Just did a pug FFA. Had a little over 2 min left after finally defeating wave 1 and 2. It was obviously going to fail. Would have been nice if the next wave would have showed up but all we did was sit there over the starbase with nothing to do but wait for 2 minutes for fail rewards, 11 fleet marks and 240 dilithium. Yeah, not worth anyone's time. Sad when even the NPCs know it is a waste of everyone's time to show up. The four folks I was with all stated that they have not finished a single FFA since the update. I am curious since the hardcore are the minority and the majority are the unwashed masses of pugs that just want to have a good time, how is this going to help the game in any way? Is FFA now end game content that you should not be doing until level 50 and in a maxed level 50 ship with complete tier XII gear? I have spent a TON of money on ships that are now obsolete even as T5Us. The game was fun before the new update, there was a point to playing STOs. Now it is NOT fun period. I have 18 toons across all factions because I simply had a ball playing STO. Now for the first time since open beta, I am wondering where to spend my time and money to have fun. When I see spoke persons for the game say things like "minor tweaks" yeah I hear "we made a choice to go in this direction and no matter the feed back we are going to run this baby off a cliff". Oh well, my opinion and how much fun I am having in game obviously means little to nothing as I am one person. Any way I can get a server that has the old game mechanics that were fun and made me feel like spending money on the game?
Perhaps you should read the rest of the Dev blog, specifically where they talk about "new challenges" being added to Advanced. Similar does not mean "exactly the same as it was before".
From reading that blog, it would appear that was talking about new Optionals to supplement the now mandatory "Old Optionals".
We have two fleets of 500 players each, the feedback i'm getting is they are not happy with the changes.
Please note about 80 percent of the people in our fleet are new, average, or part time players.
We know Elite 30K DPS players are in minority this means content should not be created for such a small group.
People also don't like content that creates ranks in the game the new difficulty is doing just that.
Below Par Player - One who cannot complete the ADV STFs and gets trolled in the forms for speaking out.
Biggest complaint people is they are discouraged when they fail the optionals and get no rewards.
(FYI : They should be called objectives not optionals. )
We went from 20 people on TeamSpeak to five after the average player become disenchanted.
These are people who did the old STFs in 5- 6 minutes and could not finish Fleet Alert, Advanced, Cure and Infected.
I put a positive spin on it and started telling the fleet to level up to 60.
The feedback I received was pretty bad, I believe its due to 75% all people dont like change.
Drastically changing majority of the players favorite content is not good due 75% all people dont like change.
Because 75% all people dont like change new content should have been added while leaving the old difficulty levels and rewards in place.
I see a few post in favor of the changes while they put down the people who dont like them shame on them.
Well you cannot argue that 75% all people dont like change and many business have gone broke due to drastic changes. (Star Wars Galaxies is a good example)
75% all people dont like change so why in the heck would any one think changing the most favored content would be accepted.
I really do hate the Advanced and Elite queues for Space. All that happened was NPCs got an extra decimal place in health/shield pools. All it did was make Advanced and Elite tedious because it takes several minutes to kill a single 250k probe alone. The probe can't even kill me, but I'm sitting here tapping the fire/tactical buff button over and over with nothing new. The content isn't more difficult; it is just boring.
I want to have more challenging content, but having more hit points to burn through doesn't make it more challenging. These queues would be so much more difficult if NPCs actually used more buffs, debuffs, healed themselves/others, and focused fire on players. For now I'm not even going to touch Advanced or Elite Space queues given the sheer amount of health I have to drain to progress the mission. That said I'll be spending a lot of time in the ground queues where NPCs obtained an acceptable health pool buff...but nothing stupid high like space.
I don't expect the advanced to be as easy as the elite was before. However, STO is focused towards the casual gamer. Yet, most of the casual gamers are not doing 35-50K DPS. A few things I would keep in mind are these:
Increasing the hull and shield hit points is not so much a challenge since newer ships and gear have always fed the power creep. Granted, knowing how to fly a ship players a lot into it. But just making them able to tank more is not adding a challenge, but just making it harder. A smarter AI would be a much better option.
You have the Normal difficulty for players to cut their teeth on. That is the way it should be. But, since you overly buffed the hull, and shield hit points for advanced, it makes it extremely hard for most of your players that don't do the "melt your face" DPS. Advanced should be the content that gives the average player a challenge, and makes them come away saying, "That was awesome!" I loved the fact that the Conduit had more spheres, and the Cure also. That added a nice touch to it.
If players want the hardest content, and want to see people die around them because of the difficulty, that is what elite is for.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am not saying that players should be able to solo any STF, or drop the cubes while the nanite probes are still under them. Or that they should be able to drop the gate in the Conduit while at least one transformer is still up. However, if three average DPS players are attacking the BOP in the Cure as soon as they spawn, and they can't drop them before they can start firing on the Kang, then there are too many hit points there.
In one instance, we had two ships that were 15K builds, and the other three were around 9K. For almost the whole time, it was 5 players hitting BOP, and spheres. At 3 min left, other players started leaving, because it was pointless.
You already added more spheres to both missions. That was a pleasant surprise. I loved it. However, lower the hit points down, and make it doable for the average player. Let the elitist have the elite queues. That is why they are called elite.
About the rewards, if you are going to do anything with them, they should have been increased from where they were originally before DR. The normal should have become 960, the advanced 1920, and the elite should have given what they are worth to the elite that can run them, 3840.
Also, the developers have mentioned that the elite are for the best of the best, as I agree it should be. However, if you lock the VR mats behind it, then you are punishing those that don't have the money, resources, or time to get the best of the best gear, and try for it. Putting a decent chance to getting them in advanced, since they are going to be harder missions that the old elites, only makes sense. But, for elite, make it a guarantee drop of at least one, but can be higher. And if it hits on a higher number, like 2 or 3, then everyone in the team gets the same amount.
This will make the elite suitable for the elite, the advanced suitable for the average player, and normal for the ones that just get in them for a few marks to run rep projects, and don't care for the higher rewards. If you want to make three categories, and them be for different range of players, then making two of them focused more for elite is not doing the job.
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Perhaps you should read the rest of the Dev blog, specifically where they talk about "new challenges" being added to Advanced. Similar does not mean "exactly the same as it was before".
He didn't suggest that "similar' should mean "exactly the same", but nice straw man.
"Similar" is far closer to "the same" than it is to "2 to 4 times as long to complete."
What I find really funny is all these supposed elite cool kids club types spending more time making snide remarks, veiled insults, and enjoying seeing everyone have things taken away from them in advanced than they are enjoying their new elite tier they asked for (and also now acting like both advanced AND elite should be their little playgrounds and we are all welcome to go sit in the kiddie pool).
Perhaps you should read the rest of the Dev blog, specifically where they talk about "new challenges" being added to Advanced. Similar does not mean "exactly the same as it was before".
Really, changing what used to be optional to mandatory makes it similar even if everything else is the same. :P
Like others, I welcome the higher difficulty of the elite missions, but I have a serious issue with the higher Hp/shields of enemies on normal and advanced. As a general rule, there has to be a purpose for gear upgrades. In this case, the elite missions give us something to shoot for. This is good because elite missions are an expansion on what already exists.
When you change all pre-existing content to suddenly become so much stronger, even though we know our DPS numbers are the same we feel weaker by comparison. It pisses on all the hard work of the players in getting their ultra xii weapons and consoles when suddenly they feel like pea shooters. Players need a gold standard against which they can feel that their efforts have accomplished something. Our STFs were that standard (even fleet alerts!). They let us gauge our strength and lets be honest, gave us respite when we just wanted to blow things up. Now, our gold standard is so much stronger than before, making all of our past efforts feel worthless and causing players to quit and rage. Upgrades should be required to MOVE FORWARD, not to CATCH UP.
So in summary, yes, add new content that requires stronger gear, but leave alone what is already there. Let players continue to use that standard and don't be afraid of letting players dominate past foes with new weapons. Rewards will be scaled accordingly, so let them have fun for goodness sakes.
Rather than changing the difficulty of advanced, I would suggest reducing the mission cool down timer on these instead, if only for the sort term until more players have adjusted to the changes. It's VERY frustrating when doing for example Infected Space advanced and 1 player pops a gen before you can pop them all quickly and then take the transformer down, failing the STF and then having to wait for nearly an hour to try again.
The difficulty really isn't the problem, if you get an intelligent team it's still doable. The problem is that intially at least most teams will think that they have the DPS to just dash through it without any care, leaving you with a very very long wait to try again. Shorter waits would mean that people could practice more.
Oh and please, turn down the wobble on the Borg cubes, it makes me feel sick watching them wobble all over the place.... lol
More Extremely high HP is the absolute worse way to make a game harder. Yes we wanted a harder game, but not in that way. Smarter NPC's are what people wanted. Just allow them to use more Bridge officer powers.
Can't Cryptic script NPC's to use certain powers at a certain time?
Hell, a tac cube using Attack pattern alpha + Attack pattern Delta III would be cool. Script them to use science team when Subnulceonic beam hits. Can the NPC's even be scripted in STO?
If not, I understand HP is all you can edit. Either that or you guys are the "L" word...
Please don't be [L word]. I use to be [L word] too, but nothing ever got done (obviously).
The dress is gold and white. Over 70% people says so. When viewed from a certain screen angle it appears blue and black. The dress displayed on amazon is a blue and black dress, but it's not the same dress in the picture. If you're seeing blue & black you're slightly colored blind. A normal upright screen = white and gold.
There is no straw man. The poster I was replying to was rather clear that they felt that since they were able to complete Elite queues before, they should be able to complete the Advanced queues now, and asked the Devs whether this new difficulty was their intent.
The devs are likewise asking us if we feel what they delivered matches their intent.
Depends on who you ask. Apparently, the Devs feel the current Advanced is "similar" to what elite used to be.
Then I can know with certainty anything the devs say is worth spit since they don't acknowledge the existing word-idea relationship the rest of humanity operates on.
You'll find I've been saying the opposite. If they're going to increase the difficulty, they need to increase the rewards for it, not reduce them. It's asking to do more work for less pay.
The statement applies to who it was addressed to:
"supposed elite cool kids club types"
I'm lamenting the fact that nobody in this entire new queue system wins right now (in the more esoteric sense). The bulk of players have just had their progression rates squashed and their expenses soar simultaneously. The people who actually wanted something challenging now just get to squeak a few more DPS out of a build for 2-3x longer per run (yay?).
The only winners here are the people coming here posting for the sole purpose of pissing in both groups' cheerios was my point :9.
We have to invest an awful lot into the game - hundreds of thousands of dilithium per character not to mention acquiring the ships and consoles themselves - to be able to do the same exact content we were able to do for years up till Monday...for half the reward.
We have to invest an awful lot into the game - hundreds of thousands of dilithium per character not to mention acquiring the ships and consoles themselves - to be able to do the same exact content we were able to do for years up till Monday...for half the reward.
How are there people not offended by that?
Because there are a dozen threads for complaining about rewards. We have a thread where we have (had?) a dev's attention wanting to talk about the difficulty mechanics, lets stay on topic here.
Because there are a dozen threads for complaining about rewards. We have a thread where we have (had?) a dev's attention wanting to talk about the difficulty mechanics, lets stay on topic here.
I am on topic. Read what I wrote. I'll give you a big hint since you seem to fail at reading comprehension: the content we've all been doing for years is suddenly now so difficult that we need to invest hundreds of thousands of dilithium to complete it.
Its no fun playing advanced which is supposed to be the old elite it really isn't.
I have pugged and every time the players left its not fun ( Im on here for a bit of fun that's all ) You should be able to complete even in pugs - how do you meet new players in the game if you always do it as a fleet
Ive not been able to complete one yet , I have all fleet mk13 gear that cost a hell of alot to upgrade to and yet still i cannot complete one pve mission
So my supprise of all , - i was thinking advanced a nice big juicy reward 1200 dilithium maybe 1000
No a big fat 480 ???? what on earth ?
So it takes longer , your gear cost so much , and yet even though you have upgraded your gear you still cannot compete ? ?? and when you do complete it , your getting a slap around the face with a lower reward
I'm glad you're considering making Elite even harder. Those DPS channel dweebs screamed for more and I hope you make it as painful as possible. And they deserve even better rewards if they can beat it.
But Advanced needs to be much, much closer to the previous elite. In rewards as well as in form. We were repeatedly told that Advanced would be the old elite, and those statements were never accurate.
I actually didn't get to any of the DR story content yesterday. I hear it's good. But I tried some advanced queues and was left too angry to actually play.
What REALLY concerns me is that a lot of the ire here was posted in the Tribble subforums...why was it not heeded there?
The concept of INCREASING the HP redonkulously yet simultaneously nerfing the rewards doth not maketh good design or encourage people to play.
Crystaline Advanced is just plain silly now.
What boggles and astounds me is that someone played the current advanced qeues and said "that's the sweet spot right there!"
They need to be harder than before but not so silly. Also, advanced and elites should have a shorter cooldown of replay since they are so easy to fail. Perhaps not a huge amount...but *something*.
I did UIA twice today... noticed two main changes: no more forcefield making us wait in the briefing room! and there's a small change to the objectives. the old optional is part of the mission, there's a new optional for getting the interrogations right.
The Undine themselves seemed no harder... But that brings me to two glitches: 1: at least some of the enemies were level 40. 2: the attackers trying to steal the orb never spawned. So we just stood there guarding the orb for a few minutes.
The problem with the new Advanced (old Elite) isn't that it's entirely too difficult, it's that the HP are so high now that it takes a LOT longer to do. Thus, it not only is very boring & drawn out to most, but to a lot of others, it gives the illusion of being more difficult. For example, when the Crystalline Entity takes 10 well-equipped people in upgraded ships 45 minutes to knock it down to 25%, and then it stays at 25%, there's an issue. It comes off as being impossible to kill, and therefore more difficult.
I'd be ok with bumping them up to twice as long, the 5-10 minutes they used to take would be upwards of 20. If that was the goal, it was missed by many quadrants. I've yet to play an Advanced queue that has finished through, everyone ends up quitting due to the HP stagnating at some point...
I just ran the Advanced (old Elite) Crystalline Entity for the first time since the expansion hit. Imagine my surprise when everything in there seems to have had their HP multiplied by a factor of 10.
Nearly 1 million HP's for a Tholian Recluse? The Entity itself had more than 20 million where it used to have a bit over 2 million on the old Elite? WTF?!
The optional is to defeat the Entity in 10 minutes or less. It took 6 minutes just to beat the first wave of Thoians. The next 15 minutes were wasted whittling the Entity down to 80%. 3 people on my team quit around this point, and I'd be willing to bet a couple from the other team quit as well. I logged out and came to the forums to see if what I'm seeing is unique. Or a bug. Seems it's WAI.
The way I understood the new setup for the queues to be was Normal would be unchanged, Advanced would simply be the old Elite with some optional things added where there were none, and some old optionals becoming mandatory. The new Elite was to be where the difficulty really ramped up. Guess things got changed.
Oh, and the Dilithium being cut down, what's the deal with that?
Oh well, I guess if this is what the new queues are going to be like, I guess I'm done running them on anything above Normal.
Thanks Cryptic, you really know how to make improvements. :rolleyes:
Hello. My name is iamynaught and I am an altaholic.
What boggles and astounds me is that someone played the current advanced qeues and said "that's the sweet spot right there!"
There's a flaw in your thinking here, which is the assumption that anyone on the STO dev team playtested them at all.
I bought one of their fancy T6 ships, the Guardian. It has a bugged heal mod that scales all hull heals as if it were a T3 ship, and its console ability is laughably broken. If no devs tested an item that they sell for $30, I would not be so sure they ever queued up for Advanced themselves.
There's a flaw in your thinking here, which is the assumption that anyone on the STO dev team playtested them at all.
I bought one of their fancy T6 ships, the Guardian. It has a bugged heal mod that scales all hull heals as if it were a T3 ship, and its console ability is laughably broken. If no devs tested an item that they sell for $30, I would not be so sure they ever queued up for Advanced themselves.
Why do i feel, that the current advanced is supposed to be the LVL60+ elite?
Your Plasma Torpedo - Heavy III deals 174321 (66343) Kinetic Damage(Critical) to I.R.W. Valdore.
Only Advanced and Elite missions reward processors, injections, implants, as well as VR R&D mats. So without them new 50 level characters will not be able to get better quality equipment. With out better quality equipment they will not be able to to Advanced and Elite missions.
It is kind of chicken an d the egg thing.
I did UIA twice today... noticed two main changes: no more forcefield making us wait in the briefing room! and there's a small change to the objectives. the old optional is part of the mission, there's a new optional for getting the interrogations right.
Previously the mark reward scaled with the number of correct interrogations. Now it's a binary on/off reward -- and all it takes is one idiot or misclick to TRIBBLE it up for everyone. BAD DESIGN!
Welcome to Delta Rising. A lot has changed in the game difficulty, and we are looking for your feedback.
Delta Rising was a massive addition, and we anticipate that we will need to make adjustments. So over the next few weeks expect changes in the baseline difficulty, advanced difficulty, and elite difficulty - and also expect rewards to change as we gather more metrics on play-times and success rates.
Our goal was to make basic difficulty and the story content something everyone can play - even with a standard T5 ship. Levels 1-50 are generally pretty easy at basic difficulty, so we felt 51-60 should step things up a bit. Although we expect 51-60 accessible everyone, those in T5 ships and non-upgraded gear should to start to feel a definite challenge as they approach level 60. We expect Advanced to be for more skilled players and those who have invested in the game (ships and gear). And we expect Elite to be for the best of the best. We don't expect most players to succeed on elite difficulty.
If I were to guess, I would expect basic to get some minor tuning, Advanced to get a little easier and Elite to get a lot harder - and rewards, like dilithium rewards, could potentially go up across queues once we are sure we are hitting the right mark. But this is just my guess at this time.
Until then, let us know your thoughts here, and we will take your feedback into consideration.
Thanks, and we hope you enjoy Delta Rising.
LLAP
My opinion is simple
The HP scaling is way to high. Even a small Kazon takes as much as pre DR Undine ship. Not to talk about Advanced or Elite in the story missions. Fighting a small enemy more then 1min is not acceptable because it gets boring, even on eltie.
There you will find much higher HP, even higher shield resistence and thats it. Maybe they do some more damage but my Vesta does not care. Shield is allways up. Simply long and boring fights without any surprise or challenge. And it might be very hard if you run into this HP-wall with a lower DPS ship.
The breaking off for an attack run of the Vodwoor is a nice idea. But they never turn for an attack if you can stay at their tail. So use at last a timer. Flying away does not work? Skip running away.
And the drops are - where are the drops?
There is next to nothing in the episodes, not on Elite nore on normal. And there is nothing in the PvE queues at advanced. I played 2 advanced yesterday and i was "allowed" to gamble for 2! items. Both XI.
And there are items that are needed for repgear from advanced. But you can get them just from elite.
So, how should that work now.
There is next to no loot, so how should new players get EC. How should anybody buy stuff from the R&D system that is on exchange.
How should they effort the Repsystems when level 50?
You can get the items you need for rep gear from the hourly projects but that is very random. So no marks, next to no Di, no EC = no Repgear. Well, maybe after a long time. But didn't you introduce the Rep system because you wanted to get rid of the randomness of the old style of getting XII "Repgear"?
And then you expect the new players to play on Elite to get the Items for the repgear with just items from the missions. Totaly works.
And are there purple R&D mats you can get from advanced? If not you killed the R&D System too for most players. Next to nobody will be able to play Elite soon. I doubt that it will be even impossible for most players with XIV gold gear and T6 ships.
Next to nobody will be able to effort R&D mats of higher quality (maybe ground ones...) and next to nobody will be able to buy that stuff on exchange.
Why again the Ditraders that where selling up to XI blue for DI where removed when you planed to kill the R&D system right in the next content update.
We are back to no EC, no Di, no Items for Repgear, very few marks and a dead marked. Congrats, you have killed your economical system that was just started with the new R&D system.
You took the EC out of the calculation. It will take some time and fleets will be crippled first because people will stopp donating EC and DI and then the market will crash. Even today i get my EC nearly just from marauding KDF toons.
Beside all that i do enjoy DR. Even if you close some story arcs with a blunt club.
Only Advanced and Elite missions reward processors, injections, implants, as well as VR R&D mats. So without them new 50 level characters will not be able to get better quality equipment. With out better quality equipment they will not be able to to Advanced and Elite missions.
It is kind of chicken an d the egg thing.
Ahh but there's r&d packs and lockboxes for better quality equipment, and of course purchasing zen to buy dilithium on the exhange.
Doesn't take a genius to see what's really going on. That's not a jab at you by the way, I'm just saying. Looking at the big picture here it's obvious what's going on.
This game need new blood. People like us hard core Star Trek fans , already here, we will be here no meter what, till last server goes offline. We already have all of the shines and we are know better not to play lock-box games.
The new people on another hand, will come because of big neon F2P sign. They will level up and then hit the end level content wall. After few futile attempts to brake trough the will leave. It is a lot of entertainment choices around.
Previously the mark reward scaled with the number of correct interrogations. Now it's a binary on/off reward -- and all it takes is one idiot or misclick to TRIBBLE it up for everyone. BAD DESIGN!
Welcome to Delta Rising. A lot has changed in the game difficulty, and we are looking for your feedback.
Delta Rising was a massive addition, and we anticipate that we will need to make adjustments. So over the next few weeks expect changes in the baseline difficulty, advanced difficulty, and elite difficulty - and also expect rewards to change as we gather more metrics on play-times and success rates.
Our goal was to make basic difficulty and the story content something everyone can play - even with a standard T5 ship. Levels 1-50 are generally pretty easy at basic difficulty, so we felt 51-60 should step things up a bit. Although we expect 51-60 accessible everyone, those in T5 ships and non-upgraded gear should to start to feel a definite challenge as they approach level 60. We expect Advanced to be for more skilled players and those who have invested in the game (ships and gear). And we expect Elite to be for the best of the best. We don't expect most players to succeed on elite difficulty.
If I were to guess, I would expect basic to get some minor tuning, Advanced to get a little easier and Elite to get a lot harder - and rewards, like dilithium rewards, could potentially go up across queues once we are sure we are hitting the right mark. But this is just my guess at this time.
Until then, let us know your thoughts here, and we will take your feedback into consideration.
Thanks, and we hope you enjoy Delta Rising.
LLAP
Come on Geko,you were planning on lowering the dilithium rewards for some time now,and you knew it would cause a crapstorm.Overshooting it now,and tweaking it later will make it seem 'not as bad' and 'something players could live with'....but it doesn't change the fact rewards are getting nerfed!
On top of that,the aim of the difficulty adjustments and the (much) lower rewards at normal and advanced difficulty,is to force players to spend money.Cryptic's F2P arguments are getting really thin...
The PWE/Cryptic sweatshop...not where the game is made,but where the game is played!
Take back your home,end the grind!
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Cirran
From reading that blog, it would appear that was talking about new Optionals to supplement the now mandatory "Old Optionals".
Please note about 80 percent of the people in our fleet are new, average, or part time players.
We know Elite 30K DPS players are in minority this means content should not be created for such a small group.
People also don't like content that creates ranks in the game the new difficulty is doing just that.
Below Par Player - One who cannot complete the ADV STFs and gets trolled in the forms for speaking out.
Biggest complaint people is they are discouraged when they fail the optionals and get no rewards.
(FYI : They should be called objectives not optionals. )
We went from 20 people on TeamSpeak to five after the average player become disenchanted.
These are people who did the old STFs in 5- 6 minutes and could not finish Fleet Alert, Advanced, Cure and Infected.
I put a positive spin on it and started telling the fleet to level up to 60.
The feedback I received was pretty bad, I believe its due to 75% all people dont like change.
Drastically changing majority of the players favorite content is not good due 75% all people dont like change.
Because 75% all people dont like change new content should have been added while leaving the old difficulty levels and rewards in place.
I see a few post in favor of the changes while they put down the people who dont like them shame on them.
Well you cannot argue that 75% all people dont like change and many business have gone broke due to drastic changes. (Star Wars Galaxies is a good example)
75% all people dont like change so why in the heck would any one think changing the most favored content would be accepted.
I want to have more challenging content, but having more hit points to burn through doesn't make it more challenging. These queues would be so much more difficult if NPCs actually used more buffs, debuffs, healed themselves/others, and focused fire on players. For now I'm not even going to touch Advanced or Elite Space queues given the sheer amount of health I have to drain to progress the mission. That said I'll be spending a lot of time in the ground queues where NPCs obtained an acceptable health pool buff...but nothing stupid high like space.
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Increasing the hull and shield hit points is not so much a challenge since newer ships and gear have always fed the power creep. Granted, knowing how to fly a ship players a lot into it. But just making them able to tank more is not adding a challenge, but just making it harder. A smarter AI would be a much better option.
You have the Normal difficulty for players to cut their teeth on. That is the way it should be. But, since you overly buffed the hull, and shield hit points for advanced, it makes it extremely hard for most of your players that don't do the "melt your face" DPS. Advanced should be the content that gives the average player a challenge, and makes them come away saying, "That was awesome!" I loved the fact that the Conduit had more spheres, and the Cure also. That added a nice touch to it.
If players want the hardest content, and want to see people die around them because of the difficulty, that is what elite is for.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am not saying that players should be able to solo any STF, or drop the cubes while the nanite probes are still under them. Or that they should be able to drop the gate in the Conduit while at least one transformer is still up. However, if three average DPS players are attacking the BOP in the Cure as soon as they spawn, and they can't drop them before they can start firing on the Kang, then there are too many hit points there.
In one instance, we had two ships that were 15K builds, and the other three were around 9K. For almost the whole time, it was 5 players hitting BOP, and spheres. At 3 min left, other players started leaving, because it was pointless.
You already added more spheres to both missions. That was a pleasant surprise. I loved it. However, lower the hit points down, and make it doable for the average player. Let the elitist have the elite queues. That is why they are called elite.
About the rewards, if you are going to do anything with them, they should have been increased from where they were originally before DR. The normal should have become 960, the advanced 1920, and the elite should have given what they are worth to the elite that can run them, 3840.
Also, the developers have mentioned that the elite are for the best of the best, as I agree it should be. However, if you lock the VR mats behind it, then you are punishing those that don't have the money, resources, or time to get the best of the best gear, and try for it. Putting a decent chance to getting them in advanced, since they are going to be harder missions that the old elites, only makes sense. But, for elite, make it a guarantee drop of at least one, but can be higher. And if it hits on a higher number, like 2 or 3, then everyone in the team gets the same amount.
This will make the elite suitable for the elite, the advanced suitable for the average player, and normal for the ones that just get in them for a few marks to run rep projects, and don't care for the higher rewards. If you want to make three categories, and them be for different range of players, then making two of them focused more for elite is not doing the job.
He didn't suggest that "similar' should mean "exactly the same", but nice straw man.
"Similar" is far closer to "the same" than it is to "2 to 4 times as long to complete."
What I find really funny is all these supposed elite cool kids club types spending more time making snide remarks, veiled insults, and enjoying seeing everyone have things taken away from them in advanced than they are enjoying their new elite tier they asked for (and also now acting like both advanced AND elite should be their little playgrounds and we are all welcome to go sit in the kiddie pool).
Makes you wonder what the real motive was.
Really, changing what used to be optional to mandatory makes it similar even if everything else is the same. :P
When you change all pre-existing content to suddenly become so much stronger, even though we know our DPS numbers are the same we feel weaker by comparison. It pisses on all the hard work of the players in getting their ultra xii weapons and consoles when suddenly they feel like pea shooters. Players need a gold standard against which they can feel that their efforts have accomplished something. Our STFs were that standard (even fleet alerts!). They let us gauge our strength and lets be honest, gave us respite when we just wanted to blow things up. Now, our gold standard is so much stronger than before, making all of our past efforts feel worthless and causing players to quit and rage. Upgrades should be required to MOVE FORWARD, not to CATCH UP.
So in summary, yes, add new content that requires stronger gear, but leave alone what is already there. Let players continue to use that standard and don't be afraid of letting players dominate past foes with new weapons. Rewards will be scaled accordingly, so let them have fun for goodness sakes.
The difficulty really isn't the problem, if you get an intelligent team it's still doable. The problem is that intially at least most teams will think that they have the DPS to just dash through it without any care, leaving you with a very very long wait to try again. Shorter waits would mean that people could practice more.
Oh and please, turn down the wobble on the Borg cubes, it makes me feel sick watching them wobble all over the place.... lol
Can't Cryptic script NPC's to use certain powers at a certain time?
Hell, a tac cube using Attack pattern alpha + Attack pattern Delta III would be cool. Script them to use science team when Subnulceonic beam hits. Can the NPC's even be scripted in STO?
If not, I understand HP is all you can edit. Either that or you guys are the "L" word...
Please don't be [L word]. I use to be [L word] too, but nothing ever got done (obviously).
The devs are likewise asking us if we feel what they delivered matches their intent.
Then I can know with certainty anything the devs say is worth spit since they don't acknowledge the existing word-idea relationship the rest of humanity operates on.
The statement applies to who it was addressed to:
"supposed elite cool kids club types"
I'm lamenting the fact that nobody in this entire new queue system wins right now (in the more esoteric sense). The bulk of players have just had their progression rates squashed and their expenses soar simultaneously. The people who actually wanted something challenging now just get to squeak a few more DPS out of a build for 2-3x longer per run (yay?).
The only winners here are the people coming here posting for the sole purpose of pissing in both groups' cheerios was my point :9.
How are there people not offended by that?
Because there are a dozen threads for complaining about rewards. We have a thread where we have (had?) a dev's attention wanting to talk about the difficulty mechanics, lets stay on topic here.
I am on topic. Read what I wrote. I'll give you a big hint since you seem to fail at reading comprehension: the content we've all been doing for years is suddenly now so difficult that we need to invest hundreds of thousands of dilithium to complete it.
Its no fun playing advanced which is supposed to be the old elite it really isn't.
I have pugged and every time the players left its not fun ( Im on here for a bit of fun that's all ) You should be able to complete even in pugs - how do you meet new players in the game if you always do it as a fleet
Ive not been able to complete one yet , I have all fleet mk13 gear that cost a hell of alot to upgrade to and yet still i cannot complete one pve mission
So my supprise of all , - i was thinking advanced a nice big juicy reward 1200 dilithium maybe 1000
No a big fat 480 ???? what on earth ?
So it takes longer , your gear cost so much , and yet even though you have upgraded your gear you still cannot compete ? ?? and when you do complete it , your getting a slap around the face with a lower reward
Yeah my idea of fun
But Advanced needs to be much, much closer to the previous elite. In rewards as well as in form. We were repeatedly told that Advanced would be the old elite, and those statements were never accurate.
I actually didn't get to any of the DR story content yesterday. I hear it's good. But I tried some advanced queues and was left too angry to actually play.
The concept of INCREASING the HP redonkulously yet simultaneously nerfing the rewards doth not maketh good design or encourage people to play.
Crystaline Advanced is just plain silly now.
What boggles and astounds me is that someone played the current advanced qeues and said "that's the sweet spot right there!"
They need to be harder than before but not so silly. Also, advanced and elites should have a shorter cooldown of replay since they are so easy to fail. Perhaps not a huge amount...but *something*.
The Undine themselves seemed no harder... But that brings me to two glitches: 1: at least some of the enemies were level 40. 2: the attackers trying to steal the orb never spawned. So we just stood there guarding the orb for a few minutes.
My character Tsin'xing
I just ran the Advanced (old Elite) Crystalline Entity for the first time since the expansion hit. Imagine my surprise when everything in there seems to have had their HP multiplied by a factor of 10.
Nearly 1 million HP's for a Tholian Recluse? The Entity itself had more than 20 million where it used to have a bit over 2 million on the old Elite? WTF?!
The optional is to defeat the Entity in 10 minutes or less. It took 6 minutes just to beat the first wave of Thoians. The next 15 minutes were wasted whittling the Entity down to 80%. 3 people on my team quit around this point, and I'd be willing to bet a couple from the other team quit as well. I logged out and came to the forums to see if what I'm seeing is unique. Or a bug. Seems it's WAI.
The way I understood the new setup for the queues to be was Normal would be unchanged, Advanced would simply be the old Elite with some optional things added where there were none, and some old optionals becoming mandatory. The new Elite was to be where the difficulty really ramped up. Guess things got changed.
Oh, and the Dilithium being cut down, what's the deal with that?
Oh well, I guess if this is what the new queues are going to be like, I guess I'm done running them on anything above Normal.
Thanks Cryptic, you really know how to make improvements. :rolleyes:
Losing faith in humanity, one person at a time.
There's a flaw in your thinking here, which is the assumption that anyone on the STO dev team playtested them at all.
I bought one of their fancy T6 ships, the Guardian. It has a bugged heal mod that scales all hull heals as if it were a T3 ship, and its console ability is laughably broken. If no devs tested an item that they sell for $30, I would not be so sure they ever queued up for Advanced themselves.
Balance this skill level so we can have a little something again please
Elite, havent seen it yet but from what all others have said- rewards.. WTF people, make it worth while.
Why do i feel, that the current advanced is supposed to be the LVL60+ elite?
It is kind of chicken an d the egg thing.
Previously the mark reward scaled with the number of correct interrogations. Now it's a binary on/off reward -- and all it takes is one idiot or misclick to TRIBBLE it up for everyone. BAD DESIGN!
My opinion is simple
The HP scaling is way to high. Even a small Kazon takes as much as pre DR Undine ship. Not to talk about Advanced or Elite in the story missions. Fighting a small enemy more then 1min is not acceptable because it gets boring, even on eltie.
There you will find much higher HP, even higher shield resistence and thats it. Maybe they do some more damage but my Vesta does not care. Shield is allways up. Simply long and boring fights without any surprise or challenge. And it might be very hard if you run into this HP-wall with a lower DPS ship.
The breaking off for an attack run of the Vodwoor is a nice idea. But they never turn for an attack if you can stay at their tail. So use at last a timer. Flying away does not work? Skip running away.
And the drops are - where are the drops?
There is next to nothing in the episodes, not on Elite nore on normal. And there is nothing in the PvE queues at advanced. I played 2 advanced yesterday and i was "allowed" to gamble for 2! items. Both XI.
And there are items that are needed for repgear from advanced. But you can get them just from elite.
So, how should that work now.
There is next to no loot, so how should new players get EC. How should anybody buy stuff from the R&D system that is on exchange.
How should they effort the Repsystems when level 50?
You can get the items you need for rep gear from the hourly projects but that is very random. So no marks, next to no Di, no EC = no Repgear. Well, maybe after a long time. But didn't you introduce the Rep system because you wanted to get rid of the randomness of the old style of getting XII "Repgear"?
And then you expect the new players to play on Elite to get the Items for the repgear with just items from the missions. Totaly works.
And are there purple R&D mats you can get from advanced? If not you killed the R&D System too for most players. Next to nobody will be able to play Elite soon. I doubt that it will be even impossible for most players with XIV gold gear and T6 ships.
Next to nobody will be able to effort R&D mats of higher quality (maybe ground ones...) and next to nobody will be able to buy that stuff on exchange.
Why again the Ditraders that where selling up to XI blue for DI where removed when you planed to kill the R&D system right in the next content update.
We are back to no EC, no Di, no Items for Repgear, very few marks and a dead marked. Congrats, you have killed your economical system that was just started with the new R&D system.
You took the EC out of the calculation. It will take some time and fleets will be crippled first because people will stopp donating EC and DI and then the market will crash. Even today i get my EC nearly just from marauding KDF toons.
Beside all that i do enjoy DR. Even if you close some story arcs with a blunt club.
Ahh but there's r&d packs and lockboxes for better quality equipment, and of course purchasing zen to buy dilithium on the exhange.
Doesn't take a genius to see what's really going on. That's not a jab at you by the way, I'm just saying. Looking at the big picture here it's obvious what's going on.
The new people on another hand, will come because of big neon F2P sign. They will level up and then hit the end level content wall. After few futile attempts to brake trough the will leave. It is a lot of entertainment choices around.
My character Tsin'xing
Come on Geko,you were planning on lowering the dilithium rewards for some time now,and you knew it would cause a crapstorm.Overshooting it now,and tweaking it later will make it seem 'not as bad' and 'something players could live with'....but it doesn't change the fact rewards are getting nerfed!
On top of that,the aim of the difficulty adjustments and the (much) lower rewards at normal and advanced difficulty,is to force players to spend money.Cryptic's F2P arguments are getting really thin...
Take back your home,end the grind!
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