No I'm implying that communities exist to strive for a particular goal. People segregate themselves.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, but as people have been pointing out, theres unintended consequences of continual DPS min maxing.
Why do you think everything in endgame now has a bajillion hitpoints and defense?
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
That's not necessarily a bad thing, but as people have been pointing out, theres unintended consequences of continual DPS min maxing.
Why do you think everything in endgame now has a bajillion hitpoints and defense?
They have always had high hitpoints. Gates and tac cubes have had over a million hit points at the start of season 5. The V'ger class ship had almost 2 million (I think about 1.7) and this was back at level 50. That was introduced during season 4. It can only scale up at level 60.
They have always had high hitpoints. Gates and tac cubes have had over a million hit points at the start of season 5. The V'ger class ship had almost 2 million (I think about 1.7) and this was back at level 50. That was introduced during season 4. It can only scale up at level 60.
The nanite transformers were not quite so OP back before my 6 month forced leave from STO (game simply stopped working)
it seems any stationary structure in level 50+ STFs has got its HP buffed to ridiculous levels.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
I don't think they build the mission around the dps channels, if they did, the dps channels wouldn't still be ripping through them in no time at all.
Instead the top dpsers would have a challenge and everyone else would just quit because it's too hard.
And although i'm a high dpser, i don't consider myself one of the 'top' dpsers, i would be amongst those who'd quit over it, i want my game to be fun with a small amount of effort and easy time. The dps channels help me to achieve this. I still pug, it's fun sometimes, but for the constant grind the channels make it easier.
Because of the channels, I can now go into almost any pug and be confident i can carry the team, call me arrogant over that statement if you want, regardless it's true, but i can now go into pugs and help them through. Not to say all pugs are bad, i've encountered some very nice teams in pug recently, and beat my own record while pugging.
I've seen the backlash of this were people think i'm showing off or trying to troll them, and to those people i just pay no attention(unless i'm bored during downtime).
SCM - Infected(S) - DMG Out: 11,776,567 DPS: 114,224.70 (28.7% of Team) - Pinky@ukcaptain420 I reserve the right to have a completely different standpoint depending on my mood.
I don't think they build the mission around the dps channels, if they did, the dps channels wouldn't still be ripping through them in no time at all.
Thing is, even as a barely average player on my best day, I can't say something like that without being called an Elitist.
It's like if we looked back at ISE, eh?
So did ISE get changed because the DPS folks were doing it in 1-2 minutes or because the average pug was doing it in 5-7 minutes...when ISE was set up with a 15 minute optional that the counter didn't start until after the first engagement completes.
I just don't get the scapegoating some of the folks out there do, yeah? It's like there's some huge mental disconnect, where they're not seeing what you're saying there.
If they geared the content to the top players, lol, the vast majority of us would be screwed...it's so blatantly obvious that if that's what Cryptic was going to do, just how massively screwed the rest of us would be.
Folks shouldn't be scapegoating the DPS folks...if they want somebody to blame, it should be the barely average casual player that just mucks about and gets the job done easily enough. Cause those are the folks making the content too hard for those complaining...
Thing is, even as a barely average player on my best day, I can't say something like that without being called an Elitist.
It's like if we looked back at ISE, eh?
So did ISE get changed because the DPS folks were doing it in 1-2 minutes or because the average pug was doing it in 5-7 minutes...when ISE was set up with a 15 minute optional that the counter didn't start until after the first engagement completes.
I just don't get the scapegoating some of the folks out there do, yeah? It's like there's some huge mental disconnect, where they're not seeing what you're saying there.
If they geared the content to the top players, lol, the vast majority of us would be screwed...it's so blatantly obvious that if that's what Cryptic was going to do, just how massively screwed the rest of us would be.
Folks shouldn't be scapegoating the DPS folks...if they want somebody to blame, it should be the barely average casual player that just mucks about and gets the job done easily enough. Cause those are the folks making the content too hard for those complaining...
Take a look, pugs for space STFs are already dead. You can queue and maybe it launches but can you win? with a pug it's not likely.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
Take a look, pugs for space STFs are already dead. You can queue and maybe it launches but can you win? with a pug it's not likely.
That has always been an issue. There are reason why vidoes like this were made way back when. It is also why the EliteSTF channel was made back in season 5. The elites were not winnable in the queue and when people tried to say to do the 10% rule they were called elitists.
Just like it was back then the private queues of the elitestf channel and the dps league of today is more reactive. This game goes in cycles between too hard for pugs and too easy.
The DPS league is only getting the flack because they have been here the longest and ate the most noticeable.
The DPS Channels are not a substitute for a fleet and that kind of environment. I love playing with fleetmates for different reasons.
The DPS channels offer something else; the ability to quickly form groups with others with comparable DPS to yourself in order to easily complete advanced/elite game content. They also offer an interesting source of information as some of the most knowledgeable players (in terms of game mechanics) are found there.
However, if this does not appeal, no one is forced to join them. The beauty of choice.
In any case, the DPS channels are NOT characterized by "high-pressure tactics" or any lack of respect towards other players. Quite the contrary.
I wouldn;'t quite say that. Just in DPS Public alone, I've seen people belittled for making one mistake. One that didn't even cause the run to fail. run in a little too early, before everyone's buffed completely (probably due to excitement or something) and die once. It happens. Meanwhile, people get belittled over it. I left DPS Public on most of my characters because of it.
I wouldn;'t quite say that. Just in DPS Public alone, I've seen people belittled for making one mistake. One that didn't even cause the run to fail. run in a little too early, before everyone's buffed completely (probably due to excitement or something) and die once. It happens. Meanwhile, people get belittled over it. I left DPS Public on most of my characters because of it.
It is unfortunate that it happens but the entire community is not like that. The DPS league is not a gated community. Anyone can join. Included those that are rude. These experiences are what causes the prejudices.
People need to remember the keys of success. It is all about attitude. People forget that. If you can look past the people who make snide remarks and see the value of the channel and want to improve your build in that direction there is a lot of good there.
If you have a good attitude you are willing to learn and if you have a good attitude people will want to run with you. Who and what you know are the results of success.
All I do is pug. I'm running around a 87-90%+ success rate.
Me too, but Virus neglected something to mention: We are not the average player. Even if we were to do less than 5k damage (one of my newer chars actually were at this level, I though I just test what it takes to get there), we would have one or two things in our pockets to not let it fail: CC, CC is the one thing that stands between failing the whole thing and succeeding. DPS is only a matter of how fast you can do it (and for 15min optional, the dps isnt that high either).
I find it fascinating that more and more non-dpsers fall into the realm of one-dimensional-thinking (the one about dps) without thinking about other possibilities. Hell, in pugs these days -due to enemies longer living- a tank is quite welcome. A CC-Sci too. But no, ppl just think "dps" without actually doing it. I always wonder at what point where "think outside the box" has become "think outside of dps", as that system boundary is just fundamentally wrong.
It is unfortunate that it happens but the entire community is not like that. The DPS league is not a gated community. Anyone can join. Included those that are rude. These experiences are what causes the prejudices.
Rude folks can join, yes, but are equally easily relegated to the exit too, from what I've seen. In my experience, only three things are heaviy frowned upon in these channels: rudeness/trolling, deliberately not folllowing channel rules (specifically not wfp-ing on purpose), and spamming. People are often smart enough not to outright do the latter. Kirks who deliberately storm in, without wfp-ing, that happen quite a bit, though, and is taken as a rather serious infraction (it is, essentially, an extension of the notion that you need to remain courteous to your fellow channel dwellers: respect the rules, or GTFO).
I'm sure an admin or channel operator can explain it far better, and more accurate, than I can. Just want to refute the rumor that rudeness is a generally allowed thing. It's not.
And if you are pugging and likely failing, that is most likelt due to YOU being a player who is so bad that you ACTIVELY cause failures. Most pugs in ISA, CSA and KSA are a success now. Hell even pugging fez is generally a success. If you are failing is CCA...yeah...just yeah.
ISA I still see a lot of fails, but that's usually because of players not doing the right thing. Blowing the generators before the Cube falls, or running off to start the right side while all 4 other players are already engaging the left side - all 4 begging the 5th player over chat to stop.
Also Crystaline... I've been shocked before and seen a few fails, as I watched more than 30% of player ships on the map explode.
I still put this on the playerbase, where too many players are playing way above their level and whining then they predictably fail. And yeah, it is still keeping the success rate down.
The wfp to me shouldn't have to be manditory. If you think about dps sitting there waiting for a person to launch their fighters is counter intuitive to dps. They can still shoot their weapons while launching fighters. In reality wfp is just their to pad their person dps. I think not waiting for them to launch is more honest in their dps numbers.
The wfp to me shouldn't have to be manditory. If you think about dps sitting there waiting for a person to launch their fighters is counter intuitive to dps. They can still shoot their weapons while fighting. In reality wfp is just their to pad their person dps. I think not waiting for them to launch is more honest in their dps numbers.
I'd say, at some point, it started as a courtesy (long before my time); and then they probably figured, to give everyone a fair parsing shake, that waiting until everyone is ready should become a rule. Unslotted boffs is another reason.
Also, a lovingly beta-stacking Recluse on the field, who knows what he/she is doing, adds about ~10k to my DPS. If they are willing to supprt the team getting their DPS up like that, it rmakes absolute sense the rest of the team has the decency to wait for said Recluse in return, rule or no.
The wfp to me shouldn't have to be manditory. If you think about dps sitting there waiting for a person to launch their fighters is counter intuitive to dps. They can still shoot their weapons while launching fighters. In reality wfp is just their to pad their person dps. I think not waiting for them to launch is more honest in their dps numbers.
Edit. Corrected stuff
It's more than just about launching pets. It ensures that everyone actually warps into the instance and is ready to go, and especially of late, that bridge officers, traits, or trays haven't fallen apart.
Nearly every queue I play, except Cure and CCA, has some kind of a wait period at the start, which helps to ensure things like that (off-hand, ISA and KSA have the option to wait, BDE, VCE, HSE, and ANRA all force one).
SCM - Crystal C. (S) - [00:12] DMG(DPS) - @jarvisandalfred: 8.63M(713.16K) - Fed Sci
It's more than just about launching pets. It ensures that everyone actually warps into the instance and is ready to go, and especially of late, that bridge officers, traits, or trays haven't fallen apart.
This. So much this.
Just yesterday all my traits cleared, and my Zemok went AWOL with some random SDO in his place. :mad:
The wfp to me shouldn't have to be manditory. If you think about dps sitting there waiting for a person to launch their fighters is counter intuitive to dps. They can still shoot their weapons while launching fighters. In reality wfp is just their to pad their person dps. I think not waiting for them to launch is more honest in their dps numbers.
Edit. Corrected stuff
On top of what everyone else has said about courtesy and waiting to make sure boffs are there etc, there is no loss to any person's dps, the combat logger records from first shot fired, the timer on the optional doesn't start until you've blown the first cube and spheres, the is no negative effect to waiting at the start, except i suppose, less than a minute wasted.
And although i'm not into the rp side of things, it's kinda like the beginning of a battle, ya know, all that ready, aim, fire stuff. But we do usually just say go.
SCM - Infected(S) - DMG Out: 11,776,567 DPS: 114,224.70 (28.7% of Team) - Pinky@ukcaptain420 I reserve the right to have a completely different standpoint depending on my mood.
The wfp to me shouldn't have to be manditory. If you think about dps sitting there waiting for a person to launch their fighters is counter intuitive to dps. They can still shoot their weapons while launching fighters. In reality wfp is just their to pad their person dps. I think not waiting for them to launch is more honest in their dps numbers.
Edit. Corrected stuff
W4P is not mandatory, nor is it a rule. It is up the person calling the game and setting it up. The reason we launch pets--then recall them--is so that you don't have your pets get blown up by first cube and that you have time to get your pets out and working for before the map is over. We do ISA so quickly that you would barely have time to get your second pet out before it was over. Or the recluse wouldn't not have its debuffing pets out to help the team.
So, w4p is a courtesy to the team and at the discretion of the person forming the map. W4p does not apply, obviously, to pug runs.
Again, the dps channels are private. They were formed to ensure a certain type of run. They set the rules, well, because it is their gig. If people have problems with the rules, they do not have to participate in the channels. But the channels DO NOT have to bend or yield to other people's idea of how the channels should be run. It is solely up to the admins, and ultimately up to the owner.
All I do is pug. I'm running around a 87-90%+ success rate.
Going back to last page, but yeah the success rate will depend on what you're doing. Just ran ISA, and we ended up failing on the first Transformer.
I only average between 10K-15K, especially 'cause I'm working on my build right now. But when I do the same amount of DPS as the other 4 players added together... that's where I have issues with pugs.
But again, that's on the players. There is no reason those other players should've been in Advanced. Sure, they likely don't parse their DPS, but they should simply be able to see how little damage their shots inflict. And how easily the Borg damage them in return. The scale from Normal to Advanced to Elite is, in my opinion, quite clear. Yeah there's a fair jump in difficulty between Normal and Adv, but things wouldn't be as frustrating if players didn't jump way above their skill level / build capacity just to get the shiny rewards - 'cause if you're playing above your level, then you're likely to fail the queue anyways.
And before anyone raises the (admittedly, sometimes entirely valid) counter-argument that DPS doesn't mean everything if you're contributing in other ways... there were no other contributions. Heals were self-directed, and buffs / debuffs were lacking in sufficient quantity.
And yes, I've only got 10K-15K DPS, so I can't carry a team. But in Adv, why should anyone have to carry a team? I don't want to be carried, and I don't want to carry. It's a team effort, or at least it should be.
Again, this isn't a complaint about the queue revamp, or something that Cryptic did. I think the queue revamp is great, and I appreciate that the devs took some time to make sure that there were clear difficulty changes in the queues. But if the players don't self-police and far too often play way above or way below their level, then it kinda ruins the whole point.
Just my two cents. But maybe that's #12 for the list: Grouping with DPS Channel members ensures that you're with players who understand what skill level they are at, and what their build is capable of, in relation to other players and the game content itself. You're not going to get players who are drastically underpowered for the queue content (or blatantly ignorant of their eye-test results), even in the 10K channel - five players pushing +10K will win a queue, save for an off run.
EDIT: and by the way, I didn't post the parse results in chat. A) yeah, that's just going to cause a lot of flak, and if those players couldn't already see how little damage they were causing the Borg ships, then the numbers mean nothing anyways.
#5 failed, but #5 wasn't the lowest team DPS. #5 didn't fail because of a lack of DPS...even with the 2.3k and 1.7k guys there. #5 failed for two reasons. 1) Chasing Butterflies. 2) Second GW misfired.
If folks hadn't decided to go after the Sphere and spawning Spheres at the Trans...had just focused the Trans, it would have gone down and the fail would have been avoided. Even with that chasing butterflies thing going on, if the second GW hadn't misfired it still wouldn't have failed at that point. I've only had two GWs misfire, and both have been since that Feb 26th patch...GW goes on CD...but no GW.
Would it be great if folks were to look at their build and ask themselves, "Hey, if there were five of me doing this - would we stand a chance in Hell at even basic success?" Sure...but that's usually not where I find things fail. /shrug
Course, it's kind of where I saw 10k as more of a farming channel than a DPS channel. Folks that don't want anything anywhere near as long as 9 minutes or more as well as not wanting to deal with folks chasing butterflies or outright trolls.
To an extent, in my twisted reasoning where the content is too easy (c'mon, random pugs doing Advanced content and meeting the Optional like that doesn't sound very Advanced)...hitting up those public queues is a way of increasing the challenge. I don't want more trolls by any means, but those folks chasing butterflies mean I have to try instead of just flying around in circles.
Cryptic's not as focused on stuff as players are...are folks having fun, yeah? Somebody tooling around in a 1-2k boat might be having a blast...never realizing just where that stands in the scheme of things and generally not caring until somebody points it out to them. Hell, how many folks might be having a blast going through a STF with no idea how they're doing compared to other folks there - they're firing everything left, right, and center...wheeee!
As for the overall progression of things, a wee bit off to the side...
Normal Mission -> Advanced Mission -> Elite Mission -> Normal Queue -> Advanced Queue -> Elite Queue
...would be a potential sort of unlocking thing for it, but as I've commented myself on almost sorts of gating that Cryptic could do - don't think it will work.
So there will be farming channels, where folks have some sort of basic competency displayed and it will go from there...some may move on to the DPS channels while others just want to avoid butterflies and trolls, imho.
I've seen people belittled for making one mistake.
I've seen that in PUGs, too.
Actually, it used to be worse, under the old system. I guess because the content was so easy, there really was no excuse for something like that to happen. And players were so accustomed to their easy-mode cruises to STF victory that anything which got in the way instantly set their rage to 11.
"Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society." - Aristotle
#5 failed, but #5 wasn't the lowest team DPS. #5 didn't fail because of a lack of DPS...even with the 2.3k and 1.7k guys there. #5 failed for two reasons. 1) Chasing Butterflies. 2) Second GW misfired.
The fail I mentioned above was very much worse than your six runs. I had a pretty bad run myself, but I still broke 10K.
I think the Generators were blown too early, but either way everyone kinda figured to shoot the Transformer pretty quick - the parse results show that there was definitely a focus on the Transformer, but I'd figured that out through the eye-test anyways. There just wasn't enough firepower on it.
My Run: 10.3K - 4.5K - 3.6K - 2.2K - 1.6K
Total DPS: 22.2K
% DPS Mine: 46.9%
That was one of the worst runs I've been in, for sure. But it's not too far off what I find regularly. Maybe I just have horrid luck, but I'm finding my ISA success rate with a pug to be somewhere around 25%.
EDIT: Well, have to be fair. In comparison to above, just ran ISA again this morning and had one of the best pug runs I've been in :P Full success, 8:40 of excellent work by all.
My Run: 16.4K - 16.3K - 15.6K - 12.2K - 11.3K
Total DPS: 71.8K
% DPS Mine: 21.7%
This is what I'd like to see more of in runs. Everyone was ready, knew what to do, builds prepared for an Adv queue, damage shared across the team. Friendly GGs and TYs after, someone posted the parse and it was happily received.
The fail I mentioned above was very much worse than your six runs. I had a pretty bad run myself, but I still broke 10K.
I think the Generators were blown too early, but either way everyone kinda figured to shoot the Transformer pretty quick - the parse results show that there was definitely a focus on the Transformer, but I'd figured that out through the eye-test anyways. There just wasn't enough firepower on it.
My Run: 10.3K - 4.5K - 3.6K - 2.2K - 1.6K
Total DPS: 22.2K
% DPS Mine: 46.9%
That was one of the worst runs I've been in, for sure. But it's not too far off what I find regularly. Maybe I just have horrid luck, but I'm finding my ISA success rate with a pug to be somewhere around 25%.
That's brutal. Looks more like what I saw back in the ISE days. Which got me thinking, I might run 1-3, sometimes more ISA a day (one character)...while I'd usually hit up 10-15 ISE a day (across multiple toons). Could be a case that I'm just dodging bullets out there.
But yeah, it gets into what players have done since Cryptic can't...
5x 1.6k folks is pretty much a guaranteed fail.
5x 2.2k folks is pretty much a guaranteed fail.
5x 3.6k folks is pretty much a guaranteed fail.
5x 4.5k folks is pretty much a guaranteed fail without some heinous CC going on.
Cause it won't just be about the outgoing DPS, the longer it takes to kill things the longer they have to fire on folks; and a bunch of those lower DPS folks are both low DPS and squishy. Bunch of them don't bring any buffs, debuffs, crowd control, or support. It's just whatever boat they might have been flying around in some episode thinking that the mission was too hard that they decided to drop in on an Advanced team queue...thinking it would be better somehow?
And that's definitely something (well, should be definitely something) that somebody's not going to have to deal with in a channel run.
Some folks will get into the "you pug it, you risk it"...and well, that's making excuses for folks that imho shouldn't be there to have the excuses made.
With all the talk after DR about how ISA was compared to how ISE was...I didn't hit up ISA. I knew where my builds were, and I didn't want to be dead weight for folks in an ISA run. It wasn't until Advanced content got nerfed into the ground that I showed up and went wheeeee again like I had with ISE.
There are folks hitting up the Battles channel, the 10k channel, various fleet channels...and I just can't fault folks in the least for doing that. I don't see them as the cause. I see that as a potential symptom. If folks would take a moment to prepare themselves for what they were getting into...then, imho, there wouldn't be as many "farming" channels and the public queues would be jumping.
Then it would get more into RP channels, fleet/friend channels, and DPS channels...and there would be all sorts of thriving endgame going on.
But some folks out there would rather just scapegoat this or that group rather than accept any personal responsibility. I think it's great that folks out there have made the effort to create their various channels to try save the endgame from folks like that...it's a positive move sort of thing.
I see it worded fine. It's only a rule when the group has called for it. If not called for then it's not a rule. Kinda simple really.
I do like a second or two to make sure DoFF's are still there and my BoFF's are still wielding the right abilities. Half the time they decide to change their build without telling the Captain
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."
I see it worded fine. It's only a rule when the group has called for it. If not called for then it's not a rule.
No, to say "W4P is not mandatory, nor is it a rule," and argue it's only a courtesy, is wording things confusingly, as (while technically true when the call for WFP hasn't been made) there's the meta-rule, if you will, that you *must* respect the call for WFP when requested. Kinda simple really.
Comments
Remove friend lists!
Remove private queues!
Remove private chat channels!
Remove private messages!
Remove name displays!
How dare people not want to play with me!!!!!!
I'll show them!
Lol... Priceless. Isolation is the ultimate form of segregation.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, but as people have been pointing out, theres unintended consequences of continual DPS min maxing.
Why do you think everything in endgame now has a bajillion hitpoints and defense?
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
They have always had high hitpoints. Gates and tac cubes have had over a million hit points at the start of season 5. The V'ger class ship had almost 2 million (I think about 1.7) and this was back at level 50. That was introduced during season 4. It can only scale up at level 60.
The nanite transformers were not quite so OP back before my 6 month forced leave from STO (game simply stopped working)
it seems any stationary structure in level 50+ STFs has got its HP buffed to ridiculous levels.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
Instead the top dpsers would have a challenge and everyone else would just quit because it's too hard.
And although i'm a high dpser, i don't consider myself one of the 'top' dpsers, i would be amongst those who'd quit over it, i want my game to be fun with a small amount of effort and easy time. The dps channels help me to achieve this. I still pug, it's fun sometimes, but for the constant grind the channels make it easier.
Because of the channels, I can now go into almost any pug and be confident i can carry the team, call me arrogant over that statement if you want, regardless it's true, but i can now go into pugs and help them through. Not to say all pugs are bad, i've encountered some very nice teams in pug recently, and beat my own record while pugging.
I've seen the backlash of this were people think i'm showing off or trying to troll them, and to those people i just pay no attention(unless i'm bored during downtime).
I reserve the right to have a completely different standpoint depending on my mood.
Thing is, even as a barely average player on my best day, I can't say something like that without being called an Elitist.
It's like if we looked back at ISE, eh?
So did ISE get changed because the DPS folks were doing it in 1-2 minutes or because the average pug was doing it in 5-7 minutes...when ISE was set up with a 15 minute optional that the counter didn't start until after the first engagement completes.
I just don't get the scapegoating some of the folks out there do, yeah? It's like there's some huge mental disconnect, where they're not seeing what you're saying there.
If they geared the content to the top players, lol, the vast majority of us would be screwed...it's so blatantly obvious that if that's what Cryptic was going to do, just how massively screwed the rest of us would be.
Folks shouldn't be scapegoating the DPS folks...if they want somebody to blame, it should be the barely average casual player that just mucks about and gets the job done easily enough. Cause those are the folks making the content too hard for those complaining...
Take a look, pugs for space STFs are already dead. You can queue and maybe it launches but can you win? with a pug it's not likely.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
That has always been an issue. There are reason why vidoes like this were made way back when. It is also why the EliteSTF channel was made back in season 5. The elites were not winnable in the queue and when people tried to say to do the 10% rule they were called elitists.
Just like it was back then the private queues of the elitestf channel and the dps league of today is more reactive. This game goes in cycles between too hard for pugs and too easy.
The DPS league is only getting the flack because they have been here the longest and ate the most noticeable.
All I do is pug. I'm running around a 87-90%+ success rate.
I wouldn;'t quite say that. Just in DPS Public alone, I've seen people belittled for making one mistake. One that didn't even cause the run to fail. run in a little too early, before everyone's buffed completely (probably due to excitement or something) and die once. It happens. Meanwhile, people get belittled over it. I left DPS Public on most of my characters because of it.
It is unfortunate that it happens but the entire community is not like that. The DPS league is not a gated community. Anyone can join. Included those that are rude. These experiences are what causes the prejudices.
People need to remember the keys of success. It is all about attitude. People forget that. If you can look past the people who make snide remarks and see the value of the channel and want to improve your build in that direction there is a lot of good there.
If you have a good attitude you are willing to learn and if you have a good attitude people will want to run with you. Who and what you know are the results of success.
Me too, but Virus neglected something to mention: We are not the average player. Even if we were to do less than 5k damage (one of my newer chars actually were at this level, I though I just test what it takes to get there), we would have one or two things in our pockets to not let it fail: CC, CC is the one thing that stands between failing the whole thing and succeeding. DPS is only a matter of how fast you can do it (and for 15min optional, the dps isnt that high either).
I find it fascinating that more and more non-dpsers fall into the realm of one-dimensional-thinking (the one about dps) without thinking about other possibilities. Hell, in pugs these days -due to enemies longer living- a tank is quite welcome. A CC-Sci too. But no, ppl just think "dps" without actually doing it. I always wonder at what point where "think outside the box" has become "think outside of dps", as that system boundary is just fundamentally wrong.
Rude folks can join, yes, but are equally easily relegated to the exit too, from what I've seen. In my experience, only three things are heaviy frowned upon in these channels: rudeness/trolling, deliberately not folllowing channel rules (specifically not wfp-ing on purpose), and spamming. People are often smart enough not to outright do the latter. Kirks who deliberately storm in, without wfp-ing, that happen quite a bit, though, and is taken as a rather serious infraction (it is, essentially, an extension of the notion that you need to remain courteous to your fellow channel dwellers: respect the rules, or GTFO).
I'm sure an admin or channel operator can explain it far better, and more accurate, than I can. Just want to refute the rumor that rudeness is a generally allowed thing. It's not.
ISA I still see a lot of fails, but that's usually because of players not doing the right thing. Blowing the generators before the Cube falls, or running off to start the right side while all 4 other players are already engaging the left side - all 4 begging the 5th player over chat to stop.
Also Crystaline... I've been shocked before and seen a few fails, as I watched more than 30% of player ships on the map explode.
I still put this on the playerbase, where too many players are playing way above their level and whining then they predictably fail. And yeah, it is still keeping the success rate down.
The wfp to me shouldn't have to be manditory. If you think about dps sitting there waiting for a person to launch their fighters is counter intuitive to dps. They can still shoot their weapons while launching fighters. In reality wfp is just their to pad their person dps. I think not waiting for them to launch is more honest in their dps numbers.
Edit. Corrected stuff
I'd say, at some point, it started as a courtesy (long before my time); and then they probably figured, to give everyone a fair parsing shake, that waiting until everyone is ready should become a rule. Unslotted boffs is another reason.
Also, a lovingly beta-stacking Recluse on the field, who knows what he/she is doing, adds about ~10k to my DPS. If they are willing to supprt the team getting their DPS up like that, it rmakes absolute sense the rest of the team has the decency to wait for said Recluse in return, rule or no.
It's more than just about launching pets. It ensures that everyone actually warps into the instance and is ready to go, and especially of late, that bridge officers, traits, or trays haven't fallen apart.
Nearly every queue I play, except Cure and CCA, has some kind of a wait period at the start, which helps to ensure things like that (off-hand, ISA and KSA have the option to wait, BDE, VCE, HSE, and ANRA all force one).
SCM - Hive (S) - [02:31] DMG(DPS) - @jarvisandalfred: 30.62M(204.66K) - Fed Sci
Tacs are overrated.
Game's best wiki
Build questions? Look here!
This. So much this.
Just yesterday all my traits cleared, and my Zemok went AWOL with some random SDO in his place. :mad:
On top of what everyone else has said about courtesy and waiting to make sure boffs are there etc, there is no loss to any person's dps, the combat logger records from first shot fired, the timer on the optional doesn't start until you've blown the first cube and spheres, the is no negative effect to waiting at the start, except i suppose, less than a minute wasted.
And although i'm not into the rp side of things, it's kinda like the beginning of a battle, ya know, all that ready, aim, fire stuff. But we do usually just say go.
I reserve the right to have a completely different standpoint depending on my mood.
W4P is not mandatory, nor is it a rule. It is up the person calling the game and setting it up. The reason we launch pets--then recall them--is so that you don't have your pets get blown up by first cube and that you have time to get your pets out and working for before the map is over. We do ISA so quickly that you would barely have time to get your second pet out before it was over. Or the recluse wouldn't not have its debuffing pets out to help the team.
So, w4p is a courtesy to the team and at the discretion of the person forming the map. W4p does not apply, obviously, to pug runs.
Again, the dps channels are private. They were formed to ensure a certain type of run. They set the rules, well, because it is their gig. If people have problems with the rules, they do not have to participate in the channels. But the channels DO NOT have to bend or yield to other people's idea of how the channels should be run. It is solely up to the admins, and ultimately up to the owner.
DPS Channels / League Info (STO Forums)
Going back to last page, but yeah the success rate will depend on what you're doing. Just ran ISA, and we ended up failing on the first Transformer.
I only average between 10K-15K, especially 'cause I'm working on my build right now. But when I do the same amount of DPS as the other 4 players added together... that's where I have issues with pugs.
But again, that's on the players. There is no reason those other players should've been in Advanced. Sure, they likely don't parse their DPS, but they should simply be able to see how little damage their shots inflict. And how easily the Borg damage them in return. The scale from Normal to Advanced to Elite is, in my opinion, quite clear. Yeah there's a fair jump in difficulty between Normal and Adv, but things wouldn't be as frustrating if players didn't jump way above their skill level / build capacity just to get the shiny rewards - 'cause if you're playing above your level, then you're likely to fail the queue anyways.
And before anyone raises the (admittedly, sometimes entirely valid) counter-argument that DPS doesn't mean everything if you're contributing in other ways... there were no other contributions. Heals were self-directed, and buffs / debuffs were lacking in sufficient quantity.
And yes, I've only got 10K-15K DPS, so I can't carry a team. But in Adv, why should anyone have to carry a team? I don't want to be carried, and I don't want to carry. It's a team effort, or at least it should be.
Again, this isn't a complaint about the queue revamp, or something that Cryptic did. I think the queue revamp is great, and I appreciate that the devs took some time to make sure that there were clear difficulty changes in the queues. But if the players don't self-police and far too often play way above or way below their level, then it kinda ruins the whole point.
Just my two cents. But maybe that's #12 for the list: Grouping with DPS Channel members ensures that you're with players who understand what skill level they are at, and what their build is capable of, in relation to other players and the game content itself. You're not going to get players who are drastically underpowered for the queue content (or blatantly ignorant of their eye-test results), even in the 10K channel - five players pushing +10K will win a queue, save for an off run.
EDIT: and by the way, I didn't post the parse results in chat. A) yeah, that's just going to cause a lot of flak, and
I did six ISA yesterday (all public queue random pugs)...
1) 11:30 minutes, successful run, optional, somebody got a 10k invite.
2) 12:21 minutes, successful run, optional, somebody got a 10k invite.
3) 16:35 minutes, successful run, optional (heh, with 3 seconds to spare).
4) 14:08 minutes, successful run, optional.
5) 3:06 minutes, failed on first Transformer.
6) 7:50 minutes, successful run, optional, somebody got a 30k invite.
Here's the DPS for each person (I'll YellowGreen me to show I'm not some DPS hot shot)...
1) 15.7k - 13.8k - 10.6k - 10.2k - 4.9k
2) 15.2k - 11.5k - 10.1k - 9.7k - 3.4k
3) 10.7k - 10.4k - 9.6k - 4.0k - 1.9k
4) 14.8k - 10.9k - 8.5k - 6.0k - 2.3k
5) 16.5k - 11.0k - 7.4k - 2.3k - 1.7k
6) 31.8k - 22.6k - 17.9k - 3.2k - 2.1k
What was the total DPS for each group there (+ for the rounding that was rounded down above)?
1) ~55.2k+
2) ~49.9k+
3) ~36.6k+
4) ~42.5k+
5) ~38.9k+
6) ~77.6k+
#5 failed, but #5 wasn't the lowest team DPS. #5 didn't fail because of a lack of DPS...even with the 2.3k and 1.7k guys there. #5 failed for two reasons. 1) Chasing Butterflies. 2) Second GW misfired.
If folks hadn't decided to go after the Sphere and spawning Spheres at the Trans...had just focused the Trans, it would have gone down and the fail would have been avoided. Even with that chasing butterflies thing going on, if the second GW hadn't misfired it still wouldn't have failed at that point. I've only had two GWs misfire, and both have been since that Feb 26th patch...GW goes on CD...but no GW.
Would it be great if folks were to look at their build and ask themselves, "Hey, if there were five of me doing this - would we stand a chance in Hell at even basic success?" Sure...but that's usually not where I find things fail. /shrug
Course, it's kind of where I saw 10k as more of a farming channel than a DPS channel. Folks that don't want anything anywhere near as long as 9 minutes or more as well as not wanting to deal with folks chasing butterflies or outright trolls.
To an extent, in my twisted reasoning where the content is too easy (c'mon, random pugs doing Advanced content and meeting the Optional like that doesn't sound very Advanced)...hitting up those public queues is a way of increasing the challenge. I don't want more trolls by any means, but those folks chasing butterflies mean I have to try instead of just flying around in circles.
Cryptic's not as focused on stuff as players are...are folks having fun, yeah? Somebody tooling around in a 1-2k boat might be having a blast...never realizing just where that stands in the scheme of things and generally not caring until somebody points it out to them. Hell, how many folks might be having a blast going through a STF with no idea how they're doing compared to other folks there - they're firing everything left, right, and center...wheeee!
As for the overall progression of things, a wee bit off to the side...
Normal Mission -> Advanced Mission -> Elite Mission -> Normal Queue -> Advanced Queue -> Elite Queue
...would be a potential sort of unlocking thing for it, but as I've commented myself on almost sorts of gating that Cryptic could do - don't think it will work.
So there will be farming channels, where folks have some sort of basic competency displayed and it will go from there...some may move on to the DPS channels while others just want to avoid butterflies and trolls, imho.
Actually, it used to be worse, under the old system. I guess because the content was so easy, there really was no excuse for something like that to happen. And players were so accustomed to their easy-mode cruises to STF victory that anything which got in the way instantly set their rage to 11.
The fail I mentioned above was very much worse than your six runs. I had a pretty bad run myself, but I still broke 10K.
I think the Generators were blown too early, but either way everyone kinda figured to shoot the Transformer pretty quick - the parse results show that there was definitely a focus on the Transformer, but I'd figured that out through the eye-test anyways. There just wasn't enough firepower on it.
My Run: 10.3K - 4.5K - 3.6K - 2.2K - 1.6K
Total DPS: 22.2K
% DPS Mine: 46.9%
That was one of the worst runs I've been in, for sure. But it's not too far off what I find regularly. Maybe I just have horrid luck, but I'm finding my ISA success rate with a pug to be somewhere around 25%.
EDIT: Well, have to be fair. In comparison to above, just ran ISA again this morning and had one of the best pug runs I've been in :P Full success, 8:40 of excellent work by all.
My Run: 16.4K - 16.3K - 15.6K - 12.2K - 11.3K
Total DPS: 71.8K
% DPS Mine: 21.7%
This is what I'd like to see more of in runs. Everyone was ready, knew what to do, builds prepared for an Adv queue, damage shared across the team. Friendly GGs and TYs after, someone posted the parse and it was happily received.
That's brutal. Looks more like what I saw back in the ISE days. Which got me thinking, I might run 1-3, sometimes more ISA a day (one character)...while I'd usually hit up 10-15 ISE a day (across multiple toons). Could be a case that I'm just dodging bullets out there.
But yeah, it gets into what players have done since Cryptic can't...
5x 1.6k folks is pretty much a guaranteed fail.
5x 2.2k folks is pretty much a guaranteed fail.
5x 3.6k folks is pretty much a guaranteed fail.
5x 4.5k folks is pretty much a guaranteed fail without some heinous CC going on.
Cause it won't just be about the outgoing DPS, the longer it takes to kill things the longer they have to fire on folks; and a bunch of those lower DPS folks are both low DPS and squishy. Bunch of them don't bring any buffs, debuffs, crowd control, or support. It's just whatever boat they might have been flying around in some episode thinking that the mission was too hard that they decided to drop in on an Advanced team queue...thinking it would be better somehow?
And that's definitely something (well, should be definitely something) that somebody's not going to have to deal with in a channel run.
Some folks will get into the "you pug it, you risk it"...and well, that's making excuses for folks that imho shouldn't be there to have the excuses made.
With all the talk after DR about how ISA was compared to how ISE was...I didn't hit up ISA. I knew where my builds were, and I didn't want to be dead weight for folks in an ISA run. It wasn't until Advanced content got nerfed into the ground that I showed up and went wheeeee again like I had with ISE.
There are folks hitting up the Battles channel, the 10k channel, various fleet channels...and I just can't fault folks in the least for doing that. I don't see them as the cause. I see that as a potential symptom. If folks would take a moment to prepare themselves for what they were getting into...then, imho, there wouldn't be as many "farming" channels and the public queues would be jumping.
Then it would get more into RP channels, fleet/friend channels, and DPS channels...and there would be all sorts of thriving endgame going on.
But some folks out there would rather just scapegoat this or that group rather than accept any personal responsibility. I think it's great that folks out there have made the effort to create their various channels to try save the endgame from folks like that...it's a positive move sort of thing.
While technically true, also very confusing worded that way, as respecting a call for WFP itself is *most certainly* a rule:
6. Respect Wait For Pets (w4p, wfp) calls or any other strategies prior to start of match.
See Rules
I see it worded fine. It's only a rule when the group has called for it. If not called for then it's not a rule. Kinda simple really.
I do like a second or two to make sure DoFF's are still there and my BoFF's are still wielding the right abilities. Half the time they decide to change their build without telling the Captain
"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."
No, to say "W4P is not mandatory, nor is it a rule," and argue it's only a courtesy, is wording things confusingly, as (while technically true when the call for WFP hasn't been made) there's the meta-rule, if you will, that you *must* respect the call for WFP when requested. Kinda simple really.