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Constructive Criticism Time!!! (PvE Queues)
orangeitis
Member Posts: 5,222 Arc User
Yes devs, adding HP and damage is not the way to make a fun and challenging gameplay experience. I think that these videos explain why.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWFzFsHc75U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea6UuRTjkKs
The sad part is... you've already provided us the tools to tackle the fun and challenging stuff with. You just didn't add much to use the tools on. Things that we'd make good use of in an "engaging" difficulty. I'm talking about the abilities and equipment we use for our starships. Our defensive Science skills, our Sci & Eng consoles, our grossly underused BOFF powers. There's a reason why we don't use some of them. And I think it's the same reason that DPS outvalues the rest. You don't give us a reason to use any of them. Instead, we get a "punishing" difficult. I mean, why even have Power Insulators when they'd still leave us with 0 shields after a Borg shield drain?
You were on the right track with, say, the revamped Mirror Invasion. No 288k HP ships to throw insane DPS at, no insta-kills to try (and fail) to tank. We actually had to use strategy. We had to take aggro from each other. We had to protect the starbase. We had to tend to the portals and generators. Yes, it wasn't the ideal way to give us better gameplay, but dammit you were on to something!
...but then Delta Rising happened. The queue system fell to pieces. While it was good that you turned the previous optional conditions into mandatory ones and gave us new optionals to work toward, the HP and damage scaling ruined it. Little effort was made to create content that would reflect the tools you want us to bring to the missions with. And Borticus, we know, making decent A.I. isn't easy. But it's what the game NEEDS.
And what's worse is that increasing the HP of your enemies demands mainly one thing from your players - DPS. The very thing that was already too in-demand. Instead of fixing one problem, the HP/damage scaling merely added to another. Assuming of course those with the highest DPS could deal with the insane HP in the first place.
So devs... try to look at it this way. If the only solution we have remaining is to keep getting stronger firepower to overcome these walls with engines attached to them, our experience with the game isn't going to be a pleasant one.
Don't get me wrong, devs. You know I love you guys and I appreciate all the work you're doing to make this game better. And I recognize that you took on a lot of projects for Delta Rising to be a reality. But now that it's out, I feel that this issue should take top priority. We got the hints of a skill revamp in season 10. That should be the perfect time to finally balance the game.
Just my thoughts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWFzFsHc75U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea6UuRTjkKs
The sad part is... you've already provided us the tools to tackle the fun and challenging stuff with. You just didn't add much to use the tools on. Things that we'd make good use of in an "engaging" difficulty. I'm talking about the abilities and equipment we use for our starships. Our defensive Science skills, our Sci & Eng consoles, our grossly underused BOFF powers. There's a reason why we don't use some of them. And I think it's the same reason that DPS outvalues the rest. You don't give us a reason to use any of them. Instead, we get a "punishing" difficult. I mean, why even have Power Insulators when they'd still leave us with 0 shields after a Borg shield drain?
You were on the right track with, say, the revamped Mirror Invasion. No 288k HP ships to throw insane DPS at, no insta-kills to try (and fail) to tank. We actually had to use strategy. We had to take aggro from each other. We had to protect the starbase. We had to tend to the portals and generators. Yes, it wasn't the ideal way to give us better gameplay, but dammit you were on to something!
...but then Delta Rising happened. The queue system fell to pieces. While it was good that you turned the previous optional conditions into mandatory ones and gave us new optionals to work toward, the HP and damage scaling ruined it. Little effort was made to create content that would reflect the tools you want us to bring to the missions with. And Borticus, we know, making decent A.I. isn't easy. But it's what the game NEEDS.
And what's worse is that increasing the HP of your enemies demands mainly one thing from your players - DPS. The very thing that was already too in-demand. Instead of fixing one problem, the HP/damage scaling merely added to another. Assuming of course those with the highest DPS could deal with the insane HP in the first place.
So devs... try to look at it this way. If the only solution we have remaining is to keep getting stronger firepower to overcome these walls with engines attached to them, our experience with the game isn't going to be a pleasant one.
Don't get me wrong, devs. You know I love you guys and I appreciate all the work you're doing to make this game better. And I recognize that you took on a lot of projects for Delta Rising to be a reality. But now that it's out, I feel that this issue should take top priority. We got the hints of a skill revamp in season 10. That should be the perfect time to finally balance the game.
Just my thoughts.
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Link: Castra - a german Fleet.
No, adding more skills doesn't equate an HP boost, not by a longshot. Most of the builds Geko says can breeze through an STF wouldn't last a second in PvP. In PvE they seldom have to worry about scramble sensors, FBP, subnuc beam, and other serious threats to their one trick pony builds.
Sure enemy hp did need to go up because elites were a joke once you started filling in with rep gear and fleet gear but these advanced queues way overdid it with some enemies. Borg bird of prey and spheres should not have over 600k hull hp and tough shields.
The dilithium nerf was just a blow below the belt the estf before the change were already not a very good way to farm dilithium. At 960 dilithium per run plus marks and implants doing all 4 estf would net you around 5500 dilithium and then you had to wait 1 hour before running all 4 again.
People call it whales vs free or elite vs casual, but neither is correct. It used to be "escorts online", then "tactical or gtfo". Which is why the vesta and dyson science ships had to be built as escorts with toys. Its why we use aux2bat. At the heart of it all, the truth is really damage vs no damage. You can dump a ton of cash and do TRIBBLE damage, this is where we got the term "scimitard". You can grind for hours, have no life but the game, and be totally sucking. The difference comes down to damage, and the fact that with more damage you can earn more rewards in less time. From this comes elitism, resent ment, jealousy, massive wealth differences, and balance becomes impossible
From this divide in the community has sprung some of the most hateful posts I've seen on the forums. And it is getting to where there are people who functionally cannot play the same content. Not just queues either, its the story missions. Try this, take a level 52 character into an old mission, say skirmish. Check the Axion's HP. I've seen a screenshot today of a ddridex in the level 30 romulan story arc at level 52 with 303,000 HP. The guy started a new alt with the double exp event and that's where he's at today.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=19925741&postcount=19
Pretend you're a new player with only dropped gear, you don't even know what fleets and rep are. We all know you hit 50 before you reach the dyson story missions. Especially with the double exp event that just ended. How are those players supposed to have fun?
There are people who after a year can't get more than 2k damage out of a lockbox ship. And then there are the guys who did elite queues in teams of all tier 1 ships. Because of the difference in these groups we have at the same time threads calling the advanced queues too hard and gecko telling us teams are farming elite too easily (and I saw those guys on tribble so I know he's telling the truth). And I was on teams doing advanced Borg disconnected with all optionals in non 5u ships.
The difference between the top and the bottom is too great. The gap has to close.
Holy cow some of those new NPC's are science spamming like crazy. In patrol mission I was getting subnuke and scammbled like crazy - every 10 seconds with 3 ships attacking I was getting scrambled!
Adding FBP in there would make it better! (and by that I mean more irritating)
Have you watched the voth at the end of the undine battle zone where they send in waves of ships for 5 minutes? Most people don't, but spend a moment some time to watch them without fighting. It is very elegant.
First frigates come in, but not all at once. Two sets about a second apart. Just long enough (I'm sure intentionally) that if you launch torp spread it only targets the first ones. If you wait a moment, or have bad reflexes you can catch both. But then they all use the Picard maneuver, breaking your targeting and unload their aoe engine/weapon scramble. They come out of cloak in the middle of the PC defenders right as cruisers and bulwarks appear in a ring around the outside and pop their invulnerability shields facing the first ship that grabs aggro. Then it devolves into a dogfight. After two waves of this, they change it up and before the cruisers appear a dreadnaught shows up in the middle.
That is actually solid ai scripting. Someone at cryptic, i think borticus, deserves credit for a job well done on that. Shame they can't use their powers smart enough to take advantage of the setup.
And the OP is the biggest apologist for them on the boards so ... no sympathy at all. Take your own advice, play everything on Normal with free gear. ITS ALL OPTIONAL YOU DONT HAVE TO PLAY
It isn't optional, really. You can't get any gear, you can't get any resources, you can't even stay at your current level (stagnating) because cost of living has increased so much. If you don't stay on top, you slip further behind than just a status quo.
In fact the only thing optional is starting the game at all, and many of us are going to OPT not to do that. See how that works?
I totally agree.
For sure, stf elite were too easy also (BUT NOT ONLY) because borg ships had few hp compared tho the huge dps we can have, however not some borg ship have too much hp to be "advanced". Ad the (dilithium) reward is too low!
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
When elite PvE feels closer(not identical to necessarily, but closer) to PvP(and not necessarily current STO PvP, I mean bridging the gap in gameplay-story segregation), THEN we're on to something. But when certain skills are ONLY useful in PvP, we have a problem.
Enemy raiders should survive on evasion, stealth, and backstabbing, for instance. Not hundreds of thousands of hitpoints. How is that better? Because the tools needed to combat those enemies are different than the tools needed to kill super tank NPCs. As are the tools need to face debuffers of any variety. Entrappers. Enemy healspammers(no, NOT the Borg STF kind). DPS spikers. Pet spammers/swarmers. Etc etc etc. And yes, including enemy tanks/damage soakers... but not when EVERYTHING is a tank/damage soaker.
The more variations of enemies we can put our(already existing) skills to use on, the more fun the game will be.
(a VERY IMPORTANT) Edit: This issue is directly tied in with career/class balancing in PvE as well. This is why high-DPS ships are maintaining value over the ships which focus less on DPS. This is why most ships with a configuration that supports more supportive, defensive, and manipulative playstyles are valued a lot less than those that focus primarily, or at least very heavily on DPS. If you can't do at least X amount of damage in most PvE queues, you're not pulling your weight.
THIS IS A HUGE PROBLEM, and it has been a huge problem since before Delta Rising added changed content to more support high-attack power builds.
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The playing field needs a dramatic re-balancing...been here just over a year now, and still haven't cracked 4k dps on my Fleet Nebula(upgraded to T5-U now), but, that's by deliberate DESIGN on my part...it's all setup for crowd control and defensive support, and it's nice to know that I still get thanked for saving someone's skidplate, though I'm now tinkering with a new setup that could loosely be called a 'hull buster' one, due to an accidental find while mentally going over a story mission I ran last night.
Being a free player(a casual one at that, who's ADHD effectively prevents me from focusing for more than 2-4 hours on ANYthing without developing a headache), I'm struggling to get 5-7k Dil a day...I refuse to grind Foundry missions as a matter of principle, and using alts for Dil is a grey area at best for me...then there's my unemployment issues, and a legal appeal battle I'm in the middle of for Social Security Disability/SSI...so any kind of funds are at a rare premium; Fleet consoles and any significant amount of upgrading is going to be rough going for me, at best, for the foreseeable future.... -_-;
I'll admit that I don't care at all for PvP, in any game, unless it's mandatory, so that's not really a factor for me....
Either way, I'll just keep right on doing what I'm doing, helping out whom I can, and seeing just how much exotic damage I can get out of this flying pancake of mine on my budget...I figure by the time I reach 60, the ship mastery bonuses and skill points(for which I'm putting everything I can into defense and evasive) will make me an even -better- support-craft!
Our time will come, OP........just kinda hard to predict -when-, hehe!
The last thing this game needs is more emphasis on tactical capabilities and DPS. It needs comprehensive support gameplay. Cruisers and science ships should be considered equally with Escorts.
The Borg Shield Neutralizer is an excellent example. All you need is to have Hazard Emitters to fix it, because other shield skills (like power insulators) mean absolutely nothing. The only way to diminish its effects is a hard counter (like Hazard Emitters).
If you are going to have so much combat decided around hard counters instead of resistances or mitigation, then there is no point of having those gameplay mechanics in the game to begin with.
Should Hazard Emitters clear things like Borg Shield Neutralizer? Absolutely.
But it should not be the only option. Science Team should mitigate the amount of shield power lost. Yes, It does create a brief layer of shielding around your ship, but it just gets consumed by the shield neutralizer in 2 seconds anyway.
It should be mitigated by Shield Power. The higher the shield power, the slower it takes for it to deplete your shields.
And that is just one example. For various powers the enemy uses on you, there should be 1 hard counter (or more), with other powers offering signifigant mitigation capabilities to various degrees in comparison.
But this isn't the kind of gameplay we have.
If Cryptic is dead set on having this to be a DPS-focused game, stop pretending otherwise. We don't have critical heals tied to our skill trees. Missions are not determined by who can survive the longest or just how much healing is dished out. There are no cookies given out for who can dish out the most gravity wells. I don't get any extra dilithium for throwing Extend Shields III on a friendly ship before they pop.
The only pathway to getting rewards is completing the mission ASAP. This should change. Especially in a Star Trek game, where victory and progress has been shown to be tied to original thinking and unorthodox methods. And more importantly... teamwork.
Well it IS just the first change after DR. And since you guys are planning to make some more tweaks, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. After all, you guys did make Brandon official captain of the NCC-97500 like I requested.
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I don't know about you, but the KDF became a lot more challenging when they gave the NPC ships Isometric Charge and Gravimetric Pulse.
The Gorn are still a pain in the TRIBBLE with their Aceton Assimilators.
The Nausicaans still have those theta radiation clouds that are annoying.
The Orions are probably still the easiest enemy group for your usual fleet alerts and fleet actions, they could do with some new abilities.
I think the Romulan enemy group would be far more devastating if they used singularity powers and the special consoles, however.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Campaign: The Battle of Neverwinter - NWS-DOQXFA4ZD
Prologue: A not so simple plan - NW-DCJG75B9D
It is a start... We just have to get through it and, if necessary, show them again that those values aren't right.
One step at a time, adjusting the HP is something they can do quickly and easily. 80% of current for Normal should be fine, in fact it may be too much- normal isn't *that* bad. 70% of current for Advanced may need to go down just a bit more. +10% for Elite won't be enough, they will still steamroll it.
But it's all a start.
You don't get the point, man: great challange means you can complete it, but you have to know how to do.
ISE (which was the easiest mission) is now an IMPOSSIBLE CHALLANGE, unless you got a end-game scimitar -_-
well, I got a fleet Ha'Feh, with elite fleet weapons and gears, vulnerability locators and STILL CAN'T COMPLETE ISE.
Yeah, that's a great challenge -_-
They wanted money ?
Well, I hope people leave this game, so those genius will have to review their way to make money: they don't deserve money.
Greed is not a good thing
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Okay, you COULD make the argument that some factions just do not have that tech. But NPC versions of playable factions should at least be capable of what we are capable of. Hell, how many times have you seen an alliance ship flying a "captured" or "salvaged" enemy faction vessel for that matter? The only canon mention we get that non-player people fly lockbox or other promotional ships is is a display or two at ESD.
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Not only would diversifying enemy abilities be more engaging gameplay-wise, it would fit perfectly in-continuity and reduce gameplay-story segregation.
Yes, it's a start. I'm not hating on them or bashing them here, and I acknowledge that they're at least trying with this issue. I just wish their efforts on this issue didn't seem so... one-dimensional.
Their job with new species have been a bit better. But again, just a handful of powers at most.
Not to mention... the very dynamic in which NPCs work breaks gameplay-story segregation too. NPC enemies to start with are heightened HP walls in which players overcome. It seems like an actual design feature. The way that the NPCs barely regenerate at all while the players are able to several times better than any NPC(assuming the NPC can at all) suggests that they want the player to have a greater shot to eventually win, while simultaneously giving the illusion that it's a more even playing field. Hell, all NPCs usually have to try to win is DPS/temp tanking. This fact alone bothers me to no extent.
I mean... before DR(haven't seen one after the patch), a level 50 Odyssey-class NPC(say, the Ent-F) had around 300,000 hull points. How is that at all plausible given that player Odysseys can't get even close to that value? Simple - because NPCs have very little in the way of recovery. That discrepancy must be eliminated.
I give credit where credit's due. I'm no one's apologist. You probably should rethink your post if you lash out at constructive criticism with a mere suggestion to 'live with it'. Especially when I suspect that you don't exactly agree with your own suggestion.
How about instead of being antagonistic, you try convincing me of your position?
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I faced that holo-bulwark today that goes back to 100% health when you die, so suffice it so say it had a long time for its AI to do it's thing (I could only survive by keeping at full speed, so I mostly had a cannon and 3 turrets firing at it). The AI was brilliant. When it would pop a grav well on me and I'd run instead of chasing me it'd move for the gw so I'd have to charge at it and get caught again or lose damage. Then when I'd come in close it'd slap on it's lolwutdamage shield and it's crazy phasers and blast my hull to almost nothing. It felt a lot more skilled than a lot of players I've faced. So I feel like the Voth really benefitted from the HP boost.
The Borg on the other hand are still just bumbling idiots who suddenly drain all your shields, tractor you, or launch crazy OP torps at you. For cubes/tac cubes I'm mostly okay with it, but the spheres are just annoying. And fleet alert is horrible now, because that opens up at like level 5 it really shouldn't have changed, plus now I can't just log in and go blow stuff up and log out while I say warm some food in the oven. I have to commit to a long gaming session if I want to play. I haven't even bothered with the CE, it was boring enough before, now it'd just be sad.
who's the genius that decided that warping into a very bright Hot pink nebula was a good idea. It hurts my eyes...
What's with the Chessy rewards in the delta episodes? I now have 6 purple phasers that I will never use.
the new delta episode maps are just patrol missions.... there is only 5 real story line maps. the rest are TRIBBLE.
look back at previous seasons. they were all story line content with good rewards.
really, I feel robbed. How do they sleep at night?
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But i think that this got nothing to do with increased health of mobs, but with the incapability of the playerbase.
When only 2 people are fireing at the transformer in ISA, and the mission fails therefore because the spheres got to the transformer intime, it clearly is a lack of understanding of the encounter that failed the mission.
When a single sphere is too much for a player in advanced mode, the player isn't ready for advanced...but he/she can still queue for advanced...why?
i honestly think it is now up to the playerbase to GET BETTER AT PLAYING, before cryptic starts nerfing anything.
The problem is as much with poor player understanding and skill than it is with mission design.
but then again, i shouldn't pug in the first place.
*edit: just did another ISA pug, and well, there are still those in pug groups that actively try to fail the mission. So for me pugging is dead, but not because the content is too hard, but people are either too dumb or fail on purpose. Out of my 3 runs so far, 2 failed because of trolling or ignorance (or both). In other words, the human factor is the one that takes the fun out of STF pugs.
I thought this is where Cryptic was heading with the new content forward...guess not.
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