Yeah difficulty spike and rewards being borked is NOT a good thing, Not ALL of us are "hardcore" players the Majority of us are "casual" simply because RL does NOT allow us the time to be "hardcore"
So, Kindly retcon advanced STF's (the old pre DR ones anyway) back to how they were difficulty wise and Reward wise OR at the VERY least remove the "optional is now a required" objective part because THAT is where most of the problems lie aside from the insane buffing of shields and HP the mobs have gotten.
If your prepared its a nice challenge, but normal should not be a challenge.
I now spend most of my time in stf's saving other unprepared players. I watched someone BFAW for a very long time on 3 probes. All he was doing was pissing them off. I had to come in and finish for him and that happens every stf now on NORMAL. I wont dare play elite right now because I will not be able to help anyone and die myself without decent support. I run a defiant, and the only reason i can kill things fast enough is because i can tear down 1 shield facing and kill it. They are not smart and use tac team. They just have a lot to work through and Cruisers unless set up for spikes take forever to kill anything.
The new STF splits 5 players into 3 teams... ... ... Can we get a 9-10 man for this? Or any of them really.
For the first time, STO feels like a game, its too bad people want their light-show theme park back, or their dps race.
Scis have a purpose now
Engineers have a purpose now
What purpose do they have? I can tank endlessly with 2 of my ships. This does not help the team beat the clock in any mission I have seen.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
They haven't changed anything significant. NPC damage output is still pretty weak, they have no real tricks, anything worth using heavy CC on is still immune anything not immune can be handled by those using CC as a secondary build aspect (TBR 1/GW 1 are plenty good enough) and the top debuff in the game is still...attack pattern beta.
If anything full on damage becomes more important when everything has 5 to 10 times the amount of health.
For the first time, STO feels like a game, its too bad people want their light-show theme park back, or their dps race.
Scis have a purpose now
Engineers have a purpose now
It is no longer the best idea or even a viable idea to go full on damage.
Yea, sto finally feels like an mmo.
Maybe they should get their easy runs back, but dont give them any rewards for them .
You wonder why ther are all these new RMT spammers in the game, the content is so easy it can be mastered by an automation.
i'd like to ask the same question too what purpose? an STF full of tanks/support just to survive still doesn't do enough damage quickly enough to " beat the clock " in ANY advanced stf.
The difficulty spike simply put just catered to a VERY SMALL portion of the playerbase who happened to whine long enough to get what they wanted , in turn messing over EVERY casual player who doesn't have a bank full of $$$$$ to spend or time to grind said gear out.
I seriously FAIL to see where making things harder from the onset ie normal or advanced mode does anyone ANY good whatsoever. Now if the AI were more intelligent THEN it might be acceptable that things were a bit harder, but simply adding mobs, buffing shields HP and dmg output by npc's is NOT the way to " give us a challenge". SO, all the "elitist" crowd that think " if you can't do 30k DPS you arent worth my time" need to pull their proverbial heads out of the exhaust manifold and realise over 3/4 of our player base just play to have fun, if we cease to have fun, we leave. so if you want ghost servers with only a handful of players keep acting/feelling that way.
Not sure where the challenge is actually? Unless you mean the challenge of staying awake doing the same old STFs which now take 3-5 times as long ... even in a 13K DPS ship at 1/2 the rewards.
For those that are happy with DR ... I just don't know what to say to you. Clearly, you're looking for a different kind of game than me. That is ... something other than fun.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
/
adverb
1To a small degree; not considerably: he lowered his voice slightly [as submodifier]: they are all slightly different
More example sentencesSynonyms
2(With reference to a persons build) in a slender way: a slightly built girl
we were told the difficulties would be ramped up slightly.
my primary complaint? did someone swap the stat sheets for the borg cubes and spheres or something?
conduit elite..or what used to be elite..
requiring all 5 ships of a given group, most of which are running top flight ships and equipment, to dogpile on just one sphere...ONE sphere...is utterly rediculous. the borg cube that we initially faced went without complaint. the two spheres...yeah...all 5 of us on the one sphere, while the other was free to oneshot at its leisure.
this is not slightly. not in the remotest sense of the definition.
we are headed in the general direction of starwars galaxies here.
Murphy's laws:
1- Murphy’s Law tells us that anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
2- And anything that does go wrong will get progressively worse.
3- And if you survive the first two laws it’s time to panic.
I agree with a few of the posts here that I skimmed over. The new Advanced difficulty, for example, feels a bit too hard for the average level 50+ player. While looking over the queue list itself, I think this makes itself known. All non-Fleet Credit giving, with the exceptions of Crystaline Catastrophe (advanced) and Infected Space (Advanced), most queues are completely empty, with at most 2-3 people waiting. There seem to be very few queues that have more than 1 or 2 groups playing at a time now.
Don't get me wrong, I love the new parameters of the Advanced difficulty, such as the increased number of enemies and non-optional optionals. I feel that these parameters are needed, as before for example, many people, even a pug team, could finish Infected Space Elite in under 5 minutes. Bars and rules needed to be set. However, many of the enemies are either highly buffed, such as Borg spheres/cubes and structures having seemingly 2 to 3 times their previous health, or ground enemies ranking up to the next level of their NPC class, such as a Heavy Tactical Drone is now an Elite Tactical Drone. I really feel the health and classes of NPCs needs to be adjusted.
As a player that was once able to carry a PUG team through an elite STF, it feels rather bad knowing that I am no longer capable of playing missions I used to be able to, even with high DPS teams. However I am more worried as to what this change in difficulty might mean for new players, due that the Advanced difficulty and up are the only queues that give the special items needed for reputation gear, such as Borg Neural Processors, for example. With the difficulty setting as it is now, I fear that new players will never be able to gain the rewards from reputation systems, or at least, it will take them a fair bit longer.
Making the old optionals mandatory isn't the problem. More enemies with 3x the HP each is the problem.
Upgrading gear and leveling to 60 will make the average player about 30% stronger. Extraordinary players will get a bit more out of.
The enemies are 300% stronger. That would be fine for a new Elite that is intended to be much, much harder than the old Elite, but that's on Advanced. Advanced which players were told- through official dev communications- would be about as hard as the old Elite.
The rewards being halved, on top of that, just feels spiteful.
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
Here is my feedback. You are money gating content by excluding players, including paying players like myself, from collecting R&D mats and ancient power cells by juicing up the difficulty level to the point where only whales able to toss down hundreds of dollars are able to make the grade.
You have taken a very casual game and turned it into something hideous. An elite chest thumping self glorification that is not based on skill at all but size of wallet.
You have removed any desire for finely tuned teams to bring an engineer. DPS is more important than ever and defense oriented players need not apply for anything but normal. A place where they will not be able to progress their characters without opening the wallet. Bravo!
I have been a paying subscriber for over 2 years. I have ships I have paid cash for. Ships I love. You now tell me I must level one of your new shinny ships just to unlock masteries for the ships I love. Bravo, again, for the slap in the face. Did someone in a high management position lack the balls to ask me if I would be will to pay for those upgrades without having to give up the ships I love?
Star Trek Online is a Game for me, a place to relax and enjoy my free time. I feel like I am being pissed on.
I like the new difficulty in general. Makes the game a bit more challenging and fun in some aspects, makes you think.
Two issues though. One Borticus mentioned was very hard to fix was that you (as in Cryptic) seemed to think that "more hps" equates to harder. In fact I find the Vaadwaar kind of boring, but I find the Heirarcy more difficult. Why? The Heirarcy may have less HPs overall, but they have better used abilities and better timing to use them, while the Vaadwaur are all HPs and no Ooomph behind them.
Also my biggest issue with the new difficulty is that anything from Advanced to Elite pretty much now requires a fleet or a pre-made team to do. Generally not an issue, but it I'm just trying to farm say Ancient Batteries now, I can't just pug for them, they're gated behind a match that takes takes a lot of teamwork to do, meaning that forget pugs. There are too many leechers, griefers, and generally bad players. Add in the constant inability for the queues to give you a full five man team all the time, and it's now a chore to get a lot of those gated items.
I live with the R&D items, those are tradeable, but the ancient batteries and the like are not, and now they're been inadvertantly gated behind something that requires premades and teams, putting them out of reach of your average player.
For the first time, STO feels like a game, its too bad people want their light-show theme park back, or their dps race.
Scis have a purpose now
Engineers have a purpose now
It is no longer the best idea or even a viable idea to go full on damage.
Yea, sto finally feels like an mmo.
Maybe they should get their easy runs back, but dont give them any rewards for them .
You wonder why ther are all these new RMT spammers in the game, the content is so easy it can be mastered by an automation.
I'd actually say the opposite is true. With the NPCs getting an HP increase of around 5x - 10x, DPS is more important now than ever before if you want to beat the clock.
I don't understand why they can't just leave Advanced the way Elites used to be and use the new Elites to cater to the people who wanted something more 'difficult'.
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!!
I agree with a few of the posts here that I skimmed over. The new Advanced difficulty, for example, feels a bit too hard for the average level 50+ player. While looking over the queue list itself, I think this makes itself known. All non-Fleet Credit giving, with the exceptions of Crystaline Catastrophe (advanced) and Infected Space (Advanced), most queues are completely empty, with at most 2-3 people waiting. There seem to be very few queues that have more than 1 or 2 groups playing at a time now.
This is a problem beyond just damage. There are too many queues at once. Many of them never fill. Perhaps taking all the ones that need ten or more players and putting them on a rotation with no us rewards would focus the people and get what times down plus it fixs the rewards some.
Doesn't hit damage vs HP, but there's feedback a plenty on that topic already.
If your going to add HP and power to NPCs then add time to the optional/more leniency (or just change it back to old Elite style with optional). The NPCs should be scaled to the average power of the team +10% to maintain the challenge in Advance.
One thing needed is good rewards for all levels and include modules in Standard level (just limit the number you can get in 20hr thru Standard only).
You listened to those who wanted more challenge by adding Elite, so don't ruin the rest of the End-game PVE for the rest of us that play for casual fun.
An alternative, how about re-adding MK 11 end-game gear as an introductory gear reward for completed a specific number of space and ground missions in the STF/FA with module requirements. Just make it non-upgradeable, but a trade-in discount when buying Advanced gears (reduced number of modules). This way players have some worthwhile gear before going into Advanced Queue. You could then get away with not adding module to Standard.
Overall, the new STF/FA are no longer worth the time if the match is more likely to fail due to some optional now mandatory requirement and over the top DPS demands that make this game less Star Trek and more MMO DPS race.
I know a lot of people are finding advanced very tough right now. Do keep in mind that these are now level 60 missions. Even though they scale you up to 60, it's really no substitute for actually being level 60 and playing them with all the bonuses and the extra gear you would then have.
Especially once we start getting into specialisation skills and people become more and more powerful, advanced will get easier and easier.
Here's my problem with this.
See the Delta Rising Reputation system is out now, and is already time gated. Now to time gate it even more to wait until I hit level 60, get a full range of specilization and traits, and... wait where am I supposed to get good enough gear to do the advanced systems? Oh that's right R&D and Reputation, all of which requires you to complete advanced difficulty STFs.
Meaning to do Advanced I need R&D materials and Reputation items that I can only get on Advanced.
Then say "well you have to wait 2 or 3 months anyway" when it's already time gated is silly.
I wouldn't even mind leaving Advanced as it is, and leaving the R&D mats as it is (since you can buy packs with zen), but there needs to be a way to get Ancient Batteries and the like without doing Advanced.
My fleet and I went into an advanced STF last night and had a blast because it was really tough. We succeeded and most of the team was still lvl 50 in T5 ships (not upgraded yet). I am not saying everyone should be able to do this, we have been at this a long time. The thought that Elite will be able to challenge us is great!
I think people should know that there are people happy with the advanced content as is. As a matter of compromise however you might want to increase the normal rewards somewhat so people used to easy wins can still do that and feel good. Nothing crazy like people are suggesting but maybe 480 for Normal, 720 for Advanced and 960 for Elite if you want to cap it there.
The most important thing for me is that the rewards and challenges are consistent between the different queued events. It was clear you guys wanted to reduce the rewards for months, because everything new that came out since had way less rewards. This disparity made new queued events hard to play, so please keep everything relatively consistent.
Is there a way to link dilithium reward to average time to finish like in the Foundry missions? That I think would make a fair compromise too.
Why did Federation Fleet Alert and Starbase Fleet Defense suddenly become advanced missions. Why is there no option for a normal version of these. This seems to disadvantage fleets that have not maxed out their base yet and cut down the options for fleet marks. Not everyone is a fan of ground missions but it seems like that's what the game for fleet marks has been reduced to.
So either change them back to normal level, or create the advanced level and a normal level variant of the missions in keeping with the standard set up for other stf's.
Normal: Seems just like the old Normal, no problems at all but the rewards are insufficient, please set them back to 480 (500) dilithium (why can't you just make dilithium rewards an even 500/1000/1500?). Mark rewards are fine, but BNP type items should be added to the Normal rewards pack, as should a chance at VR crafting materials if the plan is to keep Advance difficulty the way it is now.
Advance: The HP monsters are just not right, according to your own posting about this level, it should have been similar to the old Elite, which it is not as it takes forever to kill stuff. IMHO Advance needs to go back to the way the old Elite was but keep the new optional requirements. Increase rewards to 750 dilithium, 2 of the BNP type items, same Marks as now and a crafting box that guarantees 1 VR material.
Elite: I can only base this on mission content since I have played missions at Normal/Advance/Elite to see the difference. I'm thinking it needs to be upped quite a bit as of right now there is hardly any difference between Advance and Elite. Up rewards to 1500 dilithium, 4 BNP type items, same Marks and crafting material box that guarantees 5 VR materials. Rename this difficulty to Insane.
Add a new Elite mode that is the same as the current Advance for those who desire more challenge than the previous old Elite and will continue to challenge as players level up from 50 to 60. Reward 1000 dilithium, 3 BNP type items, Marks that are between current Advance and Elite and a crafting material box that guarantees a minimum of 3 VR materials.
Okay. So I played Borg Disconnected. Pretty fun overall.
But what's with the time limits as optionals in the other content?
I said this a long time ago and I'm not trying to be a wiseguy here but who the heck wouldn't complete content faster if they could?
That makes no sense to me as an optional and the design philosophy on optionals continues to make very little sense to me. It really feels like your systems team skews way too heavily towards bragging rights, achiever mentality.
Optionals should be exploratory. Doing something unnecessary. Doing something the hard way. Unleashing more enemies which up the difficulty is an optional.
Something which makes gameplay easier shouldn't be an optional. Something that is purely skill or gear based is a poor choice for an optional. None of those things constitute OPTIONS. They're CONDITIONS. You might as well call your "optionals" in most of the content "conditionals."
As "optionals" the only options presented are "Do you want to win or do you want to win bigger?"/"Do you want to suck or do you not want to suck?"
I like to think that you guys just get tunnel vision on this kind of thing sometimes but I think you really lose the forest for the trees when it comes to difficulty, optionals, etc.
Having played more of the things I was saving for Holodeck, my overall feeling is... Content? Beautiful. Pretty well written and well scripted in terms of events. Engaging. Fun.
Systems? I'm uncomfortable with how much money I've just spent because I wanted to give this all a fair shake. I don't really care for leveling (the type or rate), starship traits, ship tiers, progression, the economy, or level of reward for time put in. I really don't care for the difficulty. Challenge, economy, and progression are borderline dealbreakers. I'm not going to be opening my wallet up this wide again unless your whole design philosophy there gets gutted. Not compromises after a month and a half. Gutted. Completely new vision. Completely new strategy. That probably just means I'm not going to open my wallet quite this wide again. I think my spending pattern over the last two weeks or so constitutes mega-whale behavior on my end and I wanted to be sure that the complaints didn't just boil down to the Mk X gear vs. Mk XIV UR gear curve or something.
I gave all of this a good faith shot, spent a mini-vacation's worth of money on the game, and I'm just not really happy with the state of things.
I like the idea of the gear upgrade system. I like that these ship upgrades happen without claiming/dismissing and wish fleet upgrades had worked similarly. Intelligence BOffs seem novel.
But I wish I could get the content and some of the novelty without the grind and the difficulty philosophy. I don't want bragging rights. I don't want to play with people who want bragging rights. I just want to fill my dilithium quota and experience a theme park ride of gameplay in under an hour or two a day.
My fleet and I went into an advanced STF last night and had a blast because it was really tough. We succeeded and most of the team was still lvl 50 in T5 ships (not upgraded yet). I am not saying everyone should be able to do this, we have been at this a long time. The thought that Elite will be able to challenge us is great!
.
Similar case with my own fleet last night, but IS Advanced, none of us died, we finished with less than 10 seconds, all of us in level 50-51.
I can see how we could have done better, completed it faster with better tactics, but challenge level was pleasantly refreshing.
not having been a victim of it yet, I do feel that having a time penalty from autofail conditions is a bit too much. If you fail, you shouldbe able to jump back and try again.
A cooldown on success sure, but not on failure due to the optional conditions.
That is my preliminary oppinion.
Thanks for the Advanced Light Cruiser, Allied Escort Bundles, Jem-Hadar Light Battlecruiser, and Mek'leth
New Content Wishlist
T6 updates for the Kamarag & Vor'Cha
Heavy Cruiser & a Movie Era Style AoY Utility Cruiser
[...]
Advance: The HP monsters are just not right, according to your own posting about this level, it should have been similar to the old Elite, which it is not as it takes forever to kill stuff. IMHO Advance needs to go back to the way the old Elite was but keep the new optional requirements. Increase rewards to 750 dilithium, 2 of the BNP type items, same Marks as now and a crafting box that guarantees 1 VR material.
The current Normal difficulty is not really needed. it's in fact a little too easy. It's also only 10% to 15% less HP than the old Elites. So a solution would be to replace the current Normals with the old Elites, with 1/2 the dil reward (480 dil).
Advanced should stay as it is, with 960 dil reward and a little extra R&D mats.
Elites should be rewarding 1440 dil.
This way people can have their old Elite queues back, with reduced rewards due to it being easy.
Advanced remains for the intermediate players and Elite for advanced players.
tThats a bad idea there are a lot of potential new players that could come and would want to start on the small level, okay so they have the pre-50 STF's. so how will they prepare for more aadvanced Queues post-50?
Welp..., tried a PUG Infected Advanced with an Eclipse Intel Cruiser and the best gear I have (mostly XII purples from reps).
All stuff I used on my ODDY, and up till D.R. hit on Monday, I could be fairly useful to the team.
Now..., Failed miserably with a group of mostly T-6 ships.
Looks like STO will become a mainly DOff game for me once I finish the new storyline.
I certainly won't be spending any more money on this game.
Kinda-sorta sorry I bought the D.R. Pack
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Advance: The HP monsters are just not right, according to your own posting about this level, it should have been similar to the old Elite, which it is not as it takes forever to kill stuff. IMHO Advance needs to go back to the way the old Elite was but keep the new optional requirements. Increase rewards to 750 dilithium, 2 of the BNP type items, same Marks as now and a crafting box that guarantees 1 VR material.
This would work for me as well.
Do what you want with Elite, make everything have 2 billion HP and take 4 hours to kill.. fine.
Just please return 'Advanced' to something that can be completed in a reasonable amount of time and give a sufficient reward.
My character is currently level 52 and I have played the episodes as far as I can until I hit 53. Space is a challenge but doable. I am using a Fleet Avenger with the t5u upgrade and fairly good gear (very rare mk xii and reputation items). Frankly I was surprised at the difficulty. Going into the Delta quadrant I expected to breeze through the episodes. I enjoy the challenge but honestly would not even consider trying it on some of my characters until I get them set up with a better builds and certainly not in a regular t5 with average gear. This could be a real problem for newer and more casual players that don't want to spend time researching builds and grinding for gear.
Ground content again was a challenge but doable. I've never liked doing ground missions and typically skip them. Watching Star Trek I always loved space but really couldn't care less about away team missions and this holds true in STO. NPC's really need to lay off the caffeine. It may not be a problem in rpg mode but in shooter mode they have become annoyingly hard to hit. I would love it if they were "smart" enough to try and take cover or something like that but quickly running all over the place and going up columns and stuff is frustrating. The older ground content where it is your team against five of them isn't so bad but starting with the Voth the larger battles are a huge cluster**** where it is hard to even tell what is going on at times.
Queues, well I haven't even tried them. I'm still annoyed that after waiting years for the crafting revamp that the rare materials needed for it require doing the harder queues. Once in a while I would run a queue to mix things up but usually avoid them because it seems they are all about how much dps you can do and how fast you can do it which just isn't my style. I've never parsed it so I don't know what my dps is but I do know it isn't near the bottom or the top. I personally refuse to bind my skills to the space bar which I am sure lowers my dps but really how much fun can it be to just fly around hitting one key.
Summary:
Delta Rising episodes have been fun and have a lot of potential. I understand that this is meant to be harder than previous episodes. My only real concern here is that a lot of the newer players may get to it before they have gotten the better gear or a T6/T5U ship and become frustrated at it being too hard which could lead them to quitting.
Queues in general are a great idea but the rewards should be the same regardless of the difficulty. Different quantities based on difficulty but still the same rewards. That way the dps kings can run on elite without having to complain because their team sucks and the more casual players can still play the queues for a reward thats worth it. Seriously how hard would it be toe set it up like that. Play ??? queue normal 5 mats 240 dilithium, advanced 10 mats 480 dilithiium, elite 15 mats 960 dilithium. Something like that and I would play the queues. As it is now the easier ones aren't worth playing and the harder ones require a really good build or you fail and everyone gets pissed.
Put the old elites back in the game. Make it four levels of difficulty if you have to. Figure it out, because this is game breaking.
'Cause you just killed the casual-elite player. Those who were good enough to easily opt the old STFs, but not nearly good enough to complete the new ones. Normal STFs were too easy for us before... now they're even easier. Advanced queues are too hard for us by a wide berth.
AT LEAST give us our old elites back.
And give us our rewards back. Not only did you take our fun mission away, you lowered the rewards for the harder ones. It's like a slap in the face, followed by a knife in the back.
My main is now nearly 53 and I've upgraded my Odyssey. It does a bit more damage and is even tankier. Story missions are easy.
As I said a few pages back, I'm not going to do any queues (except borg disconnected) as long as the difficulty stays as it is. But even in this normal STF things aren't well. I see people blowing up a lot. It's a normal STF! Can no one understand this? Someone being destroyed in a normal STF should be rare, yet I'm seeing it regularly.
Comments
So, Kindly retcon advanced STF's (the old pre DR ones anyway) back to how they were difficulty wise and Reward wise OR at the VERY least remove the "optional is now a required" objective part because THAT is where most of the problems lie aside from the insane buffing of shields and HP the mobs have gotten.
I now spend most of my time in stf's saving other unprepared players. I watched someone BFAW for a very long time on 3 probes. All he was doing was pissing them off. I had to come in and finish for him and that happens every stf now on NORMAL. I wont dare play elite right now because I will not be able to help anyone and die myself without decent support. I run a defiant, and the only reason i can kill things fast enough is because i can tear down 1 shield facing and kill it. They are not smart and use tac team. They just have a lot to work through and Cruisers unless set up for spikes take forever to kill anything.
The new STF splits 5 players into 3 teams... ... ... Can we get a 9-10 man for this? Or any of them really.
Scis have a purpose now
Engineers have a purpose now
It is no longer the best idea or even a viable idea to go full on damage.
Yea, sto finally feels like an mmo.
Maybe they should get their easy runs back, but dont give them any rewards for them .
You wonder why ther are all these new RMT spammers in the game, the content is so easy it can be mastered by an automation.
What purpose do they have? I can tank endlessly with 2 of my ships. This does not help the team beat the clock in any mission I have seen.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Except it is still the best idea. Or atleast without having a stupid amount of damage none of the other stuff matters.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1229421
They haven't changed anything significant. NPC damage output is still pretty weak, they have no real tricks, anything worth using heavy CC on is still immune anything not immune can be handled by those using CC as a secondary build aspect (TBR 1/GW 1 are plenty good enough) and the top debuff in the game is still...attack pattern beta.
If anything full on damage becomes more important when everything has 5 to 10 times the amount of health.
The difficulty spike simply put just catered to a VERY SMALL portion of the playerbase who happened to whine long enough to get what they wanted , in turn messing over EVERY casual player who doesn't have a bank full of $$$$$ to spend or time to grind said gear out.
I seriously FAIL to see where making things harder from the onset ie normal or advanced mode does anyone ANY good whatsoever. Now if the AI were more intelligent THEN it might be acceptable that things were a bit harder, but simply adding mobs, buffing shields HP and dmg output by npc's is NOT the way to " give us a challenge". SO, all the "elitist" crowd that think " if you can't do 30k DPS you arent worth my time" need to pull their proverbial heads out of the exhaust manifold and realise over 3/4 of our player base just play to have fun, if we cease to have fun, we leave. so if you want ghost servers with only a handful of players keep acting/feelling that way.
For those that are happy with DR ... I just don't know what to say to you. Clearly, you're looking for a different kind of game than me. That is ... something other than fun.
- Judge Aaron Satie
Syllabification: slight·ly
Pronunciation: /ˈslītlē
/
adverb
1To a small degree; not considerably: he lowered his voice slightly [as submodifier]: they are all slightly different
More example sentencesSynonyms
2(With reference to a persons build) in a slender way: a slightly built girl
we were told the difficulties would be ramped up slightly.
my primary complaint? did someone swap the stat sheets for the borg cubes and spheres or something?
conduit elite..or what used to be elite..
requiring all 5 ships of a given group, most of which are running top flight ships and equipment, to dogpile on just one sphere...ONE sphere...is utterly rediculous. the borg cube that we initially faced went without complaint. the two spheres...yeah...all 5 of us on the one sphere, while the other was free to oneshot at its leisure.
this is not slightly. not in the remotest sense of the definition.
we are headed in the general direction of starwars galaxies here.
1- Murphy’s Law tells us that anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
2- And anything that does go wrong will get progressively worse.
3- And if you survive the first two laws it’s time to panic.
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Don't get me wrong, I love the new parameters of the Advanced difficulty, such as the increased number of enemies and non-optional optionals. I feel that these parameters are needed, as before for example, many people, even a pug team, could finish Infected Space Elite in under 5 minutes. Bars and rules needed to be set. However, many of the enemies are either highly buffed, such as Borg spheres/cubes and structures having seemingly 2 to 3 times their previous health, or ground enemies ranking up to the next level of their NPC class, such as a Heavy Tactical Drone is now an Elite Tactical Drone. I really feel the health and classes of NPCs needs to be adjusted.
As a player that was once able to carry a PUG team through an elite STF, it feels rather bad knowing that I am no longer capable of playing missions I used to be able to, even with high DPS teams. However I am more worried as to what this change in difficulty might mean for new players, due that the Advanced difficulty and up are the only queues that give the special items needed for reputation gear, such as Borg Neural Processors, for example. With the difficulty setting as it is now, I fear that new players will never be able to gain the rewards from reputation systems, or at least, it will take them a fair bit longer.
Upgrading gear and leveling to 60 will make the average player about 30% stronger. Extraordinary players will get a bit more out of.
The enemies are 300% stronger. That would be fine for a new Elite that is intended to be much, much harder than the old Elite, but that's on Advanced. Advanced which players were told- through official dev communications- would be about as hard as the old Elite.
The rewards being halved, on top of that, just feels spiteful.
Here is my feedback. You are money gating content by excluding players, including paying players like myself, from collecting R&D mats and ancient power cells by juicing up the difficulty level to the point where only whales able to toss down hundreds of dollars are able to make the grade.
You have taken a very casual game and turned it into something hideous. An elite chest thumping self glorification that is not based on skill at all but size of wallet.
You have removed any desire for finely tuned teams to bring an engineer. DPS is more important than ever and defense oriented players need not apply for anything but normal. A place where they will not be able to progress their characters without opening the wallet. Bravo!
I have been a paying subscriber for over 2 years. I have ships I have paid cash for. Ships I love. You now tell me I must level one of your new shinny ships just to unlock masteries for the ships I love. Bravo, again, for the slap in the face. Did someone in a high management position lack the balls to ask me if I would be will to pay for those upgrades without having to give up the ships I love?
Star Trek Online is a Game for me, a place to relax and enjoy my free time. I feel like I am being pissed on.
Sincerely, Brody.
Two issues though. One Borticus mentioned was very hard to fix was that you (as in Cryptic) seemed to think that "more hps" equates to harder. In fact I find the Vaadwaar kind of boring, but I find the Heirarcy more difficult. Why? The Heirarcy may have less HPs overall, but they have better used abilities and better timing to use them, while the Vaadwaur are all HPs and no Ooomph behind them.
Also my biggest issue with the new difficulty is that anything from Advanced to Elite pretty much now requires a fleet or a pre-made team to do. Generally not an issue, but it I'm just trying to farm say Ancient Batteries now, I can't just pug for them, they're gated behind a match that takes takes a lot of teamwork to do, meaning that forget pugs. There are too many leechers, griefers, and generally bad players. Add in the constant inability for the queues to give you a full five man team all the time, and it's now a chore to get a lot of those gated items.
I live with the R&D items, those are tradeable, but the ancient batteries and the like are not, and now they're been inadvertantly gated behind something that requires premades and teams, putting them out of reach of your average player.
I'd actually say the opposite is true. With the NPCs getting an HP increase of around 5x - 10x, DPS is more important now than ever before if you want to beat the clock.
I don't understand why they can't just leave Advanced the way Elites used to be and use the new Elites to cater to the people who wanted something more 'difficult'.
This is a problem beyond just damage. There are too many queues at once. Many of them never fill. Perhaps taking all the ones that need ten or more players and putting them on a rotation with no us rewards would focus the people and get what times down plus it fixs the rewards some.
Doesn't hit damage vs HP, but there's feedback a plenty on that topic already.
One thing needed is good rewards for all levels and include modules in Standard level (just limit the number you can get in 20hr thru Standard only).
You listened to those who wanted more challenge by adding Elite, so don't ruin the rest of the End-game PVE for the rest of us that play for casual fun.
An alternative, how about re-adding MK 11 end-game gear as an introductory gear reward for completed a specific number of space and ground missions in the STF/FA with module requirements. Just make it non-upgradeable, but a trade-in discount when buying Advanced gears (reduced number of modules). This way players have some worthwhile gear before going into Advanced Queue. You could then get away with not adding module to Standard.
Overall, the new STF/FA are no longer worth the time if the match is more likely to fail due to some optional now mandatory requirement and over the top DPS demands that make this game less Star Trek and more MMO DPS race.
Here's my problem with this.
See the Delta Rising Reputation system is out now, and is already time gated. Now to time gate it even more to wait until I hit level 60, get a full range of specilization and traits, and... wait where am I supposed to get good enough gear to do the advanced systems? Oh that's right R&D and Reputation, all of which requires you to complete advanced difficulty STFs.
Meaning to do Advanced I need R&D materials and Reputation items that I can only get on Advanced.
Then say "well you have to wait 2 or 3 months anyway" when it's already time gated is silly.
I wouldn't even mind leaving Advanced as it is, and leaving the R&D mats as it is (since you can buy packs with zen), but there needs to be a way to get Ancient Batteries and the like without doing Advanced.
I think people should know that there are people happy with the advanced content as is. As a matter of compromise however you might want to increase the normal rewards somewhat so people used to easy wins can still do that and feel good. Nothing crazy like people are suggesting but maybe 480 for Normal, 720 for Advanced and 960 for Elite if you want to cap it there.
The most important thing for me is that the rewards and challenges are consistent between the different queued events. It was clear you guys wanted to reduce the rewards for months, because everything new that came out since had way less rewards. This disparity made new queued events hard to play, so please keep everything relatively consistent.
Is there a way to link dilithium reward to average time to finish like in the Foundry missions? That I think would make a fair compromise too.
So either change them back to normal level, or create the advanced level and a normal level variant of the missions in keeping with the standard set up for other stf's.
Normal: Seems just like the old Normal, no problems at all but the rewards are insufficient, please set them back to 480 (500) dilithium (why can't you just make dilithium rewards an even 500/1000/1500?). Mark rewards are fine, but BNP type items should be added to the Normal rewards pack, as should a chance at VR crafting materials if the plan is to keep Advance difficulty the way it is now.
Advance: The HP monsters are just not right, according to your own posting about this level, it should have been similar to the old Elite, which it is not as it takes forever to kill stuff. IMHO Advance needs to go back to the way the old Elite was but keep the new optional requirements. Increase rewards to 750 dilithium, 2 of the BNP type items, same Marks as now and a crafting box that guarantees 1 VR material.
Elite: I can only base this on mission content since I have played missions at Normal/Advance/Elite to see the difference. I'm thinking it needs to be upped quite a bit as of right now there is hardly any difference between Advance and Elite. Up rewards to 1500 dilithium, 4 BNP type items, same Marks and crafting material box that guarantees 5 VR materials. Rename this difficulty to Insane.
Add a new Elite mode that is the same as the current Advance for those who desire more challenge than the previous old Elite and will continue to challenge as players level up from 50 to 60. Reward 1000 dilithium, 3 BNP type items, Marks that are between current Advance and Elite and a crafting material box that guarantees a minimum of 3 VR materials.
But what's with the time limits as optionals in the other content?
I said this a long time ago and I'm not trying to be a wiseguy here but who the heck wouldn't complete content faster if they could?
That makes no sense to me as an optional and the design philosophy on optionals continues to make very little sense to me. It really feels like your systems team skews way too heavily towards bragging rights, achiever mentality.
Optionals should be exploratory. Doing something unnecessary. Doing something the hard way. Unleashing more enemies which up the difficulty is an optional.
Something which makes gameplay easier shouldn't be an optional. Something that is purely skill or gear based is a poor choice for an optional. None of those things constitute OPTIONS. They're CONDITIONS. You might as well call your "optionals" in most of the content "conditionals."
As "optionals" the only options presented are "Do you want to win or do you want to win bigger?"/"Do you want to suck or do you not want to suck?"
I like to think that you guys just get tunnel vision on this kind of thing sometimes but I think you really lose the forest for the trees when it comes to difficulty, optionals, etc.
Having played more of the things I was saving for Holodeck, my overall feeling is... Content? Beautiful. Pretty well written and well scripted in terms of events. Engaging. Fun.
Systems? I'm uncomfortable with how much money I've just spent because I wanted to give this all a fair shake. I don't really care for leveling (the type or rate), starship traits, ship tiers, progression, the economy, or level of reward for time put in. I really don't care for the difficulty. Challenge, economy, and progression are borderline dealbreakers. I'm not going to be opening my wallet up this wide again unless your whole design philosophy there gets gutted. Not compromises after a month and a half. Gutted. Completely new vision. Completely new strategy. That probably just means I'm not going to open my wallet quite this wide again. I think my spending pattern over the last two weeks or so constitutes mega-whale behavior on my end and I wanted to be sure that the complaints didn't just boil down to the Mk X gear vs. Mk XIV UR gear curve or something.
I gave all of this a good faith shot, spent a mini-vacation's worth of money on the game, and I'm just not really happy with the state of things.
I like the idea of the gear upgrade system. I like that these ship upgrades happen without claiming/dismissing and wish fleet upgrades had worked similarly. Intelligence BOffs seem novel.
But I wish I could get the content and some of the novelty without the grind and the difficulty philosophy. I don't want bragging rights. I don't want to play with people who want bragging rights. I just want to fill my dilithium quota and experience a theme park ride of gameplay in under an hour or two a day.
Similar case with my own fleet last night, but IS Advanced, none of us died, we finished with less than 10 seconds, all of us in level 50-51.
I can see how we could have done better, completed it faster with better tactics, but challenge level was pleasantly refreshing.
not having been a victim of it yet, I do feel that having a time penalty from autofail conditions is a bit too much. If you fail, you shouldbe able to jump back and try again.
A cooldown on success sure, but not on failure due to the optional conditions.
That is my preliminary oppinion.
I'm not going to argue whether is a good or bad thing, but definitely the statement about "similar level of challenge in the enemies that you are used to when the queues were labeled Elite" is false
In every place,
The deeds of men remain the same..."
tThats a bad idea there are a lot of potential new players that could come and would want to start on the small level, okay so they have the pre-50 STF's. so how will they prepare for more aadvanced Queues post-50?
All stuff I used on my ODDY, and up till D.R. hit on Monday, I could be fairly useful to the team.
Now..., Failed miserably with a group of mostly T-6 ships.
Looks like STO will become a mainly DOff game for me once I finish the new storyline.
I certainly won't be spending any more money on this game.
Kinda-sorta sorry I bought the D.R. Pack
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
This would work for me as well.
Do what you want with Elite, make everything have 2 billion HP and take 4 hours to kill.. fine.
Just please return 'Advanced' to something that can be completed in a reasonable amount of time and give a sufficient reward.
My character is currently level 52 and I have played the episodes as far as I can until I hit 53. Space is a challenge but doable. I am using a Fleet Avenger with the t5u upgrade and fairly good gear (very rare mk xii and reputation items). Frankly I was surprised at the difficulty. Going into the Delta quadrant I expected to breeze through the episodes. I enjoy the challenge but honestly would not even consider trying it on some of my characters until I get them set up with a better builds and certainly not in a regular t5 with average gear. This could be a real problem for newer and more casual players that don't want to spend time researching builds and grinding for gear.
Ground content again was a challenge but doable. I've never liked doing ground missions and typically skip them. Watching Star Trek I always loved space but really couldn't care less about away team missions and this holds true in STO. NPC's really need to lay off the caffeine. It may not be a problem in rpg mode but in shooter mode they have become annoyingly hard to hit. I would love it if they were "smart" enough to try and take cover or something like that but quickly running all over the place and going up columns and stuff is frustrating. The older ground content where it is your team against five of them isn't so bad but starting with the Voth the larger battles are a huge cluster**** where it is hard to even tell what is going on at times.
Queues, well I haven't even tried them. I'm still annoyed that after waiting years for the crafting revamp that the rare materials needed for it require doing the harder queues. Once in a while I would run a queue to mix things up but usually avoid them because it seems they are all about how much dps you can do and how fast you can do it which just isn't my style. I've never parsed it so I don't know what my dps is but I do know it isn't near the bottom or the top. I personally refuse to bind my skills to the space bar which I am sure lowers my dps but really how much fun can it be to just fly around hitting one key.
Summary:
Delta Rising episodes have been fun and have a lot of potential. I understand that this is meant to be harder than previous episodes. My only real concern here is that a lot of the newer players may get to it before they have gotten the better gear or a T6/T5U ship and become frustrated at it being too hard which could lead them to quitting.
Queues in general are a great idea but the rewards should be the same regardless of the difficulty. Different quantities based on difficulty but still the same rewards. That way the dps kings can run on elite without having to complain because their team sucks and the more casual players can still play the queues for a reward thats worth it. Seriously how hard would it be toe set it up like that. Play ??? queue normal 5 mats 240 dilithium, advanced 10 mats 480 dilithiium, elite 15 mats 960 dilithium. Something like that and I would play the queues. As it is now the easier ones aren't worth playing and the harder ones require a really good build or you fail and everyone gets pissed.
'Cause you just killed the casual-elite player. Those who were good enough to easily opt the old STFs, but not nearly good enough to complete the new ones. Normal STFs were too easy for us before... now they're even easier. Advanced queues are too hard for us by a wide berth.
AT LEAST give us our old elites back.
And give us our rewards back. Not only did you take our fun mission away, you lowered the rewards for the harder ones. It's like a slap in the face, followed by a knife in the back.
My main is now nearly 53 and I've upgraded my Odyssey. It does a bit more damage and is even tankier. Story missions are easy.
As I said a few pages back, I'm not going to do any queues (except borg disconnected) as long as the difficulty stays as it is. But even in this normal STF things aren't well. I see people blowing up a lot. It's a normal STF! Can no one understand this? Someone being destroyed in a normal STF should be rare, yet I'm seeing it regularly.