The problem is that the game REQUIRES you to play advanced to progress your gear. That is the only way to get rep items (BNP, ISO, APC, etc) and VR mats. If normal is suppose to be for the masses to learn and get better geared...well it's a failure because you CAN'T get better gear playing normal. They need to either change it so that normal drops the rep items (could even be only if you make the optional) and has a chance to drop VR mats (like advanced used to do)...or they need to make advanced doable for the masses. I would prefer they did the former instead of the latter...but as it stands, the casual masses are just screwed and that is not good for this playerbase.
I'm going to disagree with ya on that. You don't need Rep gear to complete advanced. There are good sets you can get from playing episodes like the Solonae and Jem Hadar. Also, you can get a lot of the marks you need from playing the ground and space battlezones. There are also reps that require no special items like BNPs. Fleet gear can also be obtained. Costs on fleet gear have even been reduced and are more accessible than ever.
The casual masses can stick to normal and probably don't care and are not on the forums anyway complaining about it. They'll try to do advanced a couple times, fail it, then stick with normal that they can finish. Which I think is the intended outcome.
I suggest anyone have trouble completing advanced content find some friends that can help them get geared, get whatever mats they need to craft upgrades, and help them with all this stuff. We can look at all this DR stuff from a different perspective. It can bring more people together and help the social aspect of the game.
I'm going to disagree with ya on that. You don't need Rep gear to complete advanced. There are good sets you can get from playing episodes like the Solonae and Jem Hadar. Also, you can get a lot of the marks you need from playing the ground and space battlezones. There are also reps that require no special items like BNPs. Fleet gear can also be obtained. Costs on fleet gear have even been reduced and are more accessible than ever.
The casual masses can stick to normal and probably don't care and are not on the forums anyway complaining about it. They'll try to do advanced a couple times, fail it, then stick with normal that they can finish. Which I think is the intended outcome.
I suggest anyone have trouble completing advanced content find some friends that can help them get geared, get whatever mats they need to craft upgrades, and help them with all this stuff. We can look at all this DR stuff from a different perspective. It can bring more people together and help the social aspect of the game.
The poster quoted is a n00b who trolls DPSer posts - you are wasting your time.
You are of course correct, but that doesn't matter to them.
No, I disagree with DPS elitists who think the game should be for JUST them.
Oh come now, he'll allow you to play normal... for now...
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."
I expected as much - typical strawman, making out we say stuff we don't. Go on, find somewhere where we say STO should be just for us.
There's several hundred such posts in the past few weeks saying advanced is ADVANCED duuude. It's not for average players. Why just here in this thread at 12:54 we see this post most recently.
You haven't noticed the recurring argument about whether elite players need 66% of the missions over the past few weeks? It's been discussed to death.
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."
There's several hundred such posts in the past few weeks saying advanced is ADVANCED duuude. It's not for average players. Why just here in this thread at 12:54 we see this post most recently.
You haven't noticed the recurring argument about whether elite players need 66% of the missions over the past few weeks? It's been discussed to death.
Now why don't you actually find a point where "dps elitists" said the game should be just for them, like was actually said.
Now why don't you actually find a point where "dps elitists" said the game should be just for them, like was actually said.
Sure fair enough. The main argument seems to be that the average player should stay out of advanced and elite, ie 66% of the missions. My position is that you should stick to elite, ie 33% of the missions (for much less than 10% of the population). Perhaps you will allow the unwashed access to normal level:
The casual masses can stick to normal and probably don't care and are not on the forums anyway complaining about it. They'll try to do advanced a couple times, fail it, then stick with normal that they can finish. Which I think is the intended outcome.
I think this is a fair summary of the main argument. You are a gracious overlord.
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."
Regardless of how many players are in fleets or in the various DPS channels pumping out huge DPS numbers, the overwhelming majority of the players I would imagine are casual. Casual in that they don't go for premade teaming, min/maxing, pay-2-win, and are only in fleets to contribute resources and buy some nice shiny toys.
These are the kind of players who go for pugs and are now well and truly stuffed when it comes to endgame content.
The changes to the PVE have nearly killed off this game for a lot of the players.
This describes me to a T. I am a casual and have no way of learning STFs that I never bothered doing before because I can only queue for Advanced... and why can I only queue for Advanced?
To everyone who's complaining about failing advanced, there's really no nice way to say it. It's not a game problem, its your problem. You guys need to stick to the normal queues and forget about playing advanced until your properly geared and or skilled. There are plenty of players out there who are completing advanced queues and completing optionals without a problem.
I for one like the challenge and like having something to work towards.
Because the Normal queues are EMPTY. Because of how Cryptic has structured it, I CAN'T just stick to Normal because NORMAL BASICALLY DOESN'T EXIST.
For all those people saying "lol stay in normal noob #imamoron", why don't you try queuing for Khitomer Normal or The Cure Normal or basically anything Normal except Bug Hunt and Borg DIsconnected. You will find that you will be waiting HOURS to get into it.
So we have to queue for Advanced, failed immediately because of the timers, and then be penalized again by having to wait an hour to try again.
I have confidence that Cryptic will see this and make some adjustments but right now, it's a mess.
To everyone who's complaining about failing advanced, there's really no nice way to say it. It's not a game problem, its your problem. You guys need to stick to the normal queues and forget about playing advanced until your properly geared and or skilled. There are plenty of players out there who are completing advanced queues and completing optionals without a problem.
I for one like the challenge and like having something to work towards.
It IS a game problem. Players go from eventual unchallenging Normal Difficulty queues to uncompletable Advanced Difficulty queues. They are uncompletable because they cannot learn from failing. The now required Optionals (what an orxymoron) lead to a complete failure and players being booted from the instance.
On the Old Elite difficulty players could still complete the mission even is the Optionals were blown. They could learn from their mistakes to earn increase rewards in future tries. Other posters are quite correct in it being a turn off for lesser skilled players failing an advanced Queue, not know what the fark happened, then being unceremonious dumped from the instance, and wind up with a 1 hour cooldown.
This happened to be personally as I took an self-emposed break from STO to get over bunout. The first character I tried needed needed a some Omega Marks to finish out his MACO space set. I tried to PUG the Advanced Queue on a couple STF instances and then overwhelmed by the hugely increased HP and shields of ships and then BAM!: Failure! and booted with 10 Marks. I'm going WTF did they did do these queues?
I pugged old Elites all of the time. Most of the time it was a fun and successful experience even neve knowing what you would get. I've taken my lumps over AFK players and no-skilled players in the old Elite STF Queues. But the new Advanced queues have really turned me off of the queues. There is ZERO margin of error w/o being able to learn from failures. Not a good transition from LOL ROFLStomp Normal. And I really hate the new Normal. It's too easy
What needs is a new Difficulty level which is the old Elite. Even if you need to Combine the new Advanced Diffility and not the Optional OPTIONAL. Let players earn some decent rewards even from a partial faulure. And not a measles 10 Marks. It's insulting.
It's not a game problem. It's a player problem. Players need to adjust to the new difficulty and it's upsetting people to have to do that. It's the same thing with upgrades and r&d. People want to have it finished yesterday and don't want to have to work for it.
I'd say the normal STF queues are empty because people are off playing in the battlezones which are now giving better rewards than the STFs. People go where the money is. There's also a lot of people playing the FE's and the patrols leveling up. So there's really no proof that the normal STF are empty for any specific reason. It's all just speculation being used to support an argument with no logic.
And to the guy that keeps saying people can't learn from failure. I can't really face palm myself hard enough on that one. If you can't learn from failure what can you learn from? It's time for players to step it up or accept that they will not be playing advanced or elite and stop qq'ing that Cryptic needs to keep nerfing everything until you can steam roll it.
Sure fair enough. The main argument seems to be that the average player should stay out of advanced and elite, ie 66% of the missions. My position is that you should stick to elite, ie 33% of the missions (for much less than 10% of the population). Perhaps you will allow the unwashed access to normal level:
The casual masses can stick to normal and probably don't care and are not on the forums anyway complaining about it. They'll try to do advanced a couple times, fail it, then stick with normal that they can finish. Which I think is the intended outcome.
I think this is a fair summary of the main argument. You are a gracious overlord.
The problem is that Borg Neural Processors and Ancient Power Cells are only available in the Advanced and Elite Queues with the very rare drop from the XP reward boxes. At least, Voth Cybernetic Implants and Isometric Injections are available through the Battlezones which doesn't require teams. Therefore, if I want to get Task Force Omega or Delta Alliance equipment, then I have to run through Advanced content. A lot of problems would be removed if Cryptic simply removes these items.
The problem is that Borg Neural Processors and Ancient Power Cells are only available in the Advanced and Elite Queues with the very rare drop from the XP reward boxes. At least, Voth Cybernetic Implants and Isometric Injections are available through the Battlezones which doesn't require teams. Therefore, if I want to get Task Force Omega or Delta Alliance equipment, then I have to run through Advanced content. A lot of problems would be removed if Cryptic simply removes these items.
The gear you can get elsewhere should be more than enough to get you ready for Advanced queues.
I have tried the stf's with the new difficulty and I am not impressed either. I told myself that I will not do any of them anymore. I only do Infected Space easy so I can level up to level 60. Even with pugs, noobs, and endgamers I am done.
Fleet Admiral of the U.S.S. ATTILA KHAN-CDA (NX-921911).
And once you do an ASTF you can get the BNP, so not even a long-term issue.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Sure fair enough. The main argument seems to be that the average player should stay out of advanced and elite, ie 66% of the missions. My position is that you should stick to elite, ie 33% of the missions (for much less than 10% of the population). Perhaps you will allow the unwashed access to normal level:
The casual masses can stick to normal and probably don't care and are not on the forums anyway complaining about it. They'll try to do advanced a couple times, fail it, then stick with normal that they can finish. Which I think is the intended outcome.
I think this is a fair summary of the main argument. You are a gracious overlord.
Bull TRIBBLE.
Our argument is people should learn to use their builds properly, not that they should be blocked from Advanced or Elite content. For a typical players build, subject to fixing the usually badly set up boffs, and it is inevitably capable of FAR more than what they get from it.
Look up people on Gateway, you very rarely see an equipment set that couldn't do an ASTF - what you do see is people who do not know what to do and think gear will solve it. The key is in player knowledge and skill, not in gear. In fact, for a typical ASTF gear is irrelevant, especially post nerfs.
The fact is, 20k DPS is the average player set up's capability yet in reality, the typical player is good for doing half that.
Reason? Pure lack of knowledge. Nothing else. And don't try saying the people who do know don't let others know, we spend vast amounts of time trying to share that knowledge. We have forums dedicated to build advice, we hand out advice on here, we set up ingame chat channels, we make youtube guides, we note down every bit of what we do and why we do it, and the response is people like coldnapalm - troll us, make out we say stuff we don't say, ignore basic facts, and say stuff that is completely untrue.
And that is just what he's done here, nevermind every other similar thread he (and the rest of his ilk) pop up in.
We want the entire playerbase to be good enough to do Elite - but no, that means people have to stop being n00bs and start at least operating as good as their equipment can, and as countless threads prove, players don't like finding out their special snowflakeness isn't good enough. And then they attack those who are good enough as if it was the good player's fault for the bad players badness, because blaming themselves is never right.
I hope you don't have any upgraded to gold mkXIV stuff on your elite ship, cause you don't need it either.
If you have read any of my posts then you would know I only have 3 pieces of Mk XIII gear on my ship - and none of them Epic. Everything else on my ship is MK XII. 2 of the pieces I upgraded to Mk XIII and 1 piece was a drop. I have done over 3 dozen Advanced queues at this point in my Sovereign - the only big change to my Sovereign since DR has gone live is a T5U Upgrade.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
3x Rom Plas CrtDx2 (Rep box drop, Dil) 1x Experimental Romulan array (Rom mark content)
CC Deflector (Undine space zone)
Rom Engines (Rom mark content)
Elite Fleet core (some dil, some FC, Starbase invite with provision access)
Elite Fleet shield (as above)
Uni Consoles subject to choice, but most of the important ones can be gotten without ASTFs - certainly ones in set pieces above don't need them.
Fleet RCS/Neut. consoles
Fleet Sci [Pla] consoles
Fleet Tac Vulnerability consoles
Not a single ASTF needed yet, and we are basically done.
It's not a game problem. It's a player problem. Players need to adjust to the new difficulty and it's upsetting people to have to do that. It's the same thing with upgrades and r&d. People want to have it finished yesterday and don't want to have to work for it.
How can player adjust to he new Difficulty when they fail the mission and get booted out? Players who want to do Advanced can. Because it a long TRIBBLE'essed Leaning Curve due to one hour cools downs. Player can't adjust when they are booted out 2 minutes after getting into the mission. That's a GAME problem.
The problem is that Borg Neural Processors and Ancient Power Cells are only available in the Advanced and Elite Queues with the very rare drop from the XP reward boxes. At least, Voth Cybernetic Implants and Isometric Injections are available through the Battlezones which doesn't require teams. Therefore, if I want to get Task Force Omega or Delta Alliance equipment, then I have to run through Advanced content. A lot of problems would be removed if Cryptic simply removes these items.
There are a couple of missions tha treally don't require a lot of advanced gear. Bug Hunt for example just requires the right KIND of gear, namely anything with toxic resists (even if it is just an EV suit). The mission itself is so easy that a couple of runs should teach you enough to complete it on advanced if not even Elite. It is a simple go in and pewpew mission. there is no strategy at all required. just a general knowledge what happenes when and where and maybe what bug does what.
Undine Infiltration is even easier. Just learn the correct answers for the interviews or let someone else do them if you have problems with reading comprehension.
How can player adjust to he new Difficulty when they fail the mission and get booted out? Players who want to do Advanced can. Because it a long TRIBBLE'essed Leaning Curve due to one hour cools downs. Player can't adjust when they are booted out 2 minutes after getting into the mission. That's a GAME problem.
Failing a few times IS the learning process. You think about what went wrong and why and then adapt and come up woith a solution you can use the next time. until you can do it. It is mostly knowing what to do, not WITH what to do it.
There are a couple of missions tha treally don't require a lot of advanced gear. Bug Hunt for example just requires the right KIND of gear, namely anything with toxic resists (even if it is just an EV suit). The mission itself is so easy that a couple of runs should teach you enough to complete it on advanced if not even Elite. It is a simple go in and pewpew mission. there is no strategy at all required. just a general knowledge what happenes when and where and maybe what bug does what.
Undine Infiltration is even easier. Just learn the correct answers for the interviews or let someone else do them if you have problems with reading comprehension.
Not everyone gets Reputation equipment for its functionality, but for its look. Some people don't like to team up and enjoy doing their own thing so the Battlefields are perfect. Even if Bug Hunt is the easy Delta Alliance Advanced Queue, that doesn't mean there will always be easy Advanced Queues for people to do for their equivalent of BNPs for future reputations.
Not everyone gets Reputation equipment for its functionality, but for its look. Some people don't like to team up and enjoy doing their own thing so the Battlefields are perfect. Even if Bug Hunt is the easy Delta Alliance Advanced Queue, that doesn't mean there will always be easy Advanced Queues for people to do for their equivalent of BNPs for future reputations.
While i understand your position, STO is an MMO. In MMOs the end-game generally consists of multi-player "Raids" of some type. You are not forced to do these Raids but if you want the better Raid-quality gear then you should expect to need to team with others at some point.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
While i understand your position, STO is an MMO. In MMOs the end-game generally consists of multi-player "Raids" of some type. You are not forced to do these Raids but if you want the better Raid-quality gear then you should expect to need to team with others at some point.
Perhaps the non-raid locked reputations shouldn't require raid currency to purchase anything of use.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Well some fail conditions like all in team are dead ->> game over is an interesting topic and provide a challenge. Other fail criteria are just lame. In most cases do it in 15 mins means bring in a certain amount of DPS, ground and space alike. Problem with that is that if it fails it fails after 15 minutes so wasted time. Its lame beyond imagination and explains the empty queue lists. Such stuff even hinders a group to explain what to do during the match. Also any criteria a single player can mess up with no means for the team for correcting is lame and doesnt fit any expression of teamwork.
I did quiet a few PvE queues over the weekend and can confirm that that elite and advanced are easily doable in the right group. In most cases I went in premades but also a few where we had to take pugs cuz we were not able to fill a team.
Sad part is because of the lame design of the fail criteria, especially the timers, a match is already decided before it starts in most cases. I have a wide pool of fleetmates and in game friends to choose from to make such an estimate.
The way I see it cryptic failed epically with the revamp of the difficulty structure. Advanced/Elite teams hardly see a challenge at all and new, under-geared players arent challenged either because they can only contribute to failure.
All cryptic did was to bring it hard on the average team and give veterans and newbes a reason NOT to play with one another.
Considering what an important social hub pugs can be for future gamplay this a quiet a bad call for an mmorpg.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Comments
I'm going to disagree with ya on that. You don't need Rep gear to complete advanced. There are good sets you can get from playing episodes like the Solonae and Jem Hadar. Also, you can get a lot of the marks you need from playing the ground and space battlezones. There are also reps that require no special items like BNPs. Fleet gear can also be obtained. Costs on fleet gear have even been reduced and are more accessible than ever.
The casual masses can stick to normal and probably don't care and are not on the forums anyway complaining about it. They'll try to do advanced a couple times, fail it, then stick with normal that they can finish. Which I think is the intended outcome.
I suggest anyone have trouble completing advanced content find some friends that can help them get geared, get whatever mats they need to craft upgrades, and help them with all this stuff. We can look at all this DR stuff from a different perspective. It can bring more people together and help the social aspect of the game.
The poster quoted is a n00b who trolls DPSer posts - you are wasting your time.
You are of course correct, but that doesn't matter to them.
Oh come now, he'll allow you to play normal... for now...
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I expected as much - typical strawman, making out we say stuff we don't. Go on, find somewhere where we say STO should be just for us.
There's several hundred such posts in the past few weeks saying advanced is ADVANCED duuude. It's not for average players. Why just here in this thread at 12:54 we see this post most recently.
You haven't noticed the recurring argument about whether elite players need 66% of the missions over the past few weeks? It's been discussed to death.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Now why don't you actually find a point where "dps elitists" said the game should be just for them, like was actually said.
Sure fair enough. The main argument seems to be that the average player should stay out of advanced and elite, ie 66% of the missions. My position is that you should stick to elite, ie 33% of the missions (for much less than 10% of the population). Perhaps you will allow the unwashed access to normal level:
The casual masses can stick to normal and probably don't care and are not on the forums anyway complaining about it. They'll try to do advanced a couple times, fail it, then stick with normal that they can finish. Which I think is the intended outcome.
I think this is a fair summary of the main argument. You are a gracious overlord.
"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 describes me to a T. I am a casual and have no way of learning STFs that I never bothered doing before because I can only queue for Advanced... and why can I only queue for Advanced?
Because the Normal queues are EMPTY. Because of how Cryptic has structured it, I CAN'T just stick to Normal because NORMAL BASICALLY DOESN'T EXIST.
For all those people saying "lol stay in normal noob #imamoron", why don't you try queuing for Khitomer Normal or The Cure Normal or basically anything Normal except Bug Hunt and Borg DIsconnected. You will find that you will be waiting HOURS to get into it.
So we have to queue for Advanced, failed immediately because of the timers, and then be penalized again by having to wait an hour to try again.
I have confidence that Cryptic will see this and make some adjustments but right now, it's a mess.
It IS a game problem. Players go from eventual unchallenging Normal Difficulty queues to uncompletable Advanced Difficulty queues. They are uncompletable because they cannot learn from failing. The now required Optionals (what an orxymoron) lead to a complete failure and players being booted from the instance.
On the Old Elite difficulty players could still complete the mission even is the Optionals were blown. They could learn from their mistakes to earn increase rewards in future tries. Other posters are quite correct in it being a turn off for lesser skilled players failing an advanced Queue, not know what the fark happened, then being unceremonious dumped from the instance, and wind up with a 1 hour cooldown.
This happened to be personally as I took an self-emposed break from STO to get over bunout. The first character I tried needed needed a some Omega Marks to finish out his MACO space set. I tried to PUG the Advanced Queue on a couple STF instances and then overwhelmed by the hugely increased HP and shields of ships and then BAM!: Failure! and booted with 10 Marks. I'm going WTF did they did do these queues?
I pugged old Elites all of the time. Most of the time it was a fun and successful experience even neve knowing what you would get. I've taken my lumps over AFK players and no-skilled players in the old Elite STF Queues. But the new Advanced queues have really turned me off of the queues. There is ZERO margin of error w/o being able to learn from failures. Not a good transition from LOL ROFLStomp Normal. And I really hate the new Normal. It's too easy
What needs is a new Difficulty level which is the old Elite. Even if you need to Combine the new Advanced Diffility and not the Optional OPTIONAL. Let players earn some decent rewards even from a partial faulure. And not a measles 10 Marks. It's insulting.
I'd say the normal STF queues are empty because people are off playing in the battlezones which are now giving better rewards than the STFs. People go where the money is. There's also a lot of people playing the FE's and the patrols leveling up. So there's really no proof that the normal STF are empty for any specific reason. It's all just speculation being used to support an argument with no logic.
And to the guy that keeps saying people can't learn from failure. I can't really face palm myself hard enough on that one. If you can't learn from failure what can you learn from? It's time for players to step it up or accept that they will not be playing advanced or elite and stop qq'ing that Cryptic needs to keep nerfing everything until you can steam roll it.
The problem is that Borg Neural Processors and Ancient Power Cells are only available in the Advanced and Elite Queues with the very rare drop from the XP reward boxes. At least, Voth Cybernetic Implants and Isometric Injections are available through the Battlezones which doesn't require teams. Therefore, if I want to get Task Force Omega or Delta Alliance equipment, then I have to run through Advanced content. A lot of problems would be removed if Cryptic simply removes these items.
Then good news, they can play normal or fail at advanced/elite
The gear you can get elsewhere should be more than enough to get you ready for Advanced queues.
Where, praytell, does one get a KCB without BNP?
And once you do an ASTF you can get the BNP, so not even a long-term issue.
Bull TRIBBLE.
Our argument is people should learn to use their builds properly, not that they should be blocked from Advanced or Elite content. For a typical players build, subject to fixing the usually badly set up boffs, and it is inevitably capable of FAR more than what they get from it.
Look up people on Gateway, you very rarely see an equipment set that couldn't do an ASTF - what you do see is people who do not know what to do and think gear will solve it. The key is in player knowledge and skill, not in gear. In fact, for a typical ASTF gear is irrelevant, especially post nerfs.
The fact is, 20k DPS is the average player set up's capability yet in reality, the typical player is good for doing half that.
Reason? Pure lack of knowledge. Nothing else. And don't try saying the people who do know don't let others know, we spend vast amounts of time trying to share that knowledge. We have forums dedicated to build advice, we hand out advice on here, we set up ingame chat channels, we make youtube guides, we note down every bit of what we do and why we do it, and the response is people like coldnapalm - troll us, make out we say stuff we don't say, ignore basic facts, and say stuff that is completely untrue.
And that is just what he's done here, nevermind every other similar thread he (and the rest of his ilk) pop up in.
We want the entire playerbase to be good enough to do Elite - but no, that means people have to stop being n00bs and start at least operating as good as their equipment can, and as countless threads prove, players don't like finding out their special snowflakeness isn't good enough. And then they attack those who are good enough as if it was the good player's fault for the bad players badness, because blaming themselves is never right.
I hope you don't have any upgraded to gold mkXIV stuff on your elite ship, cause you don't need it either.
How about getting a KCB after your, for example:
3x Rom Plas CrtDx2 (Rep box drop, Dil) 1x Experimental Romulan array (Rom mark content)
CC Deflector (Undine space zone)
Rom Engines (Rom mark content)
Elite Fleet core (some dil, some FC, Starbase invite with provision access)
Elite Fleet shield (as above)
3x Rom Plas beams, 1x Exp. Proton weapon (Voth ground zone)
Uni Consoles subject to choice, but most of the important ones can be gotten without ASTFs - certainly ones in set pieces above don't need them.
Fleet RCS/Neut. consoles
Fleet Sci [Pla] consoles
Fleet Tac Vulnerability consoles
Not a single ASTF needed yet, and we are basically done.
How can player adjust to he new Difficulty when they fail the mission and get booted out? Players who want to do Advanced can. Because it a long TRIBBLE'essed Leaning Curve due to one hour cools downs. Player can't adjust when they are booted out 2 minutes after getting into the mission. That's a GAME problem.
There are a couple of missions tha treally don't require a lot of advanced gear. Bug Hunt for example just requires the right KIND of gear, namely anything with toxic resists (even if it is just an EV suit). The mission itself is so easy that a couple of runs should teach you enough to complete it on advanced if not even Elite. It is a simple go in and pewpew mission. there is no strategy at all required. just a general knowledge what happenes when and where and maybe what bug does what.
Undine Infiltration is even easier. Just learn the correct answers for the interviews or let someone else do them if you have problems with reading comprehension.
This.
Failing a few times IS the learning process. You think about what went wrong and why and then adapt and come up woith a solution you can use the next time. until you can do it. It is mostly knowing what to do, not WITH what to do it.
Age old saying about man sausage and size thereof not mattering comes to mind.
Not everyone gets Reputation equipment for its functionality, but for its look. Some people don't like to team up and enjoy doing their own thing so the Battlefields are perfect. Even if Bug Hunt is the easy Delta Alliance Advanced Queue, that doesn't mean there will always be easy Advanced Queues for people to do for their equivalent of BNPs for future reputations.
Perhaps the non-raid locked reputations shouldn't require raid currency to purchase anything of use.
I did quiet a few PvE queues over the weekend and can confirm that that elite and advanced are easily doable in the right group. In most cases I went in premades but also a few where we had to take pugs cuz we were not able to fill a team.
Sad part is because of the lame design of the fail criteria, especially the timers, a match is already decided before it starts in most cases. I have a wide pool of fleetmates and in game friends to choose from to make such an estimate.
The way I see it cryptic failed epically with the revamp of the difficulty structure. Advanced/Elite teams hardly see a challenge at all and new, under-geared players arent challenged either because they can only contribute to failure.
All cryptic did was to bring it hard on the average team and give veterans and newbes a reason NOT to play with one another.
Considering what an important social hub pugs can be for future gamplay this a quiet a bad call for an mmorpg.
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