Star Trek Online Becoming Too Easy? Anyone Agree?

maximusdecimus88

I just played Crystaline on advanced, I did not play STO for a while and I didn't have all my attacks/abilities set up so I was doing that and before I knew it, the game was over. The STF literally only lasted 1-2 minutes. I have never experienced an advanced crystaline that fast before, they would go for 8-15 min usually, never this quickly. What has happened to this game? Things have become OP! They only increase difficulty by making enemy ship DPS spounges but they don't improve AI at all.

On elite, what would make this game a lot harder is the enemy ships actually move toward you and your allies instead of pulling them like a typical MMO while the other enemies remain out of range.

rattler2

Power creep.

sheldonlcooper

I think it's pretty hard at this point not to admit there is a problem. The additional dilemma is that there is no easy solution. Well, the easy solution is to triple the enemy HP. But this would only slow down the dps monsters by a few seconds and it might make the game a tedious chore like we saw in October 2014 for everyone else.

Other solutions might be a nerf to faw or tac and particles consoles. Maybe also getting rid of the new hull penetration skills and maybe others.

Making enemies fly around at you won't help. We have some that do it already like Vaadwar. They just get melted by faw. I guess maybe having enemies spam fbp and aceton assimilators. Though that last would be pretty silly to explain storywise other than the real reason why they suddenly all used them.

For crystalline I was thinking one fix would be to have the entity be immune to all damage while absorbing and maybe quintuple the power of its blast.

Either that or let me and other bleeding hearts come to the poor thing's defense.

evilmark444

I'd rather see some NPCs with unique fight mechanics and unique, NPC only abilities than triple health

snoggymack22

No it's not becoming too easy. Most of the super desirable gear/traits/stuff is still locked behind time gates and money/resource sinks.

The content itself isn't any harder than before. It may be a bit easier, but overall game's pretty much the same as ever.

CCA has been in the state you've just experienced for quite awhile.

semalda226

@sheldoncooper ya that's what we need more nerfs to science! /sarcasm do you realise I've had to build a ship soo heavily reliant on PartG that it literally can't use anything else to deal damage and I still only pull 80k dps while Tacs using escorts or dreads (T6 Scimitar) with FAW and Tac Consoles pull 200k+....

kjwashington

Don't use B:FaW. The game quickly becomes much more difficult.
Also a lot of people are catching on that the entity has no shields and that torps will work best. (This is probably the only situation where this is the case.)

sheldonlcooper

semalda226 wrote: »

@sheldoncooper ya that's what we need more nerfs to science! /sarcasm do you realise I've had to build a ship soo heavily reliant on PartG that it literally can't use anything else to deal damage and I still only pull 80k dps while Tacs using escorts or dreads (T6 Scimitar) with FAW and Tac Consoles pull 200k+....

My favorite character is science as well, though not as strong as yours. I added particles consoles to forestall the complaints from tacs about why I was excluding my own stuff. If say tac consoles are given diminishing returns I think it's fair sci consoles get the same to some extent.

terranempire

I often explode and so do a couple of others during our attempt at taking down the entity quickly . So it must be working. That and the new temporal villians shoot Death Star rays shots that can easily destroy you if you get swarmed with them...





Damn Na'Kuhl!

risian4

I'm looking at it from the bright side: thanks to power creep, I now have little reason to spend 12000 Zen on the Temporal ship pack

taylor1701d

@semalda226
You make it sound like everyone using FaW as a tac is hitting 200k. Like its no big deal, and any idiot can slap on beams and FaW and do crazy numbers.

There's like 3 people who can pull off 200k+
And those that do are running in premade groups, where they try to get one person's dps as high as possible.


There might be 300-350 players on the dps boards who are +75k. Maybe 50 that are 100k+. And like 3 that are hitting 200k (in premades)

If the boards are any indication, the average dps is probably around 20-30k dps.

We need facts, not exaggeration.

rattler2

taylor1701d wrote: »

You make it sound like everyone using FaW as a tac is hitting 200k. Like its no big deal, and any idiot can slap on beams and FaW and do crazy numbers.

There's like 3 people who can pull off 200k+
And those that do are running in premade groups, where they try to get one person's dps as high as possible.


There might be 300-350 players on the dps boards who are +75k. Maybe 50 that are 100k+. And like 3 that are hitting 200k (in premades)

If the boards are any indication, the average dps is probably around 20-30k dps.

We need facts, not exaggeration.

The fact remains that it is a certain demographic that is getting these high numbers, and some of those are fostering a rather toxic attitude towards "underperforming" individuals.

I personally have no problem with the DPS crowd at large. I have an issue with those who bash players for not believing in the almighty DPS like they do.

terranempire

Yep, me and others are occasionally reminded of underperforming the top dps charts, and we would fail without the top dogs at our side. I don't know what to say to that. I usually just ignore it and continue to have fun. Honestly don't care for numbers.

risian4

taylor1701d wrote: »

@semalda226
You make it sound like everyone using FaW as a tac is hitting 200k. Like its no big deal, and any idiot can slap on beams and FaW and do crazy numbers.

There's like 3 people who can pull off 200k+
And those that do are running in premade groups, where they try to get one person's dps as high as possible.


There might be 300-350 players on the dps boards who are +75k. Maybe 50 that are 100k+. And like 3 that are hitting 200k (in premades)

If the boards are any indication, the average dps is probably around 20-30k dps.

We need facts, not exaggeration.

Wasn't it said that, right after DR launched, you needed approximately 15k DPS for a mission like ISA? That number, 15-20k, seems ok for the average advanced mission.

The fact that there are a couple of hundred players doing 75k DPS, a couple of dozen doing even more than that and a handful of players who are able to double that number shows there's a real problem.

And yes, some of those numbers may be from pre-mades. But I've seen players in PUGS doing 80k, 90k and one time there were even two of those in the same instance. That's just absurd. Those players are able to solo an entire instance of what's supposed to be advanced content.

And to add an example of my own DPS: I had trouble doing more than 40k before the skill revamp, no matter how many plasma set bonuses I put on my ship or how much more I invested in Particle generators on another toon. Then I suddenly parsed between 55k and 60k. In one night, my top performance increased by almost 50% and I've consistently parsed well above my previous average without really making any changes.

I've got to agree with Sheldon. They should look at the new penetration skills, and probably do something about the resistance debuffing as well. It's just ridiculous to see transformers die with a generator still attached, or an end boss like the Tac cube lose a significant part of both its shields and hull points as a result of AOE and FAW spam, before anyone has made it his or her main target.
And these are not incidents I'm describing here.

cuchulainn74

I don't personally see too much of a problem with the status quo, but here's a bit of an out there idea. Perhaps rather than choosing normal, advanced or elite, an evaluation system should automatically queue us for the fitting STF. Based on player rank, ship tier, equipment rank and quality, you could bubble the beasts to Elite and so on. Since some of us liked hitting up at the harder ones, maybe allow specifically choosing one STF tier higher or something.
Honestly though, no I don't think the game itself is getting to easy. It can still be plenty challenging if you want it to be.

rattler2

terranempire#7881 wrote: »

Yep, me and others are occasionally reminded of underperforming the top dps charts, and we would fail without the top dogs at our side. I don't know what to say to that. I usually just ignore it and continue to have fun. Honestly don't care for numbers.

I don't either. If I happen to get good numbers, nice. What matters is having fun and being able to support the team. Even if supporting the team means an 8k BFAW spread of AP Beta. That's still a lot of enemy ships hit with AP Beta for the rest of the team to hammer. As long as you can fight effectively, you should be good.

In Team Fortress 2, some people look down on Snipers using the Sydney Sleeper because you cannot headshot with it. "Its an excuse to body shoot. No skill." What they don't understand is that while I can't headshot with the Sleeper, Any enemies I don't kill will have a Jarate effect on them, granting minicrits to my teammates. That's supporting the team.

nikeix

I'm all for a little strategic down-tuning, as long as it's understood that these extreme results are built on a lot of little pieces, and you can topple the pyramid with a number of small changes that won't gut the experience of ordinary players. Its easy to be seduced by the idea of the "magic bullet": one big change that destroys the combo... but also punishes people who aren't doing the 14 other things that lead to top performers being a literal order of magnitude stronger than the norm.

I'd like to see some gradual, multifaceted adjustment and the reigning in of a few ridiculous outliers (starting with making a bunch of Doffs unique...). But first we have to see Cryptic muster the will to take any action at all.

sheldonlcooper

I do sci hybrid myself - around 50,000. I would describe myself as a poor pilot who does a lot of manual clicking, often simply forgetting to click the important stuff half the time. But I do have very good gear and the paradox which I feel is necessary for the hybrid.

What I was trying to say is that this is a really difficult thing to solve/get right without really angering lots of people. They sold this as the game with DR - the dps race with creep. And I argued against it and against the difficulty setting that fall and winter as strenuously as possible. But after a while you have to say - well this is the game now and go with it. So now it has swung too far the other way. How to fix it? I like my specific ideas for crystalline, but are they really likely to go through mission by mission? I kind of think the solution from Cryptic's pov is to just let the dil exchange go to 500 instead of worrying about 30 second cca. For me it's just too fast to challenge any survivability skills which has always been my favorite part of STO.

jonsills

I disagree with the idea of the game "becoming too easy". I don't play for challenge, I play for relaxation. If I wanted to make things hard on myself, I'd use the worst gear and skills I could find, not the best - or I'd go play EvE, which is all about the game being hard (especially at the beginning).

solidshark214

jonsills wrote: »

I disagree with the idea of the game "becoming too easy". I don't play for challenge, I play for relaxation. If I wanted to make things hard on myself, I'd use the worst gear and skills I could find, not the best - or I'd go play EvE, which is all about the game being hard (especially at the beginning).

Agreed. SWTOR is my other "main" MMO, and that's sent me into frothing incoherence sometimes. One thing I very much like about STO is that, with very rare exceptions, I can just relax. Maybe I'll die here and there, but I can pick myself back up and go right back to what I was doing. Win on the next respawn.

I like that in a game. If I wanted teeth-breaking difficulty, I'd go play Dark Souls or something.

dlmc85

I think one way would be to reduce the firing rate of weapons (if i stand correctly also doesn't a "visible" shot accounts for more than one hit now?) . It would also increase the value of piloting to optimize firing. Also IMHO would make ships look better than nail colored potatoes. With way lower dps teamwork would become a necessity like the times with the 10% rule in ISA; it didn't existed because we were good teamates, it came to be because of necessary coordination. The main obstacle is that cryptic is following the power creep because otherwise the entire game would have to be balanced over from the start. But even following that only delays and aggravates the problem. It is exploding right now. 60 seconds CCAs? And got a 141000 critical hit with a blue Mark XII photon torpedo (happened a few hours ago)?! We have a problem.

rattler2

sheldonlcooper wrote: »

I kind of think the solution from Cryptic's pov is to just let the dil exchange go to 500 instead of worrying about 30 second cca.

And how would that fix anything? That would price the majority of the F2P people out of the C-Store. Only the people with disposable income would be able to buy ships, and they'd be able to afford making mk XIV gold everything already.

catsmeat

It seems to me this discussion has happened over and over and over. Let's see if I can predict the outcome:

One side will never agree with the other. Egos will become inflamed. Chests will be thumped. In the end this will amount to just more hot air like all the previous threads like it.

snoggymack22

nikeix wrote: »

I'm all for a little strategic down-tuning, as long as it's understood that these extreme results are built on a lot of little pieces, and you can topple the pyramid with a number of small changes that won't gut the experience of ordinary players.

In my experience "nerfs" are never "a little strategic downtuning."

I think it's best to just let the game continue to evolve.

rekurzion

Not enough people have talked about this. We should bring the XBOX and PS4 crowd in on the fun too!!!

It's like a Trekked out Oprah. "You get power creep. And you get power creep. Everybody gets power creep!"

nikeix

nikeix wrote: »

I'm all for a little strategic down-tuning, as long as it's understood that these extreme results are built on a lot of little pieces, and you can topple the pyramid with a number of small changes that won't gut the experience of ordinary players.

snoggymack22 wrote: »

In my experience "nerfs" are never "a little strategic downtuning."

Too bad you haven't seen more good game design then. On the other hand, "strategic down-tuning" is hardly noticeable when it's done well. So really, you shouldn't remember it unless game design is your hobby or profession .

I think it's best to just let the game continue to evolve.

Reigning in (A) the raw power creep and (B) the collection of individually questionable tools into unquestionably out-of-scale combos IS evolution. So yeah, bring on the evolution!