I'm OK with advanced mode being a bit tougher than the old elite mode, but the spike in difficulty we've seen has been, perhaps, too much.
The catch-22 is, we need to do advanced queues to level and get the R&D materials to get the gear we need... to have any chance at the advanced queues?! #ShapedLikeItself
The artist formerly known as PlanetofHats.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
So far, DR has, to me, been a mixed bag. Seems like most people's opinion really. And I'm right on board with everyone else. Advanced is too advanced. For too little reward. My take on things was that Normal STFs, playable at L44 (?) was for beginners to learn the ins-and-outs of the missions, while the previous Elite, was for end game toons that knew what they were doing. And we complained it was too easy.
Now, enter the new system. Normal, still playable prior to L50, is still supposed to be for beginners to learn their chops. Is it too hard for that? Debatable. It's hard for someone who knows their chops to make a call on that. It's really easy for us, but then so was the prior Elite diff.
So we move to Advanced, and this is where it gets crazy. Yes, it's playable. Is it playable for beginners who have gone through Normal diff and recently hit L50? I don't think so. I had a fleet group of experienced 10k+ captains outright fail both Conduit and Fleet Alert yesterday. Something's wrong with that. Advanced diff should be playable for ALL PLAYERS at L50. It do not think, that in it's current state, that it is. And this says nothing about the fact that it's NOT WORTH playing for the rewards and time invested involved.
Elite, which none of us who couldn't get on tribble have probably experienced yet, isn't something I can comment on yet. But I can tell you I'm scared. I feel like this entire difficulty curve was formulated for the elite players who have the time and resources to fly 40k scimis and such. They were the most vocal in asking for more challenge. But they aren't the biggest group playing and paying for your game.
The rewards are another of my complaints, HOWEVER, I will also add that isn't the rewards holding me back. I have ore. We all have ore. You have continually added things that require dilly, anad given us no way to aquire more SPENDABLE dilly. 8k/day refine limit is nothing but archaic at this point. I don't expect for you o eat into profit that much, but even 10 or 12k/day is more in line with the amount of dilly the game requires, while still leaving us ion a position where we need to buy some dilly here and there. UNLESS, you are one of the people who scream that this is a F2P game and have that level of patience. One of my fleet mates said at 8k/day, he could upgrade one of his ships in like 14 days? That's a level of patience not a lot of your players have, and you're going to lose players.
On the plus side, I do like the new content, although it does seem a bit repetitive. The actor's did a fine job, as did the writers for those voice overs. Neelix was..., well, Neelix. And it was awesome. The Voyager interior was AWESOME. I can't say I was impressed by the story missions that were nothing but system patrols. And my biggest complaint with the storyline is that I found myself at L52 with 12,500 XP to go for L53, which was required for the next story mission. If that's the leveling curve, add more missions, don't just make us go out and FIND things to do to get the next level to move forward in the storyline.
I must admit, upgrading hasn't been as bad as I had feared after hearing horror stories from Tribble. No real complaints there except one: The situation that occured when R&D was rolled out where a few select ppl, who had dilly and real world cash to "Finish Now" their way to L15 should be countered by an announced period of the same time where you make the projects available to do in the same manner (more than one at a time) to let some other ppl catch up. Is it fair that they are so far ahead and can rule the exchange? It would even things up, and you guys would sell a TRIBBLE load of dilly in the process.
One other thing for the R&D. A YES/NO CONFIRMATION ON THE "FINISH NOW" BUTTON. (caps VERY intentiona). :P
i tried to be optimistic, but deep down i knew this will be the fate of the new elite difficulty.... buff to the hp and damage of the mobs.
god save us from not necessarily stronger, but smarter mobs. mobs who use various abilities, retreat and advance, try to flank, surprise the player or even adapt it's tactics to the current enemy team. that would be something. but instead, we have the same dumb enemies just now with sh*tton of health and damage high enough to oneshot anyone in any gear.
Defiant
RnD and upgrade needs less RNG. Less lottery. Something has to change.
Ok so jumped into Infected Conduit Advanced and it was waaayyy too difficult. I really did not have any problem with getting blown up, but 35 minutes just to complete it was not fun. And that was 35 minutes of really trying like hell. I mean seriously 3 team ships attacking one sphere and it takes almost two minutes to kill it. Give me a break. So now I have to put my omega rep on hold until this gets sorted. I'm just not going to waste this much time for nerfed rewards. Its just stupid.
OFF Topic: Why can't I buy Omega Marks with zen? Or dilithium? I would definitely pony up some real world cash just to skip over the incessant grinding and buy my marks for my omega rep.
I definitely think that the HP of mobs in advanced need to be reduced, probably by 30% or 40%. More dil/mark rewards for the tiers. More rewards in general would be a great thing. As is, after only running a few of them, I already am not looking forward to running more. I think it's pretty telling that most of the queues were deserted last night, where usually I can get into any of them after a short wait.
It's possible that someone has already wrote what I am about to write, but I couldn't read all the replies.
First of all, I'm glad the development team is interested in keep getting feedback. One can argue that they already had learned from the tribble feedback, but tribble is one thing, holodeck another.
So, the case in question, this is what I have to say from the limited experience I had:
Story missions:
I like them! They aren't excepcional but I'm enjoying them. So far the dificulty is adjusted. I'm having it easy because I'm playing with my main. I'm sure that if I was only keeping up the story with a new character, I'd have to be a bit more imaginative, so I think it's perfectly fine for everyone. People wanting a greater challenge, can always adjust the difficulty level up.
As for the queues, I've only done the new borg one on normal, and tried the Crystalline on Advanced. And boy, here we go wrong...
The borg normal one, is ok, the problem is that the ending is too hard for a normal PUG. I've done the mission 6 times now, and only in two we were able to take out all the dreadnoughts and in none were all the optionals achieved. This would be fine if it were advanced, but it's normal!
Now for the CCA (previous CCE). I don't know what to say, really. A Recluse with 1 million HP? the CE with 21 million?
What gameplay do you expect out of this? How is this not countered only by DPS race? There is no skill involved. It wasn't "difficult" it was just boring. It was so boring that some 40 minutes into it after finally having brought the Entity to 33, it got back to 40, and kept near that. People started to give up, until there wasn't anyone left to finish the job because it got HP faster than the people who remained could take out. And there was still a Tholian fleet around (!).
In the end the difficulty of the instance was that not enough DPS could be produced. Skill required = zero
I for one don't intend to do any more advanced queues because I play for fun, and wasting an hour to get nothing is not fun. As for the normal ones, I don't see myself in doing them either with the exception of the new borg for the delta marks. The other normal queues don't reward very rare crafting materials as far as I know so there is nothing for me there.
So we move to Advanced, and this is where it gets crazy. Yes, it's playable. Is it playable for beginners who have gone through Normal diff and recently hit L50? I don't think so. I had a fleet group of experienced 10k+ captains outright fail both Conduit and Fleet Alert yesterday. Something's wrong with that. Advanced diff should be playable for ALL PLAYERS at L50. It do not think, that in it's current state, that it is. And this says nothing about the fact that it's NOT WORTH playing for the rewards and time invested involved.
I think the right metric is whether decently skilled players at level 60 can complete the advanced queues. I'm not particularly sanguine that they will, but I'm willing to level up and find out for myself.
That said, I do think more level 50s should be completing the advanced queues successfully right now. Not all of them, to be sure. But more. A lot more.
Personally I don't find the dps race fun. Don't get me wrong, I can do it, but I hate using cookie cutter builds that everyone has to use, to do a particular piece of content.
What I suggest, is you get rid of the 3 tier difficulty and go back to 2.
Normal = The old elite pre DR, with the same optional's and 960 Dilithium
Elite = The current elite post DR and 1440 Dilithium. This is perfect for the masochists that like the dps race.
All should reward VR mats and special rep items.
This, I believe, should keep most people happy...
^^ This a million times this. Something for everyone, win-win so to speak.
After playing through a couple fleet alerts and disconnected, here is my take on it.
I think players completely look at HPs and think wow huge number, but if the game were to give lower hit points and massive resists it would equal out anyway.
Aren't most of us running Neutroniums or allres+turn, or resb/resa shields and getting our resists up to 30, 40, even 50% or higher?
The numbers you would see flying off the ship wouldn't be 14k crits, but 2k crits...
It's like trying to kill a tank healer in PVP, they only have a 60k hull but take a long time to kill unless team work is used.
That is how I rationalize the high HP.
But then again they added in more NPC's to fight, which maybe they shouldn't have done.
However seeing most players incapable of doing "high dps".
The missions need to be scaled back a bit.
For example fleet alert needs to be scaled back by about 50%
I only did two last night, and the first one we had 3 guys doing high dps and won against romulans, the second it was 2 guys with high dps against tholians and lost.
This is supposed to be one of the first PVE queue missions that players can do at lower levels.
The parser I run on stfs while pugging on the entire duration of the mission
I'd say that players are as follows
90% 1-5k
7% 6-12k
3% 13k and up
I enjoyed the difficulty of the fleet alert, but I can understand how 90% of the player base will hate it.
I think after the dev's get the feedback they will make a good judgment on how to scale things back.
If you're having difficulty blowing up NPCs on Advanced now, you're built/geared/specced wrong or are using sub-par ships/gear.
Geko spelled it out for you ... "We expect Advanced to be for more skilled players and those who have invested in the game (ships and gear)."
It will be a real shame if Advanced gets nerfed to what Elite was before. It was already boringly easy. What needs to happen now IMO is an adjustment to the rewards for completing, not changing the difficulty level.
If you can't complete Advanced now, improve your build and gear.
Not sure if someone else mentioned this, but, Elite is how most captains gear up at 50. You need the BNPs, marks and dil that level provides. You can get marks and dil, at reduced rates, in normal, but for most people elite was the way to go. Players need a path for advancement, and it was, get 50, gear up as best you can, do elites to get rep traits and gear.
If they really are trying for tiered difficulty then normal should be a way to earn everything you need in order to progress to advanced, so you can then progress to elite, if you choose. But currently normal isn't really an option and never really was an option to begin with.
Hey, the Devs told you... not everyone is going to be able to complete the new content. According to Geko, some already have completed the new Elite content with ease. Others are reporting that the new Advanced is tougher, but doable. It's clear others can do it. If you can't, the problem is with you.
Heh. Anyone got a 'I see what you did there' jpg handy?
Advanced Difficulty
I too would suggest that you wait until a sizeable number of players have made it to 60 and started tackling the Advanced queues at that point.
Elite Difficulty
My own thoughts on what Elite was supposed to be in the new paradigm (based on previous game experience and dev comments during the run up to release) was something extremely difficult to do that could be completed by above average players with top-tier gear (T5-U/T6 ships and Mk XIV gear) playing together as a team or by extremely skilled players with high level gear (T5 ships with Mk XIII or better gear or T5-U/T6 ships with Fleet grade gear) playing as a team. While completing the queues with optional objectives (any or all) would require an even higher level of skill and familiarity with the queue in question.
I would think that most of those already blowing through the Elite content are of the relatively small percentage of the population that are already extremely skilled, have/had the resources to upgrade all their gear to Mk XIV, and have a great deal of experience working as a team. While in raw numbers that's probably a fairly large number of people, as a percentage of the game population I'd think they're a very small minority. So while the Elite queues probably do need some adjustment I'd encourage you to wait a while until you have a larger sample size (of players) to draw data from for analysis.
Rewards
I actually sat down and did some calculations a while back because I was wondering just what the [censored] you guys were thinking by setting the dilithium and mark rewards so low on most of the new queues and discovered to my shock that what you'd done was take the equivalent numbers from the Borg STFs and cut them in half for all the new queues while setting those queues to be replayable every 30 minutes instead of the 60 minutes of the Borg STFs. This actually made a startling amount of sense from a purely numerical standpoint, but from an actual player perspective could be very frustrating. I would suggest considering doubling the rewards for each queue and extending the replay timer to 60 minutes from 30. While people will have more downtime before being able to replay a specific queue I honestly think this will not only encourage them to keep playing queues, but also encourage them to branch out and play a greater variety of queues.
Of course that's not the only source of player dissatisfaction with queue rewards. A lot of the newer queues have totally variable mark rewards which while potentially greater than the older Borg queues with their base reward + optional objective mark reward models (especially at normal difficulty) often reward far, far less as very few people see a point in organizing a team for such a pittance of a reward, especially given that most of these newer queues have internal timers to dictate when the mission ends instead of objectives to be accomplished.
To try and reduce some of this dissatisfaction I'd suggest setting a base reward for completion of all queues based on difficulty level with the new scoring mechanics that have been instated acting as a source of bonus rewards. Further I'd suggest making available an optional contact at the beginning and ending of each queue that explains how scoring works for that queue: how you can gain and lose points, exactly how you earn points, what point values each action/objective rewards/loses, and how points are used to calculate bonus mark rewards (X points = 1 mark). I'd further suggest that with the bonus marks the bonus itself be subjected to a difficulty level modifier, though one that isn't quite as large as the base mark reward difficulty modifier (assuming you choose to implement something close to this suggestion).
I agree completely, which is why I have suggested that since the level of difficulty is being raised across the board, Normal and Advanced need to have their rewards adjusted accordingly, including BNPs/FMs etc. to allow people to advance.
First of all, thank you guys for making this thread. And since you asked, here's my feedback.
Normal Difficulty seems fine from what I can tell. TBH, i didn't notice anything different about it.
Advanced being harder than the old elite is fine with me, but I think the buff was too extreme (for being advanced, not elite).
When I fly a cruiser with all Mk XIII weapons and consoles and I can't even kill a Borg probe reliably (especially in Borg Disconnected Advanced) then something is a bit off. Especially when said cruiser is a tier 5U Excelsior with Lt. Com tactical and 4 tac consoles.
Since I haven't hit 60 yet, I can't comment on elite.
Also, Crystalline Entity Advanced with 21+ mil HP. That could use some tweaking indeed.
Don't get me wrong, the Borg in particular deserve to be tough, but it should be doable on advanced without the best gear.
Back when I was leveling, I did some fleet actions with my fleet when my character was in her 30s. I did OK, and we succeeded. With the new normal difficulty, is that still realistic? I don't think so, and I'd like it scaled back to what it was. (Bring the end game players back down to 50 to even the difficulty.)
I also thing that the Borg STFs need to be reexamined. Back when I was first doing Borg rep, I did normal, and got mk 10 and 11 gear, then moved on to elite to get mk 12 (end game gear). Now normal doesn't really progress you (unless you get really lucky and get a BNP), and advanced (which is harder than the old elite) gets you gear, but not end game gear.
So, from a progression standpoint, advanced is the "new normal," but it's harder than the old elite from a play perspective. I don't think that it works very well.
Also, while story experience has been lowered, I'm still getting plenty from doffing. I ran one character through one mission last night, and while that character didn't go up a level, everyone went up from 30% to 90% to 51. At this rate, when my first character's through the DR storyline, my other characters will be at least 53 without setting foot in the delta quadrant. I figure that my least geared character will hit 60 before setting foot in the DQ.
Geko - thank you for taking the time to drop into the forum and seek feedback and give your thoughts on this. I appreciate it. After a major launch, it must be hard to deal with this - as well as problems and inevitible bugs. I played for a few hours yesterday and the servers were humming along well, so I'd like to say thanks for that as well.
On to my thoughts about difficulty/rewards, and all that has happened.
Difficulty - in my opinion, Elite SHOULD be nightmare mode. Enemy hull and DPS can't be the entire cause of the nightmare though. The enemies should be tricky.
Advanced - a touch too hard, OR fail conditions should be toned down. I fly a Gal-X in all Fleet weapons and gear, and I max out around 6-7K. I do NOT A2B, and like flying with phasers AND torpedoes, and have kept my cloak equipped. I had NO problems placing in the top 3 while pugging ISE before. I could fly my Mirror Nova in CE and place in the top 3 often if I healed and debuffed alot, and it has Mk XI Rare phasers and Mk XI Uncommon torpedoes. A slight buff was welcomed, but I think it's gone a little far - in light of rewards, which I go into next.
Normal - Well normal...shouldn't be too hard - easily puggable, etc.
Now on to rewards -
Elite - with great risk, shoudl come great reward. Perhaps more BNPs (or Isomorphic things, etc), a large amount of dilithium, or some really good loot drops.
Advanced - Slashing the rewards while at the same time upping the difficulty seems in poor taste. Why would I pug ISA when I could run around the BZ for 15 minutes if I know the pugs are likely going to fail. I'll still try to get a good team together, but the "queues" are probably dead to me now.
Normal - Here's where there's a problem, IF the difficulty of Advanced remains so high. Buying a C Store ship is only part of the equation in "end game" competitive gear. The other part is good equipment. As of S9.5, crafting is one way to get good equipment, and reputation gear is another. To craft good equipment, you need very rare materials. To get the reputation gear you need BNPs, or Isos, etc). Normal rewards none of this. To be successful in Advanced, you either need a good team, or if you're pugging, good gear. If you can't get the stuff you need to get the good gear, you will NOT succeed in Advanced. It makes things very painful for new players.
If the new Advanced difficulty is as intended, the rewards for the Normal queues should be adjusted to allow players to "build" up their ships.
If there's a reluctance to move the old "Elite" rewards to normal, perhaps scale them down - some item that 3x of them = 1 BNP, or chance at 1 VR mat instead of 3, etc. Otherwise, perhaps advanced should be dialed back a few notches.
I've been spending my day trying Infected space advanced. I'm level 53 with fleet mk xii and xiii everything. What I am finding is that I'm still one of the more powerful damage-dealers in a given PUG but there are just so many Spheres on the screen that even if we complete a node, it takes the group too long to clear the Spheres afterwards for us to have any chance at completing the mission.
Too many 5x HP trash mobs spoils the milk in this case.
The other thing I notice is that the Spheres seem to actually be tougher than the Cubes by orders of magnitude.
The artist formerly known as PlanetofHats.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
*facepalm
Anyone play 'surface tension' since the update ? I've never played it before last night (post update) and expected it to be a level 50 mission but unless I missed a blog or something I can guess that it isn't a lvl 50 mission. Everything up until Q'onos was typical, but after a message from tuvok going into the shipyard area the difficulty greatly increased with overwhelming numbers of cruisers and smaller ships with hitpoints near that of the old borg spheres, and at least 3 undine dreads that are almost indestructable. I dunno if Enterprise is destructable or not, but I had to keep breaking off combat to repair that ship, and the stupid Romulan ship was nowhere to be found.
Thanks Cryptic for bringing back the 'dying thru' missions. This goes against your quote of saying the new content can be done with T5 ships. Sure it can be done if you die enough (about 9 times in 90+ minutes) and this isn't even NEW content. If this is typical of the 'new' content I don't see any enjoyment in playing STO anymore. Luckily there's so many old missions that have been revamped they're shown as if I've never played them, so I'll be replaying those with my T-5U ship for the ship mastery traits instead of the 'new' content.
...Oh, and the kumbyah moments in the great hall between the feds and KDF are utterly depressing. NO PEACE, EVER with the feds, we will NEVER be fed lapdogs again !
I will preface this response by saying I have intentionally played Crystalline Catastrophe Advanced with an "ill prepared ship" for Delta Rising just to see how survivable the Mirror Negh'var battle cruiser would be. By "ill prepared ship" I mean that this ship is only capable of doing about 5.5k DPS, but that was good enough for old Elite. The intent was not so see how poorly or well a 5.5k DPS ship can do in the new Advanced, but to determine if the ship's defenses is enough to withstand the increased difficulty. I played CCA with level 50 Engineer toon, Mk XI weapons and no slotted Doffs.
I can say that it is pretty apparent that the CE hit's harder now along with the Tholian and mirror ships. However, at first with a full team of 10 players it seems that it could be possible to not blow up very often when attacked by the CE because there are plenty of targets to choose from so even if I was hit twice relatively quickly I was still able to heal up my ship enough to continue fighting for the short term. However, due to the increased DPS enemies can do I cannot heal up quick enough to not blow up. Naturally, if my ship (and other players' ships as well) had good enough DPS for CCA, then there would potentially be less enemies buzzing around me.
I plan on "playing" CCA again and I will give ISA a try tonight... but I think it is pretty clear that plain 'ol T5 starships will not be able to survive Advanced PvE missions without taking a beating. It is relatively easy enough to increase my ship's DPS. But hull points is a different matter. Probably at best I can turn my mirror Negh'var into a glass cannon for Advanced missions; capable of dishing out a good deal of damage, but not capable of absorbing much damage.
I have also played the normal version of CC which was fine. It seems easier than the old CCE since when I got hit, I did not seem to take much hull or shield damage. Not sure how it compares to the old "Normal" though.
Regarding the rewards... I guess can deal with the fact that Cryptic wants to cap the dilithium reward at 960, however given the fact that there are a lot of different types of projects that requires dilithium, I think that 480 dilithium should be the minimum reward. Advanced still provides better rewards since they reward Advanced R&D boxes instead of Normal R&D boxes. I assume Advanced also rewards a little more marks as well since completing CCN provided 105 marks vs. 115 marks for "old" Elite that I assume has been carried over into CCA.
I would say it is probably too early to ask for the difficulty level of Advanced to be reduced just yet. It is pretty clear the Advanced PvE missions are intended for level 60 toons, not level 50 toon. I need to wait until I am level 60 with good (not great) Mk XIII gear to really have an opinion on this matter. I'm sure a T6 ship would be helpful too, but I would like to wait for more ships to be released so that my toons have more options to choose from.
no it's not. 1 million hp vs 21 million isn't remotely similar, unless you failed grade school math.
hp needs to be cut by at least 50-60% to return it to around what it used to be. keep the absurd hp values for elite queues where minmaxing pvpers can get destroyed over and over, but don't force everyone with less than 30k dps into normal queues which have no rewards worth considering.
Let's not exaggerate, the ISA gateway is six million hp and the cube is seven million hp :eek:.
if the space mobs could have the half of a tribble's brain, this would be better. we need more HB (heavy brain) not HP :P
ground Vaadwaurs are good, they flank you, they crouch, and they don't stay close to each others, a good improvement; i want the same thing in space, thx ::)
if they can do that for the vaadwaurs, they can do that for all our ennemies. btw AI of the vaadwaur frigates is good too, they try to flank you, they leave the fight, and come back
the difficulty is not the problem; the problem is how this difficulty is put in game. more HP for the mobs, this is not an improvement of the difficulty. this is just terribly boring.
give a brain to the Mobs, and this would be more funny. In fleet alert, AI is so crappy; ships stay close to each others, they launch "eject warp plasma" everywhere without a real purpose. The response for this crappy AI is frigates with HP of a battleship lol
Geko, we hardly ever see you reach out like this. And, far as I'm concerned, it's appreciated.
- For starters, a few bugs despite, this expanansion appears remarkably stable; almost uncharacteristically so. :P Weapon batteries keep getting unslotted, though; so, this regression bug may need some looking into. But overall remarkable stable. So unlike LoR.
- Leveling up against some mindless waves of mission NPC's, I noticed they really step up around lv 55-56. At that point I could no longer simply ignore their multiple Feedback Pulses (on Elite, of course). All-in-all, still quite doable. Did an Advanced Cure Space too, and that went really well as well. In fact, it was finally exciting again, for a change.
Onto Advanced vs. Elite
- I think I understand your reward dilemma. On the one hand, if Advanced were to pay out as much as Elite, then those truly capable of doing Elites might just take the easy road and do 'quick' Advanceds, what with all new and improved gear and Mk and all. On the other hand, at this time, Elites are so difficult (for 99% of your playerbase), that effectively everyone is getting punished, via the Advanced rewards, just to not let that 1% take advantage, as it were. That may need some tweaking too.
- Ship Mastery went remarkably fast.
- Kudos on the '4 upgrade tokens for 2,000 Zen.' I figured you would just go for 1,000 Zen each. Pleasantly surprised there, too.
Then just play on normal. Ofc its harder on 50 because if it wasnt then on 60 it would be easier. Thing change. Adept.
Play on normal...where the rewards are even smaller. Um, yeahhhhh....no.
Bottom line is that between increased difficulty and diminished rewards, to get what I could have gotten on Monday I evidently need to put in 15-20 times the effort, or spend a heck of a lot of money. I am prepared to do neither.
@Venture-1. @Venture from City of Heroes if you remember that. Yes, that Venture. Yes, I probably trashed your MA arc. You'll have to be specific; for me it was Tuesday.
Obviously, things are still little soon to tell(despite even the feedback provided on tribble) however, based on the direction the game is heading this is becoming more of a DPS race.
So if:
A) that's the plan, you really need to reevaluate many current skills, ships, consoles, and weapons. You can now add more to the list of 'worthlessness', while adding more to the list of 'must need' with these new settings. Start by looking at those groups who are able to go through elite difficult with relative ease vs. others who don't have a chance.
that isn't the plan or what you had in mind, then you really need to reevaluate the 'difficult' itself and start looking at other areas other than just simple increase HP and damage output. Improved AI is something that has been talked about. I wouldn't know how feasible it is of an area to improve on but it certainly would be a good start.
In either case, there is a lot of work that would need to be done. The problem is, unless this is looked into now, later on, the problem with snowball and it'll even be more work and be more difficult to correct.
Retired. I'm now in search for that perfect space anomaly.
Comments
Alrighty.
Have fun with that.
Sarah Knightly - Co-leader; Frontier Explorers - U.S.S. Witchblade
Rias Gremory - Leader; Frontier Marauders - I.K.S. B'ullwinkle
The catch-22 is, we need to do advanced queues to level and get the R&D materials to get the gear we need... to have any chance at the advanced queues?! #ShapedLikeItself
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
Now, enter the new system. Normal, still playable prior to L50, is still supposed to be for beginners to learn their chops. Is it too hard for that? Debatable. It's hard for someone who knows their chops to make a call on that. It's really easy for us, but then so was the prior Elite diff.
So we move to Advanced, and this is where it gets crazy. Yes, it's playable. Is it playable for beginners who have gone through Normal diff and recently hit L50? I don't think so. I had a fleet group of experienced 10k+ captains outright fail both Conduit and Fleet Alert yesterday. Something's wrong with that. Advanced diff should be playable for ALL PLAYERS at L50. It do not think, that in it's current state, that it is. And this says nothing about the fact that it's NOT WORTH playing for the rewards and time invested involved.
Elite, which none of us who couldn't get on tribble have probably experienced yet, isn't something I can comment on yet. But I can tell you I'm scared. I feel like this entire difficulty curve was formulated for the elite players who have the time and resources to fly 40k scimis and such. They were the most vocal in asking for more challenge. But they aren't the biggest group playing and paying for your game.
The rewards are another of my complaints, HOWEVER, I will also add that isn't the rewards holding me back. I have ore. We all have ore. You have continually added things that require dilly, anad given us no way to aquire more SPENDABLE dilly. 8k/day refine limit is nothing but archaic at this point. I don't expect for you o eat into profit that much, but even 10 or 12k/day is more in line with the amount of dilly the game requires, while still leaving us ion a position where we need to buy some dilly here and there. UNLESS, you are one of the people who scream that this is a F2P game and have that level of patience. One of my fleet mates said at 8k/day, he could upgrade one of his ships in like 14 days? That's a level of patience not a lot of your players have, and you're going to lose players.
On the plus side, I do like the new content, although it does seem a bit repetitive. The actor's did a fine job, as did the writers for those voice overs. Neelix was..., well, Neelix. And it was awesome. The Voyager interior was AWESOME. I can't say I was impressed by the story missions that were nothing but system patrols. And my biggest complaint with the storyline is that I found myself at L52 with 12,500 XP to go for L53, which was required for the next story mission. If that's the leveling curve, add more missions, don't just make us go out and FIND things to do to get the next level to move forward in the storyline.
I must admit, upgrading hasn't been as bad as I had feared after hearing horror stories from Tribble. No real complaints there except one: The situation that occured when R&D was rolled out where a few select ppl, who had dilly and real world cash to "Finish Now" their way to L15 should be countered by an announced period of the same time where you make the projects available to do in the same manner (more than one at a time) to let some other ppl catch up. Is it fair that they are so far ahead and can rule the exchange? It would even things up, and you guys would sell a TRIBBLE load of dilly in the process.
One other thing for the R&D. A YES/NO CONFIRMATION ON THE "FINISH NOW" BUTTON. (caps VERY intentiona). :P
l
god save us from not necessarily stronger, but smarter mobs. mobs who use various abilities, retreat and advance, try to flank, surprise the player or even adapt it's tactics to the current enemy team. that would be something. but instead, we have the same dumb enemies just now with sh*tton of health and damage high enough to oneshot anyone in any gear.
RnD and upgrade needs less RNG. Less lottery. Something has to change.
Rewards do need to buffed this is very true.
What level to gear do you suggest that we have?? Full rep?? (which my alts can't get because they can't do adv) Full fleet??
OFF Topic: Why can't I buy Omega Marks with zen? Or dilithium? I would definitely pony up some real world cash just to skip over the incessant grinding and buy my marks for my omega rep.
First of all, I'm glad the development team is interested in keep getting feedback. One can argue that they already had learned from the tribble feedback, but tribble is one thing, holodeck another.
So, the case in question, this is what I have to say from the limited experience I had:
Story missions:
I like them! They aren't excepcional but I'm enjoying them. So far the dificulty is adjusted. I'm having it easy because I'm playing with my main. I'm sure that if I was only keeping up the story with a new character, I'd have to be a bit more imaginative, so I think it's perfectly fine for everyone. People wanting a greater challenge, can always adjust the difficulty level up.
As for the queues, I've only done the new borg one on normal, and tried the Crystalline on Advanced. And boy, here we go wrong...
The borg normal one, is ok, the problem is that the ending is too hard for a normal PUG. I've done the mission 6 times now, and only in two we were able to take out all the dreadnoughts and in none were all the optionals achieved. This would be fine if it were advanced, but it's normal!
Now for the CCA (previous CCE). I don't know what to say, really. A Recluse with 1 million HP? the CE with 21 million?
What gameplay do you expect out of this? How is this not countered only by DPS race? There is no skill involved. It wasn't "difficult" it was just boring. It was so boring that some 40 minutes into it after finally having brought the Entity to 33, it got back to 40, and kept near that. People started to give up, until there wasn't anyone left to finish the job because it got HP faster than the people who remained could take out. And there was still a Tholian fleet around (!).
In the end the difficulty of the instance was that not enough DPS could be produced. Skill required = zero
I for one don't intend to do any more advanced queues because I play for fun, and wasting an hour to get nothing is not fun. As for the normal ones, I don't see myself in doing them either with the exception of the new borg for the delta marks. The other normal queues don't reward very rare crafting materials as far as I know so there is nothing for me there.
I think the right metric is whether decently skilled players at level 60 can complete the advanced queues. I'm not particularly sanguine that they will, but I'm willing to level up and find out for myself.
That said, I do think more level 50s should be completing the advanced queues successfully right now. Not all of them, to be sure. But more. A lot more.
^^ This a million times this. Something for everyone, win-win so to speak.
I think players completely look at HPs and think wow huge number, but if the game were to give lower hit points and massive resists it would equal out anyway.
Aren't most of us running Neutroniums or allres+turn, or resb/resa shields and getting our resists up to 30, 40, even 50% or higher?
The numbers you would see flying off the ship wouldn't be 14k crits, but 2k crits...
It's like trying to kill a tank healer in PVP, they only have a 60k hull but take a long time to kill unless team work is used.
That is how I rationalize the high HP.
But then again they added in more NPC's to fight, which maybe they shouldn't have done.
However seeing most players incapable of doing "high dps".
The missions need to be scaled back a bit.
For example fleet alert needs to be scaled back by about 50%
I only did two last night, and the first one we had 3 guys doing high dps and won against romulans, the second it was 2 guys with high dps against tholians and lost.
This is supposed to be one of the first PVE queue missions that players can do at lower levels.
The parser I run on stfs while pugging on the entire duration of the mission
I'd say that players are as follows
90% 1-5k
7% 6-12k
3% 13k and up
I enjoyed the difficulty of the fleet alert, but I can understand how 90% of the player base will hate it.
I think after the dev's get the feedback they will make a good judgment on how to scale things back.
Thanks!
Not sure if someone else mentioned this, but, Elite is how most captains gear up at 50. You need the BNPs, marks and dil that level provides. You can get marks and dil, at reduced rates, in normal, but for most people elite was the way to go. Players need a path for advancement, and it was, get 50, gear up as best you can, do elites to get rep traits and gear.
If they really are trying for tiered difficulty then normal should be a way to earn everything you need in order to progress to advanced, so you can then progress to elite, if you choose. But currently normal isn't really an option and never really was an option to begin with.
Heh. Anyone got a 'I see what you did there' jpg handy?
Sarah Knightly - Co-leader; Frontier Explorers - U.S.S. Witchblade
Rias Gremory - Leader; Frontier Marauders - I.K.S. B'ullwinkle
I too would suggest that you wait until a sizeable number of players have made it to 60 and started tackling the Advanced queues at that point.
Elite Difficulty
My own thoughts on what Elite was supposed to be in the new paradigm (based on previous game experience and dev comments during the run up to release) was something extremely difficult to do that could be completed by above average players with top-tier gear (T5-U/T6 ships and Mk XIV gear) playing together as a team or by extremely skilled players with high level gear (T5 ships with Mk XIII or better gear or T5-U/T6 ships with Fleet grade gear) playing as a team. While completing the queues with optional objectives (any or all) would require an even higher level of skill and familiarity with the queue in question.
I would think that most of those already blowing through the Elite content are of the relatively small percentage of the population that are already extremely skilled, have/had the resources to upgrade all their gear to Mk XIV, and have a great deal of experience working as a team. While in raw numbers that's probably a fairly large number of people, as a percentage of the game population I'd think they're a very small minority. So while the Elite queues probably do need some adjustment I'd encourage you to wait a while until you have a larger sample size (of players) to draw data from for analysis.
Rewards
I actually sat down and did some calculations a while back because I was wondering just what the [censored] you guys were thinking by setting the dilithium and mark rewards so low on most of the new queues and discovered to my shock that what you'd done was take the equivalent numbers from the Borg STFs and cut them in half for all the new queues while setting those queues to be replayable every 30 minutes instead of the 60 minutes of the Borg STFs. This actually made a startling amount of sense from a purely numerical standpoint, but from an actual player perspective could be very frustrating. I would suggest considering doubling the rewards for each queue and extending the replay timer to 60 minutes from 30. While people will have more downtime before being able to replay a specific queue I honestly think this will not only encourage them to keep playing queues, but also encourage them to branch out and play a greater variety of queues.
Of course that's not the only source of player dissatisfaction with queue rewards. A lot of the newer queues have totally variable mark rewards which while potentially greater than the older Borg queues with their base reward + optional objective mark reward models (especially at normal difficulty) often reward far, far less as very few people see a point in organizing a team for such a pittance of a reward, especially given that most of these newer queues have internal timers to dictate when the mission ends instead of objectives to be accomplished.
To try and reduce some of this dissatisfaction I'd suggest setting a base reward for completion of all queues based on difficulty level with the new scoring mechanics that have been instated acting as a source of bonus rewards. Further I'd suggest making available an optional contact at the beginning and ending of each queue that explains how scoring works for that queue: how you can gain and lose points, exactly how you earn points, what point values each action/objective rewards/loses, and how points are used to calculate bonus mark rewards (X points = 1 mark). I'd further suggest that with the bonus marks the bonus itself be subjected to a difficulty level modifier, though one that isn't quite as large as the base mark reward difficulty modifier (assuming you choose to implement something close to this suggestion).
Fair enough
Normal Difficulty seems fine from what I can tell. TBH, i didn't notice anything different about it.
Advanced being harder than the old elite is fine with me, but I think the buff was too extreme (for being advanced, not elite).
When I fly a cruiser with all Mk XIII weapons and consoles and I can't even kill a Borg probe reliably (especially in Borg Disconnected Advanced) then something is a bit off. Especially when said cruiser is a tier 5U Excelsior with Lt. Com tactical and 4 tac consoles.
Since I haven't hit 60 yet, I can't comment on elite.
Also, Crystalline Entity Advanced with 21+ mil HP. That could use some tweaking indeed.
Don't get me wrong, the Borg in particular deserve to be tough, but it should be doable on advanced without the best gear.
"Let them eat static!"
I also thing that the Borg STFs need to be reexamined. Back when I was first doing Borg rep, I did normal, and got mk 10 and 11 gear, then moved on to elite to get mk 12 (end game gear). Now normal doesn't really progress you (unless you get really lucky and get a BNP), and advanced (which is harder than the old elite) gets you gear, but not end game gear.
So, from a progression standpoint, advanced is the "new normal," but it's harder than the old elite from a play perspective. I don't think that it works very well.
Also, while story experience has been lowered, I'm still getting plenty from doffing. I ran one character through one mission last night, and while that character didn't go up a level, everyone went up from 30% to 90% to 51. At this rate, when my first character's through the DR storyline, my other characters will be at least 53 without setting foot in the delta quadrant. I figure that my least geared character will hit 60 before setting foot in the DQ.
On to my thoughts about difficulty/rewards, and all that has happened.
Difficulty - in my opinion, Elite SHOULD be nightmare mode. Enemy hull and DPS can't be the entire cause of the nightmare though. The enemies should be tricky.
Advanced - a touch too hard, OR fail conditions should be toned down. I fly a Gal-X in all Fleet weapons and gear, and I max out around 6-7K. I do NOT A2B, and like flying with phasers AND torpedoes, and have kept my cloak equipped. I had NO problems placing in the top 3 while pugging ISE before. I could fly my Mirror Nova in CE and place in the top 3 often if I healed and debuffed alot, and it has Mk XI Rare phasers and Mk XI Uncommon torpedoes. A slight buff was welcomed, but I think it's gone a little far - in light of rewards, which I go into next.
Normal - Well normal...shouldn't be too hard - easily puggable, etc.
Now on to rewards -
Elite - with great risk, shoudl come great reward. Perhaps more BNPs (or Isomorphic things, etc), a large amount of dilithium, or some really good loot drops.
Advanced - Slashing the rewards while at the same time upping the difficulty seems in poor taste. Why would I pug ISA when I could run around the BZ for 15 minutes if I know the pugs are likely going to fail. I'll still try to get a good team together, but the "queues" are probably dead to me now.
Normal - Here's where there's a problem, IF the difficulty of Advanced remains so high. Buying a C Store ship is only part of the equation in "end game" competitive gear. The other part is good equipment. As of S9.5, crafting is one way to get good equipment, and reputation gear is another. To craft good equipment, you need very rare materials. To get the reputation gear you need BNPs, or Isos, etc). Normal rewards none of this. To be successful in Advanced, you either need a good team, or if you're pugging, good gear. If you can't get the stuff you need to get the good gear, you will NOT succeed in Advanced. It makes things very painful for new players.
If the new Advanced difficulty is as intended, the rewards for the Normal queues should be adjusted to allow players to "build" up their ships.
If there's a reluctance to move the old "Elite" rewards to normal, perhaps scale them down - some item that 3x of them = 1 BNP, or chance at 1 VR mat instead of 3, etc. Otherwise, perhaps advanced should be dialed back a few notches.
Elite - should be darned near impossible.
Just my 2 zen on the whole thing...
Too many 5x HP trash mobs spoils the milk in this case.
The other thing I notice is that the Spheres seem to actually be tougher than the Cubes by orders of magnitude.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
Anyone play 'surface tension' since the update ? I've never played it before last night (post update) and expected it to be a level 50 mission but unless I missed a blog or something I can guess that it isn't a lvl 50 mission. Everything up until Q'onos was typical, but after a message from tuvok going into the shipyard area the difficulty greatly increased with overwhelming numbers of cruisers and smaller ships with hitpoints near that of the old borg spheres, and at least 3 undine dreads that are almost indestructable. I dunno if Enterprise is destructable or not, but I had to keep breaking off combat to repair that ship, and the stupid Romulan ship was nowhere to be found.
Thanks Cryptic for bringing back the 'dying thru' missions. This goes against your quote of saying the new content can be done with T5 ships. Sure it can be done if you die enough (about 9 times in 90+ minutes) and this isn't even NEW content. If this is typical of the 'new' content I don't see any enjoyment in playing STO anymore. Luckily there's so many old missions that have been revamped they're shown as if I've never played them, so I'll be replaying those with my T-5U ship for the ship mastery traits instead of the 'new' content.
...Oh, and the kumbyah moments in the great hall between the feds and KDF are utterly depressing. NO PEACE, EVER with the feds, we will NEVER be fed lapdogs again !
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
I can say that it is pretty apparent that the CE hit's harder now along with the Tholian and mirror ships. However, at first with a full team of 10 players it seems that it could be possible to not blow up very often when attacked by the CE because there are plenty of targets to choose from so even if I was hit twice relatively quickly I was still able to heal up my ship enough to continue fighting for the short term. However, due to the increased DPS enemies can do I cannot heal up quick enough to not blow up. Naturally, if my ship (and other players' ships as well) had good enough DPS for CCA, then there would potentially be less enemies buzzing around me.
I plan on "playing" CCA again and I will give ISA a try tonight... but I think it is pretty clear that plain 'ol T5 starships will not be able to survive Advanced PvE missions without taking a beating. It is relatively easy enough to increase my ship's DPS. But hull points is a different matter. Probably at best I can turn my mirror Negh'var into a glass cannon for Advanced missions; capable of dishing out a good deal of damage, but not capable of absorbing much damage.
I have also played the normal version of CC which was fine. It seems easier than the old CCE since when I got hit, I did not seem to take much hull or shield damage. Not sure how it compares to the old "Normal" though.
Regarding the rewards... I guess can deal with the fact that Cryptic wants to cap the dilithium reward at 960, however given the fact that there are a lot of different types of projects that requires dilithium, I think that 480 dilithium should be the minimum reward. Advanced still provides better rewards since they reward Advanced R&D boxes instead of Normal R&D boxes. I assume Advanced also rewards a little more marks as well since completing CCN provided 105 marks vs. 115 marks for "old" Elite that I assume has been carried over into CCA.
I would say it is probably too early to ask for the difficulty level of Advanced to be reduced just yet. It is pretty clear the Advanced PvE missions are intended for level 60 toons, not level 50 toon. I need to wait until I am level 60 with good (not great) Mk XIII gear to really have an opinion on this matter. I'm sure a T6 ship would be helpful too, but I would like to wait for more ships to be released so that my toons have more options to choose from.
Let's not exaggerate, the ISA gateway is six million hp and the cube is seven million hp :eek:.
if they can do that for the vaadwaurs, they can do that for all our ennemies. btw AI of the vaadwaur frigates is good too, they try to flank you, they leave the fight, and come back
the difficulty is not the problem; the problem is how this difficulty is put in game. more HP for the mobs, this is not an improvement of the difficulty. this is just terribly boring.
give a brain to the Mobs, and this would be more funny. In fleet alert, AI is so crappy; ships stay close to each others, they launch "eject warp plasma" everywhere without a real purpose. The response for this crappy AI is frigates with HP of a battleship lol
- For starters, a few bugs despite, this expanansion appears remarkably stable; almost uncharacteristically so. :P Weapon batteries keep getting unslotted, though; so, this regression bug may need some looking into. But overall remarkable stable. So unlike LoR.
- Leveling up against some mindless waves of mission NPC's, I noticed they really step up around lv 55-56. At that point I could no longer simply ignore their multiple Feedback Pulses (on Elite, of course). All-in-all, still quite doable. Did an Advanced Cure Space too, and that went really well as well. In fact, it was finally exciting again, for a change.
Onto Advanced vs. Elite
- I think I understand your reward dilemma. On the one hand, if Advanced were to pay out as much as Elite, then those truly capable of doing Elites might just take the easy road and do 'quick' Advanceds, what with all new and improved gear and Mk and all. On the other hand, at this time, Elites are so difficult (for 99% of your playerbase), that effectively everyone is getting punished, via the Advanced rewards, just to not let that 1% take advantage, as it were. That may need some tweaking too.
- Ship Mastery went remarkably fast.
- Kudos on the '4 upgrade tokens for 2,000 Zen.' I figured you would just go for 1,000 Zen each. Pleasantly surprised there, too.
Play on normal...where the rewards are even smaller. Um, yeahhhhh....no.
Bottom line is that between increased difficulty and diminished rewards, to get what I could have gotten on Monday I evidently need to put in 15-20 times the effort, or spend a heck of a lot of money. I am prepared to do neither.
Obviously, things are still little soon to tell(despite even the feedback provided on tribble) however, based on the direction the game is heading this is becoming more of a DPS race.
So if:
A) that's the plan, you really need to reevaluate many current skills, ships, consoles, and weapons. You can now add more to the list of 'worthlessness', while adding more to the list of 'must need' with these new settings. Start by looking at those groups who are able to go through elite difficult with relative ease vs. others who don't have a chance.
In either case, there is a lot of work that would need to be done. The problem is, unless this is looked into now, later on, the problem with snowball and it'll even be more work and be more difficult to correct.