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Is Cryptic's Goal to Kill PUGs?
astrorobla
Member Posts: 144 Arc User
I'm not usually one to post doom rants, and the bulk of what Cryptic has done in DR is quite spectacular, from systems design to truly compelling content.
However...
I consider myself to be a solid casual player. After years in the game I got most of my characters/ships to 8-13K DPS. I'm not interested in switching to one of the handful of min-maxed aux2bat builds since I like to play with different weapons/equipment sets. I've played a LOT of space STFs, and I study the parse logs frequently. I enjoy playing STFs with my fleet, but the truth is it can take a LONG time to get a team of 5 together, so PUGs have been my preferred play method for advanced crafting and gear.
PUGs have always been a VALUABLE mode of gameplay for me that has enabled me to effectively gear up my ships.
Pre DR, clearly ISE was admittedly a bit of a joke in difficulty, but it served a valuable purpose of letting lower-skilled players get access to necessary components for getting better gear. In zillions of evening PUGs I've noted 4/5 times I was the top or nearly top DPS ship in the PUG. Typically you saw 1-2 5K ships and 1-2 2K ships. But with 1-2 8-15K DPS ships the match was still winnable.
Now, that kind of stat can barely complete a normal, and advanced is just hopeless for PUGs.
That said, ISA I've seen won a very few times, but usually a single player blows a generator early (and the generators go down so fast this isn't actually hard to do accidentally) and it's doomed.
Of a few dozen PUGs for the new Borg Disconnected STF, I have only ever seen all the optionals cleared maybe twice... on NORMAL. I've never made it past the second wave on Advanced.
Everything we were told was that the new Advanced would scale roughly to the old Elite, and there would be a new Elite to provide a real challenge. That sounded good, but when you can't even hit the goals on a space PUG on normal, what is the ultimate rationale?
STO has a larger than usual casual gamer core due to interest in the IP. The difficulty scaling has placed all but the basic space content beyond the ability/reach of the bulk of the players.
PUGs are now DEAD, at least for anything past normal.
How is this good for the game? Is this Cryptic's design intent? If so, why?
If only seasoned advanced gamers have a chance at middle-tier content, how will casual players EVER earn the advanced gear and crafting materials needed to enable them to play that content?
I'm very disappointed in this turn.
However...
I consider myself to be a solid casual player. After years in the game I got most of my characters/ships to 8-13K DPS. I'm not interested in switching to one of the handful of min-maxed aux2bat builds since I like to play with different weapons/equipment sets. I've played a LOT of space STFs, and I study the parse logs frequently. I enjoy playing STFs with my fleet, but the truth is it can take a LONG time to get a team of 5 together, so PUGs have been my preferred play method for advanced crafting and gear.
PUGs have always been a VALUABLE mode of gameplay for me that has enabled me to effectively gear up my ships.
Pre DR, clearly ISE was admittedly a bit of a joke in difficulty, but it served a valuable purpose of letting lower-skilled players get access to necessary components for getting better gear. In zillions of evening PUGs I've noted 4/5 times I was the top or nearly top DPS ship in the PUG. Typically you saw 1-2 5K ships and 1-2 2K ships. But with 1-2 8-15K DPS ships the match was still winnable.
Now, that kind of stat can barely complete a normal, and advanced is just hopeless for PUGs.
That said, ISA I've seen won a very few times, but usually a single player blows a generator early (and the generators go down so fast this isn't actually hard to do accidentally) and it's doomed.
Of a few dozen PUGs for the new Borg Disconnected STF, I have only ever seen all the optionals cleared maybe twice... on NORMAL. I've never made it past the second wave on Advanced.
Everything we were told was that the new Advanced would scale roughly to the old Elite, and there would be a new Elite to provide a real challenge. That sounded good, but when you can't even hit the goals on a space PUG on normal, what is the ultimate rationale?
STO has a larger than usual casual gamer core due to interest in the IP. The difficulty scaling has placed all but the basic space content beyond the ability/reach of the bulk of the players.
PUGs are now DEAD, at least for anything past normal.
How is this good for the game? Is this Cryptic's design intent? If so, why?
If only seasoned advanced gamers have a chance at middle-tier content, how will casual players EVER earn the advanced gear and crafting materials needed to enable them to play that content?
I'm very disappointed in this turn.
Now a top-rated spotlight mission!
Post edited by astrorobla on
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Im a casual myself and since DR and before i decided to take a break from the game i was so frusteratred by advanced STFs i stopped playing them.
And the basic one was as hard as the old elites....seems they borked something but we the player will be punished for it.
But seriously speaking, it sure seems like it, they tried to overnight turn this from a casual friendly game to something completely oriented around a tiny percent of the playerbase that's probably about as numerous as PVPers were. It's also like the devs were all replaced who worked on prior expansions, it's just a completely sudden and jarring change you just cannot do to a game! If you're going to change a game so drastically, it must be done with a pace that allows players to adapt some.
We should try to help them, we need to arm them, make them better players
Love the pugs lol.
I sell puppy skins at Earth Space Dock, i have gram of puppy bone to sell you, come get your dead puppies.
It's mission, to destroy new worlds and civilizations
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
And to boldly ruin, what no one has ruined before.
Private STF Channels although active aren't as active as they once were. Haven't seen anyone want to play Hive Onslaught and few want to do advanced Cure Space.
DR sounded good on paper but the XP barriers between rank levels, The XP nerf, The hit point and Shield increase in NPC (I won't say difficulty as these just made Advanced matches a boring shoot shoot shoot slog rather than increasing npc dmg intelligence and abilities). The Advanced queues are nothing but a new DPS race.The game has become even more centered around tactical.
So you're a totally satisfied customer then?
If that PUG has a hard time completing Normal, then they really need to learn the content. Normal is laughable in PUGs w/people just pewpeing their way along.
I'm in agreement about most of the bugs you listed being bothersome. The immediate question this raises, why the Dewa bug and not others. I want Ker'rat back, that'll probably never get resolved. And I wasn't whining by the way, I was attempting to be snarky. However, by saying that I'm whining about queues that are noticeably empty (like PvP queue empty), are you saying that my opinion is invalid?
Should I now say that you're a whiner for any of your grievances? Should anyone who played the game, while yet another bug was on Holodeck, not be able to lodge complaints?
Was this really an exploit? Or, was this a bug that they decided to scapegoat players instead of taking responsibility and admitting fault?
I did just one ISA PUG after the patch so far and we were successful. Might have to do that I brought my 20k Eclipse and a 25k Scimi was in the PUG as well. The rest were sub 10k builds. So it's possible but it will take time until everybody has upgraded their builds. Also casual gamers advance eventually and learn not to shoot the nanite gens prematurely in the new setup.
If the power creep continues I would foresee that in 6 month time nobody is complaining anymore that ISA is to hard.
I remember it took me a long time after reaching 50 before I dared to enter ISE just because in the old days Elite was well.. Elite. I did a lot of ISN to learn and get better. Even there you had to apply the 10% nanite gens tactic and two or three ships were going after the healer Borgs. Lately nobody cared about the healer borgs anymore because everything was wiped up before they arrived. I would daresay therefore that the old STFs (e.g. 3 years ago) needed as much tactics when not even more than they do now.
In that sense yes, it has become harder but not necessarily in a bad way after the HP nerf.
The one thing however I would like to see is that the rewards are adjusted back to before.