed now)?
Maybe the same error happend to the HP scaling.
To me the enemy NPC's look like they have been bumped up to Level 80 in HP scaling...
Didnt someone from the Dev team mentioning that some gear was not working as intended and was reflecting stats as if it was Levle 80 gear a few weeks ago (Though its fixed now)?
Maybe the same error happend to the HP scaling.
To me the enemy NPC's look like they have been bumped up to Level 80 in HP scaling...
Cryptic, do not listen qq'ers minority. DO NOT make end game content like "1 minute pew pew on easy mode". Majority playing a game, enjoying DR, and has no reason to come to the forum.
Cryptic, do not listen qq'ers minority. DO NOT make end game content like "1 minute pew pew on easy mode". Majority playing a game, enjoying DR, and has no reason to come to the forum.
Nope, you are the minority and small one at that. No one is saying to take away the new modes, but they should be the level 60 normal and hard, the old normal and elite should have been left at 50. There is a compromise, why you "everything must be unbeatable and no one else can have the gear I have" players are so frustrating. You play for an unbelievable challenge, I play for enjoyment and moderate challenge. There is no reason we cant have tiers to achieve the same goals. Like for instance, the Omega stuff, keep the old payouts and STFs the same but with the 2 new ones, give out like 250-500 marks, buuut add stuff to the reward system like new borg tech R&D upgrades. We both have the same chance to get the same items but now HC players can get them 2-3 times faster while letting everyone else catch up.
Why it has to be this relentless grind and epeen measuring contest is beyond me. You play MMOs to be a part of a community, so why not act like one and work together to give the right feedback and make this game a good one.
Soon the weekend warriors will arrive. They have read about the new expansion and are going to patch up to the current version. They will travel to the delta quadrant, complete a mission or two, and then be forced to find a way to level up to unlock the next story mission.
Not exactly the best time to be ironing out the balance of your public queue event difficulty. With them as the testers. It is unlikely most will bother taking to the forum to complain and with any luck they will avoid the queues or hopefully have already spent money on the game. Not the outcome I expect though.
Make advanced queues level 55+ before that crowd hits. Allow the story content on normal reward enough exp to advance you without resorting to admittedly unpolished queues.
Or not.
On another note I have hit up a few more advanced queues with my Fed Engineer in his Galor beam boat. Nothing special crazy tanky, mk xiii gear, 8 beams, 2x APB, faw, bo, eptw3, dem x2, the usual. He doesn't die but man his DPS is lacking for the new content. Previously he could solo a side of ISE for comparison.
My level 50 Rom Sci in her Recluse for giggles hit up CE A. While it took too long for my taste likely exasperated by me not bothering to get a 3rd tac console yet or upgrading any gear I still took 2nd place without doing any real healing or having gimmick heal passives (V console/2pc Borg) and only when I had the CE targeted did it's health go down. Then again four copies of APB3, one copy of APB2, and 130 AUX SS does effectively gut NPC resists. I can say with confidence she will be able to nearly solo the CE A by the end of the month.
The events are not unbalanced that badly. Boff abilities, consoles, ships, and so on are terribly balanced. No matter what I throw at it the poor Fed Eng Galor will never be half as effective as the Rom Sci Recluse.
Because he's not playing to be "part of the community".
He's playing to wave his e-peen and shout "I'm better than you cause I can buy power clear to top level right now!" and whatever else.
Which is about what the case is. Someone said 8000 dil to zen isn't enough. Correct. It's INTENDED to be not enough, the new difficulties seem to me to be a blatant attempt to extort zen money from the playerbase by making the new content unplayable without pouring money into zen and dil to get things upgraded fully fast.
Not all of us are the "super elite 50k dpsers". Yeah, the supposed 'minority' closes their wallets totally, and the e-peeners will be going somewhere else, there aren't enough of them to support all of STO if others are discouraged enough to stop paying money to Cryptic/PWE.
Lower the difficulties. Right now they are effectively extortion to force upgrades. And the vast MAJORITY of the players, who don't want to have to slog and supergrind, will leave.
I played a daily DR mission on elite today and it was pretty tough. I died in space once but the ground one was doable. It really kept me on my toes. I have pretty nice gear and I imagine at 60 these will be much easier. But right now I'm getting my butt kicked, so I dropped it down to advanced for the PVE missions.
For the PVE queues - I got *owned* in CCE with some others but it was because people were taking shards right to the face. The dynamic had changed and they didn't adapt. Then throw in more enemies, everything being harder, and you have a disaster. Maybe when more people, including myself, hit 60 I'll be more inclined to try the elite PVE queues.
I actually like how it's harder but I do wish the rewards were sweeter right from the beginning. More r&d loot and more loot in general please.
I tried to run some queues at 50, it was super tough. Failed Fleet Alert, missed the timer on CE Advanced but still completed.
Tried then again at 55, hard but doable. Fleet Alert fine, was close-ish on the timers, a minute or so to spare.
Colony Invasion seems much as before the expansion.
I'm guessing at 60 things will feel much more like they did before the patch, so I'll play normal queues while I gear up and then move on to trying the Advanced stuff.
Running queues that used to be simple, at 50 post patch, was a shock. But I think we'll level in to it.
I can get that the content is supposed to be harder with entry level 50 characters and gear.
What frustrates me is I have a level 60 char on tribble with a T5U, all mk XIV Elite gear, and a chunk of the specialization tree filled out, and its still takes forever to kill anything.
How can I justify spending a million dilithium, (or waiting the next 2 months upgrading my crafting and then spending almost as much on the materials since I can't take advanced mode with my current gear), on upgrading my ship when the end result is only marginally better than what I'm using now?
scale it back a bit - or scale the gear up a bit. Maybe then we'd have more incentive to buy/grind for it.
The pug groups stink, have yet to see one that could take infected advanced, much less elite.
The dificulty to reward ratio is way out of whack.
They feel more like the original STFs that Cryptic pulled the plug on because such a low percentage of the game population found them fun. I doubt the population has changed that much guys, but that is just an opinion.
I really hope you guys have a T6 or T5u (with a mastery) ship in your plans for the holiday event, or the f2p population will start to fall off, as the p2p players won't want them in groups given their total lack of starship mastery boons.
I really dislike the content progression. I never thought I would find myself prefering to play alts that hadn't already completed all the episode content, but there I am now.
I love the look and feel of the new content, get some of the content balance issues sorted and this will be a great expansion.
Not all of us are rich to buy the T-6 ships etc. This game was suppose to be fun and enjoyable not pay to win junk. Though i enjoy STO i do not enjoy that you need to be rich to buy everything to make the game more fun. Things should of been thought out more to make it enjoyable for everyone even reducing prices of t-6 ships though some have said t-6 ships are not worth it, I will never know until i get 3000 zen to try one out, just not sure how much longer i can play this game and try to enjoy it.
The pug groups stink, have yet to see one that could take infected advanced, much less elite.
I have also stopped queuing up, as an insignificant form of protest, and heck, I have access to far better teammates than pugs.
I have also stopped using my alt characters for any purpose other than turning in contraband or marauding. Not because I don't want to play those characters. But I simply cannot afford to upgrade another ship worth of weapons and equipment. I got my main up to Mk XIV and it broke me.
In time, I'll raise the dil to repeat that horrific process, and I am able to craft almost all of the superior upgrades I need myself (though I won't be getting VR materials, will I?). So I have some small hope of being able to use my sci captain again, or of using my KDF for something other than murdering doffs.
Just to repeat myself yet again: new elite difficulty is fine. Should be harder, even. The people who wanted it should feel challenged. But we were straight-up lied to about advanced and normal.
Easy - old normal
Normal - old elite
Advanced
Elite
keep the old rewards for the first 2. make Advanced 1440 Dil and elite 1920 Dil . plus obvious increases in vr mat drops and BNPs/VCIs/IIs
this would result in all the people complaining having their old modes back, and everyone who likes the new system would still have it. and the rewards i specified should make everyone happy.
that way you get easy to learn the ropes at 45, Normal to get you your rep gear, advanced help with upgrades and to get you ready for elite.
if cryptic really wants people to buy zen. scrap the dilithium exchange. it's far less insulting to do that then to start reducing dilithium so we can't buy it(or anything else for that matter)
btw, the undine BZ had marks and Dilithium slashed also. dilithium was down 30% last night( 800Dil instead of 1200 for helping with 2 PKs), and the marks were about 40% lower(150 instaed of 250 pre-DR including daily).
I assume Voth ground BZ has seen similar slashing, but i have not confirmed this. so it's just a hunch atm.
in the new advanced STFs and other PvEs my tank cruiser(mostly UR XII weapons and consoles, 7K DPS) is essentially useless. i tank just like a did before, but since I'm not an uber-dps player , i have become a liability, since i can't really keep up with the HP mounds that have been added. it's a mirror assault cruiser. so i literally CAN'T level it up and get specializations.
I have also stopped queuing up, as an insignificant form of protest, and heck, I have access to far better teammates than pugs.
I have also stopped using my alt characters for any purpose other than turning in contraband or marauding. Not because I don't want to play those characters. But I simply cannot afford to upgrade another ship worth of weapons and equipment. I got my main up to Mk XIV and it broke me.
In time, I'll raise the dil to repeat that horrific process, and I am able to craft almost all of the superior upgrades I need myself (though I won't be getting VR materials, will I?). So I have some small hope of being able to use my sci captain again, or of using my KDF for something other than murdering doffs.
Just to repeat myself yet again: new elite difficulty is fine. Should be harder, even. The people who wanted it should feel challenged. But we were straight-up lied to about advanced and normal.
Ya feeling pretty misled too on normal and Advanced. The reward shift too is crazy, guess its more battle zones for me, Undine and Voth drops at least can be acquired in their battle zone. Could care less about elite, give the hard core wing nuts something meaningless to brag about fine (maybe a shiny outfit to show off their giant heroic epeens with).
I have 9 characters (yes I am Steve and I am an altaholic). The new content level curve matrix has really punished already having done all the episodes. My KDF alts (who mostly leveled before all the shiney KDF content was added) have been able to rip up the levels, while my main who had done all the content really feels like a grind now.
The Difficulty Slider acts as a sub-modifier in addition to generalized queue difficulty.
And when I say modifier, I mean modifier. At least, reward-wise. Forgive me if my memory fails me for actual numbers. Let's just say, for the new Borg Space STFs:
Advanced__________Advanced (x1.25)__________1200 dilithium, 75 marks
Advanced__________Elite (x1.5)__________1440 dilithium, 90 marks
Elite***__________Normal (x1)__________1920 dilithium, 120 marks
Elite***__________Advanced (x1.25)__________2400 dilithium, 150 marks
Elite***__________Elite (x1.5)__________2880 dilithium, 180 marks
***If continued along the same speculative reasoning
I bolded the difficulty pairs that would hypothetically match up to the current difficulties. But see, modifying individual player rewards is easy - each individual has their own slider, but they all play the same instance of a mission. How can this be helped?
Anyways, this is really long, so I'm gonna end it hear. To sum up:
- The new advanced is too difficult (IMO)
- 2 Difficulties alone cannot compensate for such a diverse endgame player base
- I propose that the difficulty slider act as a risk/reward modifier in addition to the new difficulties, ideally on a per-player basis
So, how do you all feel about proposed rewards/changes to difficulty?
I went back and read the thread to find this gem. I love this idea.
Reward scaling for the sub-difficulties actually isn't too hard in this instance. All they would have to do even for sake of simplicity is implement an Elder Scrolls Skyrim'esque sort of thing.
You want to get that 2880 by playing on 1.5 Elite? Well that will just do a client-side change of your HP/Shield HP and your Damage divided by 1.5 for the duration of the mission. Make the sub-bar difficulty unchangeable once you get into the match, and if by the end the game detects a certain sub-bar setting, you get the Elite reward multiplied by some factor. Pretty simple.
I like new difficulty. But for casual and new players in inexpensive ships it's not possible to earn marks easily outside of daily bonus package + 1-17 marks are somewhat underwhelming (if not depressing) reward for 10-20 minutes of intense fight.
Could be nice to see lower amount of NPCs in normal space instances + a bit less health for bosses.
However what bother me much more than difficulty - it's extreme price of upgrades. Up to the point where I didn't even start to upgrade anything - and I'm not game-poor.
Comments
So thats why i made an 5 Hr long Video reading out to everyone how to get it done..
Clearly its my fault no one cares to educate upon things. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMuD-YI-u3TnphAERG7O1R4oeMivCnrTB
Its not required to create new strategy to beat more hit points. It doesnt require "out of the box thinking".
<- No one ever said that. Basically you resaid what i wrote, thanks.
The way they handled rewards is not in favor of the system (as i said earlier as well)
The direction the games difficulty is going is clearly good in the long run. Might have been a little to rough for the average random Queue player... But hey, why dont you step it up, and improve? Because you never had to.. (you as in 95% of the random Queue)
We all need to band together, this expansion is awful for what they did to older content.
<- its actually quite the same, just takes 5 minutes again. So if the rewards would actually reflect that, i am all down for that.
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?
<-- I am currently running APO I, APB1, TBR 2,3, HY 1,2... rest is defensive. Its actually quite durable. But a work in progress
best Regards
I am out for the weekend, so if you guys feel like you have to respond... I will not clarify the first post for a couple of days. but if you feel like reading it again, please do so. Most questions should answer themselves if you actually read it from top to bottom.
This! Nailed it!
Star Trek Online Intro HD [3rd Fleet Anniversary]
Join Date: Jul 2009
And where do we get this magical other stuff to sell? They took away the drops from STFs, and the gear on normal anything was always meh anyway. Craft it? You need mats from Advanced. Or you can do Advanced... in order to get the gear you need to sell to get the gear you need to do Advanced.
See the issue? It's not that hard. They cut the rewards out or in the best case halved it, then gated the rest behind a difficulty that is impossible to do unless you already have the gear needed to do that difficulty. Yeah that makes sense.
Simply put, as I and others have been saying, you need the gear now to do advanced, but to get the gear you need to do advanced.
Fortunatly I personally already have the gear, and a fleet. But for anyone who doesn't have the gear or the fleet you might as well kiss either good bye.
Essentially, Cryptic have utterly annihilated the whole endgame structure for all but the most superhuman of STO players. The game will shed players in the thousands.
I wouldn't expect a change for a few more weeks at least. Cryptic is in no rush as long as people are spending money hand over fist. Once people start to bail because of this, then it'll get fixed. Until then, expect the same of the same.
Oh and once they do "fix it" they'll nerf it into oblivion or break the hell out of it and make it truely unplayable.
Once again this is you and YOUR opinion. No matter how many videos you post, the general attitude of the community is outrage. You want to play harder versions of the same STFs im cool with that, they should have added two more tiers not taken away what was there.
Lots of ways, gotta find what works for you. But every time you try for a purple and get something else, sell it.
I doff for ec. I sell masses of whites and a few blues and purples. I farm crafting mats and sell them. I take advantage of once of a kind opportunities (bought aegis mk12, upgraded and resold first day of the giveaway event, by the second market was flooded).
Craft mark 2 purple consoles or blue upgrade kits and sell them, you don't need purple mats for that. Or craft components instead of the final product.
Ec farming is still viable, just slower. I recommend ambush missions not foundry farms.
Contraband never goes out of style.
I made 28 million leveling a romulan to 45 and selling drops, doffs, and doff by products plus boffs with operative. That's my personal record, I usually get 10 to 12 million, my low was two.
There's a million was to play the game and a million ways to sell what those other 999,999 people want that you have.
Edit: it's like keys, takes 200 on average to drop a ship, or just 65 to sell for the ec to buy one. Don't be the guy "opening boxes" with the crafting system unless it's what you enjoy.
1) The devs and management at Cryptic/PWE decide to create the "Plan" to balance the game in favor of a minority of UBER players to satisfy them.
2) The "Plan" is developed for the minority of UBER players!
3) The "Plan" gets loaded on Tribble for testing.
4) The "Plan" ignores tester feedback from Tribble!
5) The "Plan" launches on Holodeck.
6) The "Plan" makes STO more of a grind or no longer FUN and ENJOYABLE for the 99.99999 % MAJORITY of players.
7) The "Plan" gets Washed, Rinsed, and Repeated forever!
I truly believed Cryptic/PWE was building the game to be playable by all. But I was mistaken!
To quote Spock, and maybe the devs and management of Cryptic/PWE need to read this again, ...
“The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few”
Cryptic/PWE please listen and correct the "Plan" !
:mad:
Zeus
+1 And as well, bugs, bugs everywhere
That mission originally was a bit of a challenge and you made it into a snoozefest that the NPCs literally win it for you.
There's no room for individuality when resisting the collective, I guess.
Maybe the same error happend to the HP scaling.
To me the enemy NPC's look like they have been bumped up to Level 80 in HP scaling...
Star Trek Online Intro HD [3rd Fleet Anniversary]
Join Date: Jul 2009
Yup. And it was gecko who noted it
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1206461
Also, nice color by the way.
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Nope, you are the minority and small one at that. No one is saying to take away the new modes, but they should be the level 60 normal and hard, the old normal and elite should have been left at 50. There is a compromise, why you "everything must be unbeatable and no one else can have the gear I have" players are so frustrating. You play for an unbelievable challenge, I play for enjoyment and moderate challenge. There is no reason we cant have tiers to achieve the same goals. Like for instance, the Omega stuff, keep the old payouts and STFs the same but with the 2 new ones, give out like 250-500 marks, buuut add stuff to the reward system like new borg tech R&D upgrades. We both have the same chance to get the same items but now HC players can get them 2-3 times faster while letting everyone else catch up.
Why it has to be this relentless grind and epeen measuring contest is beyond me. You play MMOs to be a part of a community, so why not act like one and work together to give the right feedback and make this game a good one.
Not exactly the best time to be ironing out the balance of your public queue event difficulty. With them as the testers. It is unlikely most will bother taking to the forum to complain and with any luck they will avoid the queues or hopefully have already spent money on the game. Not the outcome I expect though.
Make advanced queues level 55+ before that crowd hits. Allow the story content on normal reward enough exp to advance you without resorting to admittedly unpolished queues.
Or not.
On another note I have hit up a few more advanced queues with my Fed Engineer in his Galor beam boat. Nothing special crazy tanky, mk xiii gear, 8 beams, 2x APB, faw, bo, eptw3, dem x2, the usual. He doesn't die but man his DPS is lacking for the new content. Previously he could solo a side of ISE for comparison.
My level 50 Rom Sci in her Recluse for giggles hit up CE A. While it took too long for my taste likely exasperated by me not bothering to get a 3rd tac console yet or upgrading any gear I still took 2nd place without doing any real healing or having gimmick heal passives (V console/2pc Borg) and only when I had the CE targeted did it's health go down. Then again four copies of APB3, one copy of APB2, and 130 AUX SS does effectively gut NPC resists. I can say with confidence she will be able to nearly solo the CE A by the end of the month.
The events are not unbalanced that badly. Boff abilities, consoles, ships, and so on are terribly balanced. No matter what I throw at it the poor Fed Eng Galor will never be half as effective as the Rom Sci Recluse.
He's playing to wave his e-peen and shout "I'm better than you cause I can buy power clear to top level right now!" and whatever else.
Which is about what the case is. Someone said 8000 dil to zen isn't enough. Correct. It's INTENDED to be not enough, the new difficulties seem to me to be a blatant attempt to extort zen money from the playerbase by making the new content unplayable without pouring money into zen and dil to get things upgraded fully fast.
Not all of us are the "super elite 50k dpsers". Yeah, the supposed 'minority' closes their wallets totally, and the e-peeners will be going somewhere else, there aren't enough of them to support all of STO if others are discouraged enough to stop paying money to Cryptic/PWE.
Lower the difficulties. Right now they are effectively extortion to force upgrades. And the vast MAJORITY of the players, who don't want to have to slog and supergrind, will leave.
1) Are you trying to chase away the casual gamers?
I used to like this game was alot of fun the PvE queues were fun and doable was hard enough but even an average player like me could do it.
Not everyone grinds profesionally and not everyone has the best gear and not everyone are DPS monsters doing 50K DPS all the time.
what are you guys thinking are you seriously chasing players like me away?
For the PVE queues - I got *owned* in CCE with some others but it was because people were taking shards right to the face. The dynamic had changed and they didn't adapt. Then throw in more enemies, everything being harder, and you have a disaster. Maybe when more people, including myself, hit 60 I'll be more inclined to try the elite PVE queues.
I actually like how it's harder but I do wish the rewards were sweeter right from the beginning. More r&d loot and more loot in general please.
Tried then again at 55, hard but doable. Fleet Alert fine, was close-ish on the timers, a minute or so to spare.
Colony Invasion seems much as before the expansion.
I'm guessing at 60 things will feel much more like they did before the patch, so I'll play normal queues while I gear up and then move on to trying the Advanced stuff.
Running queues that used to be simple, at 50 post patch, was a shock. But I think we'll level in to it.
What frustrates me is I have a level 60 char on tribble with a T5U, all mk XIV Elite gear, and a chunk of the specialization tree filled out, and its still takes forever to kill anything.
How can I justify spending a million dilithium, (or waiting the next 2 months upgrading my crafting and then spending almost as much on the materials since I can't take advanced mode with my current gear), on upgrading my ship when the end result is only marginally better than what I'm using now?
scale it back a bit - or scale the gear up a bit. Maybe then we'd have more incentive to buy/grind for it.
The pug groups stink, have yet to see one that could take infected advanced, much less elite.
The dificulty to reward ratio is way out of whack.
They feel more like the original STFs that Cryptic pulled the plug on because such a low percentage of the game population found them fun. I doubt the population has changed that much guys, but that is just an opinion.
I really hope you guys have a T6 or T5u (with a mastery) ship in your plans for the holiday event, or the f2p population will start to fall off, as the p2p players won't want them in groups given their total lack of starship mastery boons.
I really dislike the content progression. I never thought I would find myself prefering to play alts that hadn't already completed all the episode content, but there I am now.
I love the look and feel of the new content, get some of the content balance issues sorted and this will be a great expansion.
I have also stopped queuing up, as an insignificant form of protest, and heck, I have access to far better teammates than pugs.
I have also stopped using my alt characters for any purpose other than turning in contraband or marauding. Not because I don't want to play those characters. But I simply cannot afford to upgrade another ship worth of weapons and equipment. I got my main up to Mk XIV and it broke me.
In time, I'll raise the dil to repeat that horrific process, and I am able to craft almost all of the superior upgrades I need myself (though I won't be getting VR materials, will I?). So I have some small hope of being able to use my sci captain again, or of using my KDF for something other than murdering doffs.
Just to repeat myself yet again: new elite difficulty is fine. Should be harder, even. The people who wanted it should feel challenged. But we were straight-up lied to about advanced and normal.
Easy - old normal
Normal - old elite
Advanced
Elite
keep the old rewards for the first 2. make Advanced 1440 Dil and elite 1920 Dil . plus obvious increases in vr mat drops and BNPs/VCIs/IIs
this would result in all the people complaining having their old modes back, and everyone who likes the new system would still have it. and the rewards i specified should make everyone happy.
that way you get easy to learn the ropes at 45, Normal to get you your rep gear, advanced help with upgrades and to get you ready for elite.
if cryptic really wants people to buy zen. scrap the dilithium exchange. it's far less insulting to do that then to start reducing dilithium so we can't buy it(or anything else for that matter)
btw, the undine BZ had marks and Dilithium slashed also. dilithium was down 30% last night( 800Dil instead of 1200 for helping with 2 PKs), and the marks were about 40% lower(150 instaed of 250 pre-DR including daily).
I assume Voth ground BZ has seen similar slashing, but i have not confirmed this. so it's just a hunch atm.
in the new advanced STFs and other PvEs my tank cruiser(mostly UR XII weapons and consoles, 7K DPS) is essentially useless. i tank just like a did before, but since I'm not an uber-dps player , i have become a liability, since i can't really keep up with the HP mounds that have been added. it's a mirror assault cruiser. so i literally CAN'T level it up and get specializations.
Ya feeling pretty misled too on normal and Advanced. The reward shift too is crazy, guess its more battle zones for me, Undine and Voth drops at least can be acquired in their battle zone. Could care less about elite, give the hard core wing nuts something meaningless to brag about fine (maybe a shiny outfit to show off their giant heroic epeens with).
I have 9 characters (yes I am Steve and I am an altaholic). The new content level curve matrix has really punished already having done all the episodes. My KDF alts (who mostly leveled before all the shiney KDF content was added) have been able to rip up the levels, while my main who had done all the content really feels like a grind now.
I went back and read the thread to find this gem. I love this idea.
Reward scaling for the sub-difficulties actually isn't too hard in this instance. All they would have to do even for sake of simplicity is implement an Elder Scrolls Skyrim'esque sort of thing.
You want to get that 2880 by playing on 1.5 Elite? Well that will just do a client-side change of your HP/Shield HP and your Damage divided by 1.5 for the duration of the mission. Make the sub-bar difficulty unchangeable once you get into the match, and if by the end the game detects a certain sub-bar setting, you get the Elite reward multiplied by some factor. Pretty simple.
Could be nice to see lower amount of NPCs in normal space instances + a bit less health for bosses.
However what bother me much more than difficulty - it's extreme price of upgrades. Up to the point where I didn't even start to upgrade anything - and I'm not game-poor.