If you have a problem with "leachers" in Advanced, as you call them, don't pug.
Those of us in fleets who believe in helping people would like to continue having the liberty to take our newer members on training runs and helping those who are still struggling to get geared instead of being forced to stop because you said we ought to slam the door in their faces to satisfy you.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
I must admit I feel that Elite should only be obtainable once they have completed accolades for lower difficulty levels, this shows they have an understanding of both suitable loadouts, mission optional objectives, and appropriate tactics.
PROUD TO PLAY THIS GAME MINUS TO GIVING ANY INCOME TO CRYPTIC
I must admit I feel that Elite should only be obtainable once they have completed accolades for lower difficulty levels, this shows they have an understanding of both suitable loadouts, mission optional objectives, and appropriate tactics.
For Elite I can somewhat understand this. That said, I think fleets should reserve the right to conduct training missions for their members as they see fit. For some of the fleets in our alliance this has been a long-standing priority. If we want to carry and teach a new member, knowing full well what we are doing, I think we should be allowed to assume the "risk" that a training mission will not yield rewards.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
This is good, as an indie game developer I'm aware of the difficulty in presenting a proper balance of fun and challenge. Few people occupy the same space on that scale. I encourage more content like borg disconnected where the approach of simply burning through the targets as quickly as possible isn't always the best choice. While concepts of teamwork and strategy are present in a number of other STFs players are largely forced into relying on pure DPS by the inclusion of actual or implied timers.
For Elite I can somewhat understand this. That said, I think fleets should reserve the right to conduct training missions for their members as they see fit. For some of the fleets in our alliance this has been a long-standing priority. If we want to carry and teach a new member, knowing full well what we are doing, I think we should be allowed to assume the "risk" that a training mission will not yield rewards.
For exactly your reason full teams of fleet mates could enter a private queue, much like how in some FPS games you can have a private server for just your friends.
PROUD TO PLAY THIS GAME MINUS TO GIVING ANY INCOME TO CRYPTIC
Typically we do aim for a private queue unless we are short of the full five, which means we end up picking up one or two random team members. But the kinds of proposed changes I was responding to above, where someone not having Mk XII purples would get them banned from the queue would presumably even impact a fleet training scenario and IMO that is not cool at all.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Typically we do aim for a private queue unless we are short of the full five, which means we end up picking up one or two random team members. But the kinds of proposed changes I was responding to above, where someone not having Mk XII purples would get them banned from the queue would presumably even impact a fleet training scenario and IMO that is not cool at all.
Let them roll in normal/advanced queues, which drop purple items on completion of all optional objectives, this gives them not only knowledge of optional achieving tactics, but knowledge of ship fittings, and gives them purple items to increase their overall hitting power for when they do hit elite queues.
Basically let them learn to walk and jog, before they learn how to run.
edit: But for private teams within a fleet, they can run anything, just public games require the accolades, showing you have completed the optional objectives in normal/advanced. It just means that in time, a higher class of skill will be shown in elite queues, bringing in some more fun on STO.
PROUD TO PLAY THIS GAME MINUS TO GIVING ANY INCOME TO CRYPTIC
Factor in things like D'Angelo's call on removing spec points due to a mistake Cryptic made
Listen mate i don't want to take your quote out of context but this is a point that i find consistently brought up and also very annoying.
It wasn't primarily a mistake THEY made. The mistake was with all the people using it that thought maxing out 3 spec trees in less than a week was legitimate.
" Experience is a hard mistress, she gives the tests first, and the lessons after... "
Please devs make at least one space quick mission where the main objective is not to do the most damage in the shortest period of time.
At least one mission where the fastest way to accomplish the mission you will not run macro with keybind BFAW and APB.
At least one mission where is an engineer or science useable (without dps scimitar).
Imagine for example Interpid class with 4 phaser beam arrays, one graviton torpedo rare and transphasic torpedo aft, no particle manipulator or gravity well build , can i do alone (not with friends using APB spam) with that ship at least 10k dps? So all advanced quick missions are closed for me.
I'm seriously hoping you guys are noticing how dead the queues are for a lot of missions. Notably the advanced replacements for the old elites which used to be buzzing with people most of the day, are practically empty.
I miss being able to run these several times a day. I used to enjoy doing ISE, KASE, KAGE, etc. But now I'm apparently incapable of it (by 'it' I mean their 'advanced' replacements) unless I luck out and get a team with a couple of scimitars on it at the very least, and even then half the time we fail because someone decides to pop a transformer straight off the bat etc. I feel like the DPS nuts have kind of ruined the game for those of us who are in the 'middle' camp.
The changes with DR have killed endgame for me, so much so that I started a new toon (my 15th) just because I still wanted to play but had nothing left to do at endgame other than mind numbing 'normal' queues, or battle zones ad nauseam. Sadly, he's now hit level 60 and I'm back at square one of having nothing to do.
I still think advanced should have scaled to level 55. It was supposed to be the middle of the road between normal and elite, so it makes little sense scaling it to 60. Not to mention some of the 'optionals' (which several of them are still listed as by the way, even though they cause mission failure) just aren't possible with pugs or if the game decides to TRIBBLE out and glitch.
I realise this is a ranty post, and there'll likely be some DPS champion along in a minute to tell me why I am wrong and that I should stop complaining. But I've given up caring what other people think. I just want my damn game back!!
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 wouldn't blame the DPS nuts, its not them who implemented the current imbalance in everything. It's not the DPS guys who decided that to upgrade it would cost $200 or around 120,000,000 EC and 320,000 dilthium...
You are right to complain though as Cryptic/PWE have destroyed the basic gameplay that people enjoyed and participated in a lot. I like playing the STF's, currently I can't run advanced unless it's with my fleet. We ran a couple the other day myself and 2 other fleet members plus 2 randoms from the queue. It was a close run thing and we failed KASA due to the two randoms.
I'm not a DPS heavy player by any means now. I was on my way to getting some DPS setup prior to DR but now, I can barely pull 20K with the gear I have. TBH I think lvl 50-59 should have a separate scale to lvl 60, then again I would remodel the entire lvling and balance system if I was able to as currently it's got less sense than a religious argument.
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
You don't need to upgrade a single thing for Advanced, and hitting 20k in them is completely excessive. Those posts just exemplify the real problem -- other players have no idea what they're doing with their builds. It's great that you can pull 20k, but it doesn't matter when the four random players you're with are doing 2k or don't know how to actually complete the mission because they're so used to others carrying them through it.
Unfortunately, there's nothing anyone can do to eliminate that problem. I'd rather have a fun mid tier difficulty where I have to do premades with friends/fleetmates than dumb it down to the point you can carry your mediocre teammates through them again. The solution here isn't to make Advanced easier, that just completely undermines it as a mid-tier difficulty.
I'll say it again: Normal needs better rewards, so no one feels the need to queue for Advanced when their build isn't up to it. That's all they need to do. Put the rep trinkets, R&D mats, and a little more dilithium into Normal. There is plenty of room to improve the amount of rewards before the queues come anywhere close to the battlezones for the time invested.
Mu concerns have never been centered around difficulty. They have always been about the paltry rewards offered for the effort. If I spend fifteen minutes ingame then my reward should reflect this. But when I spend an hour to accomplish what used to take me thirty minutes, do not reward me like I only spent fifteen minutes.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
I think elite, both missions and stf's are the answer to inevitable power creep.
12 to 18 months from now when power creep makes advanced difficulty 'too easy' people will start flocking to elite because at that point player damage has scaled upwards a lot again.
That's my theory anyway. Current elite is not efficient with best endgame has to offer, so we can safely assume future endgame content will make us a more powerful over time (power creep).
Againm thanks to those ELITIST DPSERS we all suffer thanks agin but not really.
I'm seriously hoping you guys are noticing how dead the queues are for a lot of missions. Notably the advanced replacements for the old elites which used to be buzzing with people most of the day, are practically empty.
I miss being able to run these several times a day. I used to enjoy doing ISE, KASE, KAGE, etc. But now I'm apparently incapable of it (by 'it' I mean their 'advanced' replacements) unless I luck out and get a team with a couple of scimitars on it at the very least, and even then half the time we fail because someone decides to pop a transformer straight off the bat etc. I feel like the DPS nuts have kind of ruined the game for those of us who are in the 'middle' camp.
The changes with DR have killed endgame for me, so much so that I started a new toon (my 15th) just because I still wanted to play but had nothing left to do at endgame other than mind numbing 'normal' queues, or battle zones ad nauseam. Sadly, he's now hit level 60 and I'm back at square one of having nothing to do.
I still think advanced should have scaled to level 55. It was supposed to be the middle of the road between normal and elite, so it makes little sense scaling it to 60. Not to mention some of the 'optionals' (which several of them are still listed as by the way, even though they cause mission failure) just aren't possible with pugs or if the game decides to TRIBBLE out and glitch.
I realise this is a ranty post, and there'll likely be some DPS champion along in a minute to tell me why I am wrong and that I should stop complaining. But I've given up caring what other people think. I just want my damn game back!!
Again like he said the 1:30 to free 3 ships with a cordinated team some how a STRAY BEAM OR TORP will hit me knocking me out of freeing that ship so yeah so much work they did to improve the game should have left normal alons and added and none-fail optional but you know its STO DEVS at work here if it aint 50k DPS then its nothing.
I wouldn't blame the DPS nuts, its not them who implemented the current imbalance in everything. It's not the DPS guys who decided that to upgrade it would cost $200 or around 120,000,000 EC and 320,000 dilthium...
You are right to complain though as Cryptic/PWE have destroyed the basic gameplay that people enjoyed and participated in a lot. I like playing the STF's, currently I can't run advanced unless it's with my fleet. We ran a couple the other day myself and 2 other fleet members plus 2 randoms from the queue. It was a close run thing and we failed KASA due to the two randoms.
I'm not a DPS heavy player by any means now. I was on my way to getting some DPS setup prior to DR but now, I can barely pull 20K with the gear I have. TBH I think lvl 50-59 should have a separate scale to lvl 60, then again I would remodel the entire lvling and balance system if I was able to as currently it's got less sense than a religious argument.
The reason I get annoyed with the DPS nuts is because a lot of the reason these missions have been scaled so drastically is because of the 'stats' collected about playtime of missions. The Devs have an idea of how long each mission should take (in their eyes), and pre DR I know that if I got a pug with a few scimitars or the likes then you could easily run ISE (now ISA) in a couple of minutes because they were hitting crazy numbers. That skewed the data for everybody because it didn't account for the fact that if you got a team of five only doing between 5-10K DPS then the mission would still be tight on time but doable. Now it's not.
I've been playing since beta, but I've never managed to exceed 10K DPS on any of my ships. I didn't even start checking my DPS until a few months ago, because until then I was quite happy with just running missions to check out my new builds and see how long it took me on 'elite' to take out ships etc. If I liked the build, I'd go do an STF with it. Having to constantly check the numbers, and look for the one perfect build really takes something away from the fun in my own opinion.
I remember back when I started playing STFs, I sucked. Like big time sucked. The first time I managed to do an Elite mission and complete it, I was so happy with myself. I had worked for months getting my build together (this was a few years ago now so a lot of the current gear didn't exist and I had to grind the hell out of them to luck out and get the drops I needed for the MACO/Omega sets) and it was still very much a challenge, but I was able to survive for the most part and I could inflict enough damage to get the job done.
Don't get me started on the price of upgrading though haha, it's ridiculous. I'm in a small fleet and most of my Dilithium goes to fleet projects, but somehow now I need to spend millions of EC/Dil just to upgrade one ships worth of gear... that's plain unrealistic and not likely to ever happen.
Unfortunately, there's nothing anyone can do to eliminate that problem. I'd rather have a fun mid tier difficulty where I have to do premades with friends/fleetmates than dumb it down to the point you can carry your mediocre teammates through them again. The solution here isn't to make Advanced easier, that just completely undermines it as a mid-tier difficulty.
I'll say it again: Normal needs better rewards, so no one feels the need to queue for Advanced when their build isn't up to it. That's all they need to do. Put the rep trinkets, R&D mats, and a little more dilithium into Normal. There is plenty of room to improve the amount of rewards before the queues come anywhere close to the battlezones for the time invested.
Personally, I don't want to *have* to run with fleet mates only. Pugs might be a pain sometimes (especially in UIE just now where they apparently refuse to read a single line of text and keep putting me on cooldown for no reason), but I rely on them as I only have a small fleet and a lot of the time due to time zone differences I am the only one on when I'm playing. Plus, there are hundreds of people who play that don't want to be part of a fleet, they shouldn't be excluded from being able to do the advanced missions just because they don't have fleet mates to run them with.
The whole point in having an increased difficulty tier was to provide more challenging content for those who wanted it. I really would have preferred two new difficulty levels instead of them removing what a lot of us were happy with and found challenging already. You say you don't want 'advanced' to become 'easy'. Neither do I but, by the same argument, why should I be forced into running the 'normal' missions when I was running elite before and for me normal is far too easy for my level?
I will agree with you that part of the problem stems from people who don't know how to complete the missions. I learned missions like ISE back when it was impossible to get the optional unless you followed the '5% rule' for the transformers. But the issue I have, I guess, is that they shouldn't have made content which the majority could play a few weeks ago, only for the upper echelon. Really I can understand people who wanted more of a challenge, I don't want to have to play normal level difficulty so I do get it. But share and share alike eh. Perhaps four tiers of difficulty would work better for STFs? A normal and advanced for level 50-60 which scales to level 50 and 55 respectively. And an Advanced and Elite difficulty available to level 60 players which are both level 60 missions.
As it stands, the 'advanced' content scales to 60. But the power difference between a level 50 Captain and a level 60 with all Spec traits (so level 110) is phenomenal.
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!!
These arguments from both sides are largely irrelevant, though I have long believed games listen too much to their elite supastahs who post on the forum. It's the main feedback they hear after all. This is why I try to post from the casuals perspective, though I'm not so very casual.
The numbers here tell the tale. Either Cryptic doesn't care that pugging is dead or they do. I suppose if sufficient monies are being spent anyway then they will allow pugging to stay in its grave. To me this seems extraordinarily shortsighted.
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."
This is a build using a t5 mirror escort and mark XI white gear that is almost hitting 10k. The gear is worse than what you can get by replaying story missions, running most rep dailies/hourlies, and the majority of drops you'll be getting at level 60. 7k average is all you need for Infected Advanced now.
The problem isn't the enemy HP in the Advanced queues. It's other players' builds, piloting skill, and mission knowledge. There's nothing in-game that teaches you how to gear a ship effectively. I really think there should be a tutorial about using all of one weapon type, energy type, and stacking multiple of the same consoles and same abilities. Probably given around level 30, when ships start having enough stations and console slots for it to matter. None of this stuff seems to be intuitive to the majority of players from what I've seen, and from my own personal experiences when I was new.
(Before someone brings up tac in an escort, I threw a similar mk XI white gear and doffs build together for a mirror Nova on my sci character and hit 6k, which is fine for a support ship as far as I'm concerned. The only thing a fresh level 50 wouldn't have access to on the build is the Omega Kinetic Shearing trait, and that only needs t2 of Omega rep.)
I think you're right on the money with this. It's all about knowledge - of setup, but even more so of mission. The thing is - I don't think that's ever going to change. It hasn't so far in 4 years. I think that instead of figuring out what's going wrong, say in Borg Disconnected, the average pugger will just give up after 2 or 3 "you fail, loser."
Sometimes I have tried to explain but people aren't interested. It's just too miserable of an experience to keep trying.
The question is not whether the missions are too hard for good teams etc... it's whether it's possible to successfully pug them 75% of the time or more. I personally would like to be able to do this and feel it's necessary for the game's health which, for me, is the most important thing.
In my opinion the only possible way to get people to learn the missions is to allow them to finish it. Eventually they will learn what the optionals are, and how to handle them, as many did over time with ISE.
Of course those that don't care about pugs simply don't care. So they will say suck it up and get better etc... But that's not the reality of the game. The reality is frustrated players will leave. See my signature for how I feel this will play out.
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."
The failure conditions are something I'm very mixed on, I don't feel they're actually adding challenge, but I do like the introduction of new optionals (sadly they're mostly all boring timer races), and I don't believe for a second that the optionals failed often in the old Elite queues. So the failure condition means nothing to a good team (except in missions with bugged objectives...) and double punishes a bad team.
It's probably a good idea to reevaluate how failing works on Advanced. One possibility would be to keep the mission going, but inform the players they've failed it as an Advanced/Elite mission and drop rewards to the level of Normal/Advanced, then let the mission be finished normally. But if that wasn't done and failure means failure, it's over, at least actually stop the mission. It's just obnoxious how it works right now.
This is a build using a t5 mirror escort and mark XI white gear that is almost hitting 10k. The gear is worse than what you can get by replaying story missions, running most rep dailies/hourlies, and the majority of drops you'll be getting at level 60. 7k average is all you need for Infected Advanced now.
The problem isn't the enemy HP in the Advanced queues. It's other players' builds, piloting skill, and mission knowledge. There's nothing in-game that teaches you how to gear a ship effectively. I really think there should be a tutorial about using all of one weapon type, energy type, and stacking multiple of the same consoles and same abilities. Probably given around level 30, when ships start having enough stations and console slots for it to matter. None of this stuff seems to be intuitive to the majority of players from what I've seen, and from my own personal experiences when I was new.
(Before someone brings up tac in an escort, I threw a similar mk XI white gear and doffs build together for a mirror Nova on my sci character and hit 6k, which is fine for a support ship as far as I'm concerned. The only thing a fresh level 50 wouldn't have access to on the build is the Omega Kinetic Shearing trait, and that only needs t2 of Omega rep.)
It's funny actually, that build is pretty much identical to one of my escort builds. But I've never gone above 7.5K with that particular build and I was using VR fleet MK XII weapons, engines, hull consoles, vulnerability locators etc. I'll have to do some more experimenting.
Quick question for you, if you don't mind? Cannons or beams? You see, I used to use cannons a lot for escort builds but then people started telling me that beams with BFAW were better for PvE and gave better DPS overall. At first that seemed to stand true and I all but abandoned cannons but since DR came out I've started realising that Beams have a major disadvantage running with BFAW because they spread the damage too much in missions like ISE which now have more enemy targets to share the damage across so even though you may parse at a higher DPS you're not taking things out very quickly. Another thing, numerous people claim that not using a torpedo of any kind is better and instead to replace it with the KCB, which I've done though in testing I haven't noticed it make any significant change to the DPS and I think it's only really beneficial on large cruisers which turn like they're stuck in toffee, escort turn rates are so high that it's easy enough to line up a torp spread.
I think you're right on the money with this. It's all about knowledge - of setup, but even more so of mission. The thing is - I don't think that's ever going to change. It hasn't so far in 4 years. I think that instead of figuring out what's going wrong, say in Borg Disconnected, the average pugger will just give up after 2 or 3 "you fail, loser."
Sometimes I have tried to explain but people aren't interested. It's just too miserable of an experience to keep trying.
The question is not whether the missions are too hard for good teams etc... it's whether it's possible to successfully pug them 75% of the time or more. I personally would like to be able to do this and feel it's necessary for the game's health which, for me, is the most important thing.
In my opinion the only possible way to get people to learn the missions is to allow them to finish it. Eventually they will learn what the optionals are, and how to handle them, as many did over time with ISE.
Of course those that don't care about pugs simply don't care. So they will say suck it up and get better etc... But that's not the reality of the game. The reality is frustrated players will leave. See my signature for how I feel this will play out.
I agree with this, finishing the mission does help people learn. When it fails after the first two minutes, people never see how it's completed so they don't learn anything from the experience. I remember running missions like the Cure Ground Elite back before the rep system (but after the change to STFs) and I was trying to take a team of people who hadn't played the elite versions before so they could learn how to do them. The optional on that was very hit or miss, and even on occasion people would just get annoyed and leave if the shields didn't go down on the first try. But a few people stuck around and we pushed on. There was a specific run I always remember where myself and one other guy ended up being the only two left for the boss fight and we completed it with him ranged and myself up close with melee and heals (still the best/only real way to handle him).
The point I'm trying to get to was, he was grateful that I stuck around and helped him through it because he wanted to know how the mission ended so he could see the entire progression start to finish. In the following weeks we ran that together several more times and each time he got better at it. He knew where he was supposed to be and when, he knew which weapons worked best to defend the pillars, etc. After a month or so of 'training' we were able to obtain all of the optionals on all the Elite missions together. Now though, if you fail you fail because the optionals aren't optional and they just end the mission (or well, try to end the mission but some people don't even notice it's failed), and it's always highly likely you'll end up with an 'elitist jerk' on your team who will berate your ignorance if you don't already know how to complete the mission you've never played before. It doesn't encourage more attempts, or learning from the experience.
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!!
It's funny actually, that build is pretty much identical to one of my escort builds. But I've never gone above 7.5K with that particular build and I was using VR fleet MK XII weapons, engines, hull consoles, vulnerability locators etc. I'll have to do some more experimenting.
Quick question for you, if you don't mind? Cannons or beams? You see, I used to use cannons a lot for escort builds but then people started telling me that beams with BFAW were better for PvE and gave better DPS overall. At first that seemed to stand true and I all but abandoned cannons but since DR came out I've started realising that Beams have a major disadvantage running with BFAW because they spread the damage too much in missions like ISE which now have more enemy targets to share the damage across so even though you may parse at a higher DPS you're not taking things out very quickly. Another thing, numerous people claim that not using a torpedo of any kind is better and instead to replace it with the KCB, which I've done though in testing I haven't noticed it make any significant change to the DPS and I think it's only really beneficial on large cruisers which turn like they're stuck in toffee, escort turn rates are so high that it's easy enough to line up a torp spread.
I'll answer, but I'm hardly the best ship builder or pilot myself. I doubt I'd hit that number if I put that escort together. But that means it's probably a good build to practice piloting in. I don't have a fed tac, though.
I usually run DHCs or DCs on the majority of my escorts and warbirds. On some of them, I run a DBB too. (I like to build for looks, so the choice between DHCs or DCs comes down to which firing points I like better, sometimes I mix and match, but in terms of game mechanics DHCs are just better.) For battlecruisers, I tend to go with beams as I think they look better and work better with the slower turn rate. I've been told by players better than myself that beamscorts using arrays are king, but I've tried it a few times and I just don't like flying them as much. They have a huge advantage in being able to stay at full speed while keeping your weapons on target (try this with DHCs and you won't even stay on target for a full CRF cycle, and the majority of your shots that hit will suffer from falloff), but you're stuck with BFAW instead of something more focused, unless you're in the Phantom or Faeht and can use Surgical Strikes. That's the killer for me, my experiences are the same as yours and, while BFAW might get my number higher, CRF/CSV down enemies faster. Still, it's something I like to play around with from time to time.
As for torps, I've noticed they're definitely making a comeback now that we have some interesting rep choices. The gravimetric, enhanced biomolecular, particle emission, and neutronic all seem pretty popular on escorts. If you're running cannons, you'll already be lined up to fire torps. On cruisers, broadsiding with all arrays or a combo of arrays, the KCB, and/or the proton weapon are most popular because of their slow turn rate, but I do see the Regeant's wide-angle quantum showing up in builds fairly often.
I'll answer, but I'm hardly the best ship builder or pilot myself. I doubt I'd hit that number if I put that escort together. But that means it's probably a good build to practice piloting in. I don't have a fed tac, though.
I usually run DHCs or DCs on the majority of my escorts and warbirds. On some of them, I run a DBB too. (I like to build for looks, so the choice between DHCs or DCs comes down to which firing points I like better, sometimes I mix and match, but in terms of game mechanics DHCs are just better.) For battlecruisers, I tend to go with beams as I think they look better and work better with the slower turn rate. I've been told by players better than myself that beamscorts using arrays are king, but I've tried it a few times and I just don't like flying them as much. They have a huge advantage in being able to stay at full speed while keeping your weapons on target (try this with DHCs and you won't even stay on target for a full CRF cycle, and the majority of your shots that hit will suffer from falloff), but you're stuck with BFAW instead of something more focused, unless you're in the Phantom or Faeht and can use Surgical Strikes. That's the killer for me, my experiences are the same as yours and, while BFAW might get my number higher, CRF/CSV down enemies faster. Still, it's something I like to play around with from time to time.
As for torps, I've noticed they're definitely making a comeback now that we have some interesting rep choices. The gravimetric, enhanced biomolecular, particle emission, and neutronic all seem pretty popular on escorts. If you're running cannons, you'll already be lined up to fire torps. On cruisers, broadsiding with all arrays or a combo of arrays, the KCB, and/or the proton weapon are most popular because of their slow turn rate, but I do see the Regeant's wide-angle quantum showing up in builds fairly often.
Thanks for the response.
I must admit, my favourite ships in the game are still cruisers because I enjoy the ability to tank and go broadside with full on beams. One of my engi characters uses an Odyssey and in group combat I usually run with the 'attract fire' command ability because the ship is kitted out for survival so it's good to take the agro from the escorts. He also packs a fair punch for a cruiser and is probably one of my most versatile characters, which is probably a bad sign haha.
Yeah, I did quite like flying escorts running full beam arrays and BFAW when I was first told about how good they were but I just started to feel that I was flying in circles doing perhaps a high level of over all damage but not reducing the number of enemies fast enough for my liking. I think I may dig out my cannons again for my current ship and see how they do in comparison now.
I am a fan of the bio-molecular torps. I still use them on my cruiser build I mentioned above, but only one of them and a TS3, it can be handy. I think I'll try going with a torp on my escort again once I switch to the cannons. If I ever get a build that I'm happy with I'll let you know haha. You'd think after 4 years I'd have got the hang of things.
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!!
Beams vs. DHCs is an old story, but the basics is the same. If you do low dps (<15k) and are a decent pilot (some simply cant fly fast escorts with DHCs) DHCs are your friend, as your dps is focused on one target. This may seem trivial, but you have two advantages here: First, you only get threat from one target, second you destroy that target faster than with faw.
Torps can do something on specialised torpedoboats (e.g. sciships, for everything else its a waste) and on some escorts, which can utilize 2 TT, 2 CRF/CSV, 2 TorpSpread, 2 Attackpatterns. Phantom and defiant as well as kumari are examples for it, though the latter doesnt even need a doff to do it.
Cruisers are best without torps. 1-2TT (1 if doffed), 2FAW, 2 APB and it will get quite good. EPtW and EPtS in cycle with 3 DCE-Doffs round it up. If you dont have 5 slots, use either a2b (it was meant for those gimped ships that dont have full tactical armament) or phantom trait (Tactical CD reduction when enemies miss you), then you only need 1 of each ability.
As cruisers are usually robust, it is useful to use EptW3 and EptS1 or 2. Some cruisers have cmd. +lt.cmd eng, making it possible to use both on 3, as well as a Aux2Sif 3 and 2xET1/2 and RSP. A bit too much Engskills if you ask me, but if you utilize them correctly, they can be quite good. If its a intellegence ship you can even throw in a Surgical strike for single targets. For every ship you could take DEM with you for mobs or bigger enemies like the queen.
Its just a matter of thinking more than just about the tacslots to utilize the maximum out of the ship with a minimum on ressources. And BO-Skills are kinda cheap. Some doffs you get for saying hi to ferra and doffing (DCE...).
Just do one thing... just 1... put the rewards back to what they were. God i want to love this game again...
I will not play this game like this. Part of having a game is giving your users a feeling of reward. I have lost ALL of this. I feel ripped off when I do anything.
You want me to spend double or triple the time and trouble was... for half the rewards it was worth? Should we not be getting double the rewards due to this? no... we get half. That is just a slap and every single player heard it.
I ask any of you honestly... how many chars could you fill daily limit for dill on per day before DR. Now how many can you?
You had to have been seriously messed up to think nurfing rewards at the same time as adding very very large sink hole to throw resources at was even close to "ok" It was the worst game decision i have ever seen.
Space elite need to be elite, not extra hull for enemy ships.
Meaning better AI, unexpected stuff (like a mirror rift once in a while), things like that.
I think you're right on the money with this. It's all about knowledge - of setup, but even more so of mission. The thing is - I don't think that's ever going to change. It hasn't so far in 4 years. I think that instead of figuring out what's going wrong, say in Borg Disconnected, the average pugger will just give up after 2 or 3 "you fail, loser."
Sometimes I have tried to explain but people aren't interested. It's just too miserable of an experience to keep trying.
The question is not whether the missions are too hard for good teams etc... it's whether it's possible to successfully pug them 75% of the time or more. I personally would like to be able to do this and feel it's necessary for the game's health which, for me, is the most important thing.
In my opinion the only possible way to get people to learn the missions is to allow them to finish it. Eventually they will learn what the optionals are, and how to handle them, as many did over time with ISE.
Of course those that don't care about pugs simply don't care. So they will say suck it up and get better etc... But that's not the reality of the game. The reality is frustrated players will leave. See my signature for how I feel this will play out.
What he said up there pug matches were what I use to do not that the flakes we call devs say this is the new pugging has died well cord teams can be quiiet as they always succed 90% of the time example my fleet mates carried an afker and a low dps player through kilometer accord because they were cord inated as it took an hour thats the down side.
Comments
Those of us in fleets who believe in helping people would like to continue having the liberty to take our newer members on training runs and helping those who are still struggling to get geared instead of being forced to stop because you said we ought to slam the door in their faces to satisfy you.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
For Elite I can somewhat understand this. That said, I think fleets should reserve the right to conduct training missions for their members as they see fit. For some of the fleets in our alliance this has been a long-standing priority. If we want to carry and teach a new member, knowing full well what we are doing, I think we should be allowed to assume the "risk" that a training mission will not yield rewards.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Keep on iterating!
For exactly your reason full teams of fleet mates could enter a private queue, much like how in some FPS games you can have a private server for just your friends.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Let them roll in normal/advanced queues, which drop purple items on completion of all optional objectives, this gives them not only knowledge of optional achieving tactics, but knowledge of ship fittings, and gives them purple items to increase their overall hitting power for when they do hit elite queues.
Basically let them learn to walk and jog, before they learn how to run.
edit: But for private teams within a fleet, they can run anything, just public games require the accolades, showing you have completed the optional objectives in normal/advanced. It just means that in time, a higher class of skill will be shown in elite queues, bringing in some more fun on STO.
And neither of them calling us morons! We're making strides here!
Lion Heart of Hammer Squadron
Listen mate i don't want to take your quote out of context but this is a point that i find consistently brought up and also very annoying.
It wasn't primarily a mistake THEY made. The mistake was with all the people using it that thought maxing out 3 spec trees in less than a week was legitimate.
At least one mission where the fastest way to accomplish the mission you will not run macro with keybind BFAW and APB.
At least one mission where is an engineer or science useable (without dps scimitar).
Imagine for example Interpid class with 4 phaser beam arrays, one graviton torpedo rare and transphasic torpedo aft, no particle manipulator or gravity well build , can i do alone (not with friends using APB spam) with that ship at least 10k dps? So all advanced quick missions are closed for me.
I miss being able to run these several times a day. I used to enjoy doing ISE, KASE, KAGE, etc. But now I'm apparently incapable of it (by 'it' I mean their 'advanced' replacements) unless I luck out and get a team with a couple of scimitars on it at the very least, and even then half the time we fail because someone decides to pop a transformer straight off the bat etc. I feel like the DPS nuts have kind of ruined the game for those of us who are in the 'middle' camp.
The changes with DR have killed endgame for me, so much so that I started a new toon (my 15th) just because I still wanted to play but had nothing left to do at endgame other than mind numbing 'normal' queues, or battle zones ad nauseam. Sadly, he's now hit level 60 and I'm back at square one of having nothing to do.
I still think advanced should have scaled to level 55. It was supposed to be the middle of the road between normal and elite, so it makes little sense scaling it to 60. Not to mention some of the 'optionals' (which several of them are still listed as by the way, even though they cause mission failure) just aren't possible with pugs or if the game decides to TRIBBLE out and glitch.
I realise this is a ranty post, and there'll likely be some DPS champion along in a minute to tell me why I am wrong and that I should stop complaining. But I've given up caring what other people think. I just want my damn game back!!
You are right to complain though as Cryptic/PWE have destroyed the basic gameplay that people enjoyed and participated in a lot. I like playing the STF's, currently I can't run advanced unless it's with my fleet. We ran a couple the other day myself and 2 other fleet members plus 2 randoms from the queue. It was a close run thing and we failed KASA due to the two randoms.
I'm not a DPS heavy player by any means now. I was on my way to getting some DPS setup prior to DR but now, I can barely pull 20K with the gear I have. TBH I think lvl 50-59 should have a separate scale to lvl 60, then again I would remodel the entire lvling and balance system if I was able to as currently it's got less sense than a religious argument.
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
Unfortunately, there's nothing anyone can do to eliminate that problem. I'd rather have a fun mid tier difficulty where I have to do premades with friends/fleetmates than dumb it down to the point you can carry your mediocre teammates through them again. The solution here isn't to make Advanced easier, that just completely undermines it as a mid-tier difficulty.
I'll say it again: Normal needs better rewards, so no one feels the need to queue for Advanced when their build isn't up to it. That's all they need to do. Put the rep trinkets, R&D mats, and a little more dilithium into Normal. There is plenty of room to improve the amount of rewards before the queues come anywhere close to the battlezones for the time invested.
Againm thanks to those ELITIST DPSERS we all suffer thanks agin but not really.
Again like he said the 1:30 to free 3 ships with a cordinated team some how a STRAY BEAM OR TORP will hit me knocking me out of freeing that ship so yeah so much work they did to improve the game should have left normal alons and added and none-fail optional but you know its STO DEVS at work here if it aint 50k DPS then its nothing.
The reason I get annoyed with the DPS nuts is because a lot of the reason these missions have been scaled so drastically is because of the 'stats' collected about playtime of missions. The Devs have an idea of how long each mission should take (in their eyes), and pre DR I know that if I got a pug with a few scimitars or the likes then you could easily run ISE (now ISA) in a couple of minutes because they were hitting crazy numbers. That skewed the data for everybody because it didn't account for the fact that if you got a team of five only doing between 5-10K DPS then the mission would still be tight on time but doable. Now it's not.
I've been playing since beta, but I've never managed to exceed 10K DPS on any of my ships. I didn't even start checking my DPS until a few months ago, because until then I was quite happy with just running missions to check out my new builds and see how long it took me on 'elite' to take out ships etc. If I liked the build, I'd go do an STF with it. Having to constantly check the numbers, and look for the one perfect build really takes something away from the fun in my own opinion.
I remember back when I started playing STFs, I sucked. Like big time sucked. The first time I managed to do an Elite mission and complete it, I was so happy with myself. I had worked for months getting my build together (this was a few years ago now so a lot of the current gear didn't exist and I had to grind the hell out of them to luck out and get the drops I needed for the MACO/Omega sets) and it was still very much a challenge, but I was able to survive for the most part and I could inflict enough damage to get the job done.
Don't get me started on the price of upgrading though haha, it's ridiculous. I'm in a small fleet and most of my Dilithium goes to fleet projects, but somehow now I need to spend millions of EC/Dil just to upgrade one ships worth of gear... that's plain unrealistic and not likely to ever happen.
Personally, I don't want to *have* to run with fleet mates only. Pugs might be a pain sometimes (especially in UIE just now where they apparently refuse to read a single line of text and keep putting me on cooldown for no reason), but I rely on them as I only have a small fleet and a lot of the time due to time zone differences I am the only one on when I'm playing. Plus, there are hundreds of people who play that don't want to be part of a fleet, they shouldn't be excluded from being able to do the advanced missions just because they don't have fleet mates to run them with.
The whole point in having an increased difficulty tier was to provide more challenging content for those who wanted it. I really would have preferred two new difficulty levels instead of them removing what a lot of us were happy with and found challenging already. You say you don't want 'advanced' to become 'easy'. Neither do I but, by the same argument, why should I be forced into running the 'normal' missions when I was running elite before and for me normal is far too easy for my level?
I will agree with you that part of the problem stems from people who don't know how to complete the missions. I learned missions like ISE back when it was impossible to get the optional unless you followed the '5% rule' for the transformers. But the issue I have, I guess, is that they shouldn't have made content which the majority could play a few weeks ago, only for the upper echelon. Really I can understand people who wanted more of a challenge, I don't want to have to play normal level difficulty so I do get it. But share and share alike eh. Perhaps four tiers of difficulty would work better for STFs? A normal and advanced for level 50-60 which scales to level 50 and 55 respectively. And an Advanced and Elite difficulty available to level 60 players which are both level 60 missions.
As it stands, the 'advanced' content scales to 60. But the power difference between a level 50 Captain and a level 60 with all Spec traits (so level 110) is phenomenal.
The numbers here tell the tale. Either Cryptic doesn't care that pugging is dead or they do. I suppose if sufficient monies are being spent anyway then they will allow pugging to stay in its grave. To me this seems extraordinarily shortsighted.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
And that right there is what I expected. Something totally unhelpful to any sort of discussion.
http://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/2mfuoo/9800_dps_mirror_patrol_escort_budget_build/
This is a build using a t5 mirror escort and mark XI white gear that is almost hitting 10k. The gear is worse than what you can get by replaying story missions, running most rep dailies/hourlies, and the majority of drops you'll be getting at level 60. 7k average is all you need for Infected Advanced now.
The problem isn't the enemy HP in the Advanced queues. It's other players' builds, piloting skill, and mission knowledge. There's nothing in-game that teaches you how to gear a ship effectively. I really think there should be a tutorial about using all of one weapon type, energy type, and stacking multiple of the same consoles and same abilities. Probably given around level 30, when ships start having enough stations and console slots for it to matter. None of this stuff seems to be intuitive to the majority of players from what I've seen, and from my own personal experiences when I was new.
(Before someone brings up tac in an escort, I threw a similar mk XI white gear and doffs build together for a mirror Nova on my sci character and hit 6k, which is fine for a support ship as far as I'm concerned. The only thing a fresh level 50 wouldn't have access to on the build is the Omega Kinetic Shearing trait, and that only needs t2 of Omega rep.)
Sometimes I have tried to explain but people aren't interested. It's just too miserable of an experience to keep trying.
The question is not whether the missions are too hard for good teams etc... it's whether it's possible to successfully pug them 75% of the time or more. I personally would like to be able to do this and feel it's necessary for the game's health which, for me, is the most important thing.
In my opinion the only possible way to get people to learn the missions is to allow them to finish it. Eventually they will learn what the optionals are, and how to handle them, as many did over time with ISE.
Of course those that don't care about pugs simply don't care. So they will say suck it up and get better etc... But that's not the reality of the game. The reality is frustrated players will leave. See my signature for how I feel this will play out.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
It's probably a good idea to reevaluate how failing works on Advanced. One possibility would be to keep the mission going, but inform the players they've failed it as an Advanced/Elite mission and drop rewards to the level of Normal/Advanced, then let the mission be finished normally. But if that wasn't done and failure means failure, it's over, at least actually stop the mission. It's just obnoxious how it works right now.
It's funny actually, that build is pretty much identical to one of my escort builds. But I've never gone above 7.5K with that particular build and I was using VR fleet MK XII weapons, engines, hull consoles, vulnerability locators etc. I'll have to do some more experimenting.
Quick question for you, if you don't mind? Cannons or beams? You see, I used to use cannons a lot for escort builds but then people started telling me that beams with BFAW were better for PvE and gave better DPS overall. At first that seemed to stand true and I all but abandoned cannons but since DR came out I've started realising that Beams have a major disadvantage running with BFAW because they spread the damage too much in missions like ISE which now have more enemy targets to share the damage across so even though you may parse at a higher DPS you're not taking things out very quickly. Another thing, numerous people claim that not using a torpedo of any kind is better and instead to replace it with the KCB, which I've done though in testing I haven't noticed it make any significant change to the DPS and I think it's only really beneficial on large cruisers which turn like they're stuck in toffee, escort turn rates are so high that it's easy enough to line up a torp spread.
I agree with this, finishing the mission does help people learn. When it fails after the first two minutes, people never see how it's completed so they don't learn anything from the experience. I remember running missions like the Cure Ground Elite back before the rep system (but after the change to STFs) and I was trying to take a team of people who hadn't played the elite versions before so they could learn how to do them. The optional on that was very hit or miss, and even on occasion people would just get annoyed and leave if the shields didn't go down on the first try. But a few people stuck around and we pushed on. There was a specific run I always remember where myself and one other guy ended up being the only two left for the boss fight and we completed it with him ranged and myself up close with melee and heals (still the best/only real way to handle him).
The point I'm trying to get to was, he was grateful that I stuck around and helped him through it because he wanted to know how the mission ended so he could see the entire progression start to finish. In the following weeks we ran that together several more times and each time he got better at it. He knew where he was supposed to be and when, he knew which weapons worked best to defend the pillars, etc. After a month or so of 'training' we were able to obtain all of the optionals on all the Elite missions together. Now though, if you fail you fail because the optionals aren't optional and they just end the mission (or well, try to end the mission but some people don't even notice it's failed), and it's always highly likely you'll end up with an 'elitist jerk' on your team who will berate your ignorance if you don't already know how to complete the mission you've never played before. It doesn't encourage more attempts, or learning from the experience.
I'll answer, but I'm hardly the best ship builder or pilot myself. I doubt I'd hit that number if I put that escort together. But that means it's probably a good build to practice piloting in. I don't have a fed tac, though.
I usually run DHCs or DCs on the majority of my escorts and warbirds. On some of them, I run a DBB too. (I like to build for looks, so the choice between DHCs or DCs comes down to which firing points I like better, sometimes I mix and match, but in terms of game mechanics DHCs are just better.) For battlecruisers, I tend to go with beams as I think they look better and work better with the slower turn rate. I've been told by players better than myself that beamscorts using arrays are king, but I've tried it a few times and I just don't like flying them as much. They have a huge advantage in being able to stay at full speed while keeping your weapons on target (try this with DHCs and you won't even stay on target for a full CRF cycle, and the majority of your shots that hit will suffer from falloff), but you're stuck with BFAW instead of something more focused, unless you're in the Phantom or Faeht and can use Surgical Strikes. That's the killer for me, my experiences are the same as yours and, while BFAW might get my number higher, CRF/CSV down enemies faster. Still, it's something I like to play around with from time to time.
As for torps, I've noticed they're definitely making a comeback now that we have some interesting rep choices. The gravimetric, enhanced biomolecular, particle emission, and neutronic all seem pretty popular on escorts. If you're running cannons, you'll already be lined up to fire torps. On cruisers, broadsiding with all arrays or a combo of arrays, the KCB, and/or the proton weapon are most popular because of their slow turn rate, but I do see the Regeant's wide-angle quantum showing up in builds fairly often.
Thanks for the response.
I must admit, my favourite ships in the game are still cruisers because I enjoy the ability to tank and go broadside with full on beams. One of my engi characters uses an Odyssey and in group combat I usually run with the 'attract fire' command ability because the ship is kitted out for survival so it's good to take the agro from the escorts. He also packs a fair punch for a cruiser and is probably one of my most versatile characters, which is probably a bad sign haha.
Yeah, I did quite like flying escorts running full beam arrays and BFAW when I was first told about how good they were but I just started to feel that I was flying in circles doing perhaps a high level of over all damage but not reducing the number of enemies fast enough for my liking. I think I may dig out my cannons again for my current ship and see how they do in comparison now.
I am a fan of the bio-molecular torps. I still use them on my cruiser build I mentioned above, but only one of them and a TS3, it can be handy. I think I'll try going with a torp on my escort again once I switch to the cannons. If I ever get a build that I'm happy with I'll let you know haha. You'd think after 4 years I'd have got the hang of things.
Torps can do something on specialised torpedoboats (e.g. sciships, for everything else its a waste) and on some escorts, which can utilize 2 TT, 2 CRF/CSV, 2 TorpSpread, 2 Attackpatterns. Phantom and defiant as well as kumari are examples for it, though the latter doesnt even need a doff to do it.
Cruisers are best without torps. 1-2TT (1 if doffed), 2FAW, 2 APB and it will get quite good. EPtW and EPtS in cycle with 3 DCE-Doffs round it up. If you dont have 5 slots, use either a2b (it was meant for those gimped ships that dont have full tactical armament) or phantom trait (Tactical CD reduction when enemies miss you), then you only need 1 of each ability.
As cruisers are usually robust, it is useful to use EptW3 and EptS1 or 2. Some cruisers have cmd. +lt.cmd eng, making it possible to use both on 3, as well as a Aux2Sif 3 and 2xET1/2 and RSP. A bit too much Engskills if you ask me, but if you utilize them correctly, they can be quite good. If its a intellegence ship you can even throw in a Surgical strike for single targets. For every ship you could take DEM with you for mobs or bigger enemies like the queen.
Its just a matter of thinking more than just about the tacslots to utilize the maximum out of the ship with a minimum on ressources. And BO-Skills are kinda cheap. Some doffs you get for saying hi to ferra and doffing (DCE...).
I will not play this game like this. Part of having a game is giving your users a feeling of reward. I have lost ALL of this. I feel ripped off when I do anything.
You want me to spend double or triple the time and trouble was... for half the rewards it was worth? Should we not be getting double the rewards due to this? no... we get half. That is just a slap and every single player heard it.
I ask any of you honestly... how many chars could you fill daily limit for dill on per day before DR. Now how many can you?
You had to have been seriously messed up to think nurfing rewards at the same time as adding very very large sink hole to throw resources at was even close to "ok" It was the worst game decision i have ever seen.
Meaning better AI, unexpected stuff (like a mirror rift once in a while), things like that.
What he said up there pug matches were what I use to do not that the flakes we call devs say this is the new pugging has died well cord teams can be quiiet as they always succed 90% of the time example my fleet mates carried an afker and a low dps player through kilometer accord because they were cord inated as it took an hour thats the down side.