I just tried to play HSA today... in other words, the new Herald Sphere queue.
Failed in stage three both times.
This is why I stopped playing "Borg Disconnected," devs. FIX THIS please.
There is Normal, Advance and Elite. Go down to Normal if you do PuGs and are uncapable of carrying the group. Go Down to normal if you incapable of contributing at advanced in competent groups.
Marks are almost the same in normal, advance and elite if you actually do all the optionals at normal which happens to be mandatories in advance. Now, you can craft those BNps, etc at the rep table.
If the best means they have for improving the gameplay is to drop tons of NPCs on the map, then nerf the TRIBBLE out of FAW.
More likely, their intention is to push the remaining cannon holdouts into upgrading into a fawship.
I'm still trying to figure out why, with ~60% resists, I'm still eating hits that take 50% of my health or more. Or why my melee damage dropped. Or why my expose chance dropped by 33%.
I suspect it's actually easier on higher difficulties, but after eating what appear to be so many nerfs, I'm just going to get my marks from BHE and ignore the new queues.
The most efficient way is FAW. All weapons are viable. Except you need more teamwork and personal skill to do the others which would disqualify less than competent teams and PuGs from all other weapons.
There is Normal, Advance and Elite. Go down to Normal if you do PuGs and are uncapable of carrying the group. Go Down to normal if you incapable of contributing at advanced in competent groups.
Marks are almost the same in normal, advance and elite if you actually do all the optionals at normal which happens to be mandatories in advance. Now, you can craft those BNps, etc at the rep table.
A terrible solution.
If I'm bored with a Normal queue, but don't want to deal with the DPS demands of Elite, I should have Advanced as a middle ground. That is not the case, however. Telling players to "get out" or "stay away" is not a solution... and it's especially laughable when I witness people arguing in chat during ISA runs, arguing over how to properly move forward.
An approach like this does nothing to solve the problems of Advanced queues.
If I'm bored with a Normal queue, but don't want to deal with the DPS demands of Elite, I should have Advanced as a middle ground. That is not the case, however. Telling players to "get out" or "stay away" is not a solution... and it's especially laughable when I witness people arguing in chat during ISA runs, arguing over how to properly move forward.
An approach like this does nothing to solve the problems of Advanced queues.
Apparently you dont know the difference between elite and advance. Elite is harder than advance.
You are bored in normal but apparently cannot compete at advance. It means you dont belong in advance and belong in normal not unless you improve your team and your capabilities. If you dont want to improve your personal skill and the team you play with at advance, stick to normal. It is your choice and fault that your capabilities are such and your team are such.
So if we are going to nerf down advance to normal levels, what is the difference between normal and advance? Might as well just have to levels of difficulties Normal and Elite. But what about the other player base who cannot do elite but are capable of doing advance not unlike you?
If I'm bored with a Normal queue, but don't want to deal with the DPS demands of Elite, I should have Advanced as a middle ground. That is not the case, however. Telling players to "get out" or "stay away" is not a solution... and it's especially laughable when I witness people arguing in chat during ISA runs, arguing over how to properly move forward.
An approach like this does nothing to solve the problems of Advanced queues.
Thing is...the "get out" and "stay away" is exactly what would solve your problem, no?
You're ready for Advanced, yeah? If the folks queuing up were ready for Advanced too...then you'd have that more than decent shot to do Advanced or even find that Advanced is too easy.
If not for the folks that don't know what to do, aren't prepared to do what needs to be done, are just leeching, or are possibly trolling...you'd have what you wanted their with Advanced, no?
You're not going to get it, cause folks that don't know what to do, aren't prepared to do what needs to be done, are just leeching, or are possibly trolling are going to show up...and depending on how many do, the run is doomed to failure from the start.
As paxdawn said, if you're built either to carry or to facilitate the run...then you've got a chance, depending on how many folks show up that shouldn't...
Bunch of folks have abandoned the public queues because of those folks showing up.
Saying that approach doesn't resolve the issue of the advanced queues...when it would precisely resolve the issue of the advanced queues....well...huh?
So you either need to carry/facilitate as much as you can while hoping for the best, head off to various channel runs, go back to Normal, or just forget about it...
...cause folks that shouldn't be there will continue to show up there. It's exactly the problem.
I am afraid if you want your advanced goodies now, you are going to have to earn them
By "earn" you mean simply queuing up with people from one of the public channels or joining an active fleet who runs queues. It's hardly a great stretch of personal ability to simply run a mission with a premade team. I don't care what queue level you're running, "premade team" is easy mode.
Having run both, I can safely say those players who help carry a pug through to completion have truly "earned" their rewards... Floating along with 4 other players who are all well trained, well geared and know exactly what to do... well anybody can do it that way :P
If they want to reward effort... give out extra rewards for a successful pug completion, that's where the real challenge is!
Bunch of folks have abandoned the public queues because of those folks showing up.
But this is exactly the problem I'm talking about... hence, the creation of this thread. I wanted an update on what the devs were doing to fix this, a process started in earnest with the tweaks to ANRA. Season 10 did not bring these changes to the entire PvE queue, though, so I'm left a little frustrated.
Saying that approach doesn't resolve the issue of the advanced queues...when it would precisely resolve the issue of the advanced queues....well...huh?
When I'm flying in a T6 JHSS, with Mk XIV VR weapons, Mk XiV space set, Mk XII Fleet TAC consoles, and the like... I should be able to hold my own in Advanced queues. I was told I would be able to handle myself in Advanced queues, Mr. Geko. So, yes, me staying away when I want to play something with a little more challenge... that solves nothing.
Further, I'll grant you that people are still learning the new queues... there may be a learning curve. Fine. Pretty sure, however... after failing Herald Advanced a few more times last night... that the third stage of that queue is "Kill 3 waves of ships in X amount of time." Yet, my PUGs keep failing in Wave 3...
That means it's a DPS problem... which harkens back to the original problems with these new Advanced queues. If you can't burn through something fast enough, you lose. Oh, your team COULD do it eventually, but can't reach the timer? SORRY! Oh, and if you are a time-limited person, but PUGs are a mess... I'm SOL?
If they want to reward effort... give out extra rewards for a successful pug completion, that's where the real challenge is!
It's always funny how the most vocal criers of "risk vs reward" don't actually want risk, just the reward and the appearance of risk. Pugging elite or advanced should get you better rewards than rolling in with your 100k buddies and rolfstomping the queue.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Before delta rising 7 out of my 8 toons were full mk XII space & ground gears.
I was having a lots of fun in all advanced queue.
Now I don't play them anymore as mk XII is not enough anymore in advanced if you are not in a good group which is often the case, so I've stopped to play as there is no fun and no pleasure anymore.
Cryptic has screwed the game.
I have 3 toons to mk XIV now but don't have time and mostly don't have wishes now to upgrade the other to XIV.
If I didn't have a fleet to manage I probably would have stopped playing like 75% of my fl have done.
Increasing difficulty was a necessity but not at those cost they implement with DR
When I'm flying in a T6 JHSS, with Mk XIV VR weapons, Mk XiV space set, Mk XII Fleet TAC consoles, and the like... I should be able to hold my own in Advanced queues.
Your conclusion does not follow the premises.
Someone "flying in a T6 JHSS, with Mk XIV VR weapons, Mk XiV space set, Mk XII Fleet TAC consoles, and the like" absolutely does not indicate, in any way, that they would be able to hold their own in Advanced queues.
Of the three factors that Performance depends on - Build, Piloting, and Gear - Build and Piloting are multipliers for Gear.
B x P x G = P
People who blame their Gear for their lack of Performance are extremely unlikely to improve their Performance by any appreciable amount even if we were to hand them all Mk XIV Epics, simply because their Build and Piloting are so poor.
But this is exactly the problem I'm talking about... hence, the creation of this thread. I wanted an update on what the devs were doing to fix this, a process started in earnest with the tweaks to ANRA. Season 10 did not bring these changes to the entire PvE queue, though, so I'm left a little frustrated.
Cryptic would have to find a way to gate content...to fix it...cause it's a people problem.
The ANRA changes only make it worse...they'd ruin the Advanced that you claim to enjoy. Cause you'd have more folks showing up not knowing what to do, not prepared to do what needs to be done, and leeching...as well as those that like hostage trolling.
When I'm flying in a T6 JHSS, with Mk XIV VR weapons, Mk XiV space set, Mk XII Fleet TAC consoles, and the like... I should be able to hold my own in Advanced queues. I was told I would be able to handle myself in Advanced queues, Mr. Geko. So, yes, me staying away when I want to play something with a little more challenge... that solves nothing.
Further, I'll grant you that people are still learning the new queues... there may be a learning curve. Fine. Pretty sure, however... after failing Herald Advanced a few more times last night... that the third stage of that queue is "Kill 3 waves of ships in X amount of time." Yet, my PUGs keep failing in Wave 3...
That means it's a DPS problem... which harkens back to the original problems with these new Advanced queues. If you can't burn through something fast enough, you lose. Oh, your team COULD do it eventually, but can't reach the timer? SORRY! Oh, and if you are a time-limited person, but PUGs are a mess... I'm SOL?
And how is this a fair/good thing?
Didn't Sarc say three was bugged?
As for it being fair...again, it's a player problem...which people have solved by changing the people they play with...cause it's a player problem. That's not saying it's a you problem, it's saying it's a problem of those you're flying with...and it's not fair/not a good thing - and tada, folks have gone to private runs/channels because of that.
Let's go back to the "four" groups, eh?
1) Folks that don't know what to do.
2) Folks not prepared to do what needs to be done.
3) Folks that are outright leeching.
4) Folks that are trolling.
I said "four", cause imho it's actually just two...leeches and trolls.
Learning the queue? What's the difference between Normal and Advanced? Normal scales down to 50, Advanced scales up to 60, mobs in Advanced are more difficult, and you've got an Objective that's Optional in Normal and Mandatory in Advanced...the same Objective. There's nothing to be learned in Advanced. Advanced isn't a learning tier...it's a testing tier. Testing the knowledge of the instance you have and your ability to do it. Folks saying they're learning in Advanced instead of learning in Normal or from guides/written or videos as well as having tested their builds/abilities...they're leeching.
Not prepared? Well, obviously if they're not prepared - they're looking to be carried - and - tada...leeching.
Outright leeching...knowing just what minimum they need to do to avoid getting the AFK penalty...it's outright leeching.
And then the trolls...looking to cause the fail.
So how would the ANRA "fix", even if all the broken stuff that previously existed in ANRA were fixed as well...how would that "fix" address the issue?
Increase the number of folks that show up for the Advanced queue without a clue as to what needs to be done for the run? Increase the number of folks that show up for the Advanced queue woefully underprepared to tackle the queue? Increase the number of folks that just outright leech?
Would it fix the troll angle at least? Well, you'd go from potentially the quick fail and being able to go do something else to being held hostage in the queue not wanting to eat the leaver penalty and not being able to hit up anything else.
So again, in order to "fix" the problem...Cryptic would have to find a way to gate the content...but that would only address part of the problem, those showing up without a clue and those showing up not prepared to tackle the queue. You'd still be facing the outright leeches and the trolls.
So again, folks either gamble with what they get in the public queues - knowing that people are douches...they end up hitting up private channels to avoid it all...or they basically just stop playing queues. I'm not a fan of private channels, I don't want farm runs and I'm not into seeing how much faster I can do something over and over...so personally, I just stopped doing queues. Maybe if I hung out with a group of casual but advanced players that would dork around from time to time in private runs, I might still hit them up...but most folks I know were PvPers and most of them left the game.
Before delta rising 7 out of my 8 toons were full mk XII space & ground gears.
I was having a lots of fun in all advanced queue.
Now I don't play them anymore as mk XII is not enough anymore in advanced if you are not in a good group which is often the case, so I've stopped to play as there is no fun and no pleasure anymore.
Cryptic has screwed the game.
I have 3 toons to mk XIV now but don't have time and mostly don't have wishes now to upgrade the other to XIV.
If I didn't have a fleet to manage I probably would have stopped playing like 75% of my fl have done.
Increasing difficulty was a necessity but not at those cost they implement with DR
Advanced did not exist before Delta Rising, so you could not have been having lots of fun in Advanced before Delta Rising.
You don't even need Mk XII for Advanced, so claiming that you need more than that...meh...
Just a big ol' pile of stinking meh...garbage excuses.
Learning the queue? What's the difference between Normal and Advanced? Normal scales down to 50, Advanced scales up to 60, mobs in Advanced are more difficult, and you've got an Objective that's Optional in Normal and Mandatory in Advanced...the same Objective. There's nothing to be learned in Advanced. Advanced isn't a learning tier...it's a testing tier. Testing the knowledge of the instance you have and your ability to do it. Folks saying they're learning in Advanced instead of learning in Normal or from guides/written or videos as well as having tested their builds/abilities...they're leeching.
Take BDN and BDA.
In BDN just about anyone can melt the enemy ships quickly enough that you can deal with them and then rescue the ships.
Take BDN play into BDA and unless you're in the 100k channel what you learned in BDN isn't going to work in BDA.
Normal is not the learning queue for Advanced nor Elite. It is the Normal queue. If Normal was supposed to be the learning queue it is teaching the wrong things for anything beyond Normal difficulty.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Someone "flying in a T6 JHSS, with Mk XIV VR weapons, Mk XiV space set, Mk XII Fleet TAC consoles, and the like" absolutely does not indicate, in any way, that they would be able to hold their own in Advanced queues.
Of the three factors that Performance depends on - Build, Piloting, and Gear - Build and Piloting are multipliers for Gear.
B x P x G = P
People who blame their Gear for their lack of Performance are extremely unlikely to improve their Performance by any appreciable amount even if we were to hand them all Mk XIV Epics, simply because their Build and Piloting are so poor.
0.1 x 0.1 x 1 = 0.01
0.1 x 0.1 x 2 = 0.02
Yeah, look... I realize that I likely kicked an ant hill by saying that... I know a lot more goes into performance than having "the best stuffz." Just now learning about firing cycles, and adjusting power levels... I'm a work in progress, but trying to make myself better.
I was just trying to make a point. The way the changes were being sold to me (the player), from Mr. Geko, made it SOUND like all you'd need is a bump in gear. Clearly, that's not the case.
...
Learning the queue? What's the difference between Normal and Advanced? Normal scales down to 50, Advanced scales up to 60, mobs in Advanced are more difficult, and you've got an Objective that's Optional in Normal and Mandatory in Advanced...the same Objective. There's nothing to be learned in Advanced. Advanced isn't a learning tier...it's a testing tier. Testing the knowledge of the instance you have and your ability to do it. Folks saying they're learning in Advanced instead of learning in Normal or from guides/written or videos as well as having tested their builds/abilities...they're leeching.
...
This is false. Normal in no way prepares anyone for advanced. Normal is absurdly easy, and the optionals aren't even apparent there. Advanced is significantly harder. It isn't a step up, it is maybe 5 steps.
Which optionals in normal are mandatory in advanced? You have no idea if you're trying to "learn" on normal difficulty.
Bug hunt. What bugs are even the alarm bugs? Normal doesn't show you that, tell you that, or even indicate that killing them is important. Kill everything you see and maybe you get the optional, maybe not.
Of course in advanced it is the mandatory optional, but it still doesn't point out which bugs are the alarm bugs.
Only by reading on the forums about "purple bugs" and then squinting through the mess of pink bugs and overdone combat effects, looking for what is actually a slightly darker pink bug did I ever learn what the alarm bugs were. And I had done advanced in PUGs successfully several times by then.
Targeting and killing them is still not easy though. Tab targeting is worthless there, and spotting them to click on them manually is very difficult with the amount of stuff going on everywhere, and the bugs trying to kill you. I know what to do there now, but the game did not prepare anyone for that at all, not on normal, and not on advanced.
For something like KSA, the mandatory in normal is to prevent 10 probes from getting through. In advanced it is not the same at all, where not even one probe can be allowed to slip through. ISA is the same deal, no spheres can heal the transformer, instead of being able to slaughter them, then kill the transformer even if they have healed it already. The game is entirely different because there is no recovery from the arbitrary fail condition that caused no particular problem on normal.
Nothing in normal suggests these are going to be mandatory in advanced, nor does it prepare you for the fact it is much harder to do in advanced than normal. Where you can breeze through normal, you can very quickly fail advanced because of the big jump in enemy difficulty and a distinct lack of teaching what objective is most important.
The issue remains, though. Pre DR, elite queues were PUG-able. Now they are much harder to PUG, and this is extremely dissatisfying to those of us who liked them, and find normal absurdly dull.
In BDN just about anyone can melt the enemy ships quickly enough that you can deal with them and then rescue the ships.
Take BDN play into BDA and unless you're in the 100k channel what you learned in BDN isn't going to work in BDA.
Normal is not the learning queue for Advanced nor Elite. It is the Normal queue. If Normal was supposed to be the learning queue it is teaching the wrong things for anything beyond Normal difficulty.
What is the objective? Rescue the ships. Is that different? No. The means by which one does that...can that change? Sure. But guess what? The player knows that the mobs in Advanced are going to be tougher than they are in Normal, right? Do they need to go into Advanced to learn that? No. They already know that. So even before going into Advanced...they'd know that they couldn't tackle it in the same way they might have in Normal, right? People not thinking is not an excuse...
Cryptic would have to find a way to gate content...to fix it...cause it's a people problem.
The ANRA changes only make it worse...they'd ruin the Advanced that you claim to enjoy. Cause you'd have more folks showing up not knowing what to do, not prepared to do what needs to be done, and leeching...as well as those that like hostage trolling.
See, and this is why I can appreciate you, virusdancer... I really do get what you are saying. And thank you for being civil about it. I even agree with it, don't get me wrong. I don't want to be a leech, nor do I want to be a player who carries other leeches to victory.
This is the problem I saw most plainly with "Borg Disconnected." The goal of the queue was to free ships, not simply blow up stuff. If all five teammates bunch up into one of the three corners... that's an insta-fail waiting to happen. I'm all for strategy, and a different game mechanic (for once, you're not "spreading the Starfleet gospel" by simply blowing everything away, LOL). However, once I'm a part of a PUG group... one that clearly knows what to do... yet misses the hurdle by one or two OVER AND OVER... then, maybe, you must turn your attention to the team that created the queue in the first place. It speaks to greater issues that they need to address.
Herald Sphere seems like it could be another ISA, in that, you just go in and kill everything... mindless DPS, yes, but that CAN be fun within reason. I don't see the same issues with Herald, as I did with Disconnected... which brings me to:
See, and this is why I can appreciate you, virusdancer... I really do get what you are saying. And thank you for being civil about it. I even agree with it, don't get me wrong. I don't want to be a leech, nor do I want to be a player who carries other leeches to victory.
This is the problem I saw most plainly with "Borg Disconnected." The goal of the queue was to free ships, not simply blow up stuff. If all five teammates bunch up into one of the three corners... that's an insta-fail waiting to happen. I'm all for strategy, and a different game mechanic (for once, you're not "spreading the Starfleet gospel" by simply blowing everything away, LOL). However, once I'm a part of a PUG group... one that clearly knows what to do... yet misses the hurdle by one or two OVER AND OVER... then, maybe, you must turn your attention to the team that created the queue in the first place. It speaks to greater issues that they need to address.
Hrmm, the civil bit...I guess it's a case that I didn't think you were trying to make any excuses, and I guess I saw a bit of a kinship there - I like Advanced, Normal is too easy, and I couldn't imagine trying to pug Elite...so I dork around in Advanced. Folks making excuses on the other hand...meh...tends to get me in trouble with the mods. I'll often go out of my way to help or find help for somebody that's trying and not making excuses...but folks just making excuses tick me off.
Did they ever fix the issues with Borg Disco? I'd stopped playing it because of those and didn't keep track of it. Folks ran into issues with a lack of spawns to be able to complete it (kind of the same thing that existed with the old ANRA that remained with the new ANRA).
There are all sorts of bugs all over the place in the various queues. I've got six posts in that Worst STF thread...one was about a troll, one was about getting dropped into an ISA 10 seconds before it failed, but the other four were bugs. I've seen Gens in ISA drop with less than 4k damage done to them, where there is no record in the log of them being killed, but they're gone, and here come the Nanites. There are still SuperBorg from time to time, with Spheres tossing 100k torps and the Tac Cube/Gateway tossing 300k torps. All sorts of bugs riddling all sorts of things.
What is the objective? Rescue the ships. Is that different? No. The means by which one does that...can that change? Sure. But guess what? The player knows that the mobs in Advanced are going to be tougher than they are in Normal, right? Do they need to go into Advanced to learn that? No. They already know that. So even before going into Advanced...they'd know that they couldn't tackle it in the same way they might have in Normal, right? People not thinking is not an excuse...
Yes, your logic makes sense, but I have a huge issue with Borg Disconnected in particular.
The problem is: in Normal, saving ships is optional. That's the issue right there. If Normal is the "training ground" for Advanced (again, something the devs themselves said), then BDN fails miserably.
In BDN, saving ships should be mandatory, with bonuses for saving X number of ships in the three zones. This would teach players to split up and strategize a little.
In BDN, saving ships should be mandatory, with bonuses for saving X number of ships in the three zones. This would teach players to split up and strategize a little.
If the enemies in BDN had HP on par with their BDA counterparts while maintaining their current offense people would probably naturally figure out it was better to push/pull/distract them than to blow them up to free the ship. Path of least resistance and all that.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
sigh... borg disco... great queue because the only thing you need is stratergy, tactics and coordination. ...and situational awareness. Even with Elite difficulty you can absolutely get away with the whole team doing 0 DPS (for the first 3 phases).
We need more queues like this that require some thinking, preparation on the part of the players, and teamwork by covering multiple locations.
The problem is not with the queue, it's the player base. they are just noobs, leeches, and trolls. Obviously not the whole player base, but it sure seems like a lot of the random pugs are like this.
I was just trying to make a point. The way the changes were being sold to me (the player), from Mr. Geko, made it SOUND like all you'd need is a bump in gear. Clearly, that's not the case.
Eh, if we listened to Cryptic (promos, in-game) on how to fly, we'd have Beam Arrays, Single Cannons, Turrets, and Torpedos all on the same ship. :P
Yes, your logic makes sense, but I have a huge issue with Borg Disconnected in particular.
The problem is: in Normal, saving ships is optional. That's the issue right there. If Normal is the "training ground" for Advanced (again, something the devs themselves said), then BDN fails miserably.
In BDN, saving ships should be mandatory, with bonuses for saving X number of ships in the three zones. This would teach players to split up and strategize a little.
The better you perform, the better you are rewarded. The more ships you save...the better you are rewarded. It's teaching folks to try to save more ships...to get the better reward.
Only reason we didn't get the chained Dread bonus was because the Undine got stuck in scenery so we had to fly over to it and find the right angle to be able to shoot it through the scenery - still got the three before the overall timer.
All the objectives are spelled out in the Objective window...and performing better rewards better.
At a certain point, one will find themselves performing well enough in Normal that they should be ready for Advanced...
...I'm not sure how it's not preparing folks. /shrug
The issue remains, though. Pre DR, elite queues were PUG-able. Now they are much harder to PUG, and this is extremely dissatisfying to those of us who liked them, and find normal absurdly dull.
Pre-DR Elite queues were PUG-able for two types of players:
1. Those who could carry the whole team.
2. Those who were being carried by the former.
Post-DR, the 1st type of players could no longer carry the team, and deserted the PUGs in droves to avoid the 2nd type causing them to fail. The 2nd group were no longer being carried, and deserted the PUGs since they could no longer get victories.
I was just trying to make a point. The way the changes were being sold to me (the player), from Mr. Geko, made it SOUND like all you'd need is a bump in gear. Clearly, that's not the case.
This was the post Geko made on October 15th after the launch of Delta Rising...
Welcome to Delta Rising. A lot has changed in the game difficulty, and we are looking for your feedback.
Delta Rising was a massive addition, and we anticipate that we will need to make adjustments. So over the next few weeks expect changes in the baseline difficulty, advanced difficulty, and elite difficulty - and also expect rewards to change as we gather more metrics on play-times and success rates.
Our goal was to make basic difficulty and the story content something everyone can play - even with a standard T5 ship. Levels 1-50 are generally pretty easy at basic difficulty, so we felt 51-60 should step things up a bit. Although we expect 51-60 accessible everyone, those in T5 ships and non-upgraded gear should to start to feel a definite challenge as they approach level 60. We expect Advanced to be for more skilled players and those who have invested in the game (ships and gear). And we expect Elite to be for the best of the best. We don't expect most players to succeed on elite difficulty.
If I were to guess, I would expect basic to get some minor tuning, Advanced to get a little easier and Elite to get a lot harder - and rewards, like dilithium rewards, could potentially go up across queues once we are sure we are hitting the right mark. But this is just my guess at this time.
Until then, let us know your thoughts here, and we will take your feedback into consideration.
Thanks, and we hope you enjoy Delta Rising.
LLAP
And this was a post that Geko made on November 4th...
Shortly after launch of Delta Rising, I made a post asking for your input on balance for levels 51-60 balance. I wanted to take a moment and thank everyone for their input. Raising the level cap with 3 difficulty settings is a big task. The difference in skill and gear from one player to another can be very large, so getting the balance right can be a challenge.
A little over a week or so ago, we made some changes to difficulty. Based on additional feedback, as well as continuing data mining, we are in the process of making another pass. We will be noticeably reducing the HP and shields of all space critters from levels 51-60. This change will have more of an effect at level 60 than 51. This change will affect Basic and Advanced difficulty, but not affect Elite Difficulty.
Be sure to watch for additional posts from the devs on related changes. In relation to game difficulty, keep an eye out for posts on PvE queue difficulty as well as a post on changes to changes to rewards. Please focus your responses on the appropriate thread.
LLAP
Al Captain Geko Rivera
So we had on Oct 15th:
"We expect Advanced to be for more skilled players and those who have invested in the game (ships and gear)."
Modified by on Nov 4th:
"A little over a week or so ago, we made some changes to difficulty. Based on additional feedback, as well as continuing data mining, we are in the process of making another pass. We will be noticeably reducing the HP and shields of all space critters from levels 51-60. This change will have more of an effect at level 60 than 51. This change will affect Basic and Advanced difficulty, but not affect Elite Difficulty."
They reduced their requirements from the Oct 15th post, the Delta Rising launch (and based on the DPS requirements folks posted for Advanced content at launch compared to what it was after Nov, it was a hefty reduction)...but a lot of folks are treating it as if it was actually higher than it was with launch.
edit: Elaborating on this bit...
"We expect Advanced to be for more skilled players and those who have invested in the game (ships and gear)."
Note that it says that and not the following...
"We expect Advanced to be for more skilled players who have invested in the game (ships and gear)."
So it's Advanced Skilled players and Advanced Geared players...not Advanced Skilled players with Advanced Gear...sort of thing.
like i wrote somewhere 1 or 2 months ago; we need a tutorial section in these forums.
- for example: during grethor, no need to close all the gateways; only the radiation gateways are important.
I've done GtGA twice. The first time was a Failure. Aside from splitting left/right, the team was mostly clueless. We were wiping out the enemies pretty well, but didn't get the objectives completed.
The second time, somebody called out three things at the start of each phase which made a huge difference:
1. Ignore the ships in the asteroid belt, only worry about the attackers.
2. Focus on the radiation gateways.
3. Focus on the dreadnought.
Beyond splitting left/right, there was absolutely no organizing of "I close, you shoot" or anything. Simply knowing the basic tactic was enough. It actually reminded me of the old days when someone would quickly give a rundown of 10% or MRRMLL.
You want to talk about boring? Normal is boring. There is no middle ground, which is what Advanced should be.
Just failed Herald Sphere Advanced... AGAIN... because my team didn't burn through the ships fast enough. That makes it a DPS race, and that's (again) why it should change.
You know I do understand the frustration, but honestly STO is the ONLY MMO I know where players complain that they can't farm the new/harder(advanced/Elite) /perhaps requiring the new more powerful rep gear..queues a few days after an update.
I can ONLY imagine the OUTRAGE if these guys were playing World of War Craft and were upset at Blizzard because they could farm a new endgame raid instance one week post release.
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"We expect Advanced to be for more skilled players and those who have invested in the game (ships and gear)."
Note that it says that and not the following...
"We expect Advanced to be for more skilled players who have invested in the game (ships and gear)."
So it's Advanced Skilled players and Advanced Geared players...not Advanced Skilled players with Advanced Gear...sort of thing.
That's exactly the point I was making, LOL... that distinction right there. In my practice, however, it does not feel like the way Geko phrased that. It more feels like the latter portion of your statement.
Added to that, of course, the nature of PUGing, and the inability to know if your teammates are "holding their end of the bargain"... and where does that leave us? PUGs are dead, and good riddance?
Comments
There is Normal, Advance and Elite. Go down to Normal if you do PuGs and are uncapable of carrying the group. Go Down to normal if you incapable of contributing at advanced in competent groups.
Marks are almost the same in normal, advance and elite if you actually do all the optionals at normal which happens to be mandatories in advance. Now, you can craft those BNps, etc at the rep table.
The most efficient way is FAW. All weapons are viable. Except you need more teamwork and personal skill to do the others which would disqualify less than competent teams and PuGs from all other weapons.
A terrible solution.
If I'm bored with a Normal queue, but don't want to deal with the DPS demands of Elite, I should have Advanced as a middle ground. That is not the case, however. Telling players to "get out" or "stay away" is not a solution... and it's especially laughable when I witness people arguing in chat during ISA runs, arguing over how to properly move forward.
An approach like this does nothing to solve the problems of Advanced queues.
Apparently you dont know the difference between elite and advance. Elite is harder than advance.
You are bored in normal but apparently cannot compete at advance. It means you dont belong in advance and belong in normal not unless you improve your team and your capabilities. If you dont want to improve your personal skill and the team you play with at advance, stick to normal. It is your choice and fault that your capabilities are such and your team are such.
So if we are going to nerf down advance to normal levels, what is the difference between normal and advance? Might as well just have to levels of difficulties Normal and Elite. But what about the other player base who cannot do elite but are capable of doing advance not unlike you?
Thing is...the "get out" and "stay away" is exactly what would solve your problem, no?
You're ready for Advanced, yeah? If the folks queuing up were ready for Advanced too...then you'd have that more than decent shot to do Advanced or even find that Advanced is too easy.
If not for the folks that don't know what to do, aren't prepared to do what needs to be done, are just leeching, or are possibly trolling...you'd have what you wanted their with Advanced, no?
You're not going to get it, cause folks that don't know what to do, aren't prepared to do what needs to be done, are just leeching, or are possibly trolling are going to show up...and depending on how many do, the run is doomed to failure from the start.
As paxdawn said, if you're built either to carry or to facilitate the run...then you've got a chance, depending on how many folks show up that shouldn't...
Bunch of folks have abandoned the public queues because of those folks showing up.
Saying that approach doesn't resolve the issue of the advanced queues...when it would precisely resolve the issue of the advanced queues....well...huh?
So you either need to carry/facilitate as much as you can while hoping for the best, head off to various channel runs, go back to Normal, or just forget about it...
...cause folks that shouldn't be there will continue to show up there. It's exactly the problem.
I would love to take the time to learn, but my group keeps getting booted, disbanded and locked out for 30mins. Seriously what game does this?
Booted, disbanded, and locked out for 30 minutes? That sounds like Advanced or Elite and not Normal...
By "earn" you mean simply queuing up with people from one of the public channels or joining an active fleet who runs queues. It's hardly a great stretch of personal ability to simply run a mission with a premade team. I don't care what queue level you're running, "premade team" is easy mode.
Having run both, I can safely say those players who help carry a pug through to completion have truly "earned" their rewards... Floating along with 4 other players who are all well trained, well geared and know exactly what to do... well anybody can do it that way :P
If they want to reward effort... give out extra rewards for a successful pug completion, that's where the real challenge is!
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But this is exactly the problem I'm talking about... hence, the creation of this thread. I wanted an update on what the devs were doing to fix this, a process started in earnest with the tweaks to ANRA. Season 10 did not bring these changes to the entire PvE queue, though, so I'm left a little frustrated.
When I'm flying in a T6 JHSS, with Mk XIV VR weapons, Mk XiV space set, Mk XII Fleet TAC consoles, and the like... I should be able to hold my own in Advanced queues. I was told I would be able to handle myself in Advanced queues, Mr. Geko. So, yes, me staying away when I want to play something with a little more challenge... that solves nothing.
Further, I'll grant you that people are still learning the new queues... there may be a learning curve. Fine. Pretty sure, however... after failing Herald Advanced a few more times last night... that the third stage of that queue is "Kill 3 waves of ships in X amount of time." Yet, my PUGs keep failing in Wave 3...
That means it's a DPS problem... which harkens back to the original problems with these new Advanced queues. If you can't burn through something fast enough, you lose. Oh, your team COULD do it eventually, but can't reach the timer? SORRY! Oh, and if you are a time-limited person, but PUGs are a mess... I'm SOL?
And how is this a fair/good thing?
It's always funny how the most vocal criers of "risk vs reward" don't actually want risk, just the reward and the appearance of risk. Pugging elite or advanced should get you better rewards than rolling in with your 100k buddies and rolfstomping the queue.
I was having a lots of fun in all advanced queue.
Now I don't play them anymore as mk XII is not enough anymore in advanced if you are not in a good group which is often the case, so I've stopped to play as there is no fun and no pleasure anymore.
Cryptic has screwed the game.
I have 3 toons to mk XIV now but don't have time and mostly don't have wishes now to upgrade the other to XIV.
If I didn't have a fleet to manage I probably would have stopped playing like 75% of my fl have done.
Increasing difficulty was a necessity but not at those cost they implement with DR
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Your conclusion does not follow the premises.
Someone "flying in a T6 JHSS, with Mk XIV VR weapons, Mk XiV space set, Mk XII Fleet TAC consoles, and the like" absolutely does not indicate, in any way, that they would be able to hold their own in Advanced queues.
Of the three factors that Performance depends on - Build, Piloting, and Gear - Build and Piloting are multipliers for Gear.
B x P x G = P
People who blame their Gear for their lack of Performance are extremely unlikely to improve their Performance by any appreciable amount even if we were to hand them all Mk XIV Epics, simply because their Build and Piloting are so poor.
0.1 x 0.1 x 1 = 0.01
0.1 x 0.1 x 2 = 0.02
Cryptic would have to find a way to gate content...to fix it...cause it's a people problem.
The ANRA changes only make it worse...they'd ruin the Advanced that you claim to enjoy. Cause you'd have more folks showing up not knowing what to do, not prepared to do what needs to be done, and leeching...as well as those that like hostage trolling.
Didn't Sarc say three was bugged?
As for it being fair...again, it's a player problem...which people have solved by changing the people they play with...cause it's a player problem. That's not saying it's a you problem, it's saying it's a problem of those you're flying with...and it's not fair/not a good thing - and tada, folks have gone to private runs/channels because of that.
Let's go back to the "four" groups, eh?
1) Folks that don't know what to do.
2) Folks not prepared to do what needs to be done.
3) Folks that are outright leeching.
4) Folks that are trolling.
I said "four", cause imho it's actually just two...leeches and trolls.
Learning the queue? What's the difference between Normal and Advanced? Normal scales down to 50, Advanced scales up to 60, mobs in Advanced are more difficult, and you've got an Objective that's Optional in Normal and Mandatory in Advanced...the same Objective. There's nothing to be learned in Advanced. Advanced isn't a learning tier...it's a testing tier. Testing the knowledge of the instance you have and your ability to do it. Folks saying they're learning in Advanced instead of learning in Normal or from guides/written or videos as well as having tested their builds/abilities...they're leeching.
Not prepared? Well, obviously if they're not prepared - they're looking to be carried - and - tada...leeching.
Outright leeching...knowing just what minimum they need to do to avoid getting the AFK penalty...it's outright leeching.
And then the trolls...looking to cause the fail.
So how would the ANRA "fix", even if all the broken stuff that previously existed in ANRA were fixed as well...how would that "fix" address the issue?
Increase the number of folks that show up for the Advanced queue without a clue as to what needs to be done for the run? Increase the number of folks that show up for the Advanced queue woefully underprepared to tackle the queue? Increase the number of folks that just outright leech?
Would it fix the troll angle at least? Well, you'd go from potentially the quick fail and being able to go do something else to being held hostage in the queue not wanting to eat the leaver penalty and not being able to hit up anything else.
So again, in order to "fix" the problem...Cryptic would have to find a way to gate the content...but that would only address part of the problem, those showing up without a clue and those showing up not prepared to tackle the queue. You'd still be facing the outright leeches and the trolls.
So again, folks either gamble with what they get in the public queues - knowing that people are douches...they end up hitting up private channels to avoid it all...or they basically just stop playing queues. I'm not a fan of private channels, I don't want farm runs and I'm not into seeing how much faster I can do something over and over...so personally, I just stopped doing queues. Maybe if I hung out with a group of casual but advanced players that would dork around from time to time in private runs, I might still hit them up...but most folks I know were PvPers and most of them left the game.
Advanced did not exist before Delta Rising, so you could not have been having lots of fun in Advanced before Delta Rising.
You don't even need Mk XII for Advanced, so claiming that you need more than that...meh...
Just a big ol' pile of stinking meh...garbage excuses.
Take BDN and BDA.
In BDN just about anyone can melt the enemy ships quickly enough that you can deal with them and then rescue the ships.
Take BDN play into BDA and unless you're in the 100k channel what you learned in BDN isn't going to work in BDA.
Normal is not the learning queue for Advanced nor Elite. It is the Normal queue. If Normal was supposed to be the learning queue it is teaching the wrong things for anything beyond Normal difficulty.
Yeah, look... I realize that I likely kicked an ant hill by saying that... I know a lot more goes into performance than having "the best stuffz." Just now learning about firing cycles, and adjusting power levels... I'm a work in progress, but trying to make myself better.
I was just trying to make a point. The way the changes were being sold to me (the player), from Mr. Geko, made it SOUND like all you'd need is a bump in gear. Clearly, that's not the case.
This is false. Normal in no way prepares anyone for advanced. Normal is absurdly easy, and the optionals aren't even apparent there. Advanced is significantly harder. It isn't a step up, it is maybe 5 steps.
Which optionals in normal are mandatory in advanced? You have no idea if you're trying to "learn" on normal difficulty.
Bug hunt. What bugs are even the alarm bugs? Normal doesn't show you that, tell you that, or even indicate that killing them is important. Kill everything you see and maybe you get the optional, maybe not.
Of course in advanced it is the mandatory optional, but it still doesn't point out which bugs are the alarm bugs.
Only by reading on the forums about "purple bugs" and then squinting through the mess of pink bugs and overdone combat effects, looking for what is actually a slightly darker pink bug did I ever learn what the alarm bugs were. And I had done advanced in PUGs successfully several times by then.
Targeting and killing them is still not easy though. Tab targeting is worthless there, and spotting them to click on them manually is very difficult with the amount of stuff going on everywhere, and the bugs trying to kill you. I know what to do there now, but the game did not prepare anyone for that at all, not on normal, and not on advanced.
For something like KSA, the mandatory in normal is to prevent 10 probes from getting through. In advanced it is not the same at all, where not even one probe can be allowed to slip through. ISA is the same deal, no spheres can heal the transformer, instead of being able to slaughter them, then kill the transformer even if they have healed it already. The game is entirely different because there is no recovery from the arbitrary fail condition that caused no particular problem on normal.
Nothing in normal suggests these are going to be mandatory in advanced, nor does it prepare you for the fact it is much harder to do in advanced than normal. Where you can breeze through normal, you can very quickly fail advanced because of the big jump in enemy difficulty and a distinct lack of teaching what objective is most important.
The issue remains, though. Pre DR, elite queues were PUG-able. Now they are much harder to PUG, and this is extremely dissatisfying to those of us who liked them, and find normal absurdly dull.
What is the objective? Rescue the ships. Is that different? No. The means by which one does that...can that change? Sure. But guess what? The player knows that the mobs in Advanced are going to be tougher than they are in Normal, right? Do they need to go into Advanced to learn that? No. They already know that. So even before going into Advanced...they'd know that they couldn't tackle it in the same way they might have in Normal, right? People not thinking is not an excuse...
Make them all you want...it's entertaining.
Maybe if they increased the difficulty of Normal, eh? Wouldn't be such a gap too, yeah?
See, and this is why I can appreciate you, virusdancer... I really do get what you are saying. And thank you for being civil about it. I even agree with it, don't get me wrong. I don't want to be a leech, nor do I want to be a player who carries other leeches to victory.
This is the problem I saw most plainly with "Borg Disconnected." The goal of the queue was to free ships, not simply blow up stuff. If all five teammates bunch up into one of the three corners... that's an insta-fail waiting to happen. I'm all for strategy, and a different game mechanic (for once, you're not "spreading the Starfleet gospel" by simply blowing everything away, LOL). However, once I'm a part of a PUG group... one that clearly knows what to do... yet misses the hurdle by one or two OVER AND OVER... then, maybe, you must turn your attention to the team that created the queue in the first place. It speaks to greater issues that they need to address.
Herald Sphere seems like it could be another ISA, in that, you just go in and kill everything... mindless DPS, yes, but that CAN be fun within reason. I don't see the same issues with Herald, as I did with Disconnected... which brings me to:
This is the first I've heard of this, LOL... if this is true, then someone mentioning this in post #2 would have saved me a lot of typing. :P
Heh, guess you never got a reply on this part...
...I didn't know off hand, but I've seen a few threads popping up that I haven't clicked mentioning bugged new queues.
Hrmm, the civil bit...I guess it's a case that I didn't think you were trying to make any excuses, and I guess I saw a bit of a kinship there - I like Advanced, Normal is too easy, and I couldn't imagine trying to pug Elite...so I dork around in Advanced. Folks making excuses on the other hand...meh...tends to get me in trouble with the mods. I'll often go out of my way to help or find help for somebody that's trying and not making excuses...but folks just making excuses tick me off.
Did they ever fix the issues with Borg Disco? I'd stopped playing it because of those and didn't keep track of it. Folks ran into issues with a lack of spawns to be able to complete it (kind of the same thing that existed with the old ANRA that remained with the new ANRA).
There are all sorts of bugs all over the place in the various queues. I've got six posts in that Worst STF thread...one was about a troll, one was about getting dropped into an ISA 10 seconds before it failed, but the other four were bugs. I've seen Gens in ISA drop with less than 4k damage done to them, where there is no record in the log of them being killed, but they're gone, and here come the Nanites. There are still SuperBorg from time to time, with Spheres tossing 100k torps and the Tac Cube/Gateway tossing 300k torps. All sorts of bugs riddling all sorts of things.
Yes, your logic makes sense, but I have a huge issue with Borg Disconnected in particular.
The problem is: in Normal, saving ships is optional. That's the issue right there. If Normal is the "training ground" for Advanced (again, something the devs themselves said), then BDN fails miserably.
In BDN, saving ships should be mandatory, with bonuses for saving X number of ships in the three zones. This would teach players to split up and strategize a little.
If the enemies in BDN had HP on par with their BDA counterparts while maintaining their current offense people would probably naturally figure out it was better to push/pull/distract them than to blow them up to free the ship. Path of least resistance and all that.
OK: gate to phase 3, get ambushed, fight off 5 waves, then kill 3 command ships... go to phase 4.
Bugged: gate to phase 3, get ambushed... no additional ships show up, timer runs out and queue fails.
Half bugged: gate to phase 3, get ambushed, fight off 5 waves... missing command ships, timer runs out and you go to phase 4.
We need more queues like this that require some thinking, preparation on the part of the players, and teamwork by covering multiple locations.
The problem is not with the queue, it's the player base. they are just noobs, leeches, and trolls. Obviously not the whole player base, but it sure seems like a lot of the random pugs are like this.
Eh, if we listened to Cryptic (promos, in-game) on how to fly, we'd have Beam Arrays, Single Cannons, Turrets, and Torpedos all on the same ship. :P
The better you perform, the better you are rewarded. The more ships you save...the better you are rewarded. It's teaching folks to try to save more ships...to get the better reward.
I just went through and did a public BDN: http://i.imgur.com/1gxt7P5.png
Only reason we didn't get the chained Dread bonus was because the Undine got stuck in scenery so we had to fly over to it and find the right angle to be able to shoot it through the scenery - still got the three before the overall timer.
All the objectives are spelled out in the Objective window...and performing better rewards better.
At a certain point, one will find themselves performing well enough in Normal that they should be ready for Advanced...
...I'm not sure how it's not preparing folks. /shrug
Pre-DR Elite queues were PUG-able for two types of players:
1. Those who could carry the whole team.
2. Those who were being carried by the former.
Post-DR, the 1st type of players could no longer carry the team, and deserted the PUGs in droves to avoid the 2nd type causing them to fail. The 2nd group were no longer being carried, and deserted the PUGs since they could no longer get victories.
This was the post Geko made on October 15th after the launch of Delta Rising...
And this was a post that Geko made on November 4th...
So we had on Oct 15th:
"We expect Advanced to be for more skilled players and those who have invested in the game (ships and gear)."
Modified by on Nov 4th:
"A little over a week or so ago, we made some changes to difficulty. Based on additional feedback, as well as continuing data mining, we are in the process of making another pass. We will be noticeably reducing the HP and shields of all space critters from levels 51-60. This change will have more of an effect at level 60 than 51. This change will affect Basic and Advanced difficulty, but not affect Elite Difficulty."
They reduced their requirements from the Oct 15th post, the Delta Rising launch (and based on the DPS requirements folks posted for Advanced content at launch compared to what it was after Nov, it was a hefty reduction)...but a lot of folks are treating it as if it was actually higher than it was with launch.
edit: Elaborating on this bit...
"We expect Advanced to be for more skilled players and those who have invested in the game (ships and gear)."
Note that it says that and not the following...
"We expect Advanced to be for more skilled players who have invested in the game (ships and gear)."
So it's Advanced Skilled players and Advanced Geared players...not Advanced Skilled players with Advanced Gear...sort of thing.
- for example: during grethor, no need to close all the gateways; only the radiation gateways are important.
I've done GtGA twice. The first time was a Failure. Aside from splitting left/right, the team was mostly clueless. We were wiping out the enemies pretty well, but didn't get the objectives completed.
The second time, somebody called out three things at the start of each phase which made a huge difference:
1. Ignore the ships in the asteroid belt, only worry about the attackers.
2. Focus on the radiation gateways.
3. Focus on the dreadnought.
Beyond splitting left/right, there was absolutely no organizing of "I close, you shoot" or anything. Simply knowing the basic tactic was enough. It actually reminded me of the old days when someone would quickly give a rundown of 10% or MRRMLL.
You know I do understand the frustration, but honestly STO is the ONLY MMO I know where players complain that they can't farm the new/harder(advanced/Elite) /perhaps requiring the new more powerful rep gear..queues a few days after an update.
I can ONLY imagine the OUTRAGE if these guys were playing World of War Craft and were upset at Blizzard because they could farm a new endgame raid instance one week post release.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
That's exactly the point I was making, LOL... that distinction right there. In my practice, however, it does not feel like the way Geko phrased that. It more feels like the latter portion of your statement.
Added to that, of course, the nature of PUGing, and the inability to know if your teammates are "holding their end of the bargain"... and where does that leave us? PUGs are dead, and good riddance?