But VD it's not me I swear! Its my horrible teammates
Heh, in that APE thread one of the logs I linked was named VDFail_ISA. It failed ~8:49 into it on the second Trans.
Player Me) 15,946
Player 5,608
Player C) 4,750
Player D) 4,503
Player E) 1,286
I blamed myself for the failure though, knowing something was off, I didn't actually realize it until looking at the log later. I had hastily thrown together an Apex build to go chill, as suggested by another player in another thread. Admittedly I was thrown a bit by the way my shields were vanishing, and thus that APE thread; but upon looking at the parse I noticed that when I slotted my two copies of FAW (FAW2 with a FAW1 backup in case Reciprocity failed), that I somehow ended up slotting FAW1 twice. So yep, I was running FAW1 instead of FAW2. We were close enough on the second Trans, that had I actually been running FAW2 we would not have failed at that point.
Sure, I did 54.7% of the damage. I took 68% of the damage. I took 83.9% of the attacks. I did 75.7% of the healing. But none of that mattered, cause if I had been more careful and checked my trays...had seen I had two copies of FAW1 instead of FAW2 and FAW1, well it's my belief that ISA would not have failed.
I've got no control over what anybody else does...only what I do...and I screwed up. So I named that particular log VDFail_ISA.
Until Cryptic starts listening, maybe the DPSers need to stop tooting their own horns. Every time you get one of those obnoxious videos, it just lets Cryptic know it's time to nerf and ruin it for the majority. I cringe every time I see a brag video. Put the community first. Show them by lack of bragging and lack of enthusiasm that you are not cool with this behavior either. Now that the rewards nerf has hurt you too, will you consider a change in your behavior until Cryptic changes theirs?
Remember.
Every time you post a DPS boast, PWE kills a "queue"te little kitten.
look the meta here is to make u buy zen. Its a cheap tactic cryptic have been using for a while. Let them do their worst....in due course it will effect them..and they will update and change stuff. They underestimate the concept of path of least resistance and are amatuerishly trying to fix it.
Its a learning phase they are going through. Just be smart and dont spend money on this game with its little lock box gambling stuff etc etc... when a few peeps start getting laid off the game will come back to its senses ;-)
The big TRIBBLE deal they keep makibg about balance is all hogwash their intelligence to handle the game is based on pretty archaic data mining techniques and they dont have enough imagination or money power to hire triple A quality devs to construct the game.
All they are doing is leaning on an ip for as long as they can.
Imagine the staff meeting that included this discussion.
Some PWE guy comes in and says the queues are doin' too well. Gotta get that failure rate up, guys. So what do you do? Do you actually discuss and debate what percentage of failed queues you want? How do you even have that discussion?
And then the very predictable result occurs, very predictable forum posts occur, and you can't go tell that PWE guy you told him so. You've got five kids to feed. But then Mr. PWE man comes back at the next meeting, and tells you the failure rate's still too low.
That's got to be a demoralizing day at the office, is all I'm saying.
"Gotta get that failure rate up. Let's make the mission more difficult. Since the mission is now more difficult, we should increase rewar-- I mean, keep the rewards the same-- I mean, reduce rewards. Yes, increased failure rate and reduced rewards, the perfect combination to keep players coming back."
It's yet another display of Cryptics backward way of thinking..
You have say 40 total ques (I haven't actually counted them.)
You have 6-7 that are highly active.
You have 2-3 that are moderately active.
You have 30 ques that are completely dead 24/7.
The sensible thing to do is look at those 6 or 7 ques and try and determine what makes them so popular. Take the things that makes those ques popular and change the dead ques to be more like the popular ones. This gets players to spread out and creates diversity in missions which keeps people from getting bored and keeps them spending.
Now lets look at Cyrptics Approach..
Treat the 6-7 ques like exploits. Blame the players for doing them and punish them with nerfs. Make the 6-7 ques less desirable because for some reason they believe that will get people into other ques.
And they wonder why there is an 'us vs. them' mentality between the players and the devs.
We're sick and tired of Cryptic finding the things we enjoy and destroying them. Why don't these guys fix the broken stuff and leave the successful ques alone?
Backward thinking at it's best.
You are wrong ... !
This is all about sigs baby ... , all about them sigs ... .
But you want the rewards from Advanced or Elite while only playing at a Normal level? Or you want the rewards from Elite while only playing at an Advanced level?
im doing 20k dps in all my chars in every ship average. im defenetely playing on adv level, but they arem aking adv harder and harder, so im not underperforming, they constantly set up the ladder. thats the basic in my complaint.
my build is always very well thought.
they are constantly raising the bar so 99% of the players end up in normal mode, which gives half reward. which basically is the SAME as just having cut all rewards for adv (and elite) in half. but this would have been to obvious. so they are forcing us into normals.
if normals would at least have a chance for BNP and kind of stuff, it wouldnt be so bad. but they lock out 99% of the players from better gear to Do advanced missions. they basically cut players from content and i dont get why.
if there is no engaging, but DOABLE! content, i wont play. i wont buy ****s and shats just for the sake of earning ONE BNP. ill leave the game to invest my 30 into 2 months of WoW subscription.
thats all I can say how i stand towards these changes and i think only very few ppl will go the read cryptic is aiming at.
Ya know, reading through this thread, what amazes me most is not one, NOT ONE, defender of this action of any kind. Whether the full-on fanboys or the how sometimes while you may not agree with a decision you can see why it was made, but this time not even the whitest of white knights supporting this. Ya know they've really screwed up when....
Wrong !
I am fully confident that the quote below (coming from the OP / Dev Charles Gray) actually points to a general benefit to the players once the additional passes + the future added additional awards to the queues will be implemented . :P
We expect that these will be the only queues changed in such ways during this first pass of updates. As mentioned previously, this is an ongoing effort to improve STO and this update (and those that came before) are not the entirety of what will be done.
... it's not like I can't RP a White Knight and hang on to a Dev's every vague word ...
I'm uncertain as to what Cryptics motivation is or what the planned end game is with all these nerfs to rewards. I just feel like I'm being forced away from content I used to enjoy. The difficulty is such that you can't really pug successfully anymore. I used to be able to carry a terrible team though an stf, but now that the npcs have such TRIBBLE amounts of hit points you need at least a couple decent people to compete a mission on advanced. I don't blame undergeared people from joining advanced since you can't get certain rewards from normal so you're forced into it. Now the rewards getting nerfed even more... well why bother with these missions at all? It will just be the hardcore dpsers and the noobs that need the rewards for gear that are stuck doing this missions now.
just a quick recent experience. form khittemer vortex
i am in a aux2batt multi mission explorer support build. and the 3 console set. i have about 8-10k dps
all mk xiv weps.
it took us 30 min somehow, even with a scimitar in the group, and if it wasnt for my constantly refreshing grav wells force field bubble and heals, the group wouldn't have made it.
everyone knew what they were doing and there was even good communication and teamwork regarding the control of the probes.
we failed the timed optional and neelry lost it twice. there just wasnt enough dps on the team, and if it wasnt for the good teamwork and my build allowing me to spit replicating gravwells every 15 seconds we wouldn't have done it.
we only got 50 marks and iv never had to work so hard for so little.
the argument is always made that they have bad builds, but that isnt fair, without tons of dilithium, marks and energy credits, you can only get as good as the game gives you.
the best you can get on episode replay is nowhere close to good enough. there may be much new blood bolstering the numbers, but once they hit 50 and see this, then they will just as quickly leave.
this is wrong. and now they are planning on making it worse
There has been a lot of confusion expressed about some of the recent updates made specifically to PvE queues. Weve been monitoring your posts and would like to respond to the requests made by many of you for more information about why these changes (and those that came before) are being made.
Our recent updates have focused on PvE queues because we have the most data on them and because they are one of the only sources for reputation marks. As a result, they are a more closed system. The intent of these updates is to have all PvE queues reward at similar rates that take into account their individual makeups including (but not limited to) time investment, risk of failure, and number of players required. As the PvE queues exist right now there are outliers queues that reward a lot more for less time and less effort than other queues (optimal choices) and queues that reward a lot less for more time and more effort than other queues (sub-optimal choices). In fixing these discrepancies we are trying to remove the feeling of making a bad choice as a player for playing what you want to play instead of feeling forced to play something based on how much it rewards you for playing it.
We understand the sentiment expressed that there are a lot of places outside of PvE queues that either feel like they are rewarding too much for too little effort or rewarding too little for too much effort. These rewards are typically of Skill Points, Expertise, or Dilithium, all of which touch many more parts of the game and therefore need extra due diligence before any changes are made. That being said, these changes are being discussed and planned and while the details are still being hammered out, we are willing to commit to the following updates taking place in the next couple of months:
Increase the Skill Point and Expertise rewards in PvE queues.
Reward more Dilithium at lower levels and throughout the game by adding Dilithium to mission rewards.
Increase all rewards for sector patrols that are taking significantly longer than their counterparts so that they all have similar rewards per play time.
Add Skill Point and Expertise rewards to all Adventure and Battle Zones.
Add ways to earn Elite Reputation Marks (i.e. Borg Neural Processors, Voth Cybernetic Implants, etc.) from single-player content.
We thank you for your continuing patience as we get these updates through the development process and out to the players.
Charles Gray
Lead Content Designer
Star Trek Online
I'm all for them adding rewards that can actually be obtained as Charley's post seems to indicate. Thing is making the stfs harder than they are now is going to finish this game off.
My rom tac A2B/FAW doesn't really do too bad in a pug. My sci guy? Yeah. Grav Well only gets you so far, and that's usually nowhere near far enough to drag a pug through. They can't make these things so only one type of player has any chance of completion without losing player interest. They've already made the game alt-unfriendly as it is.
Higher difficulty and less rewards? Bad idea. VERY bad idea.....
why not remove adv and elite completely? they are already undoable, and they become even harder?!
do you really want this game to DIE because noone can play anything anymore?
do you want everybody go normal only, so the rewards are lower? just remove adv and elite then?! or just remove dili rewards from the game at all, why not.
im going back to wow now. this is to stupid.
I know it can seem that way, but, in fact, people are blowing away the elite ques
people are forming groups in private/public channels or public channels, the populations of those channels are people who have upgraded their gear and think about the combat a little bit
that's it, they don't have superpowered hacks or superpowered playing ability (though some are better than others)
what are they supposed to do? have the elite be 100% trivial? they don't want people to get bored
I used to think the same thing about korfez, I was like "wtf, who can do this?" but now it's trivial
OK, what's the point in nerfing fleet marks reward for Fleet alert/Colony invasion? What part of profit was endangered with 40marks?
Empty ques problems began with transition old elite = advanced, new elite.
Instead of old elite=advanced we got superHP enemies, optional=mandatory objectives and huge number of enemies. Dev's considered that inability to earn neural processors in any other way would force players in advanced/elite ques.
Well, advanced STF aren't full as they used to when theirs name was elite and new elite ques are empty.
Very good decision, bravo!
Max. One-Hit: 114,966 (Quantum Torpedo - Salvo II (Federation Typhoon Class Battleship))
So far, only negative feedback about making queues harder, I wonder if they even care.
I've been doing CCA a lot and this time checking the timer, only half my runs took less than 5 minutes, I would say the average is 6-7 minutes.
There is no briefing time, it takes players about 30 seconds to organize and reposition and 30 seconds to reach the crystalline entity, 5 minutes is an stupidly low time.
Im sorry that the queues are unbeatable to you. Me and some fleeties recently did all the ground queues at the highest levels available and to the optionals.....I haven't failed a space queue in months.......I don't have epic gear.....oh SNAP. I know that people are having problems, and im willing to help anyone. But ive seen people come into infected advanced with white rainbow builds and a bortiscue (yucky spelling) that was working a torp build. I am a 24k dpser and was able to carry the team but the only problem I have with the new difficulty is people trying to do the impossible and refuse to adapt to a changing game.
Im sorry that the queues are unbeatable to you. Me and some fleeties recently did all the ground queues at the highest levels available and to the optionals.....I haven't failed a space queue in months.......I don't have epic gear.....oh SNAP. I know that people are having problems, and im willing to help anyone. But ive seen people come into infected advanced with white rainbow builds and a bortiscue (yucky spelling) that was working a torp build. I am a 24k dpser and was able to carry the team but the only problem I have with the new difficulty is people trying to do the impossible and refuse to adapt to a changing game.
Games succeed when people can have multiple successful playstyles, and fail when you are forced to a single style.
Here, to win, you are forced to play as a DPSer, dumbed down from the original healer, tank, debuffer, control, nuker and DPSer.
A couple of years ago I was happy just playing as a tank, being impossible to kill in my Odyssey star cruiser, now I'm like everyone else, running an escort and using CrtD antiproton or an antiproton beamboat destroyer/dreadnought.
Games succeed when people can have multiple successful playstyles, and fail when you are forced to a single style.
Here, to win, you are forced to play as a DPSer, dumbed down from the original healer, tank, debuffer, control, nuker and DPSer.
A couple of years ago I was happy just playing as a tank, being impossible to kill in my Odyssey star cruiser, now I'm like everyone else, running an escort and using CrtD antiproton or an antiproton beamboat destroyer/dreadnought.
This is just not true. You at most need 8-10k DPS to finish any content and that can be done easily without losing any healing or tanking ability. I would already be happy if most people in PUGS would do 5k DPS which is really not a lot regardless of your role and ship. And i am sick and tired of this i am such an awesome tank or healer but feel useless in STFs TRIBBLE. Where are all those great tanks and healers? I never see them in PUGS. I don't even know the last time someone provided me with a significant heal. And i think i had one guy in my last 20 ISA pugs that did make his job as tank. Flying a ship with a lot of hull and shields does not make you a tank. You need to pull and keep aggro and that cannot be done without doing some damage.
I'm ok with re-balancing pve that is too easy/fast. I'm not ok with time limit fail conditions. That is not a good idea. This will discourage many who have not mastered dps builds, and eliminates choice of builds. Also, it is not consistent with trying to make the pve hard/longer.
Consider any other fail condition, it would probably work better for a team. Or maybe more npcs or greater challenge if time limit is not met. Example, command ships in Hive space start sending out repair spheres after a time.
But just plain failing because of time limit. come on!
I like long hard battles, not blowing everything to hell as quick as possible and expecting the whole team to do the same.
Games succeed when people can have multiple successful playstyles, and fail when you are forced to a single style.
Here, to win, you are forced to play as a DPSer, dumbed down from the original healer, tank, debuffer, control, nuker and DPSer.
A couple of years ago I was happy just playing as a tank, being impossible to kill in my Odyssey star cruiser, now I'm like everyone else, running an escort and using CrtD antiproton or an antiproton beamboat destroyer/dreadnought.
I have a fleetmate, she is an awesome tank and saves teams......and I generally don't use Aux to batt FAW builds, I prefer cannon and torp builds. The issue I have is when people try to force builds on ships that's arnt good for them....
This is just not true. You at most need 8-10k DPS to finish any content and that can be done easily without losing any healing or tanking ability. I would already be happy if most people in PUGS would do 5k DPS which is really not a lot regardless of your role and ship. And i am sick and tired of this i am such an awesome tank or healer but feel useless in STFs TRIBBLE. Where are all those great tanks and healers? I never see them in PUGS. I don't even know the last time someone provided me with a significant heal. And i think i had one guy in my last 20 ISA pugs that did make his job as tank. Flying a ship with a lot of hull and shields does not make you a tank. You need to pull and keep aggro and that cannot be done without doing some damage.
To be a tank or a healer you need to sacrifice dps, a lot of dps, you'll be using universal slots for engineering and science boffs instead of tactical, and your offensive science and engineering abilities for healing and defense, you'll be using engineering and science consoles to boost heals and defense instead of using universal consoles to boost dps.
You only need the threat control skill or a single threat scaling console to keep aggro.
With 10k dps you are not killing the 3 dreadnoughts in borg disconnected in 3 minutes.
With 10k dps you won't kill the assimilated birds of prey before they reach kang nor will you finish the mission in 9 minutes, you'll definitely not finish crystalline catastrophe in 5 minutes.
Face it, roles are dead, there is nothing a tank can do that cannot be solved with enough dps, it just doesn't make sense to have a tank when you can have one guy killing enemies fast enough so they are don't even scratch your shields, why heal when you can kill? dead enemies don't hurt you, so there is no need for healing.
Face it, roles are dead, there is nothing a tank can do that cannot be solved with enough dps, it just doesn't make sense to have a tank when you can have one guy killing enemies fast enough so they are don't even scratch your shields, why heal when you can kill? dead enemies don't hurt you, so there is no need for healing.
to a degree i agree with you, but there is a role for sci and eng, plenty of dps'rs are made of glass.
not only that you can further buff the dps'rs power and debuff the resistance values. a sci or an cruiser cant solo, but they can most defo help in a team.
for example a scimitar with thalaron pulse, i Eps conduit him, extend shields and tac team then grav well in front. untold damage right there, or even just a dread with scatter volley.
Im sorry that the queues are unbeatable to you. Me and some fleeties recently did all the ground queues at the highest levels available and to the optionals.....I haven't failed a space queue in months.......I don't have epic gear.....oh SNAP. I know that people are having problems, and im willing to help anyone. But ive seen people come into infected advanced with white rainbow builds and a bortiscue (yucky spelling) that was working a torp build. I am a 24k dpser and was able to carry the team but the only problem I have with the new difficulty is people trying to do the impossible and refuse to adapt to a changing game.
Since the only way to get decent gear requires many thousands of rep marks, 100s of thousands of dilithium, and up to 2 dozen "elite" marks (like BNPs, only obtainable on advanced or elite) your "help" is literally useless. Knowledge is not the problem. The inability to obtain decent gear in a reasonable amount of time for a reasonable amount of available resources is the problem.
You want players to have decent gear when they do advanced or elite, but we have to do at least advanced to get decent gear. With less than 50 marks for a normal STF with a 1 hour timer, cap of 8,000 dilithium a day, and the inability to get the required elite marks on normal and you don't understand why people who shouldn't be doing advanced are doing them anyway? Your inability to grasp the catch-22 is baffling.
to a degree i agree with you, but there is a role for sci and eng, plenty of dps'rs are made of glass.
not only that you can further buff the dps'rs power and debuff the resistance values. a sci or an cruiser cant solo, but they can most defo help in a team.
for example a scimitar with thalaron pulse, i Eps conduit him, extend shields and tac team then grav well in front. untold damage right there, or even just a dread with scatter volley.
Tanks have a purpose. My friend holds the agro and allows me to melt them, without my tank ladyfriend it would be much harder.
Since the only way to get decent gear requires many thousands of rep marks, 100s of thousands of dilithium, and up to 2 dozen "elite" marks (like BNPs, only obtainable on advanced or elite) your "help" is literally useless. Knowledge is not the problem. The inability to obtain decent gear in a reasonable amount of time for a reasonable amount of available resources is the problem.
You want players to have decent gear when they do advanced or elite, but we have to do at least advanced to get decent gear. With less than 50 marks for a normal STF with a 1 hour timer, cap of 8,000 dilithium a day, and the inability to get the required elite marks on normal and you don't understand why people who shouldn't be doing advanced are doing them anyway? Your inability to grasp the catch-22 is baffling.
Gear is really a small part.....it isn't hard to get blue XIs, a friend of mine broke 10k with them. but its also tactics. A defiant deciding to cut engines and sit the firing at a cube is suicidal, but I see it everyday. No need to be rude about it. I am not being rude or elitist im being honest. You don't need all that special gear to win you need common sense. And a torp build on a ship that turns slower then a 90 year old in a wheelchair doesn't work.
Comments
But VD it's not me I swear! Its my horrible teammates
Heh, in that APE thread one of the logs I linked was named VDFail_ISA. It failed ~8:49 into it on the second Trans.
Player Me) 15,946
Player
Player C) 4,750
Player D) 4,503
Player E) 1,286
I blamed myself for the failure though, knowing something was off, I didn't actually realize it until looking at the log later. I had hastily thrown together an Apex build to go chill, as suggested by another player in another thread. Admittedly I was thrown a bit by the way my shields were vanishing, and thus that APE thread; but upon looking at the parse I noticed that when I slotted my two copies of FAW (FAW2 with a FAW1 backup in case Reciprocity failed), that I somehow ended up slotting FAW1 twice. So yep, I was running FAW1 instead of FAW2. We were close enough on the second Trans, that had I actually been running FAW2 we would not have failed at that point.
Sure, I did 54.7% of the damage. I took 68% of the damage. I took 83.9% of the attacks. I did 75.7% of the healing. But none of that mattered, cause if I had been more careful and checked my trays...had seen I had two copies of FAW1 instead of FAW2 and FAW1, well it's my belief that ISA would not have failed.
I've got no control over what anybody else does...only what I do...and I screwed up. So I named that particular log VDFail_ISA.
1^^^^^ ths
Its a learning phase they are going through. Just be smart and dont spend money on this game with its little lock box gambling stuff etc etc... when a few peeps start getting laid off the game will come back to its senses ;-)
The big TRIBBLE deal they keep makibg about balance is all hogwash their intelligence to handle the game is based on pretty archaic data mining techniques and they dont have enough imagination or money power to hire triple A quality devs to construct the game.
All they are doing is leaning on an ip for as long as they can.
"Gotta get that failure rate up. Let's make the mission more difficult. Since the mission is now more difficult, we should increase rewar-- I mean, keep the rewards the same-- I mean, reduce rewards. Yes, increased failure rate and reduced rewards, the perfect combination to keep players coming back."
... happy now Taco ?
You are wrong ... !
This is all about sigs baby ... , all about them sigs ... .
im doing 20k dps in all my chars in every ship average. im defenetely playing on adv level, but they arem aking adv harder and harder, so im not underperforming, they constantly set up the ladder. thats the basic in my complaint.
my build is always very well thought.
they are constantly raising the bar so 99% of the players end up in normal mode, which gives half reward. which basically is the SAME as just having cut all rewards for adv (and elite) in half. but this would have been to obvious. so they are forcing us into normals.
if normals would at least have a chance for BNP and kind of stuff, it wouldnt be so bad. but they lock out 99% of the players from better gear to Do advanced missions. they basically cut players from content and i dont get why.
if there is no engaging, but DOABLE! content, i wont play. i wont buy ****s and shats just for the sake of earning ONE BNP. ill leave the game to invest my 30 into 2 months of WoW subscription.
thats all I can say how i stand towards these changes and i think only very few ppl will go the read cryptic is aiming at.
Wrong !
I am fully confident that the quote below (coming from the OP / Dev Charles Gray) actually points to a general benefit to the players once the additional passes + the future added additional awards to the queues will be implemented . :P
... it's not like I can't RP a White Knight and hang on to a Dev's every vague word ...
i am in a aux2batt multi mission explorer support build. and the 3 console set. i have about 8-10k dps
all mk xiv weps.
it took us 30 min somehow, even with a scimitar in the group, and if it wasnt for my constantly refreshing grav wells force field bubble and heals, the group wouldn't have made it.
everyone knew what they were doing and there was even good communication and teamwork regarding the control of the probes.
we failed the timed optional and neelry lost it twice. there just wasnt enough dps on the team, and if it wasnt for the good teamwork and my build allowing me to spit replicating gravwells every 15 seconds we wouldn't have done it.
we only got 50 marks and iv never had to work so hard for so little.
the argument is always made that they have bad builds, but that isnt fair, without tons of dilithium, marks and energy credits, you can only get as good as the game gives you.
the best you can get on episode replay is nowhere close to good enough. there may be much new blood bolstering the numbers, but once they hit 50 and see this, then they will just as quickly leave.
this is wrong. and now they are planning on making it worse
form
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1355171
My rom tac A2B/FAW doesn't really do too bad in a pug. My sci guy? Yeah. Grav Well only gets you so far, and that's usually nowhere near far enough to drag a pug through. They can't make these things so only one type of player has any chance of completion without losing player interest. They've already made the game alt-unfriendly as it is.
Higher difficulty and less rewards? Bad idea. VERY bad idea.....
I know it can seem that way, but, in fact, people are blowing away the elite ques
people are forming groups in private/public channels or public channels, the populations of those channels are people who have upgraded their gear and think about the combat a little bit
that's it, they don't have superpowered hacks or superpowered playing ability (though some are better than others)
what are they supposed to do? have the elite be 100% trivial? they don't want people to get bored
I used to think the same thing about korfez, I was like "wtf, who can do this?" but now it's trivial
Empty ques problems began with transition old elite = advanced, new elite.
Instead of old elite=advanced we got superHP enemies, optional=mandatory objectives and huge number of enemies. Dev's considered that inability to earn neural processors in any other way would force players in advanced/elite ques.
Well, advanced STF aren't full as they used to when theirs name was elite and new elite ques are empty.
Very good decision, bravo!
I've been doing CCA a lot and this time checking the timer, only half my runs took less than 5 minutes, I would say the average is 6-7 minutes.
There is no briefing time, it takes players about 30 seconds to organize and reposition and 30 seconds to reach the crystalline entity, 5 minutes is an stupidly low time.
Games succeed when people can have multiple successful playstyles, and fail when you are forced to a single style.
Here, to win, you are forced to play as a DPSer, dumbed down from the original healer, tank, debuffer, control, nuker and DPSer.
A couple of years ago I was happy just playing as a tank, being impossible to kill in my Odyssey star cruiser, now I'm like everyone else, running an escort and using CrtD antiproton or an antiproton beamboat destroyer/dreadnought.
This is just not true. You at most need 8-10k DPS to finish any content and that can be done easily without losing any healing or tanking ability. I would already be happy if most people in PUGS would do 5k DPS which is really not a lot regardless of your role and ship. And i am sick and tired of this i am such an awesome tank or healer but feel useless in STFs TRIBBLE. Where are all those great tanks and healers? I never see them in PUGS. I don't even know the last time someone provided me with a significant heal. And i think i had one guy in my last 20 ISA pugs that did make his job as tank. Flying a ship with a lot of hull and shields does not make you a tank. You need to pull and keep aggro and that cannot be done without doing some damage.
Consider any other fail condition, it would probably work better for a team. Or maybe more npcs or greater challenge if time limit is not met. Example, command ships in Hive space start sending out repair spheres after a time.
But just plain failing because of time limit. come on!
I like long hard battles, not blowing everything to hell as quick as possible and expecting the whole team to do the same.
I have a fleetmate, she is an awesome tank and saves teams......and I generally don't use Aux to batt FAW builds, I prefer cannon and torp builds. The issue I have is when people try to force builds on ships that's arnt good for them....
To be a tank or a healer you need to sacrifice dps, a lot of dps, you'll be using universal slots for engineering and science boffs instead of tactical, and your offensive science and engineering abilities for healing and defense, you'll be using engineering and science consoles to boost heals and defense instead of using universal consoles to boost dps.
You only need the threat control skill or a single threat scaling console to keep aggro.
With 10k dps you are not killing the 3 dreadnoughts in borg disconnected in 3 minutes.
With 10k dps you won't kill the assimilated birds of prey before they reach kang nor will you finish the mission in 9 minutes, you'll definitely not finish crystalline catastrophe in 5 minutes.
Face it, roles are dead, there is nothing a tank can do that cannot be solved with enough dps, it just doesn't make sense to have a tank when you can have one guy killing enemies fast enough so they are don't even scratch your shields, why heal when you can kill? dead enemies don't hurt you, so there is no need for healing.
to a degree i agree with you, but there is a role for sci and eng, plenty of dps'rs are made of glass.
not only that you can further buff the dps'rs power and debuff the resistance values. a sci or an cruiser cant solo, but they can most defo help in a team.
for example a scimitar with thalaron pulse, i Eps conduit him, extend shields and tac team then grav well in front. untold damage right there, or even just a dread with scatter volley.
Since the only way to get decent gear requires many thousands of rep marks, 100s of thousands of dilithium, and up to 2 dozen "elite" marks (like BNPs, only obtainable on advanced or elite) your "help" is literally useless. Knowledge is not the problem. The inability to obtain decent gear in a reasonable amount of time for a reasonable amount of available resources is the problem.
You want players to have decent gear when they do advanced or elite, but we have to do at least advanced to get decent gear. With less than 50 marks for a normal STF with a 1 hour timer, cap of 8,000 dilithium a day, and the inability to get the required elite marks on normal and you don't understand why people who shouldn't be doing advanced are doing them anyway? Your inability to grasp the catch-22 is baffling.
Tanks have a purpose. My friend holds the agro and allows me to melt them, without my tank ladyfriend it would be much harder.
Gear is really a small part.....it isn't hard to get blue XIs, a friend of mine broke 10k with them. but its also tactics. A defiant deciding to cut engines and sit the firing at a cube is suicidal, but I see it everyday. No need to be rude about it. I am not being rude or elitist im being honest. You don't need all that special gear to win you need common sense. And a torp build on a ship that turns slower then a 90 year old in a wheelchair doesn't work.