Some would argue its a fantastic at teaching players poor game design.
Also,
"No matter how you cut it, skill > build > gear"
This is definitely true, I shocked myself when I got 1st in CE on my klink with mixes of MkXI rare to MkXII uncommon gear (definitely suboptimal). Makes we wonder what it would be like if I bothered throwing time and money at the upgrade system etc. (though not enough to actually do it, ever).
Sorry to burst your bubble, but CE also uses heal for the 1rst place. In fact, it's even more important than DPS.
Having a scimitar with the valdore console for both heal and dps is pretty much a guaranteed way to be the 1rst.
Skill>build>gear is, simply put, wrong in STO.
I can pull 40k+ with my scimitard full of blue MKXII and an less than average roster/build (1sro only, no AP weapon) by just smashing spacebar and flying around.
A fleetmate of mine did 15K dps with ONLY his plasma DOT. Overall, he did 40k including the weapons and all. All he had to do was upgrade a console to epic quality.
Then you have the spec powers, the very rare and expensive doffs like Jemok....
I'm not doing the plasma dot thing, my dot parse around 100dps. On top of what I'm doing with my scim, that would be 55K dps.
Now, imagine a wealthy player with all the tricks/doff/boff and spec tree and all.
So yeah, in sto skill>gear, let me laugh. Really. A good laugh.
Sure Ryan and some other might be able to pull a lot from not much. But it's incredibly easy when you have the proper stuff to pull some heavy DPS numbers. In fact, all you have to do is run in circle smashing spacebar.
In fact, so far, all the videos I've seen from the "wizard" are always about AP beams + BFAW/SS. Except for a NX flight with heavily debuffed hull and hard hitting torps. I don't see much of DHC + CRF for example, non Jemok build, non AP build... Why ? Because they use the best.
In fact, so far, all the videos I've seen from the "wizard" are always about AP beams + BFAW/SS. Except for a NX flight with heavily debuffed hull and hard hitting torps. I don't see much of DHC + CRF for example, non Jemok build, non AP build... Why ? Because they use the best.
If you grab five random folks from Drozana and have them fly with those builds...
It's not a case of saying that gear isn't out there - there's oodles upon oodles of powercreep out there. Don't think anybody is saying that's not the case. But if it was just gearing, then everybody would be doing 80-140k wouldn't they?
1-the ability to know how to mash buttons
2-the realization that the builds that do the high dps are all aoe type setups
3-the realization that they are using fleet consoles and you know they match the ship builds
(.. well i guess 4 as well which is spec points and skill points in the right boxes to match said ship builds)
so if you can do a decent enough dps with basic gear and know these 3 things above and apply them you too can do the same
that is the 'skill' involved lol
i guess i could have just edited this post to say 4 things but this is 'way funner a way' to put it
I learned Elite STFs within two or three runs, since they aren't complicated. I'm also the type that found a DPS meter and latched on to it from my first time playing the game, so I knew what DPS to shoot for, which made things easier.
Now? Do Normal STFs until you can pull off the bonus without any issues. This means you are pulling the team, usually, and it also means you are ready to do Elites, since you know the fights in and out and how the mission is supposed to go.
The secret to success is to never underestimate the stupidity of your teammates, and to overcompensate with stupid-high DPS to cover their butts.
Sardak (Science Officer): Captain of a 23k DPS R'Mor Temporal Science Vessel, R.R.W. Vathos Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
Every time I hear "anyone can do it if they buy x," I'm reminded of the person who was still godawful after buying the Delta pack, and having his build optimized by other people. It still makes me want to pull my hair out remembering trying to help him.
"Why are you flying into that wall?" - "I don't know, I'm stuck" - "try turning" - "Oh, that did it"
"Where are you going? All of the enemies are this way." - "There must be some over here somewhere"
"You have to fire to do damage" - "I forget, is it enter that makes your weapons fire?" - "It's been 3 months. You should know what spacebar does"
I'm completely serious. Unfortunately.
Also, look at the people buying Scimitars and really not doing a whole lot with them.
Let's look at pre-DR, where pretty much everybody was in Mk XII purples. Exactly the same quality of gear. (If you say it's not quality of gear, but what gear you're using, then you're talking about build. DHCs vs BAs, etc.)
Yet we had DPS ranging from 5k to 50k.
What gear is giving +45k DPS? They're using exactly the same quality of gear. That difference is entirely due to build and skill.
On my JHDC pre-DR, without changing any gear, improving my build took me from 17.8k to 21.4k, and improving my skill (both in terms of piloting and properly using my build) took me to 26.3k. (Those are averages from multiple runs, with standard deviations of less than 10%.)
I agree that it's not Skill > Build. I think even RyanSTO (excellent pilot) would have trouble getting really good DPS out of the default Dyson Destroyer from Step Between Stars (horribly incompetent build). I think it's actually Build > Skill > Gear, assuming we're talking Mk X whites at the minimum.
Performance = Gear * Build * Skill, but each of those factors have different magnitudes.
Gear is something like 0.1 for Mk I whites to 1.2 for Mk XII purples, peaking at 1.5 for Mk XIV golds. Build is something like 1 for "Do you even read the tooltips?!" to 10 for "You're more familiar with synergies than the devs".
Improving your gear from Mk XIIs to Mk XIVs is only +0.2, but improving your build from "decent" to "optimal" is something like +5. Pretty much every "help me" thread here and on reddit is like that. If those guys were handed Mk XIV Epics, it'd help them far less than changing to a good build.
Skill is a lot harder to peg. Ignoring the "Press spacebar to shoot. No, spacebar. The enemies are over there." types of people, most of us when given the same build and gear will differ by much less than either of those factors. It's undeniable that there are a handful of individuals who do amazing things with the same build and gear, but for most of us the magnitude and range for this factor is rather low.
In fact, the difference is so low that in the fog of different levels of build and gear, we can't even see the effect of skill until we're looking at the very top guys or comparing ourselves when using exactly the same build and gear.
In any case - the difference between a good build and a bad build is considerably greater than the difference between Mk XII and Mk XIV, and the problem is almost never gear, but build. Assuming basic competency in piloting, of course.
Let's look at pre-DR, where pretty much everybody was in Mk XII purples. Exactly the same quality of gear. (If you say it's not quality of gear, but what gear you're using, then you're talking about build. DHCs vs BAs, etc.)
Yet we had DPS ranging from 5k to 50k.
What gear is giving +45k DPS? They're using exactly the same quality of gear. That difference is entirely due to build and skill.
On my JHDC pre-DR, without changing any gear, improving my build took me from 17.8k to 21.4k, and improving my skill (both in terms of piloting and properly using my build) took me to 26.3k. (Those are averages from multiple runs, with standard deviations of less than 10%.)
I agree that it's not Skill > Build. I think even RyanSTO (excellent pilot) would have trouble getting really good DPS out of the default Dyson Destroyer from Step Between Stars (horribly incompetent build). I think it's actually Build > Skill > Gear, assuming we're talking Mk X whites at the minimum.
Performance = Gear * Build * Skill, but each of those factors have different magnitudes.
Gear is something like 0.1 for Mk I whites to 1.2 for Mk XII purples, peaking at 1.5 for Mk XIV golds. Build is something like 1 for "Do you even read the tooltips?!" to 10 for "You're more familiar with synergies than the devs".
Improving your gear from Mk XIIs to Mk XIVs is only +0.2, but improving your build from "decent" to "optimal" is something like +5. Pretty much every "help me" thread here and on reddit is like that. If those guys were handed Mk XIV Epics, it'd help them far less than changing to a good build.
Skill is a lot harder to peg. Ignoring the "Press spacebar to shoot. No, spacebar. The enemies are over there." types of people, most of us when given the same build and gear will differ by much less than either of those factors. It's undeniable that there are a handful of individuals who do amazing things with the same build and gear, but for most of us the magnitude and range for this factor is rather low.
In fact, the difference is so low that in the fog of different levels of build and gear, we can't even see the effect of skill until we're looking at the very top guys or comparing ourselves when using exactly the same build and gear.
In any case - the difference between a good build and a bad build is considerably greater than the difference between Mk XII and Mk XIV, and the problem is almost never gear, but build. Assuming basic competency in piloting, of course.
My thoughts are that build and gear are additive, but skill is a multiplyer.
As an example, going from Mk 12 to mk 14 only gave most players a 20% ish buff from what I've seen in the teams I've been in. But for the top players, it more than doubled their output. Some people are getting far more benefit from the same item than others.
Also, skill has a much wider spread than either gear or build. The worst gear compared to the best isn't a difference of 5k vs 120k+ = 25 times. Skill can be that big a gap though.
But you are right that gear and build have certain control over thresholds. And there are required minimums to hit certain benchmarks. So I can buy that build is primary.
Its a system I wish a mathematics specialist I used to know in city of heroes would examine. But sadly, she doesn't like sci fi.
I do 100 dps with dots (IE pretty much nothing). My fleetmate does 15K DPS. If I upgraded the same console to reach the same dps with my dot, I would do 55K DPS. Just with a single upgrade (granted, several upgrades, but you get the point), no skill involved.
40+15=55
Get it ?
The time when STO was all about skill is well over. Since then, powercreep happened, with DOFF, ships, upgrade, rep, fleet, spec trees...
one of the very first things i try to teach people is to NOT BIND ANYTHING TO SPACEBAR. it's a DPS loss.
It's really ironic that to this day i still get accused of being a spacebar mashing a2b scimitard.
I just said it was incredibly easy if you knew what to fly to reach a very high DPS, with just spacebar mashing. As I said, 15k dps by just using BFAW1 and upgraded embassy consoles. Before taking the weapon dps into account or anything.
I didn't say "sarcasmdetector is a spacebar spammer, that's why he makes a high DPS".
But yeah, I don't use keybinds myself, mostly because I'm too lazy to make them.
I can bearly play these stf's any more the only ones I can play is disconnected and bug hunt while the others are dead but i can still play the borg stf's as they are still are going. Also I'm really struggling to do the dyson rep system and I need to do the breech and storming the spire to get the implants but there's hardly any one doing these missions any more:(
I just said it was incredibly easy if you knew what to fly to reach a very high DPS, with just spacebar mashing.
Someone should tell the people using Scimitars in the PUGs I go into about this. Because many of them aren't hitting 10k.
From what I've seen, through going into PUGs at random, the average player seems to be doing 6-12k DPS, regardless of what they're using. And this isn't 1 run. Or 5. I'm basing this on about 30 or so PUG runs doing ISA.
Ive joined a PUG and been teamed with 4 Scimitars, and, if one only looked at the numbers, you wouldn't be able to dispute that I was teamed with 4 T3 ships.
If it's incredibly easy, why isnt everyone doing it?
I can bearly play these stf's any more the only ones I can play is disconnected and bug hunt while the others are dead but i can still play the borg stf's as they are still are going. Also I'm really struggling to do the dyson rep system and I need to do the breech and storming the spire to get the implants but there's hardly any one doing these missions any more:(
Dyson Ground for Implants. Sure, it was stealth nerfed a bit back, but it is still best place to go.
Someone should tell the people using Scimitars in the PUGs I go into about this. Because many of them aren't hitting 10k.
From what I've seen, through going into PUGs at random, the average player seems to be doing 6-12k DPS, regardless of what they're using. And this isn't 1 run. Or 5. I'm basing this on about 30 or so PUG runs doing ISA.
Ive joined a PUG and been teamed with 4 Scimitars, and, if one only looked at the numbers, you wouldn't be able to dispute that I was teamed with 4 T3 ships.
When you do less than 10k dps with a scimitar, you're doing it wrong, period.
If it's incredibly easy, why isnt everyone doing it?
I just said it was incredibly easy if you knew what to fly to reach a very high DPS,
You need to know that upgrading this console will makes your dot reach incredible level, or knows that AP + high CritD + SS3 will pull insane numbers, this kind of thing.
But anyone that can stalks the internet for informations, or have a decent fleet, will stumble into this. That's not skill. That's just using limited social engineering, or google.
Most PUG player doesn't even know what DPS mean, even less what a parser is.
It's easy to read, and no real skill is involved, yet not everyone knows how to do it.
Which got broke recently when they decided to break the perfectly fine system of tagging...
I really wish people would get over this. It was clear the tagging dino system was completely broken from day 1, just because the devs ignored the whole problem forever doesn't make it a good system, its still broken, and how they handled it is twice as broken.
I do 100 dps with dots (IE pretty much nothing). My fleetmate does 15K DPS. If I upgraded the same console to reach the same dps with my dot, I would do 55K DPS. Just with a single upgrade (granted, several upgrades, but you get the point), no skill involved.
40+15=55
Get it ?
Totally thought you had gone somewhere else with that...totally missed that's what you were saying. Mea culpa.
Now, which DoTs were we talking about again...and uh...taking them from 100 DPS to 15k DPS?
I really wish people would get over this. It was clear the tagging dino system was completely broken from day 1, just because the devs ignored the whole problem forever doesn't make it a good system, its still broken, and how they handled it is twice as broken.
It was perfectly fine - people tagged, wandered off, tagged, wandered off, shot to kill. Every dino went down, and because everyone could tag, it worked. It was a perfect system, and it meant everyone could get max reward as everyone had an incentive to tag 2, kill 1, and when an entire instance did it, it worked harmoniously.
It wasn't broke, it was a genius bit of forward planning, understanding of player psychology, and player teamwork.
I really wish people would get over this. It was clear the tagging dino system was completely broken from day 1, just because the devs ignored the whole problem forever doesn't make it a good system, its still broken, and how they handled it is twice as broken.
yup not ruined a lot of people were being basically murdered by that system. Still its gots its issues where people can just login and do dinos but its not nearly as bad as it was. It was very tiresome being left with 2 others guys to kill a dino while a pack of players capable of kiling it quickly shot it once and took off leaving slaves behind to get their rewards for them.
It as simple abuse of a system and other players not in the clique of taggers.
It was perfectly fine - people tagged, wandered off, tagged, wandered off, shot to kill. Every dino went down, and because everyone could tag, it worked. It was a perfect system, and it meant everyone could get max reward as everyone had an incentive to tag 2, kill 1, and when an entire instance did it, it worked harmoniously.
It wasn't broke, it was a genius bit of forward planning, understanding of player psychology, and player teamwork.
Now ruined...
so now the truth is out people like to get their rewards on the backs of other players in the ground zones or in space there are always "lazy people" abusing fellow players in the community.
yup not ruined a lot of people were being basically murdered by that system. Still its gots its issues where people can just login and do dinos but its not nearly as bad as it was. It was very tiresome being left with 2 others guys to kill a dino while a pack of players capable of kiling it quickly shot it once and took off leaving slaves behind to get their rewards for them.
It as simple abuse of a system and other players not in the clique of taggers.
so now the truth is out people like to get their rewards on the backs of other players in the ground zones or in space there are always "lazy people" abusing fellow players in the community.
You are in an MMO. These things have this thing called "Teamwork". It is this useful idea that means that if everyone works together stuff gets done faster and for higher reward. It is a great idea that works in essentially every context possible.
I.E. everyone tags in a different order, everyone finishes up at a different dino (or swaps dino based on Omega molecule rates etc.) and everyone gets the reward for all dinos going down.
It isn't the tagger's fault you don't understand tagging.
In fact, it is just like STFs. Take ISA. Normal people go LtR, but with teamwork you can save loads of time by doing a 3:2 or 4:1 split. Are the people who split abusing their fellow players? Course not.
Same for Cure Space - split players up, 2 or 1 players take a Cube each. (or 3 players sweep all 3 Cubes in order while other 2 save Kang if per player damage isn't too good)
You are in an MMO. These things have this thing called "Teamwork". It is this useful idea that means that if everyone works together stuff gets done faster and for higher reward. It is a great idea that works in essentially every context possible.
I.E. everyone tags in a different order, everyone finishes up at a different dino (or swaps dino based on Omega molecule rates etc.) and everyone gets the reward for all dinos going down.
It isn't the tagger's fault you don't understand tagging.
Think it's the simple case of...
Group A unlocks the Dinos.
Group B sweeps in and tags.
Group B moves on to the next zone where the next Group A has unlocked the Dinos...
Group B is benefiting from the work of Group A.
Group A doesn't necessarily benefit from the work of Group B.
It's not a symbiotic relationship.
It's a parasitic relationship.
yup not ruined a lot of people were being basically murdered by that system. Still its gots its issues where people can just login and do dinos but its not nearly as bad as it was. It was very tiresome being left with 2 others guys to kill a dino while a pack of players capable of kiling it quickly shot it once and took off leaving slaves behind to get their rewards for them.
You have 2 choices in this case - wait until the group comes in for their 3rd Rex and they will help you kill it - or tag and move on as everyone else did.
The change is designed to remove the huge bonus of getting credit for killing all 3. I'm sure this was meant to be a 5% of the time thing. They wanted to remove this without incurring the full wrath of removing it officially.
For me the zone is still fine. I do agree that it rewards Rex campers and zone hoppers still. I think this is very easily fixed by requiring capture of 2 zones to get the final bonus.
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."
Group A unlocks the Dinos.
Group B sweeps in and tags.
Group B moves on to the next zone where the next Group A has unlocked the Dinos...
Group B is benefiting from the work of Group A.
Group A doesn't necessarily benefit from the work of Group B.
It's not a symbiotic relationship.
It's a parasitic relationship.
And if that is ummax's problem with it (you could certainly interpret it as such on reflection) then Group B are a problem. But if instead you have Group A, B, and C unlocking dinos in each area and then all 3 groups tagging around to end up at different dinos it works brilliantly.
You did mean as in swapping instance or just AFKing after all 3 tagged, right?
You need to know that upgrading this console will makes your dot reach incredible level, or knows that AP + high CritD + SS3 will pull insane numbers, this kind of thing.
But anyone that can stalks the internet for informations, or have a decent fleet, will stumble into this. That's not skill. That's just using limited social engineering, or google.
Most PUG player doesn't even know what DPS mean, even less what a parser is.
It's easy to read, and no real skill is involved, yet not everyone knows how to do it.
People do copy builds off the internet, and don't understand why they aren't getting the results of the ones who post the builds. LOL you know that. I'm sure you've seen it. Positive.
Upgrading, and getting the best stuff will definitely give you an advantage. Otherwise, we would all be in whatever ship looked the coolest, even if it was T1. Not as much as skill will give you, though, all other things being equal. Wouldn't you agree?
You have to stay alive and hit targets to get that dot. A better pilot will get far better benefit from it. I do agree that buybuybuy probably adds more than it should, because "sell moar powercreep."
I have seen awful, terrible pilots with top gear doing TRIBBLE damage. There are videos of great pilots in TRIBBLE ships doing great damage.
I have not seen an awful pilot with great stuff being carried by their gear, ever.
and frankly its delusional to assume otherwise.
you are right. it is an mmo. not a lan party game played by 5 people in a garage.
A language barrier isn't impossible to overcome. Sure, you will not organise some sort of record breaking run without at least some common understanding, but a basic Dyson tag sweep? Just think of what you want to say, find out what language they speak, run what you want to say through some translation software, hope enough of it makes sense to them to actually work out what you meant (it does most of the time...) and eventually it all adds up to a semi-organised run.
It just takes longer, it isn't actually impossible.
Or the ship didn't make up for lack of skill. I agree.
People do copy builds off the internet, and don't understand why they aren't getting the results of the ones who post the builds. LOL you know that. I'm sure you've seen it. Positive.
Upgrading, and getting the best stuff will definitely give you an advantage. Otherwise, we would all be in whatever ship looked the coolest, even if it was T1. Not as much as skill will give you, though, all other things being equal. Wouldn't you agree?
You have to stay alive and hit targets to get that dot. A better pilot will get far better benefit from it. I do agree that buybuybuy probably adds more than it should, because "sell moar powercreep."
I have seen awful, terrible pilots with top gear doing TRIBBLE damage. There are videos of great pilots in TRIBBLE ships doing great damage.
I have not seen an awful pilot with great stuff being carried by their gear, ever.
This is the same for ground as well. I once had a rather pointless discussion with someone on these forums who insisted that the only thing that mattered was the gear, and refused to believe that teamwork was necessary or even skill to use the gear at all.
How people think you don't need skill to use something to its fullest I'll never understand.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
This is the same for ground as well. I once had a rather pointless discussion with someone on these forums who insisted that the only thing that mattered was the gear, and refused to believe that teamwork was necessary or even skill to use the gear at all.
How people think you don't need skill to use something to its fullest I'll never understand.
Ground is vastly different than space. Much less powercreep, and more skill involved to do things.
Or the ship didn't make up for lack of skill. I agree.
You can always find someone that can't properly use his brain and hands at the same time. Doesn't mean you need skill to do what he can't, that's just mean he is bad. Really bad.
Comments
Having a scimitar with the valdore console for both heal and dps is pretty much a guaranteed way to be the 1rst.
Skill>build>gear is, simply put, wrong in STO.
I can pull 40k+ with my scimitard full of blue MKXII and an less than average roster/build (1sro only, no AP weapon) by just smashing spacebar and flying around.
A fleetmate of mine did 15K dps with ONLY his plasma DOT. Overall, he did 40k including the weapons and all. All he had to do was upgrade a console to epic quality.
Then you have the spec powers, the very rare and expensive doffs like Jemok....
I'm not doing the plasma dot thing, my dot parse around 100dps. On top of what I'm doing with my scim, that would be 55K dps.
Now, imagine a wealthy player with all the tricks/doff/boff and spec tree and all.
So yeah, in sto skill>gear, let me laugh. Really. A good laugh.
Sure Ryan and some other might be able to pull a lot from not much. But it's incredibly easy when you have the proper stuff to pull some heavy DPS numbers. In fact, all you have to do is run in circle smashing spacebar.
In fact, so far, all the videos I've seen from the "wizard" are always about AP beams + BFAW/SS. Except for a NX flight with heavily debuffed hull and hard hitting torps. I don't see much of DHC + CRF for example, non Jemok build, non AP build... Why ? Because they use the best.
I've been doing math wrong.
If you grab five random folks from Drozana and have them fly with those builds...
It's not a case of saying that gear isn't out there - there's oodles upon oodles of powercreep out there. Don't think anybody is saying that's not the case. But if it was just gearing, then everybody would be doing 80-140k wouldn't they?
(well 3 i guess)
1-the ability to know how to mash buttons
2-the realization that the builds that do the high dps are all aoe type setups
3-the realization that they are using fleet consoles and you know they match the ship builds
(.. well i guess 4 as well which is spec points and skill points in the right boxes to match said ship builds)
so if you can do a decent enough dps with basic gear and know these 3 things above and apply them you too can do the same
that is the 'skill' involved lol
i guess i could have just edited this post to say 4 things but this is 'way funner a way' to put it
Now? Do Normal STFs until you can pull off the bonus without any issues. This means you are pulling the team, usually, and it also means you are ready to do Elites, since you know the fights in and out and how the mission is supposed to go.
The secret to success is to never underestimate the stupidity of your teammates, and to overcompensate with stupid-high DPS to cover their butts.
Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler
Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
"Why are you flying into that wall?" - "I don't know, I'm stuck" - "try turning" - "Oh, that did it"
"Where are you going? All of the enemies are this way." - "There must be some over here somewhere"
"You have to fire to do damage" - "I forget, is it enter that makes your weapons fire?" - "It's been 3 months. You should know what spacebar does"
I'm completely serious. Unfortunately.
Also, look at the people buying Scimitars and really not doing a whole lot with them.
Let's look at pre-DR, where pretty much everybody was in Mk XII purples. Exactly the same quality of gear. (If you say it's not quality of gear, but what gear you're using, then you're talking about build. DHCs vs BAs, etc.)
Yet we had DPS ranging from 5k to 50k.
What gear is giving +45k DPS? They're using exactly the same quality of gear. That difference is entirely due to build and skill.
On my JHDC pre-DR, without changing any gear, improving my build took me from 17.8k to 21.4k, and improving my skill (both in terms of piloting and properly using my build) took me to 26.3k. (Those are averages from multiple runs, with standard deviations of less than 10%.)
I agree that it's not Skill > Build. I think even RyanSTO (excellent pilot) would have trouble getting really good DPS out of the default Dyson Destroyer from Step Between Stars (horribly incompetent build). I think it's actually Build > Skill > Gear, assuming we're talking Mk X whites at the minimum.
Performance = Gear * Build * Skill, but each of those factors have different magnitudes.
Gear is something like 0.1 for Mk I whites to 1.2 for Mk XII purples, peaking at 1.5 for Mk XIV golds.
Build is something like 1 for "Do you even read the tooltips?!" to 10 for "You're more familiar with synergies than the devs".
Improving your gear from Mk XIIs to Mk XIVs is only +0.2, but improving your build from "decent" to "optimal" is something like +5. Pretty much every "help me" thread here and on reddit is like that. If those guys were handed Mk XIV Epics, it'd help them far less than changing to a good build.
Skill is a lot harder to peg. Ignoring the "Press spacebar to shoot. No, spacebar. The enemies are over there." types of people, most of us when given the same build and gear will differ by much less than either of those factors. It's undeniable that there are a handful of individuals who do amazing things with the same build and gear, but for most of us the magnitude and range for this factor is rather low.
In fact, the difference is so low that in the fog of different levels of build and gear, we can't even see the effect of skill until we're looking at the very top guys or comparing ourselves when using exactly the same build and gear.
In any case - the difference between a good build and a bad build is considerably greater than the difference between Mk XII and Mk XIV, and the problem is almost never gear, but build. Assuming basic competency in piloting, of course.
My thoughts are that build and gear are additive, but skill is a multiplyer.
As an example, going from Mk 12 to mk 14 only gave most players a 20% ish buff from what I've seen in the teams I've been in. But for the top players, it more than doubled their output. Some people are getting far more benefit from the same item than others.
Also, skill has a much wider spread than either gear or build. The worst gear compared to the best isn't a difference of 5k vs 120k+ = 25 times. Skill can be that big a gap though.
But you are right that gear and build have certain control over thresholds. And there are required minimums to hit certain benchmarks. So I can buy that build is primary.
Its a system I wish a mathematics specialist I used to know in city of heroes would examine. But sadly, she doesn't like sci fi.
one of the very first things i try to teach people is to NOT BIND ANYTHING TO SPACEBAR. it's a DPS loss.
It's really ironic that to this day i still get accused of being a spacebar mashing a2b scimitard.
40+15=55
Get it ?
The time when STO was all about skill is well over. Since then, powercreep happened, with DOFF, ships, upgrade, rep, fleet, spec trees...
I just said it was incredibly easy if you knew what to fly to reach a very high DPS, with just spacebar mashing. As I said, 15k dps by just using BFAW1 and upgraded embassy consoles. Before taking the weapon dps into account or anything.
I didn't say "sarcasmdetector is a spacebar spammer, that's why he makes a high DPS".
But yeah, I don't use keybinds myself, mostly because I'm too lazy to make them.
Yep.
Still, at least I've never been accused of being a spacebar mashing a2b Scimitard abuser.
Someone should tell the people using Scimitars in the PUGs I go into about this. Because many of them aren't hitting 10k.
From what I've seen, through going into PUGs at random, the average player seems to be doing 6-12k DPS, regardless of what they're using. And this isn't 1 run. Or 5. I'm basing this on about 30 or so PUG runs doing ISA.
Ive joined a PUG and been teamed with 4 Scimitars, and, if one only looked at the numbers, you wouldn't be able to dispute that I was teamed with 4 T3 ships.
If it's incredibly easy, why isnt everyone doing it?
Dyson Ground for Implants. Sure, it was stealth nerfed a bit back, but it is still best place to go.
wait the ground battlezone gives you the implants?
yes if you successfuly kill at least one dino you get implants usually all 3 get killed.
You need to know that upgrading this console will makes your dot reach incredible level, or knows that AP + high CritD + SS3 will pull insane numbers, this kind of thing.
But anyone that can stalks the internet for informations, or have a decent fleet, will stumble into this. That's not skill. That's just using limited social engineering, or google.
Most PUG player doesn't even know what DPS mean, even less what a parser is.
It's easy to read, and no real skill is involved, yet not everyone knows how to do it.
Which got broke recently when they decided to break the perfectly fine system of tagging...
I really wish people would get over this. It was clear the tagging dino system was completely broken from day 1, just because the devs ignored the whole problem forever doesn't make it a good system, its still broken, and how they handled it is twice as broken.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
http://dtfleet.com/
Visit our Youtube channel
Totally thought you had gone somewhere else with that...totally missed that's what you were saying. Mea culpa.
Now, which DoTs were we talking about again...and uh...taking them from 100 DPS to 15k DPS?
It was perfectly fine - people tagged, wandered off, tagged, wandered off, shot to kill. Every dino went down, and because everyone could tag, it worked. It was a perfect system, and it meant everyone could get max reward as everyone had an incentive to tag 2, kill 1, and when an entire instance did it, it worked harmoniously.
It wasn't broke, it was a genius bit of forward planning, understanding of player psychology, and player teamwork.
Now ruined...
yup not ruined a lot of people were being basically murdered by that system. Still its gots its issues where people can just login and do dinos but its not nearly as bad as it was. It was very tiresome being left with 2 others guys to kill a dino while a pack of players capable of kiling it quickly shot it once and took off leaving slaves behind to get their rewards for them.
It as simple abuse of a system and other players not in the clique of taggers.
so now the truth is out people like to get their rewards on the backs of other players in the ground zones or in space there are always "lazy people" abusing fellow players in the community.
You are in an MMO. These things have this thing called "Teamwork". It is this useful idea that means that if everyone works together stuff gets done faster and for higher reward. It is a great idea that works in essentially every context possible.
I.E. everyone tags in a different order, everyone finishes up at a different dino (or swaps dino based on Omega molecule rates etc.) and everyone gets the reward for all dinos going down.
It isn't the tagger's fault you don't understand tagging.
In fact, it is just like STFs. Take ISA. Normal people go LtR, but with teamwork you can save loads of time by doing a 3:2 or 4:1 split. Are the people who split abusing their fellow players? Course not.
Same for Cure Space - split players up, 2 or 1 players take a Cube each. (or 3 players sweep all 3 Cubes in order while other 2 save Kang if per player damage isn't too good)
It is teamwork, not an abuse.
Think it's the simple case of...
Group A unlocks the Dinos.
Group B sweeps in and tags.
Group B moves on to the next zone where the next Group A has unlocked the Dinos...
Group B is benefiting from the work of Group A.
Group A doesn't necessarily benefit from the work of Group B.
It's not a symbiotic relationship.
It's a parasitic relationship.
You have 2 choices in this case - wait until the group comes in for their 3rd Rex and they will help you kill it - or tag and move on as everyone else did.
The change is designed to remove the huge bonus of getting credit for killing all 3. I'm sure this was meant to be a 5% of the time thing. They wanted to remove this without incurring the full wrath of removing it officially.
For me the zone is still fine. I do agree that it rewards Rex campers and zone hoppers still. I think this is very easily fixed by requiring capture of 2 zones to get the final bonus.
"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 if that is ummax's problem with it (you could certainly interpret it as such on reflection) then Group B are a problem. But if instead you have Group A, B, and C unlocking dinos in each area and then all 3 groups tagging around to end up at different dinos it works brilliantly.
You did mean as in swapping instance or just AFKing after all 3 tagged, right?
Or the ship didn't make up for lack of skill. I agree.
People do copy builds off the internet, and don't understand why they aren't getting the results of the ones who post the builds. LOL you know that. I'm sure you've seen it. Positive.
Upgrading, and getting the best stuff will definitely give you an advantage. Otherwise, we would all be in whatever ship looked the coolest, even if it was T1. Not as much as skill will give you, though, all other things being equal. Wouldn't you agree?
You have to stay alive and hit targets to get that dot. A better pilot will get far better benefit from it. I do agree that buybuybuy probably adds more than it should, because "sell moar powercreep."
I have seen awful, terrible pilots with top gear doing TRIBBLE damage. There are videos of great pilots in TRIBBLE ships doing great damage.
I have not seen an awful pilot with great stuff being carried by their gear, ever.
A language barrier isn't impossible to overcome. Sure, you will not organise some sort of record breaking run without at least some common understanding, but a basic Dyson tag sweep? Just think of what you want to say, find out what language they speak, run what you want to say through some translation software, hope enough of it makes sense to them to actually work out what you meant (it does most of the time...) and eventually it all adds up to a semi-organised run.
It just takes longer, it isn't actually impossible.
This is the same for ground as well. I once had a rather pointless discussion with someone on these forums who insisted that the only thing that mattered was the gear, and refused to believe that teamwork was necessary or even skill to use the gear at all.
How people think you don't need skill to use something to its fullest I'll never understand.
You can always find someone that can't properly use his brain and hands at the same time. Doesn't mean you need skill to do what he can't, that's just mean he is bad. Really bad.