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Difference: Average DPS/ MEDIAN DPS
davideight
Member Posts: 460 Arc User
i think something in the long run should be sorted out in this game.
the difference between a minimum dps player (1k dps) and a maximum full gear player (100k dps and more) is: one hundred times the dps of the first one.
thats basically unacceptable when it comes to designing content for the majority of players.
how can it be, that in both cases! builds are possible that are 1k dps LOW like the pits of hell
and on the other hand be minmaxed that way of 100times the bad build ones?
i played several years of wow and whenever it came to comparisons with really BAD players and the Best, dps was never !one hundred times! apart from each other. thats insane.
before minmaxers kill me:
somehow it should be secured, that the gap gets smaller by RAISING the minimum dps somehow.
cause as it is now, i cannot see how pve solo, pve normal stf, pve adv and elite somehow could be balanced, if good and bad are THIS FAR APART.
i consider myself a relatively good player: am at 10k dps standard whatever i do, but im STILL ten times apart from the min-maxed builds?!
just saying that this leads to the problem of designing content for "most of all", whatever nerfs, buffs, rewardchanges you will make.
dont get me wrong here, im not saying i want more dps out of nothing, im just saying that the gap is so far away, designing "content for all or almost all" that is enjoyable, fun and maybe challenging but doable is impossible as long as builds (can) vary this much.
*dont get me wrong, i somehow like how free builds are, but does that mean that we can build TRIBBLE 1k dps builds?
i think minmaxing in this game has a lot of "synergy potential" . ive never seen a game make such difference between a "decent build" (like 10k-30k) and a minmaxed one (100k-160k). in wow when you started minmaxing chars, your dps would NOT skyrocket to 10 times the decent ones (excluding exploits of course). maybe double or tripple (with certain hidden allowed techniques like stacking dots in aoe fights, whatever ^^)
im just saying that, i dont know if the devs are aware of this large gap at all, when ive seen smirk play, i wonder if he knows that there are players actually capable of outperforming 100 smirks with ONE SHIP. (no personal insult, im just trying to make a point with examples everyone can go along with)
_____________
also i think another part is very difficult in the "metrics" the devs use.
there is a difference between average and median.
median is a term used in socioeconomic statistics to make them more accurate to actually HIT the BROAD mass income expectations, without having them distracted to the top by multibillionaires, or distracted to the bottom by incomeless/homeless people.
to get valuablem etrics its extremly important to know this difference!!!
we all know "average income" calculations right? how many of you know that those average income calculations are not "the real average" but kind like a "cleared up" average, after the very RICH incomes have erased out of the calculus (and the very poor of course)!
the non standardised "average income" of the us is like 500thousand dollars a year. the "average median income" is like 50thousand dollars a year. the first number is when gates and jobs are in the calculus. they are the 160k dps players of the real world income, so to say.
if you dont "clean up" the ultra outperformers your metrics give you wrong conclusions about whats the "real" average and thus make it harder to please the broad masses expectations and capabilities.*
(* it might be possible, that cryptic actually tries to hit jobs and gates expectations! or tries to make diff content for mass(solo pve)and the minmaxers (elite stf) i just mention it, for the sake of having it been said)
lets get back to sto again:
the average dps using cryptics metrics surely is like 50k dps ... unfortunately 99% of the players (me included) dont even reach half that far in dps. content gets nerfed to that number, stfs are designed around that (purely imagined by me) number.
so you have a stf of 10 players, and the expected average dps is 50k.
the REAL average dps, based on the fact that i explained above, is 5k dps. (heck ive seen pets outperforming players in dps ^^ no insult but wtf ...)
suddenly a decent stf adv becomes undoable for 99% of the players UNLESS steve jobs or gates with 100-160k dps are present, that chance is 1 ot of hundred, so in every 1of100 stfs youll have luck an suddenly reach the average dps, have gates and jobs and you still rush through it ^^
(im just trying to hint on a certain "typical metric" error here, not saying or suggesting changes, calling nerfs or buffs, i just think cryptic devs really dont know how "poisonous" ultra-performers are for "averaging" metrics if you uncoutiously include them in your metrics and dps expectations)
again: just saying.
the difference between a minimum dps player (1k dps) and a maximum full gear player (100k dps and more) is: one hundred times the dps of the first one.
thats basically unacceptable when it comes to designing content for the majority of players.
how can it be, that in both cases! builds are possible that are 1k dps LOW like the pits of hell
and on the other hand be minmaxed that way of 100times the bad build ones?
i played several years of wow and whenever it came to comparisons with really BAD players and the Best, dps was never !one hundred times! apart from each other. thats insane.
before minmaxers kill me:
somehow it should be secured, that the gap gets smaller by RAISING the minimum dps somehow.
cause as it is now, i cannot see how pve solo, pve normal stf, pve adv and elite somehow could be balanced, if good and bad are THIS FAR APART.
i consider myself a relatively good player: am at 10k dps standard whatever i do, but im STILL ten times apart from the min-maxed builds?!
just saying that this leads to the problem of designing content for "most of all", whatever nerfs, buffs, rewardchanges you will make.
dont get me wrong here, im not saying i want more dps out of nothing, im just saying that the gap is so far away, designing "content for all or almost all" that is enjoyable, fun and maybe challenging but doable is impossible as long as builds (can) vary this much.
*dont get me wrong, i somehow like how free builds are, but does that mean that we can build TRIBBLE 1k dps builds?
i think minmaxing in this game has a lot of "synergy potential" . ive never seen a game make such difference between a "decent build" (like 10k-30k) and a minmaxed one (100k-160k). in wow when you started minmaxing chars, your dps would NOT skyrocket to 10 times the decent ones (excluding exploits of course). maybe double or tripple (with certain hidden allowed techniques like stacking dots in aoe fights, whatever ^^)
im just saying that, i dont know if the devs are aware of this large gap at all, when ive seen smirk play, i wonder if he knows that there are players actually capable of outperforming 100 smirks with ONE SHIP. (no personal insult, im just trying to make a point with examples everyone can go along with)
_____________
also i think another part is very difficult in the "metrics" the devs use.
there is a difference between average and median.
median is a term used in socioeconomic statistics to make them more accurate to actually HIT the BROAD mass income expectations, without having them distracted to the top by multibillionaires, or distracted to the bottom by incomeless/homeless people.
to get valuablem etrics its extremly important to know this difference!!!
we all know "average income" calculations right? how many of you know that those average income calculations are not "the real average" but kind like a "cleared up" average, after the very RICH incomes have erased out of the calculus (and the very poor of course)!
the non standardised "average income" of the us is like 500thousand dollars a year. the "average median income" is like 50thousand dollars a year. the first number is when gates and jobs are in the calculus. they are the 160k dps players of the real world income, so to say.
if you dont "clean up" the ultra outperformers your metrics give you wrong conclusions about whats the "real" average and thus make it harder to please the broad masses expectations and capabilities.*
(* it might be possible, that cryptic actually tries to hit jobs and gates expectations! or tries to make diff content for mass(solo pve)and the minmaxers (elite stf) i just mention it, for the sake of having it been said)
lets get back to sto again:
the average dps using cryptics metrics surely is like 50k dps ... unfortunately 99% of the players (me included) dont even reach half that far in dps. content gets nerfed to that number, stfs are designed around that (purely imagined by me) number.
so you have a stf of 10 players, and the expected average dps is 50k.
the REAL average dps, based on the fact that i explained above, is 5k dps. (heck ive seen pets outperforming players in dps ^^ no insult but wtf ...)
suddenly a decent stf adv becomes undoable for 99% of the players UNLESS steve jobs or gates with 100-160k dps are present, that chance is 1 ot of hundred, so in every 1of100 stfs youll have luck an suddenly reach the average dps, have gates and jobs and you still rush through it ^^
(im just trying to hint on a certain "typical metric" error here, not saying or suggesting changes, calling nerfs or buffs, i just think cryptic devs really dont know how "poisonous" ultra-performers are for "averaging" metrics if you uncoutiously include them in your metrics and dps expectations)
again: just saying.
Post edited by davideight on
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http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=21875151&postcount=12
That being said, Cryptic should be using some kind of measure of spread in addition to measures of location. If I wanted summary statistics for some data, I would ask for the following:
mean
standard deviation
25th percentile
50th percentile (mean)
75th percentile
The 25th percentile is sometimes subtracted from the 75th percentile to produce the interquartile range. If you want to get an idea of the shape of the distribution, a histogram would probably be better than summary statistics alone.
There is also the question of computational efficiency. I'm not sure how much data Cryptic is dealing with and what tools they have available. Did they hand-write code to compute their statistics? Are they relying on tools provided by their database? Does the data fit into RAM? If not, how do they optimize their disk access?
Further, in getting into various content and looking at things - certain things like optionals come to mind, not fail conditions - but optionals. Those are optionals. Using ISA as an example, a group could take over 20 minutes to do an ISA - they avoid the fail conditions of the Nanites and Transformers, but they completely miss the 15 minute optional. That's an optional - the run was still a success.
In addition to that, with the discussion of comparing the 1k DPS player and the 100k DPS player - how much support was that 100k DPS player receiving from the team to get that vs. the 1k DPS player?
Okay then, let's move beyond that and just look at some basic things we could to destroy that 100k DPS, eh? Say they're just getting 100k from their weapons and any more is elsewhere, k?
Let's have that player average 50 Weapon Power instead of 125, yeah? We've just dropped them down to 40k from 100k. Let's move them out to inside 10km instead of say inside 3km, yeah? We've just dropped them down to 27.8k from 40k. And let's say instead of 95% active engaged they're at 50%? We've just dropped them down from 27.8k to 14.6k.
No change in gear...all we did was change Weapon Power, the range they attacked from, and how much time was spent dawdling in the middle of nowhere doing nothing.
What if removed some debuff stacking, eh? Hell, we could drop them down to 7k or less there...and if we were to butcher any buff rotations so they weren't efficient? We could probably get them down to 5k or less, yeah? We could then start in on some gear adjustments, and we could probably get them down to 2-3k, eh?
Okay, so was the major kill to DPS there any min/maxing thing? Or was the major kill to DPS there...that those guys know how to play better than most of us?
It's almost as if the whole premise is a red herring.
If there was all sorts of content requiring 20k, 30k, 50k, 100k...then that would be another story, no?
For most content, 5-10 people doing 10k is going to be overkill. If as suggested the average is 5k, then again - what would be the problem with that? Wouldn't something Advanced or Elite be something one would expect to be...Advanced or Elite...and thus require more than that average?
And frtoaster, damn you for frying my brain there! :P
The problem is the design of space combat and how many stuff factors in towards dmg increase.
There are several factors that stack multiplicatively:
- weapon tier
- weapon power
- distance to target
- direct dmg buffs type 1 as in crits
- direct dmg buffs type 2 like apa, apo, gdf, amp core, ...
- indirect dmg buffs as in debuffs like apb, intense focus trait, pen weapons
- weapon firing mode buffs like faw/ crf/ csv
That means there are 7 in words *SEVEN* sources of dmg increase that stack multiplicatively.
What this means is sto is a game designed for pro players and keybind kings not for the average joe. I'm not even talking about stuff stacking additively with obe of the groups above.
If you take avg joe he props will have medium distance 100weapon power, low to medium crit values, maybe even apb1 and he has apa and faw but doesnt use them at the same time.
Compare that to someone with
-125 wespon power + overcapping/borg set proc/marion dem
- mk 14 epic crtDx3 pen ap beams
- sitting right next to the target at almost zero distance
- high crith/critd values
- stacking apa, apo, gdf
- supported by a recluse with elite pets and pen weapons, intense focus, delta T2 rep trait for debuffing
- stacking faw3 on top of it all
Then you get a 5-10k dude for the joe and 100k + for the min-maxer.
Its not only about gear or traits or overcapping. Its about how those things stack And how to stack them.
Having recently leveled a fresh character, it was.. surprising.. how 'Star Trek' the game felt pre-50(I think gameplay peaks around level 30). Shield Facings mattered - naked torpedo hits were satisfying/deadly. Activating an attack ability was like a 'power move' rather than the 'status quo'.
When I went back to my 60's, it was just an ability spam-fest with a bunch of damage sponges where everyone replenishes themselves instantly without any drama or tension. End game is just.. a waiting game where you wait for things to fall over/explode while mashing the same button(s) again and again and again.
This, I discovered that while leveling my Deferi character as well.
I used boarding parties and scramble sensors during the leveling process. I spawned the nimbus pirates so they could distract the enemy which I sensor scrambled to *get away* in order to reach my objective (chase an escaping freighter).
When you reach endgame nothing of that matters anymore remotely.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
[Combat (Self)] Your Ferengi Rapid Fire Missile deals 7555 (3741) Kinetic Damage(Critical) to Malon Cruiser.
The Benthan NPCs and their Photons...
[Combat (Self)] Your Photon Torpedo - Salvo I deals 21686 (12351) Kinetic Damage to Malon Cruiser.
[Combat (Self)] Your Photon Torpedo - Salvo I deals 22635 (12891) Kinetic Damage to Malon Cruiser.
[Combat (Self)] Your Photon Torpedo deals 23052 (11416) Kinetic Damage to Malon Cruiser.
[Combat (Self)] Your Photon Torpedo - Salvo I deals 26643 (13194) Kinetic Damage to Malon Cruiser.
...debuffing, wheeee!
edit: How about this one from an ISA I just ran...
15:02:10:05:18:23.8::Willard the Rat,P[6114054@4209758 Willard the Rat@virusdancer],,*,Nanite Transformer,C[6576 Mission_Borgraid1_Comm_Array],Ferengi Rapid Fire Missile,Pn.Umb72p1,Kinetic,Critical,17257.3,4777.78
Yes, that's a 4777.78 base damage hit (including the critical) that actually hit for 17257.3 damage.
17257.3 / 4777.78 = 3.612...361.2% the damage from debuffing.
The biggest factors are the apa, apo, gdf - combo, power settings and debuffing, then crits and ability buffs, then range and gear. (Order aproximated only ofc)
What do you mean by "midpoint"? Is that different from median?
I'm not sure what I said that was confusing, unless it was this:
Maybe, I shouldn't have brought it up. The reason I did is that it might be simpler for them to compute the mean than the median.
I'm not a math guy...not a statistics guy. Doesn't take much for you guys to throw me for a loop and have me off searching for just what you're talking about.
In the end though, given the sheer amount of data that they could potentially process and everything they actually do need to track; do you think perhaps they are simply enabling logging of random samples over a period of time via some triggered procedure which they are in turn using to extrapolate the values, whether mean or median? Which I guess would get back more into what some folks have said about their being that potential bias, which if their sample is somewhat poisoned in some fashion because of that then their conclusions could be way off base.
An avg dps value is not very interesting as a value itself and thus wont be looked at. Also dps depends on your target type resis avg num enemies hit and stuff like that.
Thus its massivly depending on what event you're playing and how long the mission takes and more things like that.
... which brings me to the main reason why of this huge gap.
The OP , as he's been away for a long while, maybe doesn't know about the new MK XIII up to XIV, ultra rare and epic gear, which boost your number and he doesn't know that, some time ago, the epic mk XIV were furtherly buffed because apparently folks were not spending enough cash to reach MK XIV epic ( which is understandable since bringing anything from mk XIV ultra rare to mk XIV epic, waiting for the epic crit is like winning a lottery LOL ).
The OP, moreover, doesn't know that recently Al Rivera said that he has no idea how some folks can reach such high DPS, which implies that they have not carefully calculated costs and gains of this new upgrade system : they first raised the costs and then they had to raise also their powers to lure people to spend.
Not sure if you're talking about the STF we ran together but if I recall time on target (or time spent firing) was a huge factor as well, wasn't it?
I see it kind of like this, if the speed limit is 65, who cares if your car can do 200.
I'd like to see less DPS shaming in this game, there are channels for high DPS crowds, to pull members from for content.
If you don't want to deal with players are playing the game the way you would like, don't pug.
I suppose it's possible. If they are sampling, then two possible sources of error are (1) not large enough samples and (2) a biased sampling procedure. However, I'm not entirely convinced that they do have too much data. How many matches do you think take place in a day? I'm going to guess fewer than one million. Even over a three-month period, that's still only 90 million matches. That doesn't seem like too much data to fit into memory. I suppose they could be storing the entire combat log instead of just aggregate numbers for each match. I'm not sure why they would do that though.
But they're tweaking content, so to an extent DPS has to be a consideration as DPS will play such a large factor in how long the content might be expected to take.
Say you were tasked with designing a new instance. Probably one of the first things you're going to be told is that it should take around X amount of time. How are you going to have the content take that X amount of time? You're basically going to have four factors involved, no?
1) Artificial Wait Time
2) Dialogue Time
3) Travel Time
4) Combat Time
The Artificial Wait Time is the factor you've got the most control over...you've set it, and it is whatever it is.
The Dialogue Time is subject to folks just hitting the F-key and skipping it to get on with the show (perhaps seeing it 9000 times already, they just don't feel like reading it that 9001st time).
The Travel Time isn't going to be too variable outside of a given range...outside of people not traveling, exploring, or chasing butterflies.
That mainly leaves you with the Combat Time.
The Combat Time is going to come from having a set of NPCs with a fixed health value that needs to be zeroed. This is going to be highly variable, no? But you must have some number at hand to determine just which mobs you're going to toss into the mix so that your mission is near that X amount of time, no?
So even if they're not tracking the DPS of players (which I can't see them doing), you could potentially look at how long the content is actually taking (mean/median) and from that see whether or not that DPS from the combat time is higher or lower than the number you used to create the content. If the content is being completed faster than expected, one could say that folks are putting out more DPS than expected - need to buff the health of the NPCs so the content takes around the expected time instead. If the content is taking longer than expected, one could say that folks are putting out less DPS than expected - need to decrease the health of the NPCs so the content takes the expected time instead.
You're never actually looking at the DPS after having initially created the content, but you're making DPS related adjustments based on the completion time.
And well, because you weren't actually looking at the actual DPS - you could potentially see something like the following:
ISA...4:45 minutes (285 seconds)...where based off of the time, you might say there was a total of 121,289.123 DPS done; where you calculated it based off your initial DPS for creating the content vs. the time. And perhaps you then average that out...ah, each player was doing ~24,257.8246 DPS.
When the reality was...
A) 72,699.117
C) 17,495.426
D) 8,827.93
E) 2,952.23
Where four of the five players were actually below that 24k number.
Perhaps there was another one:
ISA...5:54 minutes (354 seconds)..where again based off of the time (yadda-yadda)...there was 84,668.926 total DPS done, which you average out to 16,933.7852 DPS.
When the reality was...
A) 33,075.188
C) 16,139.552
D) 6,890.133
E) 7,011.977
With three of the four players being below that average 16.9k number.
How about one more?
ISA...12:30 minutes (750 seconds)...where (blah, blah, blah)...there was 41,156.263 total DPS with the average of 8,231.2526 DPS.
Nope, the reality was...
A) 20,133.545
C) 6,047.035
D) 5,430.292
E) 2,969.278
Four of the five players below that average of 8k.
And while that first one might stand out with the 70k+ guy in there, even the last one with the 20k guy with the other guys stands out on its own.
Okay then, just one more. This one had a total of 38,919.569 DPS. 2,236.694 DPS less than the last one. This one took 17:29 minutes (1049 seconds). 2,236.694 DPS ~= almost 5 more minutes?
A) 14,692.571
C) 7,441.328
D) 4,716.956
E) 4,491.202
So what was the actual damage difference between those last two (not the DPS, but damage)?
The 750s run: 30,740,298 (Gateway took 4,056,490)
The 1049s run: 40,662,433 (Gateway took 5,904,094)
The 285s run: 34,020,714 (Gateway took 6,352,329)
Why did the Gateway take so much more in two of those? Broken Gateways? Not the same initial HP? Folks whacking away at it while it's being healed - fake DPS - so to speak? Hell, maybe it was just Photonics or Typhoons, eh? I didn't check.
But there are so many potential nuances in what might actually be taking place, yeah? Depending on how far down Cryptic does or does not drill down - how much they just look beneath whatever numbers they're looking at or even what numbers they're looking at could make a big difference.
One last one...
ISA...1:08 minutes (68 seconds)
A) 180,399.141
C) 51,268.91
D) 29,918.953
E) 20,827.25
The actual numbers from the individuals...it really does get into what Cryptic is looking at, no?
I suppose it's a personal bias, lol, in my surprise at some of the things that have been said here and there over the years...which to me suggests they're simply not looking at certain data. Whether they potentially have access to it or not, it's simply not something they're looking at for whatever reason.
I guess I just can't help picturing that they're running a more centralized database team which means that they probably have some web/intranet team that worked with the database folks to put together some canned reports based on which each of the development teams asked for at some point...and that they have to jump through flaming hoops to try to get any of that changed.
This is what I was trying to get at before.
One question you could ask is "Did they separate private matches and PUGs?" If you look at that older thread, you'll see that I'm not the only one who asked this question. The reason I asked is that they lowered the rewards for and increased the difficulty of CSA, but not ISA or KASA. I would say that CSA is harder than ISA and KASA, so how did they arrive at their decision?
If they don't have the ability to create customized reports based on their needs, then that would explain why some of their decisions seem questionable to us.
A completely green player with 1 damage type on their weapons and matching tac consoles with a build that results from "I played from 1-60 but don't know much" typical hits about 4-5k dps.
And the vast majority of players** are between 1.5 - 3times that, pulling 7 to 10k.
Or, if you look at the bell curve**, I would say about** 80% or so of players are from 5-10k. However this seems to be steadily rising as players copy builds from others, upgrade, buy t6 ships, and whatnot.
** based solely off my own pug experiences since DR, but I do tend to run 5+ stf pugs a night.
Based on what Charles said, I wouldn't assume that they're anywhere near done with what they're doing with tweaking things. I've never run CSA or KASA, so I couldn't offer any sort of opinion there...but er, it would be hard to imagine anything easier than ISA. Could just be that CSA was the easiest tweak to implement first there.
The CCA thing on the other hand with its adjustment stands out as a timely thing, so to speak. The Crystalline event starts March 5th and runs through the 26th according to the calendar.
edit: As for the reports, it was just one of the things I saw while looking through the jobs over at pwe-inc - the DBA position has creating game statistics reports as part of the description.
Exactly!
Surprised people only notice this now, as if they've never leveled a new character in forever on any difficulty other than normal.
Abilities spam-fest takes away the strategy of carefully choosing abilities when they make the most difference, in effect taking away the sense of reward that comes from seeing the strategy play out just right.
When did I have the most fun in this game? Solo missions on hard or elite (pre-DR) using older tier ships taking on enemies in fights that were always bordering on either side winning. The scenarios were endless, always a surprise, and rewarding in both success and defeat.
Examples:
- shield facings & torp contact
- reinforcements show up unexpectedly
- dodging stronger enemies behind asteroids
- sensor jamming, tractor beams, and other sci abilities on proper target at just the right moment
- timing of battle cloaking, decloaking
- NPC health reset timer vs ship status
- staying out of range to pierce enemy lines
- managing power levels to fit the situation on the fly
Examples now:
- wait for cooldown on 3 tray-load of abilities to keep them in constant use, plus a ton of BOFF powers, on all types of NPCs that all are bloated with hull, shield and weapon powers completely out of proportion to your own ship or to the ship that they are even flying
- repeat as fast as possible, doing everything in a constant rush, with little importance to anything else but damage output or science
And to the OP, it truly breaks the challenge when you have one person in the team pretty much carry the whole team through, or likewise, one or more ruining the entire match in failure despite a great team effort to try to compensate.
Such disparity in power (and player competence, another issue entirely) that's been left unchecked and that grows with each new expansion to me says PWE cares nothing for Star Trek, like an artist who hates their own work and exerts no creative effort in it whatsoever, at least until the trend dies completely to make way for a new opportunity that will be more profitable as a result of the previous one's failure, like a STO2 after they've driven STO1 into the ground.
They arent calculation anything they just play it 2-3 times, see what happens and thats it. Sometimes propably not even that.
And the game never even tells them their build is horrible. The only performance feedback in-game is the indefinite feeling of everyone else killing things faster. Only with a third-party software could they get the numbers to back it up.
As long as players are expected to just figure all this stuff out for themselves, there will be players with absurdly low DPS. Because not everyone is going to ask for help.
On top of the mishmash of weapon types that come with the ship the ship doesn't even come with tac consoles to give a new player an idea of what they should be putting in there.
Oh hey, I've got a beam weapon in the front, so I'll put this beam console in, oh look, a cannon console for the dual cannon, sweet, I've got a plasma array in the back so I should slot that plasma (projectile) console...
And dear Q, if anyone thought the Dyson layout from the mission ship was how it was supposed to be set up...
Also, there are some that need help but don't know they do until they try the queues. It worked "fine" for the missions so it should be fine for a queue.
I agree the lack of a build tutorial is a serious problem. An ongoing one that really should be handled....
But I would argue that any *gamer* would get drops of specific damage type consoles and think to theyself ".. hmm... if only these things worked on all my weapons". They see that their cannon skills only buff cannons and that beam skills only buff beams and think "hmm... if only those worked for all my weapons". There is a point at which one must give the players a *little* credit for being smarter than, say, a grapefruit. Making some synergy with gear is obvious by level 40. Figuring out the more complex stuff like power management is not, however. A lot of the problems are compounded by incorrect mouse-over values ... things that look good, sometimes are not, and things that look junky, sometimes are good.
I also argue that being blown up or taking 20 min to kill 1 enemy is the feedback to know your build is not too good. Esp once exposed to others and seeing them one-shot the thing that took you 10 min to kill.
Really, the cards are stacked hard against new players.
- the solo missions all the way to 50 are so easy you can do them with minimal learning or gearing up or anything.
- there is little to no help on what things do
- there is little to no help on what works together
- default setups are almost intentionally the worst possible
- tooltips that are misleading, wrong, or change depending on where you are when you look at them
- bridge officers given early on have terrible skills
- hidden mechanics like power or speed/defense or torp/mine issues (shields lowering them and their oddball firing sequences)
- hidden tools like macro-keymaps, autofire settings, custom power settings, ...
This is why I'd suggest we as a community STOP USING ISE as the standard, because:
(1) it does NOT allow for an accurate personal DPS measurement, as it is very dependant on buffs/debuffs from others for max dps.
(2) it is a team environment, which means any added dps from your party to cut down the amount of time it takes to finish the content, increases your personal dps artificially. If i get in a PUG and fire one FAW volley just to register dps, in a heavy dps group that can finish in 4 minutes without me, my dps will be higher than the same single volley fired with a group that takes 10 minutes to finish the content without me. ISE, unless solo'd by the STO elite, should only be used for cohesive team measurements, not solo dps.
(3) A more accurate measure of personal DPS would be SOLO CONTENT thats standardized already, such as specific system patrols with X number specific mobs, a foundry mission built for it (i used to see a couple dil farming foundry missions that would fit the bill) or a controlled private team STF session where 4 stealthed or people watch and parse one finish the content (for those extremely high dps players) if they, can and analyze/compare the complete parser findings.
I don't think we will see as many 100k dps posts, and it would also help the devs balance the content ship by ship if that is their desire, as they can then effectively compare each ship build against a standard, solo dps measurement.
I think this would also help close the gap between what is real and what is imagined or supposed between high and low dps players.
While this might be true, the game also doesn't tell you that a turret is a cannon, while people do need to make common sense leaps, the complete lack of any documented combat stats and effects are the core of it.
I woud argue that most players that are <1k DPSing aren't guilty of the tac console problems so much as having flat power systems.
In our fleet, we used to check in on under performers with the gateway, and most of the really bad players are just all over the place, but if you put your thought process into their shoes you can start to see why they build train wrecks like they do.
So bad player A dies a lot, constantly in fact as they attempt but fail to steamroll through episodes. They are basically stock ships and loadouts, power levels flat, boff abilities whatever sounds cool, weapons are the best colour they have. Player A is a brilliant problem solver by their standards, they throw on more armour, more shields with eng and sci consoles and put all their gimmics into the tac console slots. Reality is they have no clue what shield resistance is (much less stacking them), what defence does or that it is even a mechanic. To them, now they can survive, normal content is so easy its hard not to kill things, so they should be awesome when it comes to queued content too.
I would say this is pretty typcial of the bad player, and while the application of what they think is cool changes from player to player, lockbox to lockbox, the thought process is generally the same, self preservation with zero understanding is the prime motivator.
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There we are back at statistics. ISA is used because it is standardized, has pretty much zero travel time (after 2sec full impuls at start you are always in combat and under fire) and the enemies can actually destroy you. Even on Elite you wouldnt have that in any patrol. ISA actually requires you to either destroy or tank the enemy, patrols dont really. In respect to VM/SNB etc. it is also free of any accidental debuff, Assimilate ship aside. The logs can also be validated because others can log (fairly) well, without much regard to distance (2/3 splits aside, though those are used only on high-dps-groups to begin with).
There is also a simple truth about ISA: If you want to know, what your potential (in dependency to the team) is, fly with a premade. If you want to know your mean dps, just pug it often enough. Pugging is actually the best test for a build as a whole, as you not only have to kill all of it nearly alone (usually your pets, if you have some, do more damage than 3 of your teammates) but also tank (because in pugs DD=Aggro), and if you die, you TRIBBLE your dps (and if worse came to worse, the team can TRIBBLE the stf as a whole). Do that often enough and you have a fairly certain idea of what you dps is. Statistics.
And tbh if you fly 100k in a team, 45k in a pug or 38k alone (the last one is a single try though), it doesnt really matter compared with 1-4k average player dps.
P.S.: You also have a certain misconception: If you fly with good players, a single mistep can get you out with lower dps than you would do in any pug, because things might not stand long enough to fire on them inefficiently. Especially if you are not a tactical captain or flying DHCs/Torps.
Yes, thats another team-dependency, but it goes in the opposite direction from what you think it does
Going just from what groverclvld said in his post they did not separate pugvs private they only looked at total rewards given across total number of runs compared to time taken to complete. This was too high against some secret internal value for CCA and the others they nerfed and not isa or kasa or the ones they buffed (mine trap etc).
From the priority one interview with gecko it seems true that the only thing they measure is rewards over time divided by number of players. They don't appear to dig any deeper and the few times they do they get flabbergasted by what they find.
The dark side of all this is, they actually do know how people got so powerful and they just act like they don't. There was an old Q&A back from the old website and I remember some people around here posted the links to the page a few times (these posts were months ago, shame I didn't save the link) and the power creep was meant to be there. The big man himself even said it was suppose to be some kind of little "secret" to make people feel special once it was found so they can feel good about themselves.
The last part of your statement is actually a clue to what's happening. They're selling power, not fun. Worst part is it's working. Big time. Many people have this deep down temptation to be perfect and to be the best of the best and they're feeding on that and making it easy, but costly. So, add fancy new items, add in more grind, add in absurd stats to enemies (increased HP, etc, etc), add in more abilities, throw in some "finish now" buttons. Boom, money. If anything, the power creep is just a finish now button for STFs. Maybe a very elaborate one. lol.
It is sad there's actually players who support the above problems. They say they don't support it the current state of the game, they act rebellious, try to baffle the devs with their amazing numbers, but it's not actually happening. If anything, they're just supporting the "metrics" they're trying to break. If anything, it's what's encouraging the company to keep making the decisions that keep happening. I'm afraid all of this is only going to get worse and people are letting it happen.
But with them nerfing stuff, it probably won't happen because of said reasons above. There's been many games where one weapon or some other vehicle or something was so insanely powerful that it got nerfed, even if it took a long time to get. Sometimes the companies would even compensate for taking away such items or reducing their effectiveness. Even if people got all mad about it they won't leave. They never will. They'll just sit there and talk about how boss they were before the man nerfed them, but they'll still play. I don't see anything like that being done here though. And if it does happen then it probably won't be done properly.
You made my point precisely WHY ISE should not be used. The amount of variables, from other players contribution or lack thereof is ever changing. The example I listed was rife with variable influence on dps. In a SOLO environment, the captain is the ONLY variable, the mobs and or hitpoints never change. The variables are the traits, ship weapon configuration, doffs, captain skillset, and reputations of the solo captain. There he/she can tweak his build and see the instant results either through the time it takes to complete or the increased/decreased results in the scrolling number wall, verified through a standard parser.
It would contribute in some small amount to not wasting someone elses ISE purposed run with a low DPSer trying to "see where he stacks", because the only place the forum directs him/her to, is an instance he probably has no place being to be productive. Nothing can be accurately measured in ISE, because of the variables mentioned, except team dps.
I am talking about pure dps, which IS a statistic, and actually the level of the sponges doesn't matter if everyone is hitting the same sponges with the same variables. In a solo run the captain is the variable, not your teammates.
Right now, the combination of tools being used to test dps is faulty at best because the calibration is all over the place from player to player. I'm not bashing the pioneers but this is a Standardized tool will help get much better result for the different tiers of dps out there.
It would also allow the DPS level/skill gates of progression to be visible. Think of the sortable leaderboard of any shooter game. you can compare yourself to your friends, your skill peers, or against the elite with a lot more accuracy.
EXAMPLE:
Normal Player does n dps in a normal run X
Advanced Player does n dps in an advanced run of Y
Elite player does n dps in an elite run ox Z
Team does n dps in normal run of X
Advanced team does n dps in a advanced run of Y
Elite team does n dps in an elite run of Z
You can change out weapon types, loadouts etc., and if the time to complete or the dps is off,you know where you broke your build, independent of what the community tells or directs and independent of the team variables.
The X, Y, and Z can even be the same, but should allow for solo completion or team completion. Just because this is the way we have always defaulted to measuring DPS does not make it the right or best way. Lets fix the standardized tools first is all I'm saying..