It's funny you mention Romulan Plasma. I had an alt with all VR MK XII Romulan Plasma from rep drops. Cost me 0. I almost used that as an example. I have an alt with all VR MK XII Biomolecular Disruptors for hahas. Still haven't done enough with it to see if I actually like them enough to keep them or not. Even the new Delta Rep doesn't give you MK XIV drops.
I do agree with the exchange being cheaper (at least for the things I'm looking at). I think that's a result of the vendor trash nerf, and maybe that I'm not really looking at stuff that wasn't there pre-DR, though. I surely could be wrong.
Think about how much those [CrtD]x3 weapons or the VR Mk XII Tac Consoles would go for on the Exchange...how many keys and the like folks would sell...where they were getting that Zen from, whether farming Dil or Visa/MasterCard...eh? Still, folks were shelling out the Dil for their Deflectors/Engines/Shields and then Cores, eh?
Don't get me wrong, I don't think folks were as spoiled as they were spoiled...ie...Cryptic set up all those expectations. Definitely can see Cryptic at the root of the issue, a bunch of them.
Folks say STO was more Alt-Friendly. Was it really more Alt-Friendly or was it more Alt-Needy? I was up to 14 toons at one point and looking at more...because I didn't have enough to do for just a couple of toons. If I didn't have all the alts, then I likely would have quit playing with nothing to do. Bunch of folks had quit because of not really having anything to do. Hell, it's one of the reasons I ended up spending so much time in Ker'rat...it was something to do. I'm not into playing Barbie 'n Ken dress up the Star Trek Experience or ERPing or trying find some haven from the misery of my day (other than blowing stuff up and going wheeeee). Hell, it's one of the reasons I used to reroll all my toons once or twice a year if not more...there just really wasn't anything to do otherwise. Lol, I didn't get this post count from having too much to do in the game...meh.
Different folks will feel differently about different things obviously, and just because I saw it one way doesn't mean that was the way...it's just how I started to feel about it.
So regardless of it was Alt-Friendly or Alt-Needy, in the end it was still Alt-Friendly...so folks that could easily gear oodles upon oodles of toons (never stopping to wonder if that might not have been a problem) are faced with a bit of an issue with how long it might take to gear all those toons now, eh? So from my point of view, those folks are complaining about there being too much to do in the game rather than when there wasn't enough to do which allowed them to create their oodles and oodles of alts, eh? Kind of like folks arguing for an increase in the Dil cap are telling Cryptic that they're making too much Dil...meh.
Then there's stuff like ISE. ISE where you've got a 15 minute optional, meaning that really good groups should be able to meet that optional while not so good groups would fail to meet that optional...where the 15 minutes didn't even start until after the initial encounter was complete...became something that took 3-5 minutes total for an average PUG hitting it up...a bad group might take 7-8 minutes.
Different folks will feel differently about different things obviously, and just because I saw it one way doesn't mean that was the way...it's just how I started to feel about it.
To me, that stood out like a sore thumb...it was broken. That should have been fixed. Others, well - the expectation set in that's how it's supposed to be...expectations and entitlements...and well, we all saw what happened with The Breach and Storming the Spire when they tried to lengthen how long the new content would take without first having addressed the old content's issues, eh? So yeah, there's a bunch of complaints about various things taking too long.
There's complaints going on about the space queues being relatively empty, eh? I think this was the thread I posted in earlier asking what point did anybody have to run the queues outside of perhaps actually wanting to...since everything but BNPs are faster/easier to get elsewhere. There were all the complaints about folks not wanting to play with others in a MMO and Cryptic addressed them...tada...empty queues, eh?
Different folks will feel differently about different things obviously, and just because I saw it one way doesn't mean that was the way...it's just how I started to feel about it.
Every Winter and Summer, we get the threads complaining about the grind for the ships. Yep, a few minutes a day is a massive grind. Cryptic even went through and added discounts (yeah, they're broken right now). Folks still complain. There's a thread where folks are complaining about the upcoming Anniversary again and what a grind that will be.
Different folks will feel differently about different things obviously, and just because I saw it one way doesn't mean that was the way...it's just how I started to feel about it.
So when one gets into the discussion about why folks are hitting up queues they might not be ready for...well, yeah...obviously they're entitled to all the rewards and the Hell if they should be expected to do anything to get them.
It's the attitude that Cryptic continued to foster...and folks that live their life that way flocked to the game. Folks that weren't like that before, started to become like that.
Different folks will feel differently about different things obviously, and just because I saw it one way doesn't mean that was the way...it's just how I started to feel about it.
Just because you could get VR12 Plasma drops didn't mean that you didn't want the VR12 RomPlas. Just because you could get a VR12 Tac Console didn't mean you didn't want the UR12 Advanced Tac Console.
I honestly don't see any change in direction that's taken place...well, that's not true. Things have gotten cheaper and you get more for your resources than you did.
Consider how expensive the TRIBBLE was with R&D or in the Dil Store, eh? Consider how expensive things could get on the Exchange when there were fewer viable alternatives available for them?
As for it being monetized...how? I earn Dil in game...I spend that Dil. I don't need everything yesterday. Cryptic monetizing impatience isn't anything new either...that folks are more and more impatient...meh, I'll get there with my stuff when I get there.
It really does come off as a bunch of impatient spoiled kids moaning...and yeah, I've definitely gotten in more trouble with the mods since all the moaning started up.
Things have gotten cheaper?!?!? Cryptic would be sad to hear you say that seeing DR was all about making things more expensive and much harder to get without spending money in order to make a better profit.
If a newer, casual player wants a rep set at 34k a pop and every source of dil except a few getting nerfed, I think MANY of them would beg to disagree.
The biggest problem for PUGs on STFs is lack of communication.
I have had so many groups fail and nobody would respond to any kind of communication.
I was in a group just recently where 4 team members decided to protect the Kang. They would not respond to anything, they would not move anywhere else they just flew around it shooting stuff. What is worse is that not one of them healed it and they had lower DPS than my aceton emitter managed to get.
I managed to take out two of the cubes before the kang ended up below 75% and mission failure and we would have failed anyways by running out of time.
However no matter how many times I asked politely for someone to heal the Kang they just kept circling around it shooting at stuff with not one response ever.
You see the same kind of issue in Borg disconnected. The more DPS you do the harder that mission gets and the harder it is to get the optional objectives. However that does not change people doing just that and sometimes screaming at you if you don't do that.
We have a punch of people that just go in and pew pew pew and don't talk EVER, don't respond EVER and don't listen to any kind of instructions for helping the mission along.
It is sad that this has been the case in STO for a very long time and I just can't figure out why it happened. I cant think of any other MMO I have ever played (eq1, eq2, dcuo, ac, ac2, etc etc) where that been the case. I wish I knew a way to fix it but i don't see one.
Think about how much those [CrtD]x3 weapons or the VR Mk XII Tac Consoles would go for on the Exchange...how many keys and the like folks would sell...where they were getting that Zen from, whether farming Dil or Visa/MasterCard...eh? Still, folks were shelling out the Dil for their Deflectors/Engines/Shields and then Cores, eh?
Sure. The problem now, is...you used to spend the dilithium for your "endgame" stuff, and then you had it. Now, you spend the dilithium for the stuff, and- it's not endgame stuff. So you spend dilithium for upgrades. Then the upgrades are time gated. Then there are 2 rarity levels even after upgrading to MK XIV. And trying to upgrade rarity is plain gambling, with a far better chance you will just throw your dilithium away.
Whether or not it is necessary to do so isn't the point- the point is, in order to have the top-tiered item, after the initial purchase, you now have many steps, timegates, and gambling for the same result.
In theory, the upgrade system was a great idea, IMO. Great, until it turned into an over-the-top greedy money grab.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think folks were as spoiled as they were spoiled...ie...Cryptic set up all those expectations. Definitely can see Cryptic at the root of the issue, a bunch of them.
There is a lot of that. For one, the STFs were just plain silly easy. Usually, endgame content isn't a 2-10 minute thing. Even now, what is in place shouldn't even be considered endgame, as it's really not that hard or involved.
Folks say STO was more Alt-Friendly. Was it really more Alt-Friendly or was it more Alt-Needy? I was up to 14 toons at one point and looking at more...because I didn't have enough to do for just a couple of toons. If I didn't have all the alts, then I likely would have quit playing with nothing to do. Bunch of folks had quit because of not really having anything to do. Hell, it's one of the reasons I ended up spending so much time in Ker'rat...it was something to do. I'm not into playing Barbie 'n Ken dress up the Star Trek Experience or ERPing or trying find some haven from the misery of my day (other than blowing stuff up and going wheeeee). Hell, it's one of the reasons I used to reroll all my toons once or twice a year if not more...there just really wasn't anything to do otherwise. Lol, I didn't get this post count from having too much to do in the game...meh.
Different folks will feel differently about different things obviously, and just because I saw it one way doesn't mean that was the way...it's just how I started to feel about it.
I liked that you could try different things on different characters, and it wasn't a complete chore to do so. Now, I have stop bothering playing around with my alts, for the most part. All I think about is that it will cost hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dilithium to finish the builds with which I'd like to experiment. Of course, that's me and "my fun." Others would disagree.
So regardless of it was Alt-Friendly or Alt-Needy, in the end it was still Alt-Friendly...so folks that could easily gear oodles upon oodles of toons (never stopping to wonder if that might not have been a problem) are faced with a bit of an issue with how long it might take to gear all those toons now, eh? So from my point of view, those folks are complaining about there being too much to do in the game rather than when there wasn't enough to do which allowed them to create their oodles and oodles of alts, eh? Kind of like folks arguing for an increase in the Dil cap are telling Cryptic that they're making too much Dil...meh.
I can't speak for everyone, but it isn't "too much to do" for me. It's "too much doing the same boring thing repeatedly." I honestly get tired of ISA sometimes, frankly.
Then there's stuff like ISE. ISE where you've got a 15 minute optional, meaning that really good groups should be able to meet that optional while not so good groups would fail to meet that optional...where the 15 minutes didn't even start until after the initial encounter was complete...became something that took 3-5 minutes total for an average PUG hitting it up...a bad group might take 7-8 minutes.
Different folks will feel differently about different things obviously, and just because I saw it one way doesn't mean that was the way...it's just how I started to feel about it.
I still don't think they should've nerfed (the new) ISA. The same people failing it because they are awful are still failing it because they're awful. The borderline person can't carry the awful ones. All it did is make it so the ones with no problems with it could more easily carry the leechers.
To me, that stood out like a sore thumb...it was broken. That should have been fixed. Others, well - the expectation set in that's how it's supposed to be...expectations and entitlements...and well, we all saw what happened with The Breach and Storming the Spire when they tried to lengthen how long the new content would take without first having addressed the old content's issues, eh? So yeah, there's a bunch of complaints about various things taking too long.
I think the complaints are that they're too long, when considering the rewards offered. And, if it takes longer, that's OK, but it seems that the longer they make things, the more tedious they are. Not challenging, just tedious.
There's complaints going on about the space queues being relatively empty, eh? I think this was the thread I posted in earlier asking what point did anybody have to run the queues outside of perhaps actually wanting to...since everything but BNPs are faster/easier to get elsewhere. There were all the complaints about folks not wanting to play with others in a MMO and Cryptic addressed them...tada...empty queues, eh?
Different folks will feel differently about different things obviously, and just because I saw it one way doesn't mean that was the way...it's just how I started to feel about it.
You're right. Now that the rewards aren't an incentive, why do the things people don't find fun? There seems to be an overabundance of grindy tedium, and a severe lack of "Wow, that was fun. I want to do it again." It doesn't help that, as I stated above, most are sticking to the same character, instead of "I want to try it with x next time."
Every Winter and Summer, we get the threads complaining about the grind for the ships. Yep, a few minutes a day is a massive grind. Cryptic even went through and added discounts (yeah, they're broken right now). Folks still complain. There's a thread where folks are complaining about the upcoming Anniversary again and what a grind that will be.
Different folks will feel differently about different things obviously, and just because I saw it one way doesn't mean that was the way...it's just how I started to feel about it.
You have to consider the context. If people are logging in, setting time gates for however many reps they are doing, DOFFs, upgrades, fleet projects, etc.- one more small one turns into "I'm getting tired of this." The time gates themselves are getting to be a bit much- yet they keep adding more as "content." Why not just a special 5 part queued mission where you have to earn parts of x reward?
So when one gets into the discussion about why folks are hitting up queues they might not be ready for...well, yeah...obviously they're entitled to all the rewards and the Hell if they should be expected to do anything to get them.
It's the attitude that Cryptic continued to foster...and folks that live their life that way flocked to the game. Folks that weren't like that before, started to become like that.
Different folks will feel differently about different things obviously, and just because I saw it one way doesn't mean that was the way...it's just how I started to feel about it.
I do agree that there are a ridiculous amount of people who want all of the rewards, and they have no problem leeching off of someone else to get them. Someone doing 2k DPS or less in an ISA knows they don't belong in anything called Advanced or Elite. It's one thing to say "I play how I want," and another to say "I'm going to just let random people do it for me, and profit." I mean, why are they playing a game, if they aren't playing the game?
Doing an STF on advanced in a PUG is pretty much a guaranteed fail outside of crystalline or bug hunt.
The borg stfs are even fairly often fails on normal.
My ship is NOT impressive in any way. I have a Sarr Theln drain boat and right now I am at about 6-7K dps. However when I did the cure recently in a pug the highest other member didn't parse above 1K.
I just can't figure out how that happens. They where shooting stuff the whole time but even the default equipment their ship came with does better than that. How the heck do people end up with a ship where the dps is that bad?
What do they do and how can we help them? Also how do you help someone that is clearly no reading chat or responding to it in any way. What does cryptic have to do to help these people.
I wonder if some of these people would be happier if they had some default loadouts to choose. The community could make some default ship setups that are super cheap to build (<2M or so total) and just make them as selectable options for people. Then if the game notices that your dps is just utterly abysmal it can suggest using one of the loadouts.
Calling them noobs, yelling at them, swearing at them etc is obviously not a solution since while it may make you feel better it does not solve the problem at hand.
Sure. The problem now, is...you used to spend the dilithium for your "endgame" stuff, and then you had it. Now, you spend the dilithium for the stuff, and- it's not endgame stuff.
Remove the Mk XIII/XIV stuff. Remove Epic. What changes? Nothing changes. Because the VR/UR Mk XII stuff which was so much overkill for what we had is still overkill for what we have.
Perhaps with the next expansion or the one after that...the Mk XIII/XIV stuff will actually be endgame stuff.
I mean, really - Epic for weapons adds +5% Damage Strength and a mod that adds another +5% Damage Strength and +10% Accuracy...with a heinous RNG chance of it ever getting it. It's like buying silk napkins for the ice cream cones you're going to give the kids at little league.
It's such superfluous superficial optional stuff that's just there so that as folks go along they might have something to do until the next thing comes along...yet folks are treating it like they need it yesterday.
All I think about is that it will cost hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dilithium to finish the builds with which I'd like to experiment.
You really need to G14 everything to test things? Or is it pretty much the same thing it was before...where things might even be cheaper and faster than they were. Where if there's something you like, you've got the time, and the spare resources that you'd look at hitting Mk XIV on it or even just with nothing to do or to spend stuff on otherwise that you'd G14 stuff?
I can't speak for everyone, but it isn't "too much to do" for me. It's "too much doing the same boring thing repeatedly." I honestly get tired of ISA sometimes, frankly.
Which is one of the other things that was kind of treated as a new complaint with DR...as if the game had suddenly became a case of just doing the same thing over and over again. That's how the game was. Folks talk about everybody stuck at Argala. Why? Is it the most efficient means to get SP? For some it might be, for others it wouldn't be. Folks don't even bother looking around. Then there's the question of why the rush to do it? Just what is not having all 60 points holding them back from doing? They're choosing to do the same thing over and over again...then complaining about it.
Which goes back to creating hordes of alts...to do the same thing over and over again...and then complain about it?
It's a game...not a job. We can play it like a game or make it a job...
I still don't think they should've nerfed (the new) ISA. The same people failing it because they are awful are still failing it because they're awful. The borderline person can't carry the awful ones. All it did is make it so the ones with no problems with it could more easily carry the leechers.
And some folks out there...don't want to hear that. Course, if they'd left the Advanced stuff the way it was or made it tougher and then took the Elite from there...then the endgame would have possibly actually shifted. Which in turn might have started justifying those complaints about costs to upgrade. That they did nerf the content...well...
I think the complaints are that they're too long, when considering the rewards offered. And, if it takes longer, that's OK, but it seems that the longer they make things, the more tedious they are. Not challenging, just tedious.
This is a game, where all jokes aside, folks literally did get lost in Exploration Clusters.
It doesn't help that, as I stated above, most are sticking to the same character, instead of "I want to try it with x next time."
That's a player choice though. Hell, I've already been fighting the urge to start up on the alts again...I've fought off creating additional Sci from just doing respecs on the one guy, it's actually cheaper. And again, do you need a G14 build to try it with x next time? And even if you do want to do that...what's stopping somebody from doing that? No, they won't have it yesterday...it might take time, but what's the rush?
Why not just a special 5 part queued mission where you have to earn parts of x reward?
That removes choice. Just because there are a dozen things out there one can do, doesn't mean you have to do that dozen things. If somebody wants to do that, they're choosing to do that. If you made it a case that folks had to do something, that's removed the choice.
I mean, why are they playing a game, if they aren't playing the game?
But how many folks are doing that besides just those folks you mention? How many folks are turning it into a chore and then complaining that it's a chore? It's a game...it's entertainment...maybe because I'm not an "achiever" in games, I just play games.
My Bartle...
Explorer 87%
Killer 73%
Achiever 33%
Socializer 7%
...kind of matches what my STO experience has been like. Exploring all the mechanics that I can for a greater understanding of what's going on. PvP. Having argued for folks enjoying average DPS since it was all that was actually needed - just having fun. Cringing at a bunch of what I see going on in the game...lol.
Edit: I wanted to add another random thought, but I didn't want to add another post - so I'm just going to drop it at the end here:
It's like some of the complaints about how long it takes to upgrade things and spending Dil to finish it off. Last night before going to bed, I upgraded three pieces. This morning, yeah, they're finished. There was no need to hit any finish now. Going to upgrade stuff but still want it for when you're playing? How about upgrading at the end of your play session instead of trying to do it at the start? Some of the complaints out there are just so mind-boggling, like they couldn't select from the countless list of actual problems out there and had to start making TRIBBLE up.
First, this is not boasting. This is by no means boasting. If somebody thinks the following is boasting, then I think they've got issues. In a game where folks are doing 30-40, 60, 80, over 100k DPS...the following is in no way any sort of boasting. It's more a huh?
Upgraded two of the Polaron Arrays to Mk XIII from Mk XII, upgraded one from Mk XI to Mk XIII, upgraded the Thoron from Mk XII to Mk XIII, and upgraded the two Locators from Mk XII to Mk XIV.
The builds are pretty much fail builds - there's some stuff that might be expected - but there's all sorts of failgasm going on. [Acc]x2[Over] weapons instead of [CrtD]x3. Sci instead of Tac. Not using FAW. Aceton in a Tac slot. That CrtH%. Etc, etc, etc...you can compare it to the various builds that have been posted from folks actually doing all sorts of nifty DPS to see the failgasm that my build is. Like I said earlier, it's a hodgepodge of various different tests that I was running and not any kind of coherent build. It's a bad build...don't do it. But even that bad build is doing what it is doing. Folks with a halfway decent build by comparison should be bottoming that build on the parse.
So like I said, lol by no means any sort of boasting...just a huh? A huh as in why folks that likely have better builds aren't doing as well. I'm a TRIBBLE pilot too. So it's not some mad skill where I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be each and every moment, where I'm even hitting the goofball abilities right when I'm supposed to be hitting them...I'm all over the place, I'm spacebaring, I'm fat fingering, I'm lagging out from own damn pets because I play on a toaster, etc, etc, etc.
So it's a huh...that belief that most if not all folks should be wiping the floor with me...but it not being the case.
Outside of the folks leeching or running some protest boat...I just have a difficult time with it at times...that huh? bit.
I think some of it is positional and the other part is that they aren't button mashing properly also it may have to do with doffs dunno
My biggest complaint is I like torpedos and cannons (not turrets but cannons) but in order to achieve the high dps needed to compensate in pugs (not something I had to do in the past) I am forced towards those aoe type builds.
I have or am adjusting and just tossed my cannons and most torpedoes and am slowly rebuilding my ships but I enjoyed torpedoes especially. Anyhow the rest is possibly as I mentioned above improper button mashing and not being in a good position (and maybe doffs i can't compete with doffs the reality is that I have only been back in this game since about october and I have only doffs that well are available and some doffs used are collectors items and no longer available in the game.)
Oh on your build *cough* I would have chosen beam overload with all those beams as a tactical skill but you were just playing around but I noticed that
re: the complaints about speed we live in an instant culture so that is the complaints. Me I have complaints but one of them isn't revolving around the speed or even cost of upgrading because its all about time and you dont need to spend a dime to achieve good results and.. I am a patient person lol. Its hard to take some of the complaints on this forum seriously because the time gates are not particularly even noticeable and mesh into the game in a convenient way so that with a little planning you dont even notice them.
I didn't, for the most part. There is only 1 Advanced queue I feel comfortable running, Crystalline Catastrophe. For a long while after I came back to the game a little over 2 years ago, I didn't run ANY of the queue content as I wanted to actually get the feel for the game and not be a hindrance on a team. I slowly started working on several of the queues, but only on normal and none of them were the Borg queues.
Now with the revamp on how the queues work, I can't get any experience with the missions because 'no one' is playing them. I have a mindset that I want to learn to play at my own pace and actually get good at it before upping the difficulty. Since 'no one' is playing the Normal queues and even a lot of the Advanced queues are sitting empty, it looks like I won't be getting any experience.
I belong to a great fleet and they have always been willing to take newbs through new stuff to help them learn. I just never took them up on it due to poor timing on my part. I think like a lot of players, my fleet tends to be active more in the evening, but I'm more active in the morning and early afternoon. I'm never on "after dinner", so as a result while I do see fleet mates on when I do play, it's just not enough to get a team of 5 together to run stuff.
Now, add in that I won't play the crafting/upgrade game and most of the rep gear is locked out for me, I don't have good enough gear to even attempt the Advanced queues. If somewhere down the road they allow us to pick what mods we want, then perhaps I may shift my thoughts on trying Advanced. Since I don't see them ever doing that, I don't see myself playing Advanced. Ever.
It used to be, before the revamp, people would say you could run the Elite STF's with white Mk X gear and do just fine, *IF* you knew what you were doing and had the skill to back that up. Now since the revamp, people who perhaps played the old Elite that way are getting their rear ends handed to them even though "new Advanced is basically old Elite". Well, enough time has passed and we know that's all BS.
Add in how Cryptic cut the rewards for queues and yeah, players don't want to bother. Even with the 50% reward increase they added a few weeks after DR went live, we still make 25% less for content that takes longer and is more difficult to do than prior to DR. The new risk does not equal the new rewards.
Oh well, I'll keep playing the game and getting what enjoyment I can out of it. While I would like to someday learn to do all the queue content, if it doesn't happen, so be it. I'll find fun things to do elsewhere, if needed.
Hello. My name is iamynaught and I am an altaholic.
I think some of it is positional and the other part is that they aren't button mashing properly also it may have to do with doffs dunno
I wonder about that. Back in the ISE days when I'd hit it up in a cloaked T'varo and basically just did burst, wait, burst, wait - I had more time to spend watching folks around me than I did with those runs where it was that mix of wtf did I just do, why am I over here instead of over there, and just all that focus on trying not to TRIBBLE everything up. But yeah, there is that at range or just out of combat thing, eh?
Hell, consider the different ways folks might just start off the run...
Full throttle into the Borg with low power.
Full throttle with Evasive into the Borg.
Quarter throttle will eventually get inside 10km.
Charging off alone vs. waiting for the group, knowing it doesn't start until it starts - when they're not in the position to have been able to solo it.
Dragging stuff off to the right as if they're going to be going right when they're still going to be going left.
Burning Evasive to chase stuff off to the right somebody's dragged off to the right.
I keep mentioning the Evasive there, cause when folks are ready to go left it will help them get going that way while still in combat...without it, they're just snailing their way on over.
How many of those folks that burned their Evasive initially have gone far left, so they burn their second Evasive getting back to the Nanites...leaving them to waddle on over to the right. How many go far right and have to waddle back over to the Nanites? How many go far back on the Gate and have to waddle over to the Cube? Heck, how many folks have kited the Cube off away from folks?
Yeah, I guess in talking about positioning - it's more about fine positioning...rather than the basic stuff that's kind of taken for granted at this point. Thinking about the adjusting the positioning based on what other folks are doing. In that second run, I didn't adjust my positioning based on what the others were doing and it cost me DPS. But that's adjusted/fine tuning...and not just the basics. So yeah, folks that are off chasing butterflies or enjoying the weather and not doing anything, that's going to reflect in their DPS.
There's also going to be stuff like what the Infected walkthrough on STOwiki still tells folks...
"Destroy the Gate. You can do so safely from 9km+ out from it."
So not only are folks who follow that looking at only doing 40% of their damage with cannons or 60% with beams, they're also likely to end up having themselves out in the parking lot while everybody else is playing the game.
So part of it will be where they get their information from. Somebody earlier mentioned it would be nifty if there were walkthroughs and guides, etc, etc, etc...and those DPS League folks have got that stuff. They've got the stuff over on reddit, they've got the videos, they post here, and they've even run folks through things to help them with their builds and piloting. So the information is there...but then there's also going to be the stuff like STOwiki, if somebody doesn't know about the other stuff...and well, yeah...meh.
My biggest complaint is I like torpedos and cannons (not turrets but cannons) but in order to achieve the high dps needed to compensate in pugs (not something I had to do in the past) I am forced towards those aoe type builds.
Which kind of gets into that discussion of the complaints about being forced into things and...well, if folks didn't have that feeling that needed that protective buffer to cover for somebody that perhaps needs some help before they showed up for the content; then outside of the folks looking to do speed runs or high DPS runs...well, everybody else could run all sorts of things, eh?
Sure, as one works their way up the spectrum...builds are going to get limited. But down at the content's actual requirements, there are countless things folks can do. But that some folks show up unprepared to meet those, sometimes woefully unprepared, and folks feeling the need to change their builds to provide that padding...meh, if folks would just show up prepared, eh? Which tends to be viewed as an elitist comment for some insane reason. Do folks show up to play football with their friends with a bat and glove? Do they take rifles to go fishing and rods to go hunting? Do they wear coats in the midst of summer and shorts in the midst of winter? The content's got requirements...meet them...it's that simple. If somebody's complaining about everybody not doing 30k+ for an ISA...make fun of them. Who cares about their personal requirements? They can go hit up a channel run. But if the content's got requirements...then meet them. It's your turn for the carpool, do you grab your bike out of the garage? (Note, the "you" etc isn't directed at you...they're just the general "you" thing where I used "you" instead of one, he, she, etc, etc, etc.)
Think of all the fun that could be had by all if folks simply did that...instead of showing up and hoping to be carried because they want some reward, eh?
I have or am adjusting and just tossed my cannons and most torpedoes and am slowly rebuilding my ships but I enjoyed torpedoes especially. Anyhow the rest is possibly as I mentioned above improper button mashing and not being in a good position (and maybe doffs i can't compete with doffs the reality is that I have only been back in this game since about october and I have only doffs that well are available and some doffs used are collectors items and no longer available in the game.)
Oh on your build *cough* I would have chosen beam overload with all those beams as a tactical skill but you were just playing around but I noticed that
Heh, my usual preference for Tac BOFF abilities on a ship tends to involve...
TT1, APB1/APD1, TS3, APO3
BO1
or
TT1, APB1/APD1, TS3, APO3
TT1, BO2
or dropping the TS3 down to TS2 with the APO1 in place of TS3.
Cause I'm usually not thinking PvE, and I'd be working in the EWO BO Penetration DOFF(s) for that BO1/2 to land the TS3 through the shields with some additional debuffing from the APB1. Hell, even with a torp boat - because of the OD arrays, I'd dorked around with a low power BO1 for the Pen DOFFs.
It is pretty interesting, though, with that DOFF, I'm able to maintain that 3stack of Beam Barrage for the +6% damage on the Beams from the innate Subsystem Targeting on the Sarr Theln. I noticed what looked like another player in the second run doing the same thing (think it was the second run).
Hawk had said that he was reconsidering the duration on Beam Barrage for FAW, the initial implementation had been for what he called turning...working in the changes made to BO, it was basically a case of them trying to get folks looking at alternating FAW and BO to maintain Beam Barrage stacks. But that never happened, so you can't stack Beam Barrage with FAW. You can with BO, though, and with some Reciprocity where you're taking aggro and being missed, that can work out for that as well.
But yeah, I had just picked up Beam Barrage like the day before (character was a fresh reroll for DR, so had to work all those R&D things up again). So that was part of the testing there.
Heh, my previous Sarr Theln build would have been:
No idea what that would have parsed...I don't want to be "that guy", but I'm kind of curious now. I'd been running all sorts of various things testing this and that's one of the reasons I never hit up an ISA or anything outside of a CCA. I didn't want to be a potential burden to the group.
But yeah, it's definitely a build recommendation by any means...which gets into that huh? thing, eh?
re: the complaints about speed we live in an instant culture so that is the complaints. Me I have complaints but one of them isn't revolving around the speed or even cost of upgrading because its all about time and you dont need to spend a dime to achieve good results and.. I am a patient person lol. Its hard to take some of the complaints on this forum seriously because the time gates are not particularly even noticeable and mesh into the game in a convenient way so that with a little planning you dont even notice them.
I think that's where, imho, it's a case that folks are creating the problems that they're in turn complaining about. Some folks have turned it into work where you need to do X to get Y...while some folks are just playing a game where when you do Y you get X.
Neither the Romulan nor Nukara gear requires any special items. Neither the Dyson nor Voth gear requires you do any queues to get the special items. With Omega and Delta gear, yeah, you're looking at the BNPs and APCs...but some folks are just getting those from the Daily boxes without having to hit any of the queues for them.
Ive noticed a lot of references to skill in this and other posts and most of the skill claims I see as just plain wrong
in STO you have
the players Skill at using their ship is the only thing that equals skill, everything else I list is NOT skill in itself but a avantage that can be purchased with money or selection or grinding
Damage and defense accolaydes
The ship
The Gear in the ship/ weapons consoles space set ect
The ship traits like built in battlecloaking/flanking/use of DHCs ect
the players traits
The players racial traits
The Bridge officers
The duty officers
If you put a team of players together in the same ships same race same gear..........then you would have a test of skill
right now its a test of skill at putting all of this together not actually using it against equals
my romulan character is no more skilled in my hands than my fed character but can do double the dps
My romulan isn't more skillfull it just has better advantages
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Remove the Mk XIII/XIV stuff. Remove Epic. What changes? Nothing changes. Because the VR/UR Mk XII stuff which was so much overkill for what we had is still overkill for what we have.
Perhaps with the next expansion or the one after that...the Mk XIII/XIV stuff will actually be endgame stuff.
I mean, really - Epic for weapons adds +5% Damage Strength and a mod that adds another +5% Damage Strength and +10% Accuracy...with a heinous RNG chance of it ever getting it. It's like buying silk napkins for the ice cream cones you're going to give the kids at little league.
It's such superfluous superficial optional stuff that's just there so that as folks go along they might have something to do until the next thing comes along...yet folks are treating it like they need it yesterday.
And that's without even upgrading any of the gear.
You really need to G14 everything to test things? Or is it pretty much the same thing it was before...where things might even be cheaper and faster than they were. Where if there's something you like, you've got the time, and the spare resources that you'd look at hitting Mk XIV on it or even just with nothing to do or to spend stuff on otherwise that you'd G14 stuff?
Which is one of the other things that was kind of treated as a new complaint with DR...as if the game had suddenly became a case of just doing the same thing over and over again. That's how the game was. Folks talk about everybody stuck at Argala. Why? Is it the most efficient means to get SP? For some it might be, for others it wouldn't be. Folks don't even bother looking around. Then there's the question of why the rush to do it? Just what is not having all 60 points holding them back from doing? They're choosing to do the same thing over and over again...then complaining about it.
Which goes back to creating hordes of alts...to do the same thing over and over again...and then complain about it?
It's a game...not a job. We can play it like a game or make it a job...
And some folks out there...don't want to hear that. Course, if they'd left the Advanced stuff the way it was or made it tougher and then took the Elite from there...then the endgame would have possibly actually shifted. Which in turn might have started justifying those complaints about costs to upgrade. That they did nerf the content...well...
This is a game, where all jokes aside, folks literally did get lost in Exploration Clusters.
That's a player choice though. Hell, I've already been fighting the urge to start up on the alts again...I've fought off creating additional Sci from just doing respecs on the one guy, it's actually cheaper. And again, do you need a G14 build to try it with x next time? And even if you do want to do that...what's stopping somebody from doing that? No, they won't have it yesterday...it might take time, but what's the rush?
That removes choice. Just because there are a dozen things out there one can do, doesn't mean you have to do that dozen things. If somebody wants to do that, they're choosing to do that. If you made it a case that folks had to do something, that's removed the choice.
But how many folks are doing that besides just those folks you mention? How many folks are turning it into a chore and then complaining that it's a chore? It's a game...it's entertainment...maybe because I'm not an "achiever" in games, I just play games.
My Bartle...
Explorer 87%
Killer 73%
Achiever 33%
Socializer 7%
...kind of matches what my STO experience has been like. Exploring all the mechanics that I can for a greater understanding of what's going on. PvP. Having argued for folks enjoying average DPS since it was all that was actually needed - just having fun. Cringing at a bunch of what I see going on in the game...lol.
Edit: I wanted to add another random thought, but I didn't want to add another post - so I'm just going to drop it at the end here:
It's like some of the complaints about how long it takes to upgrade things and spending Dil to finish it off. Last night before going to bed, I upgraded three pieces. This morning, yeah, they're finished. There was no need to hit any finish now. Going to upgrade stuff but still want it for when you're playing? How about upgrading at the end of your play session instead of trying to do it at the start? Some of the complaints out there are just so mind-boggling, like they couldn't select from the countless list of actual problems out there and had to start making TRIBBLE up.
LOL I don't have any Epic weapons on any of my alts. I did randomly get upgrades on...2 consoles? And UR upgrades on.....4 I think. Upgrading (or trying to upgrade) to Epic seems like the biggest waste to me. I find the whole "spend your dilithium for a -chance- at upgrading" a ripoff, honestly. But, I'm not a fan of gambling anyway, so that may just be me. The buying and/or upgrading isn't "something to do" for me, it's a means to an end. A speed bump. Like going to the store when I'm hungry.
I do like testing with MK XII, but, say I want to go further and upgrade, or commit my build to what I have- that's where the hundreds of thousands of dilithium comes in. And waiting. Sure, it's no big deal to do it before you log off. But isn't that a workaround to a timegate that really is unnecessary? Again, it's not that there is a cost. It's that there is a cost, plus another cost, plus time gates, with gambling added into it. So, a system that could have been great, is something tedious, and time consuming. Even ship upgrades- I honestly like the idea of being able to upgrade a ship. But, then there are the restrictions- an upgrade system for any T5 or mirror ship would have been fantastic, IMO.
Timegates on rep system, cooldowns on queues, fleet projects, crafting, so many things. Sometimes it just seems a bit silly to me, I dunno. Instead of more content, they seem to put timers and artificial time inflators on things. Honestly, why put timers on so many things? It could just be me, but I find it odd.
A lot of people have played other games, and there are artificial things put into games that take up time, while you aren't doing anything. Things like silly amounts of travel time, or timegated content. It's generally known as a crutch, at best.
The [finish now] buttons are obvious. "You don't want to wait, pay." But timers on queues? I can only assume that it's meant to be a deterrent for what is going on now- which is just ignoring the more tedious or annoying ones. Instead, it's incentive to play what you want, and log off. Or just wait.
There seems to be a lot of "put a band aid on that head wound, and send them home," instead of "let's fix that head wound." I don't know that it will change, but I'd say that it's unlikely. That doesn't mean that people are going to like "content" that has time gates longer than the actual thing you're doing.
I honestly understand that money needs to be made. But all of these systems seem to be trying to wring every penny they can from a concept- and it's so flagrantly obvious, that one can't help but think about it at some point. I think, were it toned down, many of these additions would be great, as they seem (to me) to be great ideas, in theory. I think it may not be one of these things, or two, but some combination of all of it that makes people cringe, and may make people rationalize leeching in STFs, to get rewards. Not that I think it's right, mind you.
Ive noticed a lot of references to skill in this and other posts and most of the skill claims I see as just plain wrong
in STO you have
the players Skill at using their ship is the only thing that equals skill, everything else I list is NOT skill in itself but a avantage that can be purchased with money or selection or grinding
Damage and defense accolaydes
The ship
The Gear in the ship/ weapons consoles space set ect
The ship traits like built in battlecloaking/flanking/use of DHCs ect
the players traits
The players racial traits
The Bridge officers
The duty officers
If you put a team of players together in the same ships same race same gear..........then you would have a test of skill
right now its a test of skill at putting all of this together not actually using it against equals
my romulan character is no more skilled in my hands than my fed character but can do double the dps
My romulan isn't more skillfull it just has better advantages
This guy is right on the money. The most important skill is buying the right ship then setting it up right.
My Romulan tac is my weakest character by far. Why? She flies the Risian loveboat cruiser. All my other characters have much better ships. Am I somehow less skillful flying one character over the other four?
The only flying skill involved in these sorts of games is flying tiny ships in dogfights with other tiny ships. The Scimitar does not fit this.
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 guy is right on the money. The most important skill is buying the right ship then setting it up right.
My Romulan tac is my weakest character by far. Why? She flies the Risian loveboat cruiser. All my other characters have much better ships. Am I somehow less skillful flying one character over the other four?
The only flying skill involved in these sorts of games is flying tiny ships in dogfights with other tiny ships. The Scimitar does not fit this.
Virusdancer made a post somewhere in this thread, with a theoretical numerical equation (as odd as it may sound) to demonstrate the importance of skill. I completely agree with it.
Doing an STF on advanced in a PUG is pretty much a guaranteed fail outside of crystalline or bug hunt.
The borg stfs are even fairly often fails on normal.
My ship is NOT impressive in any way. I have a Sarr Theln drain boat and right now I am at about 6-7K dps. However when I did the cure recently in a pug the highest other member didn't parse above 1K.
I just can't figure out how that happens. They where shooting stuff the whole time but even the default equipment their ship came with does better than that. How the heck do people end up with a ship where the dps is that bad?
What do they do and how can we help them? Also how do you help someone that is clearly no reading chat or responding to it in any way. What does cryptic have to do to help these people.
I wonder if some of these people would be happier if they had some default loadouts to choose. The community could make some default ship setups that are super cheap to build (<2M or so total) and just make them as selectable options for people. Then if the game notices that your dps is just utterly abysmal it can suggest using one of the loadouts.
Calling them noobs, yelling at them, swearing at them etc is obviously not a solution since while it may make you feel better it does not solve the problem at hand.
Do you know the technical support truism where asking the caller, regardless of what they say, is their computer plugged in, and is it turned on, solves about a third of all help calls? I have spent over 200 hours in game helping new players. Trust me when I say the answer is that basic.
They have power levels at default, meaning "balanced"
They have no weapons on auto fire
They have no doffs on active duty and/or none that help them
They have random consoles, including several "cannon" or "beam" tactical consoles instead of ones specific to their damage type
On my more cynical days, after helping three or four people in a row, i think, if cryptic made the default power setting for changing ships be full power to weapons, and defaulted all weapons to autofire, the average damage across the servers would double.
I can't imagine how painful it must be to level to the 40s or 50s using balanced power the whole time. And yet I've seen so many people who have done that.
Do you know the technical support truism where asking the caller, regardless of what they say, is their computer plugged in, and is it turned on, solves about a third of all help calls? I have spent over 200 hours in game helping new players. Trust me when I say the answer is that basic.
They have power levels at default, meaning "balanced"
They have no weapons on auto fire
They have no doffs on active duty and/or none that help them
They have random consoles, including several "cannon" or "beam" tactical consoles instead of ones specific to their damage type
On my more cynical days, after helping three or four people in a row, i think, if cryptic made the default power setting for changing ships be full power to weapons, and defaulted all weapons to autofire, the average damage across the servers would double.
I can't imagine how painful it must be to level to the 40s or 50s using balanced power the whole time. And yet I've seen so many people who have done that.
In one of Geko's podcasts, was early last year, during one of his talks about a skill revamp - part of it involved the number of folks that hadn't spent any skill points. Believe he also mentioned some of the things you did there as well as some other things their metrics showed that folks...well, just either didn't do or did do. That you've got skillpoints to spend thing became pretty "Look here, look here!"...oh well.
There really are some other basics though, that just really aren't covered in the least by some of the early gameplay to set the precedence. It really would great if the game did...cause folks aren't going to the forums to see about it, they're not checking out STOwiki, they're not hitting up reddit, or any source...and everything might seem normal for them until they hit up a queue and wonder why somebody's yelling at them.
Well.. honestly, I just avoid the Advanced and Elite STFs altogether. I play this game to have fun and those STFs are simply NOT fun. The only exception is Crystalline Catasrophe. I do advanced on that (there is no elite).
One thing that help tremendously is if, when an STF was over, you got an overview of your performance along with the other players so you knew where you stood. I'm not talking about JUST dps here either. Like how many objectives did you contribute towards, how may were earned by the team out of the maximum. Oh, many of the STFs say that the team earned X amount of marks or whatever but they never tell you what the maximum that could have been earned was. There just seems to be the assumption that everyone knows it. Well, everyone DOESN'T know and we should stop treating everyone who joins an STF as a expert in it. It would be even nicer to know what your success rate was with that particular STF.
This is the main reason I don't do most advanced or elite STFs, with the exception of doing them with my fleet. My fleet has Ventrilo, so before we decide to do an STF, we will often discuss who knows what about it. If possible, w will create a private instance and avoid the PUG aspect altogether. That way, if we fail, we aren't ruining someone else's game play experience.
A while back, I tried to do quite a few of the Elite STFs and did poorly at almost all of them and those that I did succeed at were long and drawn out. Certainly they weren't fun to do. I have lost track of the number of players who got angry because, even though I had said that I had not done this STF on elite before, they would get angry anyways because I was not thoroughly versed in absolutely EVERYTHING there was to know about that STF. It never ceases to amaze me how many ppl would simply bail the very instant someone said they had never done it on elite before.
Now, the vast majority of players just don't do most STFs on the normal level. If you want to try it at all, you have to try it on advanced or elite or simply not do it al all. Most players have little tolerance, if any, for players who are rookies/n00bs. Once upon a time we were ALL a rookie/n00b.
Now before you elitist powergamers go off... remember, not everyone can dedicate 8 hrs+ a day to play STO. And once most ppl fail at any given task three or more times, it is unlikely that they are going to go back for more of the same. No one likes failing. We all want to succeeed.
One thing that most certainly doesn't help, are the folks who seem to get their jollies by causing others to fail the STF. I am talking about the guy that seems to go straight to the one place or do the one thing that will cause it to fail almost as soon as they can. When you try to send them a tell asking what were they doing, you discover that you have already been put on ignore (or will be once they get done gloating and telling you how lame you are).
Doing an STF on advanced in a PUG is pretty much a guaranteed fail outside of crystalline or bug hunt.
I'm definitely starting to feel that...and...I can definitely see why folks might decide not to hit the public queues for some pug action rather than hit up their fleets or various channels.
It's uh 3:2 so far, with success:failure.
Infected Space [8:19] - Success
Player A: 8,528,438 (17,299)
Player B: 6,832,343 (14,058)
Player C: 6,284,114 (12,619)
Player 3,560,926 (7,327)
Player E: 3,487,826 (7,089)
Infected Space [6:55] - Success
Player A: 9,401,671 (22,655)
Player B: 7,367,666 (18,058)
Player C: 673,856 (16,120)
Player 3,467,994 (8,500)
Player E: 1,047,705 (2,581)
Infected Space [3:31] - Failure
Player A: 3,181,002 (15,076)
Player B: 729,745 (3,560)
Player C: 578,441 (2,864)
Player 492,199 (2,389)
Player E: 347,428 (1,687)
Infected Space [11:12] - Success
Player A: 12,933,343 (19,478)
Player B: 5,190,759 (7,771)
Player C: 4,140,924 (6,246)
Player 2,864,966 (4,270)
Player E: 2,572,318 (3,886)
Infected Space [10:37] - Failure
Player A: 8,353,987 (13,606)
Player B: 2,003,356 (3,236)
Player C: 1,838,563 (3,009)
Player 1,654,929 (2,810)
Player E: 1,134,926 (1,782)
And the reason for the two failures stands out like a sore thumb. With the various "solutions" offered to that particular problem, I can't help but feel personally that the token system would be the best way to go for the public queues.
You do X in a Normal, it gives you a token so you can run Advanced.
You do Y in Advanced, it gives you another token so you can run Advanced again.
You do Z in Advanced, it gives you a token so you can run Elite.
You do Z in Elite, it gives you another token so you can run Elite again.
Cause that first one, I was surprised. The second one was pretty nifty seeing those others in action. The third one and I didn't want to queue again. The fourth one was the most fun I've had in forever (not the almost breaking 20k with that goofy build, but the 857.7k healing and taking over 1m damage without dying, without anybody dying...that one was kind of exciting). That fifth one...well, yeah, I'm just not going to bother with it anymore.
There's just too much information available out there, written guides, build guides, discussions of mechanics, the various video guides, all the folks willing to answer questions...there's just too much information available, too much help available - for that kind of nonsense to take place.
But the folks that are going to make excuses are too busy making excuses or blaming anybody but themselves for what's going on...they're spending all their time on excuses and blaming everything else - not on trying to learn a damn thing. So TRIBBLE it.
I'm definitely starting to feel that...and...I can definitely see why folks might decide not to hit the public queues for some pug action rather than hit up their fleets or various channels.
It's uh 3:2 so far, with success:failure.
Infected Space [8:19] - Success
Player A: 8,528,438 (17,299)
Player B: 6,832,343 (14,058)
Player C: 6,284,114 (12,619)
Player 3,560,926 (7,327)
Player E: 3,487,826 (7,089)
Infected Space [6:55] - Success
Player A: 9,401,671 (22,655)
Player B: 7,367,666 (18,058)
Player C: 673,856 (16,120)
Player 3,467,994 (8,500)
Player E: 1,047,705 (2,581)
Infected Space [3:31] - Failure
Player A: 3,181,002 (15,076)
Player B: 729,745 (3,560)
Player C: 578,441 (2,864)
Player 492,199 (2,389)
Player E: 347,428 (1,687)
Infected Space [11:12] - Success
Player A: 12,933,343 (19,478)
Player B: 5,190,759 (7,771)
Player C: 4,140,924 (6,246)
Player 2,864,966 (4,270)
Player E: 2,572,318 (3,886)
Infected Space [10:37] - Failure
Player A: 8,353,987 (13,606)
Player B: 2,003,356 (3,236)
Player C: 1,838,563 (3,009)
Player 1,654,929 (2,810)
Player E: 1,134,926 (1,782)
And the reason for the two failures stands out like a sore thumb. With the various "solutions" offered to that particular problem, I can't help but feel personally that the token system would be the best way to go for the public queues.
You do X in a Normal, it gives you a token so you can run Advanced.
You do Y in Advanced, it gives you another token so you can run Advanced again.
You do Z in Advanced, it gives you a token so you can run Elite.
You do Z in Elite, it gives you another token so you can run Elite again.
Cause that first one, I was surprised. The second one was pretty nifty seeing those others in action. The third one and I didn't want to queue again. The fourth one was the most fun I've had in forever (not the almost breaking 20k with that goofy build, but the 857.7k healing and taking over 1m damage without dying, without anybody dying...that one was kind of exciting). That fifth one...well, yeah, I'm just not going to bother with it anymore.
There's just too much information available out there, written guides, build guides, discussions of mechanics, the various video guides, all the folks willing to answer questions...there's just too much information available, too much help available - for that kind of nonsense to take place.
But the folks that are going to make excuses are too busy making excuses or blaming anybody but themselves for what's going on...they're spending all their time on excuses and blaming everything else - not on trying to learn a damn thing. So TRIBBLE it.
I feel your pain. I've been testing out ISA PUGs, and I actually have left 2 of them in the past few weeks. Before that, I would finish it, regardless....but there's just flagrant, unapologetic leeching going on, and I think it's starting to get to me. Not the "normal" or "average" player. The only thing I see different in your results, is that I always, without fail, get at least one person under 2k DPS. Every time.
Nothing I can think of to weed out the leechers and the incompetents seems viable to me. After all, if there's a qualifying mission, one could just leech in that until they got past it. Going by DPS would make too many people mad. Doing the CCA thing is ridiculous, as you see people thinking they're making a huge contribution by coming in third, which you can basically do with auto heal drones.
I feel your pain. I've been testing out ISA PUGs, and I actually have left 2 of them in the past few weeks. Before that, I would finish it, regardless....but there's just flagrant, unapologetic leeching going on, and I think it's starting to get to me. Not the "normal" or "average" player. The only thing I see different in your results, is that I always, without fail, get at least one person under 2k DPS. Every time.
Nothing I can think of to weed out the leechers and the incompetents seems viable to me. After all, if there's a qualifying mission, one could just leech in that until they got past it. Going by DPS would make too many people mad. Doing the CCA thing is ridiculous, as you see people thinking they're making a huge contribution by coming in third, which you can basically do with auto heal drones.
The tokens I was talking about there were DPS tokens. You meet a threshold, you get a token. You don't, you don't. On the one hand, I hate the idea of making that about DPS - but the actual content requirements are so low compared to potential DPS, that it wouldn't be putting a focus on doing the most DPS but rather doing enough. And folks that want to roll healers/tanks, there's still no reason not to meet the content requirements there and still be able to try to do what you want...there is just so much overgearing and the rest available, that it's not an excuse.
That 4th run up there:
46.7% of damage done
49.6% of damage taken
54.8% of healing done (only player actually to heal anybody else)
I don't think it should be purely DPS. My current ship is a sar theln carrier and I am at 7K DPS right now. Once I get my frigates and complete a few other things I will hit 10K or so until I finish my upgrades.
However I am setup as a drain boat. I can make a tactical cube helpless. I can take an entire group of spheres and probes and shut them down in < 5 seconds. They will just sit there dead in space with no weapons, shields, propulsion etc.
I tried my same setup but used the romulan plasma weapons instead. Based on the parses my dps went up a fair bit BUT it also took me longer to kill every enemy also based on the parse. A good drain boat won't parse as high as a dps boat but it also does not need to. Once you have a group of enemies with stripped shields, weapons, propulsion they are ripped apart and once one pops you get a chain reaction of warp core explosions.
If we are going to do tokens to get to the next tier then I would like to see it based on something other than just dps. I just wish I knew how to really factor in other abilities. I don't want to just base it on time to completion since that would allow people to be carried trivially.
Maybe if there was a way to credit your dps to account for stripping shields and destroying ships using other ships warp core explosions.
I don't think it should be purely DPS. My current ship is a sar theln carrier and I am at 7K DPS right now. Once I get my frigates and complete a few other things I will hit 10K or so until I finish my upgrades.
But that's the thing...I doubt for Advanced it would even require 10k with what I'm talking about, and you're a good example of what I'm talking about. You're doing a drain build and you're still going to be hitting what is relatively a low number. The record when I last looked at the tables was 165k. All of us talking about our 7-15k or so builds, there are folks doing 40k, 60k, 80k, over 100k...165k.
I'm not talking about setting a threshold anywhere near any of that kind of damage. I'm talking about down here with us mortals, lol. But a threshold that would keep out those folks that are showing up for an ISA doing 1-3k DPS and the like.
First Run: 6363 DPS (outDPS'd 0 of the other players)
Second Run: 5191 DPS (outDPS'd 1 of the other players)
Third Run: 4391 DPS (outDPS'd the other 4 players)
Fourth Run: 6341 DPS (outDPS'd 3 of the other players)
Fifth Run: 4164 DPS (outDPS'd the other 4 players)
Most of those "Pets" aren't even doing 100 DPS...with a handful not even doing 200 DPS. They shouldn't be outDPSing players in an Advanced STF, eh?
I still say TRIBBLE folks with their personal requirements, if they want folks doing 20, 30, 50k or whatever...but the actual content requirements (Hell, they were nerfed) are so low compared to the potential out there, that setting low thresholds at or just below the content requirements wouldn't be that big of a deal, imho. And outside of internet/computer issues, drunken play, and the like...would prevent having four folks on the team with you where there is no chance for success unless you're not one of us mortals.
I'm not talking about setting a threshold anywhere near any of that kind of damage. I'm talking about down here with us mortals, lol. But a threshold that would keep out those folks that are showing up for an ISA doing 1-3k DPS and the like.
If the threshold was a 3K build or something like that I could fully support it. At some level your dps is so low it doesn't matter what other stuff you are doing since you just can't help.
I was completely shocked on one parse on a failed advanced STF that my aceton assimilators managed to do more damage than any of the other players did. I have NO idea how they did so badly since those things are NOT for damage.
The tokens I was talking about there were DPS tokens. You meet a threshold, you get a token. You don't, you don't. On the one hand, I hate the idea of making that about DPS - but the actual content requirements are so low compared to potential DPS, that it wouldn't be putting a focus on doing the most DPS but rather doing enough. And folks that want to roll healers/tanks, there's still no reason not to meet the content requirements there and still be able to try to do what you want...there is just so much overgearing and the rest available, that it's not an excuse.
That 4th run up there:
46.7% of damage done
49.6% of damage taken
54.8% of healing done (only player actually to heal anybody else)
The problem is- it doesn't matter if that's a good solution or not- people would freak out because of anything linked to DPS. That's like some sort of hot button for people who refuse to admit they aren't contributing.
"But I
1. Did crowd control! Because instead of killing a bunch of things, I moved them, so everyone else still had to kill them
2. Healed! Because all the time spent clicking everyone else, I could have taken out 20% of the things making everyone require healing instead, but didn't
3. Said encouraging words!"
Everything is set up to require more DPS, but people refuse to adapt. You can still heal/CC while you are doing decent damage, BTW, folks.
It's odd, because I went for a smoke to think about it...and...I realized that I was trying to DPS pad, even on the low level, to try to compensate for what folks might or might not be doing.
With those two failed ISA runs up there...
The first failed at the point it did because two of the five players did not fire on the Transformer. No, it was not a case that they were off handling the Nanite Spheres because of the guy that charged in and popped the first Gen early. It was obvious from the first engagement with the Cube and Spheres that it wasn't the kind of group that could do that. The guy that popped that first Gen was one of the two that never fired on the Trans. They were off fighting the normal Spheres instead. If those two had instead fired on the Trans as well, though it would have likely failed elsewhere down the line - it would not have failed at that point.
So if myself and the other two players that were firing on the Trans had more DPS, we could have compensated for the two off chasing butterflies. So for that particular failure, the "easier" thought process would be to pad/buffer the DPS to cover for such things than to expect people not to wander around daydreaming.
The second failure was a bit more complicated. The initial engagement once again showed exactly how the group was going to progress. Nobody popped anything early though on the left side, so everything eventually got done and we moved to the right side. Where one of the guys proceeded to pop the first Gen before half the team was even halfway to the right side. Okay then, the three guys right there could have done something about the Nanites, right? Nope, two of them died while the third continued on. Two Gens down, one almost down, and the fourth untouched...I charge over to grab the Nanites and pull them with me away, so I that can try to zip back on over there. Course, they dropped the other Gen, and then proceeded to ignore the fourth while chasing the Spheres and ignoring that one Nanite that managed to get ahead of me on the way back.
So the thought being, if everybody had more DPS - then I might have done a better job tackling all of the Nanites to cover for it. They might have popped the butterflies sooner and then taken out the Gen to get in on the Trans. That maybe they would have killed stuff faster and not died as much (one guy died 3 times, one 4 times, and a third had a single death).
So yeah, in the end, looking at a DPS threshold...well...it's really just looking to DPS as a crutch for really bad play, folks going into the content without a clue or just showing up to leech. Looking at a DPS solution is really just looking at trying to cover for that kind of nonsense...meh.
The only real solution then would be just to avoid the public queues...
It's odd, because I went for a smoke to think about it...and...I realized that I was trying to DPS pad, even on the low level, to try to compensate for what folks might or might not be doing.
With those two failed ISA runs up there...
The first failed at the point it did because two of the five players did not fire on the Transformer. No, it was not a case that they were off handling the Nanite Spheres because of the guy that charged in and popped the first Gen early. It was obvious from the first engagement with the Cube and Spheres that it wasn't the kind of group that could do that. The guy that popped that first Gen was one of the two that never fired on the Trans. They were off fighting the normal Spheres instead. If those two had instead fired on the Trans as well, though it would have likely failed elsewhere down the line - it would not have failed at that point.
So if myself and the other two players that were firing on the Trans had more DPS, we could have compensated for the two off chasing butterflies. So for that particular failure, the "easier" thought process would be to pad/buffer the DPS to cover for such things than to expect people not to wander around daydreaming.
The second failure was a bit more complicated. The initial engagement once again showed exactly how the group was going to progress. Nobody popped anything early though on the left side, so everything eventually got done and we moved to the right side. Where one of the guys proceeded to pop the first Gen before half the team was even halfway to the right side. Okay then, the three guys right there could have done something about the Nanites, right? Nope, two of them died while the third continued on. Two Gens down, one almost down, and the fourth untouched...I charge over to grab the Nanites and pull them with me away, so I that can try to zip back on over there. Course, they dropped the other Gen, and then proceeded to ignore the fourth while chasing the Spheres and ignoring that one Nanite that managed to get ahead of me on the way back.
So the thought being, if everybody had more DPS - then I might have done a better job tackling all of the Nanites to cover for it. They might have popped the butterflies sooner and then taken out the Gen to get in on the Trans. That maybe they would have killed stuff faster and not died as much (one guy died 3 times, one 4 times, and a third had a single death).
So yeah, in the end, looking at a DPS threshold...well...it's really just looking to DPS as a crutch for really bad play, folks going into the content without a clue or just showing up to leech. Looking at a DPS solution is really just looking at trying to cover for that kind of nonsense...meh.
The only real solution then would be just to avoid the public queues...
Another thing people don't think about is that if you have 1 person doing over 20k DPS (or even 15K), and 4 people doing under 5k DPS, not only is that 20k DPS person doing most of the work, but they're getting most of the aggro- which means everyone else is, in effect, REVERSE healing them.
The threat I generate (at over 20k DPS)in PUGs is ridiculous. There are times I blow up 3 times, because everything is shooting at me. This is always reinforced when I look at the parse from the run- my damage in and self heals are through the roof, while everyone else would have to try to blow up.
The only thing I can think of that would help, is a solo mission, "Taking the steps to Elite" or something. Where you can only play solo, and you can't play Advanced or higher content unless you've passed some threshold within the mission. But, linking that to DPS would cheese too many people off, and I can't think of a better qualifier.
I seriously can't think of a solution to someone doing under 2k DPS. They KNOW they have no business in these things. I consider it griefing/trolling if you're doing that little.
Measuring contribution is going to be almost impossible without human intervention. Folks would generally try to find a way to game any system in place - it's amazing how much energy folks will put into trying to get around something rather than just doing it.
There are all sorts of various roles that one can take up, and all sorts of things folks could potentially do to contribute to an instance. For the most part, none of the content is designed for any of that to matter.
The damage potential from players is so high in the game compared to any threat that the NPCs provide, that brute force is the natural evolution of things. The game itself is designed in such a fashion that so many of the things players might think about simply do not matter.
Each ship is Tank, Heals, and DPS. Not talking about the MMO Trinity and all of its fake threat nonsense. Just talking about the basic taking damage, avoiding damage, healing damage, and doing damage. It's all there.
Before going any further, let's stop for a moment and consider that healing damage aspect. Talking about Space? Healing? What the Hell's going on there? Why is that even a thing? Repairing critical systems, boosting a failing structural integrity, widening shields so they're covering an ally...sure. Waving that magic wand? Lolwut? Why is that even a thing?
But anyway, so we get back over to us vs. the NPCs, eh? Why drain a target when that target can be obliterated in a few seconds? Why are NPCs so weak compared to us? Almost everything, including "bosses"...they're all just a bunch of trashmobs there for the slaughter.
Imagine how boring the shows/movies would have been if it was like that week in and week out? "Join us next week as the crew of the Enterprise shoot blue fish in a barrel instead of yellow fish in a barrel!"
If we weren't slaughtering NPCs by the millions, then we might just open up some of those other roles without making anything a requirement, eh?
Imagine an ISA where the first engagement is against a single Cube that's tougher than the everything there combined, eh? Go left to face a Sphere that's tougher than everything there combined - have a few Probes come that are tougher than all those Nanite Spheres/Spheres...go right, then go back to deal with that Tac Cube while you try to destroy the Gate before anything else can come through.
Something other than the lob the grenades in this barrel, go over there lob grenades in that barrel, go over there lob grenades in that barrel, and finish it off by lobbing grenades in one last barrel...wheeeeeee, did everybody have fun?
I keep thinking about stuff like SB24, where you have to blow up 70 ships but you usually blow up over a hundred ships. You can solo that, zipping through it...huhwhat?
The game, from the ground up...is not designed for endgame. I'm tired of typing in this post, so I'm going to stop now...
They should just remove Advanced and Elite queues as well as PvP.
Comments
Think about how much those [CrtD]x3 weapons or the VR Mk XII Tac Consoles would go for on the Exchange...how many keys and the like folks would sell...where they were getting that Zen from, whether farming Dil or Visa/MasterCard...eh? Still, folks were shelling out the Dil for their Deflectors/Engines/Shields and then Cores, eh?
Don't get me wrong, I don't think folks were as spoiled as they were spoiled...ie...Cryptic set up all those expectations. Definitely can see Cryptic at the root of the issue, a bunch of them.
Folks say STO was more Alt-Friendly. Was it really more Alt-Friendly or was it more Alt-Needy? I was up to 14 toons at one point and looking at more...because I didn't have enough to do for just a couple of toons. If I didn't have all the alts, then I likely would have quit playing with nothing to do. Bunch of folks had quit because of not really having anything to do. Hell, it's one of the reasons I ended up spending so much time in Ker'rat...it was something to do. I'm not into playing Barbie 'n Ken dress up the Star Trek Experience or ERPing or trying find some haven from the misery of my day (other than blowing stuff up and going wheeeee). Hell, it's one of the reasons I used to reroll all my toons once or twice a year if not more...there just really wasn't anything to do otherwise. Lol, I didn't get this post count from having too much to do in the game...meh.
Different folks will feel differently about different things obviously, and just because I saw it one way doesn't mean that was the way...it's just how I started to feel about it.
So regardless of it was Alt-Friendly or Alt-Needy, in the end it was still Alt-Friendly...so folks that could easily gear oodles upon oodles of toons (never stopping to wonder if that might not have been a problem) are faced with a bit of an issue with how long it might take to gear all those toons now, eh? So from my point of view, those folks are complaining about there being too much to do in the game rather than when there wasn't enough to do which allowed them to create their oodles and oodles of alts, eh? Kind of like folks arguing for an increase in the Dil cap are telling Cryptic that they're making too much Dil...meh.
Then there's stuff like ISE. ISE where you've got a 15 minute optional, meaning that really good groups should be able to meet that optional while not so good groups would fail to meet that optional...where the 15 minutes didn't even start until after the initial encounter was complete...became something that took 3-5 minutes total for an average PUG hitting it up...a bad group might take 7-8 minutes.
Different folks will feel differently about different things obviously, and just because I saw it one way doesn't mean that was the way...it's just how I started to feel about it.
To me, that stood out like a sore thumb...it was broken. That should have been fixed. Others, well - the expectation set in that's how it's supposed to be...expectations and entitlements...and well, we all saw what happened with The Breach and Storming the Spire when they tried to lengthen how long the new content would take without first having addressed the old content's issues, eh? So yeah, there's a bunch of complaints about various things taking too long.
There's complaints going on about the space queues being relatively empty, eh? I think this was the thread I posted in earlier asking what point did anybody have to run the queues outside of perhaps actually wanting to...since everything but BNPs are faster/easier to get elsewhere. There were all the complaints about folks not wanting to play with others in a MMO and Cryptic addressed them...tada...empty queues, eh?
Different folks will feel differently about different things obviously, and just because I saw it one way doesn't mean that was the way...it's just how I started to feel about it.
Every Winter and Summer, we get the threads complaining about the grind for the ships. Yep, a few minutes a day is a massive grind. Cryptic even went through and added discounts (yeah, they're broken right now). Folks still complain. There's a thread where folks are complaining about the upcoming Anniversary again and what a grind that will be.
Different folks will feel differently about different things obviously, and just because I saw it one way doesn't mean that was the way...it's just how I started to feel about it.
So when one gets into the discussion about why folks are hitting up queues they might not be ready for...well, yeah...obviously they're entitled to all the rewards and the Hell if they should be expected to do anything to get them.
It's the attitude that Cryptic continued to foster...and folks that live their life that way flocked to the game. Folks that weren't like that before, started to become like that.
Different folks will feel differently about different things obviously, and just because I saw it one way doesn't mean that was the way...it's just how I started to feel about it.
Things have gotten cheaper?!?!? Cryptic would be sad to hear you say that seeing DR was all about making things more expensive and much harder to get without spending money in order to make a better profit.
If a newer, casual player wants a rep set at 34k a pop and every source of dil except a few getting nerfed, I think MANY of them would beg to disagree.
I have had so many groups fail and nobody would respond to any kind of communication.
I was in a group just recently where 4 team members decided to protect the Kang. They would not respond to anything, they would not move anywhere else they just flew around it shooting stuff. What is worse is that not one of them healed it and they had lower DPS than my aceton emitter managed to get.
I managed to take out two of the cubes before the kang ended up below 75% and mission failure and we would have failed anyways by running out of time.
However no matter how many times I asked politely for someone to heal the Kang they just kept circling around it shooting at stuff with not one response ever.
You see the same kind of issue in Borg disconnected. The more DPS you do the harder that mission gets and the harder it is to get the optional objectives. However that does not change people doing just that and sometimes screaming at you if you don't do that.
We have a punch of people that just go in and pew pew pew and don't talk EVER, don't respond EVER and don't listen to any kind of instructions for helping the mission along.
It is sad that this has been the case in STO for a very long time and I just can't figure out why it happened. I cant think of any other MMO I have ever played (eq1, eq2, dcuo, ac, ac2, etc etc) where that been the case. I wish I knew a way to fix it but i don't see one.
Sure. The problem now, is...you used to spend the dilithium for your "endgame" stuff, and then you had it. Now, you spend the dilithium for the stuff, and- it's not endgame stuff. So you spend dilithium for upgrades. Then the upgrades are time gated. Then there are 2 rarity levels even after upgrading to MK XIV. And trying to upgrade rarity is plain gambling, with a far better chance you will just throw your dilithium away.
Whether or not it is necessary to do so isn't the point- the point is, in order to have the top-tiered item, after the initial purchase, you now have many steps, timegates, and gambling for the same result.
In theory, the upgrade system was a great idea, IMO. Great, until it turned into an over-the-top greedy money grab.
There is a lot of that. For one, the STFs were just plain silly easy. Usually, endgame content isn't a 2-10 minute thing. Even now, what is in place shouldn't even be considered endgame, as it's really not that hard or involved.
I liked that you could try different things on different characters, and it wasn't a complete chore to do so. Now, I have stop bothering playing around with my alts, for the most part. All I think about is that it will cost hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dilithium to finish the builds with which I'd like to experiment. Of course, that's me and "my fun." Others would disagree.
I can't speak for everyone, but it isn't "too much to do" for me. It's "too much doing the same boring thing repeatedly." I honestly get tired of ISA sometimes, frankly.
I still don't think they should've nerfed (the new) ISA. The same people failing it because they are awful are still failing it because they're awful. The borderline person can't carry the awful ones. All it did is make it so the ones with no problems with it could more easily carry the leechers.
I think the complaints are that they're too long, when considering the rewards offered. And, if it takes longer, that's OK, but it seems that the longer they make things, the more tedious they are. Not challenging, just tedious.
You're right. Now that the rewards aren't an incentive, why do the things people don't find fun? There seems to be an overabundance of grindy tedium, and a severe lack of "Wow, that was fun. I want to do it again." It doesn't help that, as I stated above, most are sticking to the same character, instead of "I want to try it with x next time."
You have to consider the context. If people are logging in, setting time gates for however many reps they are doing, DOFFs, upgrades, fleet projects, etc.- one more small one turns into "I'm getting tired of this." The time gates themselves are getting to be a bit much- yet they keep adding more as "content." Why not just a special 5 part queued mission where you have to earn parts of x reward?
I do agree that there are a ridiculous amount of people who want all of the rewards, and they have no problem leeching off of someone else to get them. Someone doing 2k DPS or less in an ISA knows they don't belong in anything called Advanced or Elite. It's one thing to say "I play how I want," and another to say "I'm going to just let random people do it for me, and profit." I mean, why are they playing a game, if they aren't playing the game?
The borg stfs are even fairly often fails on normal.
My ship is NOT impressive in any way. I have a Sarr Theln drain boat and right now I am at about 6-7K dps. However when I did the cure recently in a pug the highest other member didn't parse above 1K.
I just can't figure out how that happens. They where shooting stuff the whole time but even the default equipment their ship came with does better than that. How the heck do people end up with a ship where the dps is that bad?
What do they do and how can we help them? Also how do you help someone that is clearly no reading chat or responding to it in any way. What does cryptic have to do to help these people.
I wonder if some of these people would be happier if they had some default loadouts to choose. The community could make some default ship setups that are super cheap to build (<2M or so total) and just make them as selectable options for people. Then if the game notices that your dps is just utterly abysmal it can suggest using one of the loadouts.
Calling them noobs, yelling at them, swearing at them etc is obviously not a solution since while it may make you feel better it does not solve the problem at hand.
Remove the Mk XIII/XIV stuff. Remove Epic. What changes? Nothing changes. Because the VR/UR Mk XII stuff which was so much overkill for what we had is still overkill for what we have.
Perhaps with the next expansion or the one after that...the Mk XIII/XIV stuff will actually be endgame stuff.
I mean, really - Epic for weapons adds +5% Damage Strength and a mod that adds another +5% Damage Strength and +10% Accuracy...with a heinous RNG chance of it ever getting it. It's like buying silk napkins for the ice cream cones you're going to give the kids at little league.
It's such superfluous superficial optional stuff that's just there so that as folks go along they might have something to do until the next thing comes along...yet folks are treating it like they need it yesterday.
And that's without even upgrading any of the gear.
You really need to G14 everything to test things? Or is it pretty much the same thing it was before...where things might even be cheaper and faster than they were. Where if there's something you like, you've got the time, and the spare resources that you'd look at hitting Mk XIV on it or even just with nothing to do or to spend stuff on otherwise that you'd G14 stuff?
Which is one of the other things that was kind of treated as a new complaint with DR...as if the game had suddenly became a case of just doing the same thing over and over again. That's how the game was. Folks talk about everybody stuck at Argala. Why? Is it the most efficient means to get SP? For some it might be, for others it wouldn't be. Folks don't even bother looking around. Then there's the question of why the rush to do it? Just what is not having all 60 points holding them back from doing? They're choosing to do the same thing over and over again...then complaining about it.
Which goes back to creating hordes of alts...to do the same thing over and over again...and then complain about it?
It's a game...not a job. We can play it like a game or make it a job...
And some folks out there...don't want to hear that. Course, if they'd left the Advanced stuff the way it was or made it tougher and then took the Elite from there...then the endgame would have possibly actually shifted. Which in turn might have started justifying those complaints about costs to upgrade. That they did nerf the content...well...
This is a game, where all jokes aside, folks literally did get lost in Exploration Clusters.
That's a player choice though. Hell, I've already been fighting the urge to start up on the alts again...I've fought off creating additional Sci from just doing respecs on the one guy, it's actually cheaper. And again, do you need a G14 build to try it with x next time? And even if you do want to do that...what's stopping somebody from doing that? No, they won't have it yesterday...it might take time, but what's the rush?
That removes choice. Just because there are a dozen things out there one can do, doesn't mean you have to do that dozen things. If somebody wants to do that, they're choosing to do that. If you made it a case that folks had to do something, that's removed the choice.
But how many folks are doing that besides just those folks you mention? How many folks are turning it into a chore and then complaining that it's a chore? It's a game...it's entertainment...maybe because I'm not an "achiever" in games, I just play games.
My Bartle...
Explorer 87%
Killer 73%
Achiever 33%
Socializer 7%
...kind of matches what my STO experience has been like. Exploring all the mechanics that I can for a greater understanding of what's going on. PvP. Having argued for folks enjoying average DPS since it was all that was actually needed - just having fun. Cringing at a bunch of what I see going on in the game...lol.
Edit: I wanted to add another random thought, but I didn't want to add another post - so I'm just going to drop it at the end here:
It's like some of the complaints about how long it takes to upgrade things and spending Dil to finish it off. Last night before going to bed, I upgraded three pieces. This morning, yeah, they're finished. There was no need to hit any finish now. Going to upgrade stuff but still want it for when you're playing? How about upgrading at the end of your play session instead of trying to do it at the start? Some of the complaints out there are just so mind-boggling, like they couldn't select from the countless list of actual problems out there and had to start making TRIBBLE up.
ISA Run#1: http://i.imgur.com/qWQYLzt.png
Player A(me): http://i.imgur.com/Z6hRBrD.png
Player B: http://i.imgur.com/ozA9VGh.png
Player C: http://i.imgur.com/lU4q7dI.png
Player
Player E: http://i.imgur.com/AhfSySY.png
ISA Run#2: http://i.imgur.com/72pxDDJ.png
Player A: http://i.imgur.com/WL9uFlo.png
Player B: http://i.imgur.com/GxnzTyd.png
Player C(me): http://i.imgur.com/Zxmldkd.png
Player
Player E: http://i.imgur.com/TFWcJCT.png
Build for Run#1: http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/index.php?build=sarrwheee2_5343
Build for Run#2: http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/index.php?build=sarrwheee3_5343
Upgraded two of the Polaron Arrays to Mk XIII from Mk XII, upgraded one from Mk XI to Mk XIII, upgraded the Thoron from Mk XII to Mk XIII, and upgraded the two Locators from Mk XII to Mk XIV.
The builds are pretty much fail builds - there's some stuff that might be expected - but there's all sorts of failgasm going on. [Acc]x2[Over] weapons instead of [CrtD]x3. Sci instead of Tac. Not using FAW. Aceton in a Tac slot. That CrtH%. Etc, etc, etc...you can compare it to the various builds that have been posted from folks actually doing all sorts of nifty DPS to see the failgasm that my build is. Like I said earlier, it's a hodgepodge of various different tests that I was running and not any kind of coherent build. It's a bad build...don't do it. But even that bad build is doing what it is doing. Folks with a halfway decent build by comparison should be bottoming that build on the parse.
So like I said, lol by no means any sort of boasting...just a huh? A huh as in why folks that likely have better builds aren't doing as well. I'm a TRIBBLE pilot too. So it's not some mad skill where I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be each and every moment, where I'm even hitting the goofball abilities right when I'm supposed to be hitting them...I'm all over the place, I'm spacebaring, I'm fat fingering, I'm lagging out from own damn pets because I play on a toaster, etc, etc, etc.
So it's a huh...that belief that most if not all folks should be wiping the floor with me...but it not being the case.
Outside of the folks leeching or running some protest boat...I just have a difficult time with it at times...that huh? bit.
My biggest complaint is I like torpedos and cannons (not turrets but cannons) but in order to achieve the high dps needed to compensate in pugs (not something I had to do in the past) I am forced towards those aoe type builds.
I have or am adjusting and just tossed my cannons and most torpedoes and am slowly rebuilding my ships but I enjoyed torpedoes especially. Anyhow the rest is possibly as I mentioned above improper button mashing and not being in a good position (and maybe doffs i can't compete with doffs the reality is that I have only been back in this game since about october and I have only doffs that well are available and some doffs used are collectors items and no longer available in the game.)
Oh on your build *cough* I would have chosen beam overload with all those beams as a tactical skill but you were just playing around but I noticed that
re: the complaints about speed we live in an instant culture so that is the complaints. Me I have complaints but one of them isn't revolving around the speed or even cost of upgrading because its all about time and you dont need to spend a dime to achieve good results and.. I am a patient person lol. Its hard to take some of the complaints on this forum seriously because the time gates are not particularly even noticeable and mesh into the game in a convenient way so that with a little planning you dont even notice them.
I didn't, for the most part. There is only 1 Advanced queue I feel comfortable running, Crystalline Catastrophe. For a long while after I came back to the game a little over 2 years ago, I didn't run ANY of the queue content as I wanted to actually get the feel for the game and not be a hindrance on a team. I slowly started working on several of the queues, but only on normal and none of them were the Borg queues.
Now with the revamp on how the queues work, I can't get any experience with the missions because 'no one' is playing them. I have a mindset that I want to learn to play at my own pace and actually get good at it before upping the difficulty. Since 'no one' is playing the Normal queues and even a lot of the Advanced queues are sitting empty, it looks like I won't be getting any experience.
I belong to a great fleet and they have always been willing to take newbs through new stuff to help them learn. I just never took them up on it due to poor timing on my part. I think like a lot of players, my fleet tends to be active more in the evening, but I'm more active in the morning and early afternoon. I'm never on "after dinner", so as a result while I do see fleet mates on when I do play, it's just not enough to get a team of 5 together to run stuff.
Now, add in that I won't play the crafting/upgrade game and most of the rep gear is locked out for me, I don't have good enough gear to even attempt the Advanced queues. If somewhere down the road they allow us to pick what mods we want, then perhaps I may shift my thoughts on trying Advanced. Since I don't see them ever doing that, I don't see myself playing Advanced. Ever.
It used to be, before the revamp, people would say you could run the Elite STF's with white Mk X gear and do just fine, *IF* you knew what you were doing and had the skill to back that up. Now since the revamp, people who perhaps played the old Elite that way are getting their rear ends handed to them even though "new Advanced is basically old Elite". Well, enough time has passed and we know that's all BS.
Add in how Cryptic cut the rewards for queues and yeah, players don't want to bother. Even with the 50% reward increase they added a few weeks after DR went live, we still make 25% less for content that takes longer and is more difficult to do than prior to DR. The new risk does not equal the new rewards.
Oh well, I'll keep playing the game and getting what enjoyment I can out of it. While I would like to someday learn to do all the queue content, if it doesn't happen, so be it. I'll find fun things to do elsewhere, if needed.
Losing faith in humanity, one person at a time.
I wonder about that. Back in the ISE days when I'd hit it up in a cloaked T'varo and basically just did burst, wait, burst, wait - I had more time to spend watching folks around me than I did with those runs where it was that mix of wtf did I just do, why am I over here instead of over there, and just all that focus on trying not to TRIBBLE everything up. But yeah, there is that at range or just out of combat thing, eh?
Hell, consider the different ways folks might just start off the run...
Full throttle into the Borg with low power.
Full throttle with Evasive into the Borg.
Quarter throttle will eventually get inside 10km.
Charging off alone vs. waiting for the group, knowing it doesn't start until it starts - when they're not in the position to have been able to solo it.
Dragging stuff off to the right as if they're going to be going right when they're still going to be going left.
Burning Evasive to chase stuff off to the right somebody's dragged off to the right.
I keep mentioning the Evasive there, cause when folks are ready to go left it will help them get going that way while still in combat...without it, they're just snailing their way on over.
How many of those folks that burned their Evasive initially have gone far left, so they burn their second Evasive getting back to the Nanites...leaving them to waddle on over to the right. How many go far right and have to waddle back over to the Nanites? How many go far back on the Gate and have to waddle over to the Cube? Heck, how many folks have kited the Cube off away from folks?
Yeah, I guess in talking about positioning - it's more about fine positioning...rather than the basic stuff that's kind of taken for granted at this point. Thinking about the adjusting the positioning based on what other folks are doing. In that second run, I didn't adjust my positioning based on what the others were doing and it cost me DPS. But that's adjusted/fine tuning...and not just the basics. So yeah, folks that are off chasing butterflies or enjoying the weather and not doing anything, that's going to reflect in their DPS.
There's also going to be stuff like what the Infected walkthrough on STOwiki still tells folks...
"Destroy the Gate. You can do so safely from 9km+ out from it."
So not only are folks who follow that looking at only doing 40% of their damage with cannons or 60% with beams, they're also likely to end up having themselves out in the parking lot while everybody else is playing the game.
So part of it will be where they get their information from. Somebody earlier mentioned it would be nifty if there were walkthroughs and guides, etc, etc, etc...and those DPS League folks have got that stuff. They've got the stuff over on reddit, they've got the videos, they post here, and they've even run folks through things to help them with their builds and piloting. So the information is there...but then there's also going to be the stuff like STOwiki, if somebody doesn't know about the other stuff...and well, yeah...meh.
Which kind of gets into that discussion of the complaints about being forced into things and...well, if folks didn't have that feeling that needed that protective buffer to cover for somebody that perhaps needs some help before they showed up for the content; then outside of the folks looking to do speed runs or high DPS runs...well, everybody else could run all sorts of things, eh?
Sure, as one works their way up the spectrum...builds are going to get limited. But down at the content's actual requirements, there are countless things folks can do. But that some folks show up unprepared to meet those, sometimes woefully unprepared, and folks feeling the need to change their builds to provide that padding...meh, if folks would just show up prepared, eh? Which tends to be viewed as an elitist comment for some insane reason. Do folks show up to play football with their friends with a bat and glove? Do they take rifles to go fishing and rods to go hunting? Do they wear coats in the midst of summer and shorts in the midst of winter? The content's got requirements...meet them...it's that simple. If somebody's complaining about everybody not doing 30k+ for an ISA...make fun of them. Who cares about their personal requirements? They can go hit up a channel run. But if the content's got requirements...then meet them. It's your turn for the carpool, do you grab your bike out of the garage? (Note, the "you" etc isn't directed at you...they're just the general "you" thing where I used "you" instead of one, he, she, etc, etc, etc.)
Think of all the fun that could be had by all if folks simply did that...instead of showing up and hoping to be carried because they want some reward, eh?
Neither the Romulan nor Nukara gear requires any special items. Neither the Dyson nor Voth gear requires you do any queues to get the special items. With Omega and Delta gear, yeah, you're looking at the BNPs and APCs...but some folks are just getting those from the Daily boxes without having to hit any of the queues for them.
in STO you have
the players Skill at using their ship is the only thing that equals skill, everything else I list is NOT skill in itself but a avantage that can be purchased with money or selection or grinding
Damage and defense accolaydes
The ship
The Gear in the ship/ weapons consoles space set ect
The ship traits like built in battlecloaking/flanking/use of DHCs ect
the players traits
The players racial traits
The Bridge officers
The duty officers
If you put a team of players together in the same ships same race same gear..........then you would have a test of skill
right now its a test of skill at putting all of this together not actually using it against equals
my romulan character is no more skilled in my hands than my fed character but can do double the dps
My romulan isn't more skillfull it just has better advantages
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
LOL I don't have any Epic weapons on any of my alts. I did randomly get upgrades on...2 consoles? And UR upgrades on.....4 I think. Upgrading (or trying to upgrade) to Epic seems like the biggest waste to me. I find the whole "spend your dilithium for a -chance- at upgrading" a ripoff, honestly. But, I'm not a fan of gambling anyway, so that may just be me. The buying and/or upgrading isn't "something to do" for me, it's a means to an end. A speed bump. Like going to the store when I'm hungry.
I do like testing with MK XII, but, say I want to go further and upgrade, or commit my build to what I have- that's where the hundreds of thousands of dilithium comes in. And waiting. Sure, it's no big deal to do it before you log off. But isn't that a workaround to a timegate that really is unnecessary? Again, it's not that there is a cost. It's that there is a cost, plus another cost, plus time gates, with gambling added into it. So, a system that could have been great, is something tedious, and time consuming. Even ship upgrades- I honestly like the idea of being able to upgrade a ship. But, then there are the restrictions- an upgrade system for any T5 or mirror ship would have been fantastic, IMO.
Timegates on rep system, cooldowns on queues, fleet projects, crafting, so many things. Sometimes it just seems a bit silly to me, I dunno. Instead of more content, they seem to put timers and artificial time inflators on things. Honestly, why put timers on so many things? It could just be me, but I find it odd.
A lot of people have played other games, and there are artificial things put into games that take up time, while you aren't doing anything. Things like silly amounts of travel time, or timegated content. It's generally known as a crutch, at best.
The [finish now] buttons are obvious. "You don't want to wait, pay." But timers on queues? I can only assume that it's meant to be a deterrent for what is going on now- which is just ignoring the more tedious or annoying ones. Instead, it's incentive to play what you want, and log off. Or just wait.
There seems to be a lot of "put a band aid on that head wound, and send them home," instead of "let's fix that head wound." I don't know that it will change, but I'd say that it's unlikely. That doesn't mean that people are going to like "content" that has time gates longer than the actual thing you're doing.
I honestly understand that money needs to be made. But all of these systems seem to be trying to wring every penny they can from a concept- and it's so flagrantly obvious, that one can't help but think about it at some point. I think, were it toned down, many of these additions would be great, as they seem (to me) to be great ideas, in theory. I think it may not be one of these things, or two, but some combination of all of it that makes people cringe, and may make people rationalize leeching in STFs, to get rewards. Not that I think it's right, mind you.
This guy is right on the money. The most important skill is buying the right ship then setting it up right.
My Romulan tac is my weakest character by far. Why? She flies the Risian loveboat cruiser. All my other characters have much better ships. Am I somehow less skillful flying one character over the other four?
The only flying skill involved in these sorts of games is flying tiny ships in dogfights with other tiny ships. The Scimitar does not fit this.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Virusdancer made a post somewhere in this thread, with a theoretical numerical equation (as odd as it may sound) to demonstrate the importance of skill. I completely agree with it.
Do you know the technical support truism where asking the caller, regardless of what they say, is their computer plugged in, and is it turned on, solves about a third of all help calls? I have spent over 200 hours in game helping new players. Trust me when I say the answer is that basic.
They have power levels at default, meaning "balanced"
They have no weapons on auto fire
They have no doffs on active duty and/or none that help them
They have random consoles, including several "cannon" or "beam" tactical consoles instead of ones specific to their damage type
On my more cynical days, after helping three or four people in a row, i think, if cryptic made the default power setting for changing ships be full power to weapons, and defaulted all weapons to autofire, the average damage across the servers would double.
I can't imagine how painful it must be to level to the 40s or 50s using balanced power the whole time. And yet I've seen so many people who have done that.
In one of Geko's podcasts, was early last year, during one of his talks about a skill revamp - part of it involved the number of folks that hadn't spent any skill points. Believe he also mentioned some of the things you did there as well as some other things their metrics showed that folks...well, just either didn't do or did do. That you've got skillpoints to spend thing became pretty "Look here, look here!"...oh well.
There really are some other basics though, that just really aren't covered in the least by some of the early gameplay to set the precedence. It really would great if the game did...cause folks aren't going to the forums to see about it, they're not checking out STOwiki, they're not hitting up reddit, or any source...and everything might seem normal for them until they hit up a queue and wonder why somebody's yelling at them.
Take back your home,end the grind!
Volunteer moderators policing the forums is like a mall cop trying to solve a murder.
One thing that help tremendously is if, when an STF was over, you got an overview of your performance along with the other players so you knew where you stood. I'm not talking about JUST dps here either. Like how many objectives did you contribute towards, how may were earned by the team out of the maximum. Oh, many of the STFs say that the team earned X amount of marks or whatever but they never tell you what the maximum that could have been earned was. There just seems to be the assumption that everyone knows it. Well, everyone DOESN'T know and we should stop treating everyone who joins an STF as a expert in it. It would be even nicer to know what your success rate was with that particular STF.
This is the main reason I don't do most advanced or elite STFs, with the exception of doing them with my fleet. My fleet has Ventrilo, so before we decide to do an STF, we will often discuss who knows what about it. If possible, w will create a private instance and avoid the PUG aspect altogether. That way, if we fail, we aren't ruining someone else's game play experience.
A while back, I tried to do quite a few of the Elite STFs and did poorly at almost all of them and those that I did succeed at were long and drawn out. Certainly they weren't fun to do. I have lost track of the number of players who got angry because, even though I had said that I had not done this STF on elite before, they would get angry anyways because I was not thoroughly versed in absolutely EVERYTHING there was to know about that STF. It never ceases to amaze me how many ppl would simply bail the very instant someone said they had never done it on elite before.
Now, the vast majority of players just don't do most STFs on the normal level. If you want to try it at all, you have to try it on advanced or elite or simply not do it al all. Most players have little tolerance, if any, for players who are rookies/n00bs. Once upon a time we were ALL a rookie/n00b.
Now before you elitist powergamers go off... remember, not everyone can dedicate 8 hrs+ a day to play STO. And once most ppl fail at any given task three or more times, it is unlikely that they are going to go back for more of the same. No one likes failing. We all want to succeeed.
One thing that most certainly doesn't help, are the folks who seem to get their jollies by causing others to fail the STF. I am talking about the guy that seems to go straight to the one place or do the one thing that will cause it to fail almost as soon as they can. When you try to send them a tell asking what were they doing, you discover that you have already been put on ignore (or will be once they get done gloating and telling you how lame you are).
I'm definitely starting to feel that...and...I can definitely see why folks might decide not to hit the public queues for some pug action rather than hit up their fleets or various channels.
It's uh 3:2 so far, with success:failure.
Infected Space [8:19] - Success
Player A: 8,528,438 (17,299)
Player B: 6,832,343 (14,058)
Player C: 6,284,114 (12,619)
Player
Player E: 3,487,826 (7,089)
Infected Space [6:55] - Success
Player A: 9,401,671 (22,655)
Player B: 7,367,666 (18,058)
Player C: 673,856 (16,120)
Player
Player E: 1,047,705 (2,581)
Infected Space [3:31] - Failure
Player A: 3,181,002 (15,076)
Player B: 729,745 (3,560)
Player C: 578,441 (2,864)
Player
Player E: 347,428 (1,687)
Infected Space [11:12] - Success
Player A: 12,933,343 (19,478)
Player B: 5,190,759 (7,771)
Player C: 4,140,924 (6,246)
Player
Player E: 2,572,318 (3,886)
Infected Space [10:37] - Failure
Player A: 8,353,987 (13,606)
Player B: 2,003,356 (3,236)
Player C: 1,838,563 (3,009)
Player
Player E: 1,134,926 (1,782)
And the reason for the two failures stands out like a sore thumb. With the various "solutions" offered to that particular problem, I can't help but feel personally that the token system would be the best way to go for the public queues.
You do X in a Normal, it gives you a token so you can run Advanced.
You do Y in Advanced, it gives you another token so you can run Advanced again.
You do Z in Advanced, it gives you a token so you can run Elite.
You do Z in Elite, it gives you another token so you can run Elite again.
Cause that first one, I was surprised. The second one was pretty nifty seeing those others in action. The third one and I didn't want to queue again. The fourth one was the most fun I've had in forever (not the almost breaking 20k with that goofy build, but the 857.7k healing and taking over 1m damage without dying, without anybody dying...that one was kind of exciting). That fifth one...well, yeah, I'm just not going to bother with it anymore.
There's just too much information available out there, written guides, build guides, discussions of mechanics, the various video guides, all the folks willing to answer questions...there's just too much information available, too much help available - for that kind of nonsense to take place.
But the folks that are going to make excuses are too busy making excuses or blaming anybody but themselves for what's going on...they're spending all their time on excuses and blaming everything else - not on trying to learn a damn thing. So TRIBBLE it.
I feel your pain. I've been testing out ISA PUGs, and I actually have left 2 of them in the past few weeks. Before that, I would finish it, regardless....but there's just flagrant, unapologetic leeching going on, and I think it's starting to get to me. Not the "normal" or "average" player. The only thing I see different in your results, is that I always, without fail, get at least one person under 2k DPS. Every time.
Nothing I can think of to weed out the leechers and the incompetents seems viable to me. After all, if there's a qualifying mission, one could just leech in that until they got past it. Going by DPS would make too many people mad. Doing the CCA thing is ridiculous, as you see people thinking they're making a huge contribution by coming in third, which you can basically do with auto heal drones.
The tokens I was talking about there were DPS tokens. You meet a threshold, you get a token. You don't, you don't. On the one hand, I hate the idea of making that about DPS - but the actual content requirements are so low compared to potential DPS, that it wouldn't be putting a focus on doing the most DPS but rather doing enough. And folks that want to roll healers/tanks, there's still no reason not to meet the content requirements there and still be able to try to do what you want...there is just so much overgearing and the rest available, that it's not an excuse.
That 4th run up there:
46.7% of damage done
49.6% of damage taken
54.8% of healing done (only player actually to heal anybody else)
However I am setup as a drain boat. I can make a tactical cube helpless. I can take an entire group of spheres and probes and shut them down in < 5 seconds. They will just sit there dead in space with no weapons, shields, propulsion etc.
I tried my same setup but used the romulan plasma weapons instead. Based on the parses my dps went up a fair bit BUT it also took me longer to kill every enemy also based on the parse. A good drain boat won't parse as high as a dps boat but it also does not need to. Once you have a group of enemies with stripped shields, weapons, propulsion they are ripped apart and once one pops you get a chain reaction of warp core explosions.
If we are going to do tokens to get to the next tier then I would like to see it based on something other than just dps. I just wish I knew how to really factor in other abilities. I don't want to just base it on time to completion since that would allow people to be carried trivially.
Maybe if there was a way to credit your dps to account for stripping shields and destroying ships using other ships warp core explosions.
But that's the thing...I doubt for Advanced it would even require 10k with what I'm talking about, and you're a good example of what I'm talking about. You're doing a drain build and you're still going to be hitting what is relatively a low number. The record when I last looked at the tables was 165k. All of us talking about our 7-15k or so builds, there are folks doing 40k, 60k, 80k, over 100k...165k.
I'm not talking about setting a threshold anywhere near any of that kind of damage. I'm talking about down here with us mortals, lol. But a threshold that would keep out those folks that are showing up for an ISA doing 1-3k DPS and the like.
Speaking of "Pets"...
Aceton Assimilator
Elite Scorpion Fighter
Elite Tholian Widow Fighter
Photonic Fleet
Nimbus Pirate Distress Call
Tyken's Rift
...are what will show in my "Pets" section.
First Run: 6363 DPS (outDPS'd 0 of the other players)
Second Run: 5191 DPS (outDPS'd 1 of the other players)
Third Run: 4391 DPS (outDPS'd the other 4 players)
Fourth Run: 6341 DPS (outDPS'd 3 of the other players)
Fifth Run: 4164 DPS (outDPS'd the other 4 players)
Most of those "Pets" aren't even doing 100 DPS...with a handful not even doing 200 DPS. They shouldn't be outDPSing players in an Advanced STF, eh?
I still say TRIBBLE folks with their personal requirements, if they want folks doing 20, 30, 50k or whatever...but the actual content requirements (Hell, they were nerfed) are so low compared to the potential out there, that setting low thresholds at or just below the content requirements wouldn't be that big of a deal, imho. And outside of internet/computer issues, drunken play, and the like...would prevent having four folks on the team with you where there is no chance for success unless you're not one of us mortals.
If the threshold was a 3K build or something like that I could fully support it. At some level your dps is so low it doesn't matter what other stuff you are doing since you just can't help.
I was completely shocked on one parse on a failed advanced STF that my aceton assimilators managed to do more damage than any of the other players did. I have NO idea how they did so badly since those things are NOT for damage.
The problem is- it doesn't matter if that's a good solution or not- people would freak out because of anything linked to DPS. That's like some sort of hot button for people who refuse to admit they aren't contributing.
"But I
1. Did crowd control! Because instead of killing a bunch of things, I moved them, so everyone else still had to kill them
2. Healed! Because all the time spent clicking everyone else, I could have taken out 20% of the things making everyone require healing instead, but didn't
3. Said encouraging words!"
Everything is set up to require more DPS, but people refuse to adapt. You can still heal/CC while you are doing decent damage, BTW, folks.
With those two failed ISA runs up there...
The first failed at the point it did because two of the five players did not fire on the Transformer. No, it was not a case that they were off handling the Nanite Spheres because of the guy that charged in and popped the first Gen early. It was obvious from the first engagement with the Cube and Spheres that it wasn't the kind of group that could do that. The guy that popped that first Gen was one of the two that never fired on the Trans. They were off fighting the normal Spheres instead. If those two had instead fired on the Trans as well, though it would have likely failed elsewhere down the line - it would not have failed at that point.
So if myself and the other two players that were firing on the Trans had more DPS, we could have compensated for the two off chasing butterflies. So for that particular failure, the "easier" thought process would be to pad/buffer the DPS to cover for such things than to expect people not to wander around daydreaming.
The second failure was a bit more complicated. The initial engagement once again showed exactly how the group was going to progress. Nobody popped anything early though on the left side, so everything eventually got done and we moved to the right side. Where one of the guys proceeded to pop the first Gen before half the team was even halfway to the right side. Okay then, the three guys right there could have done something about the Nanites, right? Nope, two of them died while the third continued on. Two Gens down, one almost down, and the fourth untouched...I charge over to grab the Nanites and pull them with me away, so I that can try to zip back on over there. Course, they dropped the other Gen, and then proceeded to ignore the fourth while chasing the Spheres and ignoring that one Nanite that managed to get ahead of me on the way back.
So the thought being, if everybody had more DPS - then I might have done a better job tackling all of the Nanites to cover for it. They might have popped the butterflies sooner and then taken out the Gen to get in on the Trans. That maybe they would have killed stuff faster and not died as much (one guy died 3 times, one 4 times, and a third had a single death).
So yeah, in the end, looking at a DPS threshold...well...it's really just looking to DPS as a crutch for really bad play, folks going into the content without a clue or just showing up to leech. Looking at a DPS solution is really just looking at trying to cover for that kind of nonsense...meh.
The only real solution then would be just to avoid the public queues...
Another thing people don't think about is that if you have 1 person doing over 20k DPS (or even 15K), and 4 people doing under 5k DPS, not only is that 20k DPS person doing most of the work, but they're getting most of the aggro- which means everyone else is, in effect, REVERSE healing them.
The threat I generate (at over 20k DPS)in PUGs is ridiculous. There are times I blow up 3 times, because everything is shooting at me. This is always reinforced when I look at the parse from the run- my damage in and self heals are through the roof, while everyone else would have to try to blow up.
The only thing I can think of that would help, is a solo mission, "Taking the steps to Elite" or something. Where you can only play solo, and you can't play Advanced or higher content unless you've passed some threshold within the mission. But, linking that to DPS would cheese too many people off, and I can't think of a better qualifier.
I seriously can't think of a solution to someone doing under 2k DPS. They KNOW they have no business in these things. I consider it griefing/trolling if you're doing that little.
There are all sorts of various roles that one can take up, and all sorts of things folks could potentially do to contribute to an instance. For the most part, none of the content is designed for any of that to matter.
The damage potential from players is so high in the game compared to any threat that the NPCs provide, that brute force is the natural evolution of things. The game itself is designed in such a fashion that so many of the things players might think about simply do not matter.
Each ship is Tank, Heals, and DPS. Not talking about the MMO Trinity and all of its fake threat nonsense. Just talking about the basic taking damage, avoiding damage, healing damage, and doing damage. It's all there.
Before going any further, let's stop for a moment and consider that healing damage aspect. Talking about Space? Healing? What the Hell's going on there? Why is that even a thing? Repairing critical systems, boosting a failing structural integrity, widening shields so they're covering an ally...sure. Waving that magic wand? Lolwut? Why is that even a thing?
But anyway, so we get back over to us vs. the NPCs, eh? Why drain a target when that target can be obliterated in a few seconds? Why are NPCs so weak compared to us? Almost everything, including "bosses"...they're all just a bunch of trashmobs there for the slaughter.
Imagine how boring the shows/movies would have been if it was like that week in and week out? "Join us next week as the crew of the Enterprise shoot blue fish in a barrel instead of yellow fish in a barrel!"
If we weren't slaughtering NPCs by the millions, then we might just open up some of those other roles without making anything a requirement, eh?
Imagine an ISA where the first engagement is against a single Cube that's tougher than the everything there combined, eh? Go left to face a Sphere that's tougher than everything there combined - have a few Probes come that are tougher than all those Nanite Spheres/Spheres...go right, then go back to deal with that Tac Cube while you try to destroy the Gate before anything else can come through.
Something other than the lob the grenades in this barrel, go over there lob grenades in that barrel, go over there lob grenades in that barrel, and finish it off by lobbing grenades in one last barrel...wheeeeeee, did everybody have fun?
I keep thinking about stuff like SB24, where you have to blow up 70 ships but you usually blow up over a hundred ships. You can solo that, zipping through it...huhwhat?
The game, from the ground up...is not designed for endgame. I'm tired of typing in this post, so I'm going to stop now...
They should just remove Advanced and Elite queues as well as PvP.