I myself find it hard to understand how they want to encourage tank/dps/healer when it's not set up for people who are queing for groups. I am a fly a very good tank ship that have no problems with the borg yet I have not even ran across a healer as of yet, I have ran across tons of dpsers who can't seem to do much damage to the borg to even finish the missions now. I try my best to keep some of the ships with me healed (since I use voice commands and joyrstick I am able to call out members of my teams by number 1-4 then heal them then revert back to the mob). So far this whole new way they have came up with is in my opinion a little short sighted.
They just added huge amounts of HP to everything so it takes longer to do an advanced STF and halved the rewards. This makes no sense. If I spend 15mins doing an STF I expect the rewards to be proportional to time taken and difficulty. The way it is now is just not fun. Not fun means a population drop= less revenue.
Whoever thought and supported adding all the extra dil sinks and reward reductions all in one go doesn't understand MMO populations. An expansion has just been released and the PvE queues are almost empty. No it isn't people just doing all the missions, because there aren't enough skill point rewards to get you to the next tier, so you have to queue PvE. This really wasn't the time to experiment. A really bad idea.
Whoever thought and supported adding all the extra dil sinks and reward reductions all in one go doesn't understand MMO populations. An expansion has just been released and the PvE queues are almost empty. No it isn't people just doing all the missions, because there aren't enough skill point rewards to get you to the next tier, so you have to queue PvE. This really wasn't the time to experiment. A really bad idea.
I'm certainly not queuing up for anything else until I see patch notes outlining changes.
But I'm actually willing to wait for that patch to come, I can't imagine how many players they're losing forever in the meantime.
Until then, let us know your thoughts here, and we will take your feedback into consideration.
The problem has little to do with the health or damage output of the NPCs and everything to do with the massive disparity between two players using the same level of ship and same quality of gear with two different builds.
Take player A in a Scimitar beam boat sporting AP cooldown reduction doffs 8 beam arrays and a leech console with 5 Operative boffs. Compare him to player B in an Oddessy using 6 beam arrays, two torpedoes and Aux2Bat with Technicians. If you really want to get silly add in player C flying a Galaxy-R who does not use any cooldown reduction doffs.
Until STO manages to reduce the disparity of those three you will not be able to please all three. Even with three difficulty levels because of the second major problem. Especially when the game does nearly nothing to help players increase their level of game mastery to be able to make a high performance build beyond the community efforts.
The rewards we play for are intended to be used in the content we are playing to get them. In order to get a Maco space set I need to play advanced queue content. Content designed for players who have that level of gear. Furthermore to get the crafting materials to advance my maco gear from Mk XII to Mk XIV I need to play advanced queues. Granted I can get those materials via other means in the game but those methods are unreliable.
Beyond those two core problems though slowly burning down huge bags of HPs does not make a very exciting or engaging gameplay experience.
Good luck.
PS: The entire T6 ship roll out combined with the decrease of rewards and increased difficulty has eroded any benefit of the doubt I had left to give as a consumer. I doubt I am the only one who feels that way.
I do not played a lot. Just one fleet alert versus tholians and one crystaline entity on advanced. Before Delta Rising I was a good player on both (I could often take 2nd plance on CE - Elite). Now, I failed in both. On the fleet alert, I did not died once, but it did seemed to take a long time to kill the Tholians, in agreement with the general consensus that HP is WAY TOO HIGH. On CE I noticed that was taking longer than usual to lower its health, due to the insane HP it has now. It could be doable if I was on my cruisers, making easier to run away from the fragments spawned at ~70% HP, preventing the entity from regenerating. But the remaining players would need to do the same and It would take hours to finish it. No fun.
For the note: my gear was reasoanable: I think Upgraded chimera, with purple MK XII refracting tetryon cannons and the quad phaser at Mk XII also. Full Assimilated Set Mk XI and all my remaining consoles were at least Mk XII blue. The teamates seemed to be well equipped as well. In the two cases there were at least one T6 ship. Perhaps under the new philosophy it would be reasonable to not get second place in the CE - Adavanced. But an well equipped team completeley fail seens too much. And a well equpped team failling a Fleet alert clearly shows that mobs HP is too much.
Also, listen to the players on Tribble. There is a thread there with several players complaining about this issue
Pre-forum change name: Captain Wilhelm Join Date: March 2009
Thanks Cryptic for introducing the Kelvin Timeline. It remembered why I decided to never more put any money on this game.
There was no need to keep halving the dilth rewards.
I'll praise Cryptic for the new content. But they really didn't need to shaft people quite so hard.
What annoys me most is that I keep expecting/thinking Cryptic do these things to keep afloat (it was easy to beleive when they struggled prior to the PWE takeover.)
Now it just feels like they dont care about the people who supported them through the tough times.
If the advance difficulty is for level 60 players; i think we should wait until a good chunk of the player base is level 60 to judge if its too hard.
My only complaint right now goes to the Crystalline Entity. The shards spawn too far away from the Entity which causes it to hit players and healing the Entity making the game last much longer then it needs to be. Crystalline Entity right now with our levels takes too long! Also them Tholians are beastly, oi.
Ok, me and a few fleet mates, very well built high dps builds all of us, just tried a Crystalline Entity Advanced, and we got our butts thoroughly, ridiculously kicked.
I'm lv 59 with all mk13 gear, two mk14 fleet nutroniums, a leveled starship mastery, and 46% damage resist to everything, and me, and everyone else, was getting killed in two shots, being hit for between 25k and 35k about every 10 seconds. So, if the argument is its mean for lv 60, what lv 60 build and gear is supposed to survive that ?
I'm thinking maybe we needed a good science toon debuffing the hell out of its damage output to even stand a chance, we didn't have any science. But, really, is that what it takes to do an Advanced now? An absolutely perfect team every time? I am totally fine with that being the elite, leave it that way for people that like it, absolutely need a perfect team and people playing their roles and a planned out strategy, but this wasn't elite, and not everyone wants to play like that. Advanced should be hard, but reasonable, and possible, for a few friends with good builds to just jump into and do, even with a very high challenge, it shouldn't be impossible, it stops being fun.
I don't even mind it having way way more hit points and taking a lot longer, I actually like that, but again, I just ask, you tell me, what true lv 60 build n gear is supposed to survive a 30k hit every ten seconds?
my humble suggestion to fix the issues and complaints from both sides is to have easy and normal stf's that are equivalent to the previous normal and advanced, but also keep the current advanced and elite stf's with corresponding reward increases for those who want harder.
until something like that happens casual and average players are simply going to give up on stf's, i know ive given up on them personally
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.
I think the Advanced ground missions are way too hard.
Here's my experience. I played with a level-51 character in a Chimera Heavy Destroyer (non-fleet, T5).
Infected Space Advanced (ISA)
I queued ISA twice in a PUG. Both times, we failed at the first transformer.
1st time: The first failure was admittedly my fault, as I accidentally blew a generator early. After that, we were unable to destroy the transformer before the nanite spheres arrived. The generators seemed much more fragile than everything else. Was the HP of the generators intentionally not increased?
2nd time: In this instance, we executed the 10% rule perfectly, but could not deal enough damage to destroy the transfomer in time. I believe we got it down to 68% before the nanite spheres arrived.
Federation Fleet Alert (FFA)
I queued FFA twice in a PUG. In both instances, we ran out of time. This mission is labeled as Normal, yet the HP of the enemies is quite high. Here are some examples.
FFA is available to levels 5 through 60, but the enemies are scaled to level 60. Players are scaled to level 60 as well, but their ships and equipment are not scaled. I'm not sure who this new difficulty is designed for. In my opinion, new level-50 characters, who may not have the best equipment, should be able to complete FFA so that they can earn fleet marks to get better equipment.
It is possible that Normal difficulty is bugged right now. Here's what the patch notes say:
Not many changes have been made to the Normal modes for the queues. These remain as you have always enjoyed them, only now the endgame events have a minimum level requirement of 50. All Captains and critters in Normal mode will be fighting at level 50, and those who enter the queues above that level will have their efficacy lowered to that of level 50. Dont fret! Youll still have all your powers and Bridge Officer seats, but the numbers you produce will be scaled appropriately to the level of the event.
The statements above do not match what I saw in FFA: both players and enemies were scaled to level 60.
I think the Advanced ground missions are way too hard.
I might avoid the stfs entirely.
With the exception of mine trap, colony defense, and undine infiltration all the ground queues have been harder than space with less reward per time taken to complete them. The Borg are the worst offenders here, but its true of them all save the three I mentioned. The dilithium ones (big dig, etc) are pretty equal to their space counterparts. Or at least, were, I haven't tried them lately as after three hours of waiting with no queue popup I get tired of waiting and stop trying.
I fear Crypric dont actually play the game (recent failboat dev example) so its little wonder they got things so very wrong.
^this
I don't even think they test things like this. They might run through stuff to see if there are bugs, but no one ran these difficulties with any regard to how they should or would be played out. You mean to tell me they had positive results with a wide verity of group make ups to be confident that pushing them to live was a good idea? No way is that even remotely possible.
You have Elite for the uber DPSers. Please let the rest of us have Normal and Advanced, and especially please make non rated PvE queue content achievable for level 50s again.
Dear Cryptic, please do what you have always done and nerf things back down. Make the new Advanced equivalent to the old Elite - only keep the Optionals as mandatory and keep the Dilithium reward at its current half-value. If you do that we get actually get on to talking about Delta Rising rather then Advanced queues.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
I don't even think they test things like this. They might run through stuff to see if there are bugs, but no one ran these difficulties with any regard to how they should or would be played out. You mean to tell me they had positive results with a wide verity of group make ups to be confident that pushing them to live was a good idea? No way is that even remotely possible.
I think it's obvious they ran through the actual new stuff (Borg Disconnected, battle of Korfez, Bug Hunt, etc.) but not the "upscaled" old stuff.
I've commented in several threads about the difficulty changes but since this is now the official feedback, I'll add my two cents here.
Basic difficulty (normal) in story driven content seems to be pretty much fine, there are a few 'normal' queued missions though which seem to have had the NPC ships HP increased to stupid levels. Gorn Minefield for instance, the cruisers each have in excess of 250K HP and the frigates were swimming around with 79K HP. Personally, I don't mind that too much but if you're aiming for this to be the difficulty for 'casual' players, then it may need a slight reduction. I know several of my friends who play far less than I do used to struggle with normal content as it was which was why I rarely played with them haha.
Advanced Difficulty queued missions are nuts. I can't emphasise that quite enough in words. I took part in what used to be ISE, now ISA, with a Dauntless, two scimitars, an Undine Dreadnaught, and a Scryer and we got pasted. I'm not one of these 20K DPS people and I don't think I should really have to be when I've been playing Elites just fine doing my 'measly' 8K DPS for the last several years. Also, the one advanced run I did complete so far was so not worth the rewards.
Elite Difficulty, I can't really comment on because I don't have any characters at level 60 yet. That said, I'm all for having Elite as one that most of us wont be able to play. Leave it tough for the afore mentioned 20K DPS folks. They're the ones who have been making the Elite runs look 'easy' for the last year or two and have been complaining about needing harder content so by all means let them have it. Just don't take away the content that us middle of the road guys liked doing.
Join date is wrong, I've actually been around since STO Beta.
True alters don't have a "main". Account wide unlocks for all unique event rewards!!
Adding this because it came up elsewhere: hpmscaling is breaking older missions for new players. If you level past 50 on your first character you hit enemies with delta quad levels of hp, but are still running your level 30 or 40 ship with white, green and a few blue items, most mark 10 or lower.
The specific thread mentioned the shariens swords mission with enemies having 168k HP.
This is flat out impossible for a new player. When we hit the delta quad it's one thing, but to inflict it on people still working through the story the first time is really worse then the pre-nerf elachi finale.
And imagine how bad it will be on double exp weekends when you get to 50 with half as much loot and mission completion drops?
I'm sure it will be interesting to see the player data over the next week. Overall I'm loving the content, but the difficulty has left a sour taste in my mouth. It's overwhelmingly soured the impressions of our fleet and STF channel players.
The general consensus of the players I regularly game with: Too hard, too long, for little or no value. Add that to that astronomical shift in costs within the game, and suddenly the queues are not worth playing.
For the past year, the queues are the only reason to continue playing. There's not much else to do. You've killed exploration, and content (while really nice) is sadly 'not enough'.
I'll try to stay focused on the difficulty alone.
SPACE
1.) The Borg are wildly inconsistent in HP. That makes for an odd story telling device.
ISA spheres - tough to beat. Borg Disconnected - spheres explode when you TRIBBLE in their general direction. In Severed Ties - Damaged Borg Spheres can take more damage than those in ISA. Not sure why, they have the same hit points. Another mechanic at work.
2.) The rewards were slashed. No need to go into detail here.
3.) Completing the event within the timeframe has become extremely difficult.
Summary: Harder to complete, longer, for less than half the original reward. Not puggable. Not fun. New players need not apply.
Not all of us are flying 50K dps ships. Not all of us want to play like that. While the audience for this type of gameplay is vocal, I have watched groups of generally decent players (15K+ dps ea) fail the optional. I won't even try to describe the pug environment.
Given, over the next week new strategies will emerge. But it's clear, we're not doing it for fun anymore.
GROUND
I liked it. It was just challenging enough to make me want to do it again. Then I saw the reward. Meh.
NEW CONTENT
Great content - long boring battles. The ground stuff against the Vaardwar is immensely engaging, but the space battles drag on for so long I actually find myself thinking of other games to play.
I'm sure my impression will change as I make it to 60. The new ship mastery abilities, specializations etc - potentially very cool. But I'm finding the new content easier in T5-U ships than in the T6 ships. It's making me question the purchase of the Operations pack and $100 worth of zen for dilithium.
My suggestion:
Roll back the HP by 50%. We're not all 50K players here.
Restore and enhance the rewards. You're cheap. No one likes a cheap-skate. Seriously. If you want me to drop $250 on the next expansion, give me a reason to want to play.
Update the AI. Add random elements. Come up with a system that engages the 50K monster without squashing the 10K average joe. You know... programming.
I 100%, absolutely, unequivocally, and whole-heartedly agree with this.
You Sir, have earned The "Citizen Kane" Applause Award. Well done. I salute you.
With the exception of mine trap, colony defense, and undine infiltration all the ground queues have been harder than space with less reward per time taken to complete them. The Borg are the worst offenders here, but its true of them all save the three I mentioned. The dilithium ones (big dig, etc) are pretty equal to their space counterparts. Or at least, were, I haven't tried them lately as after three hours of waiting with no queue popup I get tired of waiting and stop trying.
Infected Ground Advanced is being blotched too quickly.
Players are barely making it past the first few rooms.
Why bother playing something in which you cannot at least complete?
The general consensus of the players I regularly game with: Too hard, too long, for little or no value. Add that to that astronomical shift in costs within the game, and suddenly the queues are not worth playing.
I think it's obvious they ran through the actual new stuff (Borg Disconnected, battle of Korfez, Bug Hunt, etc.) but not the "upscaled" old stuff.
Like I said, they yest for bugs and make sure things work, but not for balance. And that is the real issue here I think, balance.
They want to make everything a dps race, fine, but give all classes the potential to do somewhat equal DPS. Sure it will never be perfect but right now it's not even remotely close. And no that doesn't mean making every class the same, each can have the same potential with different play styles, other games do it all the time. Is every tank in WOW the same? No they all play differently but each can fill the same role. And it wouldn't take much either, there are only 5 powers that define each class (in space), just rework them so each has an offensive, defensive, maybe a debuff and some sort of utility. They can serve the same purpose but play differently. It's either that or you build for the trinity, which I doubt most want. You can even have the trinity if you want to use it, in Rift each class can tank, heal, support or dps, but they each do so in their own way. Anyway, either build the content for you classes, or balance your classes for the content. Right now it's just a mess IMO.
"difficulty", that if under this therm can be named, hp bloated up by factor 5 or 10. i feel myself like fresh 50 sitting in old T4 with white MK IX weapons. that given the fact i got full fleet grade ships along with fleet items and reputation sets.
its kind of like by now a player need T10 ship with 12 weapon slots along MK XX weapons.
ground
mostly broken. defera is more entertaining then kobali home world. kobali just clueless chaotic wandering around. there are games that like 10 years ahead. "tabula rasa" playgrounds were better 5 years ago.
experience
"running up the wall", nothing else. it remembers me the days where a player had to do countless cluster patrols to complete the level for progression.
and who ever came to the "brilliant" idea to cut xp gain that much should be fired. seriously, an stf get 1/10 of level. a patrol mission in delta quadrant get more xp then a stf.
new skills
under "intelligence" i would call something quite different. they are just gimmick procs. some doffs can give more advantage then those skills.
earnings
ok, f2p player now can officially call himself as self-employment businessman. 240 dili per 15-20 minutes. that 1k dili per hour, 8 hours for 8k dili. too bad no one can buy food or pay the rent bill with dili.
advance or elite grade are failures outright, waste of time.
conclusion
very disappointing experience. and i am a lifetimer and have played sto since release.
as for me i will play thru the new episodes with a single of my characters just for the sake of curiousness. then i am out, its no fun anymore.
My suggestion would be to at least include the Neural Processors in the Omega boxes, or something to make them more readily available. The current situation is absurd.
Cryptic totally screwed up the game especially the Borg Space missions.
I like the extra ships they added, means more aggro if you wade in with faw and more difficulty in having to clear them.
However if they wanted to make these so mixed teams of damage dealers, tanks and healers can accomplish these missions, they royally screwed up. With the new shield and hull hit points the Borg have in advanced, taking a Tank or Sci healer into these matches without the ability to deal high dps to the Borg, well its a straight up FAIL.
With the changes to Advanced they also made certain ships completely obsolete as they don't have the damage potential to kill anything and thats the nature of the missions to kill things.
The following ships are all but useless
Galaxy Class
Nebula Class
Starcruiser or whatever its called these days
Intrepid Class
Well pretty much anything with 2/3 tact consoles and only a Lt. boff station
What they needed to do to make the roles they wanted viable was to give the Borg maybe a 10% hull and shield increase. But make them hit harder, not to be hit and hit and hit and hit and hit and tedious boredom later still be hit.
So decrease the hull and shield hit points increase firepower and make the role of tank/healer viable in a group.
I'm happy with the extra npc's to shoot at me, but the currently these missions are undoable outside a pre-made team all capable of high dps.
My suggestion would be to at least include the Neural Processors in the Omega boxes, or something to make them more readily available. The current situation is absurd.
They are and always have been in the daily/hourly boxes. Rate is too low, but they are in there.
I have to bring up a quote from a dev blog for this one:
"What you used to refer to as Elite in our queued events and STFs is now known as Advanced. In the new Advanced versions of the queues you will see a similar level of challenge in the enemies that you are used to when the queues were labeled Elite."
This right here is why I am a bit upset over the "new" normal. With this quote, they set the tone for what we thought we were getting. I was just fine with sticking to the new advanced queues (old elites). This, however, is nothing like what we got.
To have them lead us to believe this was what we were getting has caused a massive player shock. Even the normal queues are buffed to incredibly high levels when it comes to enemy hit points. I know the normal queues are supposed to be for people still gearing up and getting used to certain runs. There is just no way someone just getting started with a new ship and possible some new gear can make their way through the "new" normal runs. I previously stated that I was in a normal Fed fleet alert and we didn't even make it past wave 2. That's...bad. I have always flown support ships so I survived just fine, but I could not say the same for the rest of the team. Each one died at least twice with one dying 4 times in that new t6 escort.
I know there will be a couple of people saying "I got through a normal just fine with green gear, etc etc." one or even a few people being able to do this does not make it the average. I thought they did a good job of hyping the expansion and bringing in new players. I doubt many of these newer players can handle the difficulty level though. Those are the people I am speaking for.
No, I am not who you think I am. I am someone different. I am instead a banana.
We expect Advanced to be more impossible for 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 LOT 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.
LLAP
There....fixed that for ya. I already posted a long explanation of this in another thread. Suffice it to say Advanced is WAY too difficult for a lvl 50 with a new T5-U ship, and it seems pointless for a max lvl 60 capt with a max level T5-U ship to be having to do this only to get Mk XII gear. The Rep Gear sets were supposed to be a gateway to harder missions in that rep, although there is no better reward which seems kind of pointless, and a gateway to the next harder rep STF's from what I was told back in the past. Apparently that's all been tossed out the window. Either the extra items like neural processors needed for the rep set gear needs to drop in normal mode STF's, or the requirement for them needs to be removed. Also a Mk XIII or Mk XIV rep set needs to be added to make it worth running these STF's on elite mode. Or even grinding up to the better sets on Advanced mode to have better gear to be able to even run Elite mode.
Comments
Whoever thought and supported adding all the extra dil sinks and reward reductions all in one go doesn't understand MMO populations. An expansion has just been released and the PvE queues are almost empty. No it isn't people just doing all the missions, because there aren't enough skill point rewards to get you to the next tier, so you have to queue PvE. This really wasn't the time to experiment. A really bad idea.
I'm certainly not queuing up for anything else until I see patch notes outlining changes.
But I'm actually willing to wait for that patch to come, I can't imagine how many players they're losing forever in the meantime.
Heh, I'm almost gone myself. I'm just getting to lvl 60 so I can troll the stfs that do pop.
The problem has little to do with the health or damage output of the NPCs and everything to do with the massive disparity between two players using the same level of ship and same quality of gear with two different builds.
Take player A in a Scimitar beam boat sporting AP cooldown reduction doffs 8 beam arrays and a leech console with 5 Operative boffs. Compare him to player B in an Oddessy using 6 beam arrays, two torpedoes and Aux2Bat with Technicians. If you really want to get silly add in player C flying a Galaxy-R who does not use any cooldown reduction doffs.
Until STO manages to reduce the disparity of those three you will not be able to please all three. Even with three difficulty levels because of the second major problem. Especially when the game does nearly nothing to help players increase their level of game mastery to be able to make a high performance build beyond the community efforts.
The rewards we play for are intended to be used in the content we are playing to get them. In order to get a Maco space set I need to play advanced queue content. Content designed for players who have that level of gear. Furthermore to get the crafting materials to advance my maco gear from Mk XII to Mk XIV I need to play advanced queues. Granted I can get those materials via other means in the game but those methods are unreliable.
Beyond those two core problems though slowly burning down huge bags of HPs does not make a very exciting or engaging gameplay experience.
Good luck.
PS: The entire T6 ship roll out combined with the decrease of rewards and increased difficulty has eroded any benefit of the doubt I had left to give as a consumer. I doubt I am the only one who feels that way.
For the note: my gear was reasoanable: I think Upgraded chimera, with purple MK XII refracting tetryon cannons and the quad phaser at Mk XII also. Full Assimilated Set Mk XI and all my remaining consoles were at least Mk XII blue. The teamates seemed to be well equipped as well. In the two cases there were at least one T6 ship. Perhaps under the new philosophy it would be reasonable to not get second place in the CE - Adavanced. But an well equipped team completeley fail seens too much. And a well equpped team failling a Fleet alert clearly shows that mobs HP is too much.
Also, listen to the players on Tribble. There is a thread there with several players complaining about this issue
Join Date: March 2009
Thanks Cryptic for introducing the Kelvin Timeline. It remembered why I decided to never more put any money on this game.
There was no need to keep halving the dilth rewards.
I'll praise Cryptic for the new content. But they really didn't need to shaft people quite so hard.
What annoys me most is that I keep expecting/thinking Cryptic do these things to keep afloat (it was easy to beleive when they struggled prior to the PWE takeover.)
Now it just feels like they dont care about the people who supported them through the tough times.
But then again, why should they?
My only complaint right now goes to the Crystalline Entity. The shards spawn too far away from the Entity which causes it to hit players and healing the Entity making the game last much longer then it needs to be. Crystalline Entity right now with our levels takes too long!
I'm lv 59 with all mk13 gear, two mk14 fleet nutroniums, a leveled starship mastery, and 46% damage resist to everything, and me, and everyone else, was getting killed in two shots, being hit for between 25k and 35k about every 10 seconds. So, if the argument is its mean for lv 60, what lv 60 build and gear is supposed to survive that ?
I'm thinking maybe we needed a good science toon debuffing the hell out of its damage output to even stand a chance, we didn't have any science. But, really, is that what it takes to do an Advanced now? An absolutely perfect team every time? I am totally fine with that being the elite, leave it that way for people that like it, absolutely need a perfect team and people playing their roles and a planned out strategy, but this wasn't elite, and not everyone wants to play like that. Advanced should be hard, but reasonable, and possible, for a few friends with good builds to just jump into and do, even with a very high challenge, it shouldn't be impossible, it stops being fun.
I don't even mind it having way way more hit points and taking a lot longer, I actually like that, but again, I just ask, you tell me, what true lv 60 build n gear is supposed to survive a 30k hit every ten seconds?
I fear Crypric dont actually play the game (recent failboat dev example) so its little wonder they got things so very wrong.
until something like that happens casual and average players are simply going to give up on stf's, i know ive given up on them personally
I might avoid the stfs entirely.
Infected Space Advanced (ISA)
I queued ISA twice in a PUG. Both times, we failed at the first transformer.
1st time: The first failure was admittedly my fault, as I accidentally blew a generator early. After that, we were unable to destroy the transformer before the nanite spheres arrived. The generators seemed much more fragile than everything else. Was the HP of the generators intentionally not increased?
2nd time: In this instance, we executed the 10% rule perfectly, but could not deal enough damage to destroy the transfomer in time. I believe we got it down to 68% before the nanite spheres arrived.
Federation Fleet Alert (FFA)
I queued FFA twice in a PUG. In both instances, we ran out of time. This mission is labeled as Normal, yet the HP of the enemies is quite high. Here are some examples.
Vishap Frigate: 110,839 hull
Tuatara Cruiser: 288,183 hull
Zilant Battleship: 360,229 hull
FFA is available to levels 5 through 60, but the enemies are scaled to level 60. Players are scaled to level 60 as well, but their ships and equipment are not scaled. I'm not sure who this new difficulty is designed for. In my opinion, new level-50 characters, who may not have the best equipment, should be able to complete FFA so that they can earn fleet marks to get better equipment.
It is possible that Normal difficulty is bugged right now. Here's what the patch notes say:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/7010463-release-notes-october-14th%2C-2014
Here's what the dev blog says:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/7006643-queue-revamp
The statements above do not match what I saw in FFA: both players and enemies were scaled to level 60.
With the exception of mine trap, colony defense, and undine infiltration all the ground queues have been harder than space with less reward per time taken to complete them. The Borg are the worst offenders here, but its true of them all save the three I mentioned. The dilithium ones (big dig, etc) are pretty equal to their space counterparts. Or at least, were, I haven't tried them lately as after three hours of waiting with no queue popup I get tired of waiting and stop trying.
^this
I don't even think they test things like this. They might run through stuff to see if there are bugs, but no one ran these difficulties with any regard to how they should or would be played out. You mean to tell me they had positive results with a wide verity of group make ups to be confident that pushing them to live was a good idea? No way is that even remotely possible.
Member since December 2009
I think it's obvious they ran through the actual new stuff (Borg Disconnected, battle of Korfez, Bug Hunt, etc.) but not the "upscaled" old stuff.
Basic difficulty (normal) in story driven content seems to be pretty much fine, there are a few 'normal' queued missions though which seem to have had the NPC ships HP increased to stupid levels. Gorn Minefield for instance, the cruisers each have in excess of 250K HP and the frigates were swimming around with 79K HP. Personally, I don't mind that too much but if you're aiming for this to be the difficulty for 'casual' players, then it may need a slight reduction. I know several of my friends who play far less than I do used to struggle with normal content as it was which was why I rarely played with them haha.
Advanced Difficulty queued missions are nuts. I can't emphasise that quite enough in words. I took part in what used to be ISE, now ISA, with a Dauntless, two scimitars, an Undine Dreadnaught, and a Scryer and we got pasted. I'm not one of these 20K DPS people and I don't think I should really have to be when I've been playing Elites just fine doing my 'measly' 8K DPS for the last several years. Also, the one advanced run I did complete so far was so not worth the rewards.
Elite Difficulty, I can't really comment on because I don't have any characters at level 60 yet. That said, I'm all for having Elite as one that most of us wont be able to play. Leave it tough for the afore mentioned 20K DPS folks. They're the ones who have been making the Elite runs look 'easy' for the last year or two and have been complaining about needing harder content so by all means let them have it. Just don't take away the content that us middle of the road guys liked doing.
The specific thread mentioned the shariens swords mission with enemies having 168k HP.
This is flat out impossible for a new player. When we hit the delta quad it's one thing, but to inflict it on people still working through the story the first time is really worse then the pre-nerf elachi finale.
And imagine how bad it will be on double exp weekends when you get to 50 with half as much loot and mission completion drops?
I 100%, absolutely, unequivocally, and whole-heartedly agree with this.
You Sir, have earned The "Citizen Kane" Applause Award. Well done. I salute you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_e-CNh-gc8
Players are barely making it past the first few rooms.
Why bother playing something in which you cannot at least complete?
I think that is an additional problem.
...and, then auto failing when the timer runs out.
Lame.
Players are pushing like crazy, so they can watch the timer hit zero.
...and, then only be rewarded in scraps.
Meh.
Like I said, they yest for bugs and make sure things work, but not for balance. And that is the real issue here I think, balance.
They want to make everything a dps race, fine, but give all classes the potential to do somewhat equal DPS. Sure it will never be perfect but right now it's not even remotely close. And no that doesn't mean making every class the same, each can have the same potential with different play styles, other games do it all the time. Is every tank in WOW the same? No they all play differently but each can fill the same role. And it wouldn't take much either, there are only 5 powers that define each class (in space), just rework them so each has an offensive, defensive, maybe a debuff and some sort of utility. They can serve the same purpose but play differently. It's either that or you build for the trinity, which I doubt most want. You can even have the trinity if you want to use it, in Rift each class can tank, heal, support or dps, but they each do so in their own way. Anyway, either build the content for you classes, or balance your classes for the content. Right now it's just a mess IMO.
"difficulty", that if under this therm can be named, hp bloated up by factor 5 or 10. i feel myself like fresh 50 sitting in old T4 with white MK IX weapons. that given the fact i got full fleet grade ships along with fleet items and reputation sets.
its kind of like by now a player need T10 ship with 12 weapon slots along MK XX weapons.
ground
mostly broken. defera is more entertaining then kobali home world. kobali just clueless chaotic wandering around. there are games that like 10 years ahead. "tabula rasa" playgrounds were better 5 years ago.
experience
"running up the wall", nothing else. it remembers me the days where a player had to do countless cluster patrols to complete the level for progression.
and who ever came to the "brilliant" idea to cut xp gain that much should be fired. seriously, an stf get 1/10 of level. a patrol mission in delta quadrant get more xp then a stf.
new skills
under "intelligence" i would call something quite different. they are just gimmick procs. some doffs can give more advantage then those skills.
earnings
ok, f2p player now can officially call himself as self-employment businessman. 240 dili per 15-20 minutes. that 1k dili per hour, 8 hours for 8k dili. too bad no one can buy food or pay the rent bill with dili.
advance or elite grade are failures outright, waste of time.
conclusion
very disappointing experience. and i am a lifetimer and have played sto since release.
as for me i will play thru the new episodes with a single of my characters just for the sake of curiousness. then i am out, its no fun anymore.
I like the extra ships they added, means more aggro if you wade in with faw and more difficulty in having to clear them.
However if they wanted to make these so mixed teams of damage dealers, tanks and healers can accomplish these missions, they royally screwed up. With the new shield and hull hit points the Borg have in advanced, taking a Tank or Sci healer into these matches without the ability to deal high dps to the Borg, well its a straight up FAIL.
With the changes to Advanced they also made certain ships completely obsolete as they don't have the damage potential to kill anything and thats the nature of the missions to kill things.
The following ships are all but useless
Galaxy Class
Nebula Class
Starcruiser or whatever its called these days
Intrepid Class
Well pretty much anything with 2/3 tact consoles and only a Lt. boff station
What they needed to do to make the roles they wanted viable was to give the Borg maybe a 10% hull and shield increase. But make them hit harder, not to be hit and hit and hit and hit and hit and tedious boredom later still be hit.
So decrease the hull and shield hit points increase firepower and make the role of tank/healer viable in a group.
I'm happy with the extra npc's to shoot at me, but the currently these missions are undoable outside a pre-made team all capable of high dps.
They are and always have been in the daily/hourly boxes. Rate is too low, but they are in there.
This right here is why I am a bit upset over the "new" normal. With this quote, they set the tone for what we thought we were getting. I was just fine with sticking to the new advanced queues (old elites). This, however, is nothing like what we got.
To have them lead us to believe this was what we were getting has caused a massive player shock. Even the normal queues are buffed to incredibly high levels when it comes to enemy hit points. I know the normal queues are supposed to be for people still gearing up and getting used to certain runs. There is just no way someone just getting started with a new ship and possible some new gear can make their way through the "new" normal runs. I previously stated that I was in a normal Fed fleet alert and we didn't even make it past wave 2. That's...bad. I have always flown support ships so I survived just fine, but I could not say the same for the rest of the team. Each one died at least twice with one dying 4 times in that new t6 escort.
I know there will be a couple of people saying "I got through a normal just fine with green gear, etc etc." one or even a few people being able to do this does not make it the average. I thought they did a good job of hyping the expansion and bringing in new players. I doubt many of these newer players can handle the difficulty level though. Those are the people I am speaking for.
There....fixed that for ya. I already posted a long explanation of this in another thread. Suffice it to say Advanced is WAY too difficult for a lvl 50 with a new T5-U ship, and it seems pointless for a max lvl 60 capt with a max level T5-U ship to be having to do this only to get Mk XII gear. The Rep Gear sets were supposed to be a gateway to harder missions in that rep, although there is no better reward which seems kind of pointless, and a gateway to the next harder rep STF's from what I was told back in the past. Apparently that's all been tossed out the window. Either the extra items like neural processors needed for the rep set gear needs to drop in normal mode STF's, or the requirement for them needs to be removed. Also a Mk XIII or Mk XIV rep set needs to be added to make it worth running these STF's on elite mode. Or even grinding up to the better sets on Advanced mode to have better gear to be able to even run Elite mode.