The problem with DPS being king is inherent to not only the design of MMOs, but Cryptic's Free to Play formula. To briefly summarize the problem.
DPS helps you win fast, the more the better. Tanking and Healing/Support helps you not die, you need enough to not constantly die.
Since dying is a slap on the wrist, this devalues Tanking and Healing.
Therefore, better tanking/healing is useless beyond a point while for DPS the sky's the limit.
There is a large disparity between players in how well they are equipped. This disparity can only be bridged by either a lot of grinding, or real money.
Making top-end missions be serious threats to the Whales, to the point that they start considering tanking and healing to stay alive means that they will utterly crush the casual players.
You can't TRIBBLE off the casual players too much, they're the people you're trying to convert into Whales.
Therefore they under-tune the instances, so that tanking and healing are not needed because sky-high DPs blitzes everything.
There are certain things that Cryptic can do to help make Tanking/Healing more important. Harsher penalties for dying, the ability to have your ship visibly marked as a healer ship, and WOW-style raid markers would all be welcome additions. However, the fundamental problem cannot be solved without looking at the business model, and that's not going to happen anytime soon.
you can add to that making escorts into true glass cannons. some escorts have the same or greater hull than cruisers.
BFAW BOL CSV and CRF needs to have a far more significant energy drains thank they currently have.
Ok smart TRIBBLE how else are newer players going to get the raw mats to craft and improve thier gear? I just love you elitist jerks that want to shut out newer players from trying things and from procurng the BNP's etc.
Personally, I did ground. Those were easier to gear up for than space. I also got a fair amount of BNPs from the box rewards from the reputation projects. It requires patience but it isn't all as difficult as some may lead you to believe.
I'm not saying that people should but I personally keep all my chars away from any advanced space queues until I can get them up reliably to about 8k in normal. Personally, I wanted to contribute, not leech. The only time I'd take a sub 8k toon into an advanced space instance is if I was invited into a private queue, with the members fully aware of my untested ship or low DPS status.
Right now there are even more options to getting BNPs and other advanced marks. It's really just a matter of patience. IMO I don't understand the need to max things now, or get all reps done now. There is nothing at the finish line to race to. Might as well enjoy the game, enjoy the normal STFs and take your time. Rushing in will only get you burnt out.
You can earn by playing normal to get BNPs. No need to play advance to get BNPs nor Marks. Or they can improve themselves, piloting, build in order to complete advance.
Say what? There are no BnPs in Normal. We'll just overlook the entire "And who still uses BnPs and Borg-Rep Gear Anyway?" thing, since the same applies to almost every rep, except Dyson and Undine, which have continuous battlezones in which you can grind for said thingummies. The simple fact is that if you want to get anything out of a queue, you must play a minimum of Advanced, otherwise you get nothing and the entire exercise is a waste of time.
Sure, there are alternate paths in several reps, but they are by no means universal, repeatable, or even smart. The "pay 100 marks to get ONE thingummy ONCE per day" is a joke option I cannot seriously recommend to anyone under any circumstances. Knowing which reps even have these alternate paths and which ones aren't TRIBBLE bait is sort of advanced knowledge. If someone knew how to do these things, they wouldn't be subjecting themselves to the queues in the first place.
What do you want instantaneous gratification? Once per day should be sufficient. If one is in a hurry, one can always improve one self to play advance. Nor do any player need to have borg stuff to compete at Advance. Borg stuff are optional for minimum requirement in advance. Which is why it defeats the purpose of needing borg stuff when you dont need borg stuff to do advance. Self-Entitlement is the reason for this, much like first world problems.
However, like I said that is a closed issue. Advance was nerfed so that normal level skilled players or players with low reading comprehension can complete it.
You can earn by playing normal to get BNPs. No need to play advance to get BNPs nor Marks. Or they can improve themselves, piloting, build in order to complete advance.
Say what? There are no BnPs in Normal. We'll just overlook the entire "And who still uses BnPs and Borg-Rep Gear Anyway?" thing, since the same applies to almost every rep, except Dyson and Undine, which have continuous battlezones in which you can grind for said thingummies. The simple fact is that if you want to get anything out of a queue, you must play a minimum of Advanced, otherwise you get nothing and the entire exercise is a waste of time.
Sure, there are alternate paths in several reps, but they are by no means universal, repeatable, or even smart. The "pay 100 marks to get ONE thingummy ONCE per day" is a joke option I cannot seriously recommend to anyone under any circumstances. Knowing which reps even have these alternate paths and which ones aren't TRIBBLE bait is sort of advanced knowledge. If someone knew how to do these things, they wouldn't be subjecting themselves to the queues in the first place.
You can get BNPs from Defera Ground Hard missions (at least until whatever is going on with Defera over on tribble hits holodeck). As for the "who uses borg gear" well I do for one. Every character I have (14) has at least one set of Borg gear, usually the Assimilated Space set for the fastest sector space speed available, though several also have the MACO set, and all of them have the Assimilated Module console and KCB.
You mean the Defera warzone shutdown business on tribble? That better not make it to the holodeck at all.
anytime you move to a percentile based exponential formula, from a d20 subset, this happens. the top end is always going to be the top. proper limits were set into place with the basic mod formulas. it is only when you add in the excessive gear that this happens. give people the ability to craft crtdx3/pen/damage bonus, and fit it on everything, with leveled up ultra rare/epic consoles, well what did you expect the top of the mountain to be.
mud devs learned 20 years ago that you have to be very careful with percentile based formulas outside of a non d20 scenario, because the basic purpose of exponential division with percentiles is absurd. when you stack percentiles, things... get... huge.... @eof
Another issue with the system is that the same type of DPS is effective in almost all scenarios: Group them up and AOE them down. WoW like boss mechanics might introduce more varied builds which discourage other play styles. The problem with that is, how do you get players to play the more thoughtful and careful style of encounter instead of just picking one where you can AOE everything down.
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you can add to that making escorts into true glass cannons. some escorts have the same or greater hull than cruisers.
BFAW BOL CSV and CRF needs to have a far more significant energy drains thank they currently have.
My character Tsin'xing
I'm not saying that people should but I personally keep all my chars away from any advanced space queues until I can get them up reliably to about 8k in normal. Personally, I wanted to contribute, not leech. The only time I'd take a sub 8k toon into an advanced space instance is if I was invited into a private queue, with the members fully aware of my untested ship or low DPS status.
Right now there are even more options to getting BNPs and other advanced marks. It's really just a matter of patience. IMO I don't understand the need to max things now, or get all reps done now. There is nothing at the finish line to race to. Might as well enjoy the game, enjoy the normal STFs and take your time. Rushing in will only get you burnt out.
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What do you want instantaneous gratification? Once per day should be sufficient. If one is in a hurry, one can always improve one self to play advance. Nor do any player need to have borg stuff to compete at Advance. Borg stuff are optional for minimum requirement in advance. Which is why it defeats the purpose of needing borg stuff when you dont need borg stuff to do advance. Self-Entitlement is the reason for this, much like first world problems.
However, like I said that is a closed issue. Advance was nerfed so that normal level skilled players or players with low reading comprehension can complete it.
You mean the Defera warzone shutdown business on tribble? That better not make it to the holodeck at all.
mud devs learned 20 years ago that you have to be very careful with percentile based formulas outside of a non d20 scenario, because the basic purpose of exponential division with percentiles is absurd. when you stack percentiles, things... get... huge.... @eof