Except they don't actually. That's the thing - people just aren't reading carefully.
THey don´t but it really doesn´t matter.
In Khitomer in stasis for example the "mandatory optional" is to destroy those transformers within 15 minutes. If you can´t do that the mission fails. So there is no need for an "optional optional" after that. But there is. you have more time for the optional than for the mandatory objectives.
And another thing.
Yesterday in Undine infiltration Elite:
We were quesioning the suspects 9/10 done. Now with number 10 something weird happened (i didn´t question him)
for me he was listed as cleeared so we had all 10 suspects questioned correctly, my list of objectoves showed 10/10 correctly and it should be we got the message from the Bajoran commander that our informations enabled them to identify the undine.
But then the mission failed.
I have no idea why. 10/10 questioned correctly, no wrong answers but failed.
And please guys stop all that PUG-Bashing.
Why do you have to be in an highly active fleet, have a superior build and experience in the game to do PvE? On my ship i still use fleet weapons. not CritHx3, normal Dmg, Acc and CritDs.Maybe i will get some critdx3 in the future but now i won´t.
And if i cause missions to fail with that, well i really don´t care. According to Cryptic Advanced should be the same as the old Elite so if my Weapons, that worked perfectly on Elite (old) don´t work now it must be Cryptics fault.
pre DR the PvEs were not too easy, they were good and fun and not too long. not this race against time that it is now. And everytime a newbie does an STF he ends up getting insulted if he is doing something wrong (thank God that we have the auto-censoring)
Pre DR everyone could join any PvE mission in as short time with nearly every gear and still win.
Now you need high-level crafted gear so you need to spend millions and millions on that gear or have to craft it yourself, which would be Problematic because the Gear you need to craft those things, comes from the missions you can´t do without it.
SO you have to have the gear to gbe able to get it. Nice logic, Spock would shoot himself
OK, I just failed ANRA like 3 times this evening and I freed two ships myself each time. Each time I would wander over to the third ship and see what it was that just couldn't be freed in three minutes by one, two, or three players: two 1's and a 2.
I can't blame the fail condition, though. If two players can't free a 1 or a 2 in three minutes, then they just plain shouldn't be in advanced. Ditto for the people I see shooting at probes in KSA but just not being able to crack those shields in the 1-2 minutes it takes for them to get to the gate. There just needs to be a better way to implement it.
I like sinn's idea of some kind of test. Maybe just pew pew at ships before you unlock the ability to do advanced queues and require a certain DPS (set the bar low, like 8-10K). Then you need to unlock each advanced queue by successfully completing the associated normal level queue.
And yes the test should be about DPS. This game is about killing things. There are other games that are not about killing things. I have a toon with a drain build doing 16K dps, and he's totally focused on drains. There's no reason people can't have some fun role but also have decent dps. Some players' refusal/inability to get a basic build together is ruining other people's good times.
Single player only, teamed with 4 NPCs, similar to Fleet Support.
Aye, just single player and teamed with 4 NPCs...but thinking along the lines of:
"Do you prefer...?"
Where it inserts some relevant role, and it selects the 4 NPCs that fly with you based on that preference of role.
Say Heal/Tank was an option. The NPCs would be set with higher damage/aggro and lower resistances. So the task would be keeping aggro, keeping oneself alive, and keeping the NPCs alive.
Say Debuff/Buff was an option. The NPCs would be below a certain threshold where the mission would fail unless enough debuff 'n buff action were going on sort of thing.
Basically role-training/testing sort of stuff.
With it throwing a loop in as you move from Normal to Advanced and Elite where you may not be the only one (NPCs doing it as well), so you're still going to have to do more...etc, etc, etc.
In Khitomer in stasis for example the "mandatory optional" is to destroy those transformers within 15 minutes. If you can´t do that the mission fails. So there is no need for an "optional optional" after that. But there is. you have more time for the optional than for the mandatory objectives.
And another thing.
Yesterday in Undine infiltration Elite:
We were quesioning the suspects 9/10 done. Now with number 10 something weird happened (i didn´t question him)
for me he was listed as cleeared so we had all 10 suspects questioned correctly, my list of objectoves showed 10/10 correctly and it should be we got the message from the Bajoran commander that our informations enabled them to identify the undine.
But then the mission failed.
I have no idea why. 10/10 questioned correctly, no wrong answers but failed.
Did you put out the fires or stop the Undine from stealing the Orb?
Aye, just single player and teamed with 4 NPCs...but thinking along the lines of:
"Do you prefer...?"
Where it inserts some relevant role, and it selects the 4 NPCs that fly with you based on that preference of role.
Say Heal/Tank was an option. The NPCs would be set with higher damage/aggro and lower resistances. So the task would be keeping aggro, keeping oneself alive, and keeping the NPCs alive.
Say Debuff/Buff was an option. The NPCs would be below a certain threshold where the mission would fail unless enough debuff 'n buff action were going on sort of thing.
Basically role-training/testing sort of stuff.
I thought of that, but, you never know what you'll get in a PUG. I figure, getting about the same as you'd get from Fleet Support would do the trick. Like...Argala, kind of, with the Benthans? I'm thinking that it would kind of force one to evaluate how well their character would do in a queue.
It'd be fun to choose your role, but...if you're choosing your role in a queue, it's premade. That means you have people carrying you if you're not up to it, or know exactly what (non-DPS) role you're bringing- which would negate the need for what I'm proposing.
I'm convinced Infected Ground Advanced's "optionals" are impossible. Saving those Starfleet members in time not only requires you to beat the timer but also requires you to beat an invisible timer for every room.
(Side note: it would be nice if they had a progress bar on the assimilation status of the hostages so you could see how close those drones were).
And yes, I know how to not trigger it until ready, how to rescue them, etc. I'm outfitted with full rep gear and my character is specced for ground. It's still impossible.
I would welcome the return of Elites and the toning down of Advanced queues.
I thought of that, but, you never know what you'll get in a PUG. I figure, getting about the same as you'd get from Fleet Support would do the trick. Like...Argala, kind of, with the Benthans? I'm thinking that it would kind of force one to evaluate how well their character would do in a queue.
It'd be fun to choose your role, but...if you're choosing your role in a queue, it's premade. That means you have people carrying you if you're not up to it, or know exactly what (non-DPS) role you're bringing- which would negate the need for what I'm proposing.
But that's where I was looking at having that loop thrown in at Advanced and Elite...that thing of where you show up for a PUG run, and well - there are three guys looking to be support. So in order to complete that mission at the higher difficulties, you'd have to bring something else to the game - be able to adapt sort of thing.
I'm massively opposed to the queues being set for folks to select roles - because that's just not my thing; but folks are still going to try to do their roles (Hell, I like running Debuff/Tank)...so if they could get some feedback before throwing the team under the bus, that would be kind of nifty.
And yeah, it could be a potential way to gate content...so there would be no misdiagnosing somebody that maybe shouldn't have been there and needs some help with somebody that's just leeching/afking...
But that's where I was looking at having that loop thrown in at Advanced and Elite...that thing of where you show up for a PUG run, and well - there are three guys looking to be support. So in order to complete that mission at the higher difficulties, you'd have to bring something else to the game - be able to adapt sort of thing.
I'm massively opposed to the queues being set for folks to select roles - because that's just not my thing; but folks are still going to try to do their roles (Hell, I like running Debuff/Tank)...so if they could get some feedback before throwing the team under the bus, that would be kind of nifty.
And yeah, it could be a potential way to gate content...so there would be no misdiagnosing somebody that maybe shouldn't have been there and needs some help with somebody that's just leeching/afking...
I would think some kind of points system, in addition to the pass/fail:
a to b points - Below Normal
b to c points - Normal
c to d points - Advanced
d to e points - Elite (if applicable).
Damage dealt would likely have to factor heavily into this. Maybe some equation involving time/damage/deaths/heals/damage taken?
Honestly, people would complain about the damage aspect of it, but...I mean everyone deals damage in one way or another.
I would think some kind of points system, in addition to the pass/fail:
a to b points - Below Normal
b to c points - Normal
c to d points - Advanced
d to e points - Elite (if applicable).
Damage dealt would likely have to factor heavily into this. Maybe some equation involving time/damage/deaths/heals/damage taken?
Honestly, people would complain about the damage aspect of it, but...I mean everyone deals damage in one way or another.
Would definitely work damage into it, cause outside of specific team comps where folks won't do damage cause the group is parsing the one guy - just because somebody's a healer or a tank doesn't mean they can't do way more than the DPS required for the content. There's just that much room between what content actually requires and how much damage is possible.
And yes, folks would complain about it - but when folks are doing what they're doing and doing damage, the complaints don't mean anything now and wouldn't mean anything with such a system.
Oh sry, I didn't know that since this games PvE "content" is so ridiculously easy that I didn't realise the need of a team...
I know this was meant as a half-joke...but - and I'm not joking about this - I jumped in my Tholian shuttle last night and soloed so much content that it was ridiculous.
Would definitely work damage into it, cause outside of specific team comps where folks won't do damage cause the group is parsing the one guy - just because somebody's a healer or a tank doesn't mean they can't do way more than the DPS required for the content. There's just that much room between what content actually requires and how much damage is possible.
And yes, folks would complain about it - but when folks are doing what they're doing and doing damage, the complaints don't mean anything now and wouldn't mean anything with such a system.
Completely agree. If something like this went into effect, like you said, it could gate the Advanced/Elite queues. Like, say, you can't enter a public queue without having earned x accolade (tied to point score). You could join private queues, but completion of those do not erase the need for x accolade for public ones.
That way, people could still learn with friends/fleet/whatever, if they need to learn. And it would keep the "I'm clueless but want rewards for nothing" people from leeching off of the average player.
It's design changes like this that make me wonder if Cryptic is intentionally trying to torpedo Star Trek Online...because no developer could be this unintentionally incompetent.
yes they can...designers can be notoriously short sighted, exhibit a lack of planning, complete disconnects with the player base of the game, etc.
not that they all do it (devs/designers) but it isn't that uncommon. btw, not making excuses for cryptic/pwe. there is no excuse for bad design especially when you have the player base so involved as it is in STO.
warframe, UI (absolutely one of the worst i've seen), host<>client issues due to their refusal to have a central game server system.
tera UI (adobe scaleform)
rappelz, various, though the most glaring was allowing a known server crash bug to go from test to live without being fixed..which of course crashed the servers every 10 minutes.
2 moons, too many exploits.
ddo, inventory duping exploits. initial release of guilds that forced players into large guilds...same as sto though ddo later changed the parameters so smaller guilds were viable. using a sliding scale.
black prophecy, time gated crafting that locked you out of anything except chatting.
bsgo, paygate that lost them nearly half their players even though they were told, warned, and begged repeatedly not to let that patch go live.
forsaken world, guild lockouts. unique items locked behind guilds...big rich guilds.
swtor, f2p model
shin megami tensei, timers on almost all CS items, including bank.
wizardry online, PvP exploits
WoW, mass death exploit, insufficient planning on releases.
eve, developers interfering directly in the game siding with (certain) players
skyrim, launched broken.
sim city, don't have to go into detail there do i?
assassins creed unity
watchdogs
there's more, but all of them have one common theme, not understanding the players of their game, or gamers in general. you have pundits in the industry who claim to know what works and what doesn't and conservatives who keep trying the same old copy/pasted to every other game/new content. designers best source of information they ignore (players of their game) instead relying on 'experts' who in most cases don't game at all much less the don't play the game they're adding changes too.
gaming industry atm is a fustercluck. mmo industry is a fustercluck squared. studied this for years and the same mistakes keep happening. the so called experts don't change their tunes (or are so out of date) so mechanics that previously didn't work keep getting rehashed and they seem continually surprised that their expert given/rehashed/recycled ideas don't pan out...
sto just suffers worse from it. conservatives are rampant (retread old ideas onto new content) they thinkplayers are morons (that may be changing...though i suspect it's only lip service) being owned by pwe, a corporation with entirely too many people running it who don't have a clue...but hey, they probably have business degrees. which brings up one more issue where standard businesses and mmo's don't mix...but owners attempt to run them as if they are the same.
profit increases and growth. 'if you're not growing you're dying as a business' whomever stated that ought to be retroactively lobotomized and locked away as it promotes many of the cash grabs in all mmo's and games in general (DLC's). simply put, if you can pay your expenses and have some left over, you're good. trying to consistently increase profits annually (growth) in an mmo especially is a sure way to find failure.
all this actually pertains to this thread as it gives the reasons behind what seem nonsensical changes. buy t6 ship or upgrade, buy consoles, and upgrade...spend that dilithium, and buy more with zen. fast track yourself through cash injections to have the ship and gear to run the non optional advanced/elite stf's.
you can pay your way to win. which is the final form of that growth in profits is required error. you can trace every decision to that in sto. add new mechanic? make sure it's tied to dilithium.
cryptic/pwe loves the dil<>zen conversion, and don't care what the players think...it's the best cash generator ever. (to paraphrase a certain lizard)
Dr. Patricia Tanis ~ "Bacon is for sycophants and products of incest."
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
I think I agree with the OP on the matter. I have run over 3000 PvE queued maps the past 3 years in this game and whatever Cryptic or the publisher tried to achieve with the DR revamp they seem to have failed miserably with it demonstrating massive lacks of knowledge about their own game as well as players.
Thanks to the fleets Im in I have a position where I can assemble my own teams with strength and weaknesses or where I can deliberately pug if I want a surprise.
My problem is that I dont feel challenged, rather stressed or frustrated with those instant fails. I mostly know if a team can handle them before we disembark and if the team-mates are as good as me we dont notice the fails at all NO CHALLENGE
The other option for me is to do a surprise surprise pug but also then I only feel a lack of challenge because the way most of the fails are design.. one team member makes a mistake and the game is over without the option for me to do anything about it. As alternative I simply end up in a below 3k DPS/per player-group and again could quit before I even start with my 20k contribution .again NO CHALANGE
You know it could have been really easy for cryptic and pwe.. even with that entire DR money grabbing ambition. Instead of making fail criteria they cold have also made additional rewards for former optional and not only additional but also substantial. Complete a mission within a certain timeframe: 300 more dil; Complete Optional: 1 more salvage; keep evereryone in team alive: +Materials.
In such an environment the challenge for elitists and TRIBBLE would be the same but we at least would have a positive basic atmosphere and not the I need to run for my money one we have now.
No matter how I see, it no matter how I twist it, from the perspective of one of the best players of my guild or from the one of newcommers. I come to the same conclusion. Cryptic made a massive error in judgement on the redesign of PvE queue maps and they crippled the aspect of the game me and so many others of my fl and fleet mates used to like most as badly as they could.
Their current repair efforts feel like a laugh.
-Connor
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
If it had been just any one of these things, I doubt people would have started up such a storm. Instead, it all hit at the same time, and we have a situation akin to what happened in Star Trek V. There are some good points, but people tend to see the negatives far more. Mainly because people are gonna do the pve queues a lot more often than they do story missions once they hit level 50, and this is where the trouble really hits big.
The optional-turned-mandatory objectives, combined with these "failure prizes" and universal queue cooldowns, have probably done the most damage by far to the game's Pugs. And this is before you factor in the strange decision to increase the difficulty, yet slash the rewards (would somebody please explain the logic behind that to me? Sarek would be spinning in his grave if he found out about this.).
Now, the way I see to fix this is to simply either return the optional-turned-mandatory objectives back to optional, or remove the failure prizes and cooldown timers on mission fail, and fix the bugged objectives, such as the benthans on korfez and the anomaly in viscous cycle. I do not want a consolation prize and a cooldown timer on a failure. All it does is make me feel like I have completely and utterly wasted my time, and that my time is better spent on a game that is not star trek online. Fixing that and turning the rewards back up, not to mention actually addressing and fixing several issues inside the missions themselves would go a long way to restoring the faith of the playerbase and getting pugs back to a healthy state.
I understand that there is a list of reward buffs on another thread, but we have no actual set date on them, but we do have a set date on another grind and another set of nerfs. All we've been seeing since delta rising launched was nothing but a steady stream of nerfs, which is probably what convinced several people on the forums and in the game that the developers and PWE were at war with the players. What the players would probably love to see is for there to be a set date for these buffs, and then for these buffs to actually make a difference when they are delivered. This is supposed to be a game, not a chore. Please stop making the players feel like it is such.
It would all make more sense if the "optional" actually meant something. In isa you can't let the spheres heal the transformer...but why? Why does that matter? It would make more sense if the borg spheres came through as scouts saw that their gate was under attack and you had a time limit to destroy them before they summon reinforcements, like a bunch of tac cubes. Alternatively, science captain's could block the transmission, engineer captain's could temporarily disable the gate giving you more time to destroy the Borg scouts etc... so that there are alternate ways to win without massive dps.
That's not entirely true, I've spent many hours helping "noobs" learn how to build ships and fly better. The bad part is when they then go all teenage angst and then blame you for messing up their ship. Had that a few times, annoying as hell when it's mainly due to a failure to listen or a mistake in their build/flying.
Anyway back to the STF's. Advanced is only currently hard when full of a PUG of 1K DPS'ers. In a group that pull 10K each then there's no problems. A single 20K+ can carry 3-4 2-4K DPS players too (well in ISA at least).
The problem is that with DR Geko and his rebalance turned out to be a steaming lump of compost. There is no balance any more. There is only Damage and Sponge.
If the AI had been upgraded to be mildly competent with loadouts that made some sense (instead of the current 3-4 item's the AI actually have) then it would be in a better state. The intention was to increase TTK (Time To Kill). However all it did was increase an insane arms race to get the highest DPS from a ship (current max is 171,000 DPS I believe).
If it's all balanced off a single player then as you gain more players the damage output increases rapidly. 4 Players technically equals 4x the damage vs a single target. If there were AI scaling resistances instead of just giving each ship 1 Million Hull points then it would be a better challenge.
Hell I could go into far more detail, and have done in the past, but they don't want to know. Geko has his spreadsheets and that's all that matters to him.
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
Had the same happen earlier. And there didn't seem to be any reason for it; no probes made it past anyone and the mission was, by all accounts, progressing fairly well.
Is there a cloaked countdown timer or something?
^^ Same here. (As I posted about in this thread too, about KSA)
Just wanna pitch in and say, I'm not a moonbrain: no one left any probes thru. Like in your case, we were doing fine; then, boom, mission failed.
In other cases, I've heard someone mention prematurely summoning a cube or something. Wouldn't know which one, actually, LOL, but maybe that is fail nowadays?!
yes they can...designers can be notoriously short sighted, exhibit a lack of planning, complete disconnects with the player base of the game, etc.
not that they all do it (devs/designers) but it isn't that uncommon. btw, not making excuses for cryptic/pwe. there is no excuse for bad design especially when you have the player base so involved as it is in STO.
warframe, UI (absolutely one of the worst i've seen), host<>client issues due to their refusal to have a central game server system.
tera UI (adobe scaleform)
rappelz, various, though the most glaring was allowing a known server crash bug to go from test to live without being fixed..which of course crashed the servers every 10 minutes.
2 moons, too many exploits.
ddo, inventory duping exploits. initial release of guilds that forced players into large guilds...same as sto though ddo later changed the parameters so smaller guilds were viable. using a sliding scale.
black prophecy, time gated crafting that locked you out of anything except chatting.
bsgo, paygate that lost them nearly half their players even though they were told, warned, and begged repeatedly not to let that patch go live.
forsaken world, guild lockouts. unique items locked behind guilds...big rich guilds.
swtor, f2p model
shin megami tensei, timers on almost all CS items, including bank.
wizardry online, PvP exploits
WoW, mass death exploit, insufficient planning on releases.
eve, developers interfering directly in the game siding with (certain) players
skyrim, launched broken.
sim city, don't have to go into detail there do i?
assassins creed unity
watchdogs
there's more, but all of them have one common theme, not understanding the players of their game, or gamers in general. you have pundits in the industry who claim to know what works and what doesn't and conservatives who keep trying the same old copy/pasted to every other game/new content. designers best source of information they ignore (players of their game) instead relying on 'experts' who in most cases don't game at all much less the don't play the game they're adding changes too.
gaming industry atm is a fustercluck. mmo industry is a fustercluck squared. studied this for years and the same mistakes keep happening. the so called experts don't change their tunes (or are so out of date) so mechanics that previously didn't work keep getting rehashed and they seem continually surprised that their expert given/rehashed/recycled ideas don't pan out...
sto just suffers worse from it. conservatives are rampant (retread old ideas onto new content) they thinkplayers are morons (that may be changing...though i suspect it's only lip service) being owned by pwe, a corporation with entirely too many people running it who don't have a clue...but hey, they probably have business degrees. which brings up one more issue where standard businesses and mmo's don't mix...but owners attempt to run them as if they are the same.
profit increases and growth. 'if you're not growing you're dying as a business' whomever stated that ought to be retroactively lobotomized and locked away as it promotes many of the cash grabs in all mmo's and games in general (DLC's). simply put, if you can pay your expenses and have some left over, you're good. trying to consistently increase profits annually (growth) in an mmo especially is a sure way to find failure.
all this actually pertains to this thread as it gives the reasons behind what seem nonsensical changes. buy t6 ship or upgrade, buy consoles, and upgrade...spend that dilithium, and buy more with zen. fast track yourself through cash injections to have the ship and gear to run the non optional advanced/elite stf's.
you can pay your way to win. which is the final form of that growth in profits is required error. you can trace every decision to that in sto. add new mechanic? make sure it's tied to dilithium.
cryptic/pwe loves the dil<>zen conversion, and don't care what the players think...it's the best cash generator ever. (to paraphrase a certain lizard)
Best post in this thread hands down.
How many years is probably this game going to survive in your opinion, deadspace ?
I'm convinced Infected Ground Advanced's "optionals" are impossible. Saving those Starfleet members in time not only requires you to beat the timer but also requires you to beat an invisible timer for every room.
(Side note: it would be nice if they had a progress bar on the assimilation status of the hostages so you could see how close those drones were).
And yes, I know how to not trigger it until ready, how to rescue them, etc. I'm outfitted with full rep gear and my character is specced for ground. It's still impossible.
I would welcome the return of Elites and the toning down of Advanced queues.
I've done IGA a number of times since DR and pulled it off with plenty of time to spare.
Teamwork and competence is all it takes. If you know your trigger lines, you are FINE. If everybody is carrying a long range rifle, you can do it. Of somebody is carrying a pulsewave or a pistol and can't fire at the enemy from the proper place, it's their fault if you lose time. You need their DPS to down the enemies quickly.
I'm convinced Infected Ground Advanced's "optionals" are impossible. Saving those Starfleet members in time not only requires you to beat the timer but also requires you to beat an invisible timer for every room.
(Side note: it would be nice if they had a progress bar on the assimilation status of the hostages so you could see how close those drones were).
And yes, I know how to not trigger it until ready, how to rescue them, etc. I'm outfitted with full rep gear and my character is specced for ground. It's still impossible.
I would welcome the return of Elites and the toning down of Advanced queues.
The problem is that the gap between the people who know their stuff and those who don't is unnecessarily huge. Cryptic makes no effort to make the game in a way that teaches you the workings, how to build correctly, and most importantly that teamwork is OP.
this.
along with the issue of there being two different games being played in the STF queues.
one where new players dont have the power to crush the content
and
one where established players just facemelt everything and arent interested in teaching new players 'how to'.
While my friends and myself will try to help people, I do realise that most folks don't try in the first place to help anyone. That being said we have a few issues around this.
The first is that there are some groups and individuals in the game who pretend to know how an aspect of the game works, yet on closer inspection they actually are either clueless or they are trying to cheat their way out of it, or in other words, blind leading the blind or 'leeching' respectively.
The other is that a lot of people refuse to be taught. They insist on running the queues yet contribute nothing to the team. Again this can come under leeching, but considering simple competence is usually enough in a queue and a half decent build, it is a sad state of the playerbase and has been this way for a long time. DR just exacerbated the problem.
Finally like I said above, Cryptic make zero effort to put anything in game to help the playerbase learn the game.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
To be Honest and from experience iga can be completed in plenty of time with three players. But like you said knowledge and competence are the key to completing along with a good measure of teamwork.
It would all make more sense if the "optional" actually meant something. In isa you can't let the spheres heal the transformer...but why? Why does that matter? It would make more sense if the borg spheres came through as scouts saw that their gate was under attack and you had a time limit to destroy them before they summon reinforcements, like a bunch of tac cubes. Alternatively, science captain's could block the transmission, engineer captain's could temporarily disable the gate giving you more time to destroy the Borg scouts etc... so that there are alternate ways to win without massive dps.
You are giving me false hopes, great ideas but false hopes that something like that would replace the goofy timers.
If ppl would just use 50% of the time they spent complaining for learning how to play, there wouldnt be any "this is too hard"-threads on the forums anymore...
Comments
Single player only, teamed with 4 NPCs, similar to Fleet Support.
Wait what? STF already are single player content - you just hop in with ur l33t tac dps beam boat and do "your thing".
You're doing it wrong.
THey don´t but it really doesn´t matter.
In Khitomer in stasis for example the "mandatory optional" is to destroy those transformers within 15 minutes. If you can´t do that the mission fails. So there is no need for an "optional optional" after that. But there is. you have more time for the optional than for the mandatory objectives.
And another thing.
Yesterday in Undine infiltration Elite:
We were quesioning the suspects 9/10 done. Now with number 10 something weird happened (i didn´t question him)
for me he was listed as cleeared so we had all 10 suspects questioned correctly, my list of objectoves showed 10/10 correctly and it should be we got the message from the Bajoran commander that our informations enabled them to identify the undine.
But then the mission failed.
I have no idea why. 10/10 questioned correctly, no wrong answers but failed.
And please guys stop all that PUG-Bashing.
Why do you have to be in an highly active fleet, have a superior build and experience in the game to do PvE? On my ship i still use fleet weapons. not CritHx3, normal Dmg, Acc and CritDs.Maybe i will get some critdx3 in the future but now i won´t.
And if i cause missions to fail with that, well i really don´t care. According to Cryptic Advanced should be the same as the old Elite so if my Weapons, that worked perfectly on Elite (old) don´t work now it must be Cryptics fault.
pre DR the PvEs were not too easy, they were good and fun and not too long. not this race against time that it is now. And everytime a newbie does an STF he ends up getting insulted if he is doing something wrong (thank God that we have the auto-censoring)
Pre DR everyone could join any PvE mission in as short time with nearly every gear and still win.
Now you need high-level crafted gear so you need to spend millions and millions on that gear or have to craft it yourself, which would be Problematic because the Gear you need to craft those things, comes from the missions you can´t do without it.
SO you have to have the gear to gbe able to get it. Nice logic, Spock would shoot himself
I can't blame the fail condition, though. If two players can't free a 1 or a 2 in three minutes, then they just plain shouldn't be in advanced. Ditto for the people I see shooting at probes in KSA but just not being able to crack those shields in the 1-2 minutes it takes for them to get to the gate. There just needs to be a better way to implement it.
I like sinn's idea of some kind of test. Maybe just pew pew at ships before you unlock the ability to do advanced queues and require a certain DPS (set the bar low, like 8-10K). Then you need to unlock each advanced queue by successfully completing the associated normal level queue.
And yes the test should be about DPS. This game is about killing things. There are other games that are not about killing things. I have a toon with a drain build doing 16K dps, and he's totally focused on drains. There's no reason people can't have some fun role but also have decent dps. Some players' refusal/inability to get a basic build together is ruining other people's good times.
Aye, just single player and teamed with 4 NPCs...but thinking along the lines of:
"Do you prefer...?"
Where it inserts some relevant role, and it selects the 4 NPCs that fly with you based on that preference of role.
Say Heal/Tank was an option. The NPCs would be set with higher damage/aggro and lower resistances. So the task would be keeping aggro, keeping oneself alive, and keeping the NPCs alive.
Say Debuff/Buff was an option. The NPCs would be below a certain threshold where the mission would fail unless enough debuff 'n buff action were going on sort of thing.
Basically role-training/testing sort of stuff.
With it throwing a loop in as you move from Normal to Advanced and Elite where you may not be the only one (NPCs doing it as well), so you're still going to have to do more...etc, etc, etc.
Oh sry, I didn't know that since this games PvE "content" is so ridiculously easy that I didn't realise the need of a team...
Did you put out the fires or stop the Undine from stealing the Orb?
I thought of that, but, you never know what you'll get in a PUG. I figure, getting about the same as you'd get from Fleet Support would do the trick. Like...Argala, kind of, with the Benthans? I'm thinking that it would kind of force one to evaluate how well their character would do in a queue.
It'd be fun to choose your role, but...if you're choosing your role in a queue, it's premade. That means you have people carrying you if you're not up to it, or know exactly what (non-DPS) role you're bringing- which would negate the need for what I'm proposing.
(Side note: it would be nice if they had a progress bar on the assimilation status of the hostages so you could see how close those drones were).
And yes, I know how to not trigger it until ready, how to rescue them, etc. I'm outfitted with full rep gear and my character is specced for ground. It's still impossible.
I would welcome the return of Elites and the toning down of Advanced queues.
But that's where I was looking at having that loop thrown in at Advanced and Elite...that thing of where you show up for a PUG run, and well - there are three guys looking to be support. So in order to complete that mission at the higher difficulties, you'd have to bring something else to the game - be able to adapt sort of thing.
I'm massively opposed to the queues being set for folks to select roles - because that's just not my thing; but folks are still going to try to do their roles (Hell, I like running Debuff/Tank)...so if they could get some feedback before throwing the team under the bus, that would be kind of nifty.
And yeah, it could be a potential way to gate content...so there would be no misdiagnosing somebody that maybe shouldn't have been there and needs some help with somebody that's just leeching/afking...
I would think some kind of points system, in addition to the pass/fail:
a to b points - Below Normal
b to c points - Normal
c to d points - Advanced
d to e points - Elite (if applicable).
Damage dealt would likely have to factor heavily into this. Maybe some equation involving time/damage/deaths/heals/damage taken?
Honestly, people would complain about the damage aspect of it, but...I mean everyone deals damage in one way or another.
Would definitely work damage into it, cause outside of specific team comps where folks won't do damage cause the group is parsing the one guy - just because somebody's a healer or a tank doesn't mean they can't do way more than the DPS required for the content. There's just that much room between what content actually requires and how much damage is possible.
And yes, folks would complain about it - but when folks are doing what they're doing and doing damage, the complaints don't mean anything now and wouldn't mean anything with such a system.
I know this was meant as a half-joke...but - and I'm not joking about this - I jumped in my Tholian shuttle last night and soloed so much content that it was ridiculous.
Completely agree. If something like this went into effect, like you said, it could gate the Advanced/Elite queues. Like, say, you can't enter a public queue without having earned x accolade (tied to point score). You could join private queues, but completion of those do not erase the need for x accolade for public ones.
That way, people could still learn with friends/fleet/whatever, if they need to learn. And it would keep the "I'm clueless but want rewards for nothing" people from leeching off of the average player.
yes they can...designers can be notoriously short sighted, exhibit a lack of planning, complete disconnects with the player base of the game, etc.
not that they all do it (devs/designers) but it isn't that uncommon. btw, not making excuses for cryptic/pwe. there is no excuse for bad design especially when you have the player base so involved as it is in STO.
warframe, UI (absolutely one of the worst i've seen), host<>client issues due to their refusal to have a central game server system.
tera UI (adobe scaleform)
rappelz, various, though the most glaring was allowing a known server crash bug to go from test to live without being fixed..which of course crashed the servers every 10 minutes.
2 moons, too many exploits.
ddo, inventory duping exploits. initial release of guilds that forced players into large guilds...same as sto though ddo later changed the parameters so smaller guilds were viable. using a sliding scale.
black prophecy, time gated crafting that locked you out of anything except chatting.
bsgo, paygate that lost them nearly half their players even though they were told, warned, and begged repeatedly not to let that patch go live.
forsaken world, guild lockouts. unique items locked behind guilds...big rich guilds.
swtor, f2p model
shin megami tensei, timers on almost all CS items, including bank.
wizardry online, PvP exploits
WoW, mass death exploit, insufficient planning on releases.
eve, developers interfering directly in the game siding with (certain) players
skyrim, launched broken.
sim city, don't have to go into detail there do i?
assassins creed unity
watchdogs
there's more, but all of them have one common theme, not understanding the players of their game, or gamers in general. you have pundits in the industry who claim to know what works and what doesn't and conservatives who keep trying the same old copy/pasted to every other game/new content. designers best source of information they ignore (players of their game) instead relying on 'experts' who in most cases don't game at all much less the don't play the game they're adding changes too.
gaming industry atm is a fustercluck. mmo industry is a fustercluck squared. studied this for years and the same mistakes keep happening. the so called experts don't change their tunes (or are so out of date) so mechanics that previously didn't work keep getting rehashed and they seem continually surprised that their expert given/rehashed/recycled ideas don't pan out...
sto just suffers worse from it. conservatives are rampant (retread old ideas onto new content) they thinkplayers are morons (that may be changing...though i suspect it's only lip service) being owned by pwe, a corporation with entirely too many people running it who don't have a clue...but hey, they probably have business degrees. which brings up one more issue where standard businesses and mmo's don't mix...but owners attempt to run them as if they are the same.
profit increases and growth. 'if you're not growing you're dying as a business' whomever stated that ought to be retroactively lobotomized and locked away as it promotes many of the cash grabs in all mmo's and games in general (DLC's). simply put, if you can pay your expenses and have some left over, you're good. trying to consistently increase profits annually (growth) in an mmo especially is a sure way to find failure.
all this actually pertains to this thread as it gives the reasons behind what seem nonsensical changes. buy t6 ship or upgrade, buy consoles, and upgrade...spend that dilithium, and buy more with zen. fast track yourself through cash injections to have the ship and gear to run the non optional advanced/elite stf's.
you can pay your way to win. which is the final form of that growth in profits is required error. you can trace every decision to that in sto. add new mechanic? make sure it's tied to dilithium.
cryptic/pwe loves the dil<>zen conversion, and don't care what the players think...it's the best cash generator ever. (to paraphrase a certain lizard)
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
Thanks to the fleets Im in I have a position where I can assemble my own teams with strength and weaknesses or where I can deliberately pug if I want a surprise.
My problem is that I dont feel challenged, rather stressed or frustrated with those instant fails. I mostly know if a team can handle them before we disembark and if the team-mates are as good as me we dont notice the fails at all NO CHALLENGE
The other option for me is to do a surprise surprise pug but also then I only feel a lack of challenge because the way most of the fails are design.. one team member makes a mistake and the game is over without the option for me to do anything about it. As alternative I simply end up in a below 3k DPS/per player-group and again could quit before I even start with my 20k contribution .again NO CHALANGE
You know it could have been really easy for cryptic and pwe.. even with that entire DR money grabbing ambition. Instead of making fail criteria they cold have also made additional rewards for former optional and not only additional but also substantial. Complete a mission within a certain timeframe: 300 more dil; Complete Optional: 1 more salvage; keep evereryone in team alive: +Materials.
In such an environment the challenge for elitists and TRIBBLE would be the same but we at least would have a positive basic atmosphere and not the I need to run for my money one we have now.
No matter how I see, it no matter how I twist it, from the perspective of one of the best players of my guild or from the one of newcommers. I come to the same conclusion. Cryptic made a massive error in judgement on the redesign of PvE queue maps and they crippled the aspect of the game me and so many others of my fl and fleet mates used to like most as badly as they could.
Their current repair efforts feel like a laugh.
-Connor
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
The optional-turned-mandatory objectives, combined with these "failure prizes" and universal queue cooldowns, have probably done the most damage by far to the game's Pugs. And this is before you factor in the strange decision to increase the difficulty, yet slash the rewards (would somebody please explain the logic behind that to me? Sarek would be spinning in his grave if he found out about this.).
Now, the way I see to fix this is to simply either return the optional-turned-mandatory objectives back to optional, or remove the failure prizes and cooldown timers on mission fail, and fix the bugged objectives, such as the benthans on korfez and the anomaly in viscous cycle. I do not want a consolation prize and a cooldown timer on a failure. All it does is make me feel like I have completely and utterly wasted my time, and that my time is better spent on a game that is not star trek online. Fixing that and turning the rewards back up, not to mention actually addressing and fixing several issues inside the missions themselves would go a long way to restoring the faith of the playerbase and getting pugs back to a healthy state.
I understand that there is a list of reward buffs on another thread, but we have no actual set date on them, but we do have a set date on another grind and another set of nerfs. All we've been seeing since delta rising launched was nothing but a steady stream of nerfs, which is probably what convinced several people on the forums and in the game that the developers and PWE were at war with the players. What the players would probably love to see is for there to be a set date for these buffs, and then for these buffs to actually make a difference when they are delivered. This is supposed to be a game, not a chore. Please stop making the players feel like it is such.
Anyway back to the STF's. Advanced is only currently hard when full of a PUG of 1K DPS'ers. In a group that pull 10K each then there's no problems. A single 20K+ can carry 3-4 2-4K DPS players too (well in ISA at least).
The problem is that with DR Geko and his rebalance turned out to be a steaming lump of compost. There is no balance any more. There is only Damage and Sponge.
If the AI had been upgraded to be mildly competent with loadouts that made some sense (instead of the current 3-4 item's the AI actually have) then it would be in a better state. The intention was to increase TTK (Time To Kill). However all it did was increase an insane arms race to get the highest DPS from a ship (current max is 171,000 DPS I believe).
If it's all balanced off a single player then as you gain more players the damage output increases rapidly. 4 Players technically equals 4x the damage vs a single target. If there were AI scaling resistances instead of just giving each ship 1 Million Hull points then it would be a better challenge.
Hell I could go into far more detail, and have done in the past, but they don't want to know. Geko has his spreadsheets and that's all that matters to him.
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
^^ Same here.
Just wanna pitch in and say, I'm not a moonbrain: no one left any probes thru. Like in your case, we were doing fine; then, boom, mission failed.
In other cases, I've heard someone mention prematurely summoning a cube or something. Wouldn't know which one, actually, LOL, but maybe that is fail nowadays?!
Best post in this thread hands down.
How many years is probably this game going to survive in your opinion, deadspace ?
I've done IGA a number of times since DR and pulled it off with plenty of time to spare.
Teamwork and competence is all it takes. If you know your trigger lines, you are FINE. If everybody is carrying a long range rifle, you can do it. Of somebody is carrying a pulsewave or a pistol and can't fire at the enemy from the proper place, it's their fault if you lose time. You need their DPS to down the enemies quickly.
I'm just gonna stick this here just to save writing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6Mk15o7R1E
The problem is that the gap between the people who know their stuff and those who don't is unnecessarily huge. Cryptic makes no effort to make the game in a way that teaches you the workings, how to build correctly, and most importantly that teamwork is OP.
While my friends and myself will try to help people, I do realise that most folks don't try in the first place to help anyone. That being said we have a few issues around this.
The first is that there are some groups and individuals in the game who pretend to know how an aspect of the game works, yet on closer inspection they actually are either clueless or they are trying to cheat their way out of it, or in other words, blind leading the blind or 'leeching' respectively.
The other is that a lot of people refuse to be taught. They insist on running the queues yet contribute nothing to the team. Again this can come under leeching, but considering simple competence is usually enough in a queue and a half decent build, it is a sad state of the playerbase and has been this way for a long time. DR just exacerbated the problem.
Finally like I said above, Cryptic make zero effort to put anything in game to help the playerbase learn the game.
To be Honest and from experience iga can be completed in plenty of time with three players. But like you said knowledge and competence are the key to completing along with a good measure of teamwork.
You are giving me false hopes, great ideas but false hopes that something like that would replace the goofy timers.