Odd because I don't have stacking Boff powers. I have 3 skills that boost my damage...just....3.... Sensor Scan Overload Subsystem Safeties III Chronometric Energy Converter
That's it!
Also how is adding more difficult content punishing to good players???
One problem I have throughout this thread is everyone is using ISA as a baseline.
My highest parse was a CSA run where I did 98k. Highest on ISA is like 77.4k
But lets remember. There are more enemies then just the Borg. It doesn't mean I'm capable of doing 98k or even 77.4k all of the time against every enemy type.
Borg have been made into player punching bags. Maybe that's an issue in and of itself. As they were scary as frack in TNG.
But almost any other enemy types use immunities and other such voodoo, which makes scoring high dps a chore. Part of the reason Borg Queues are great to parse is because of their punching bag likeness, and isa is a nice compact level, which gives fairly reliable results.
I think @snoggymack22 had mentioned this in a FaW thread a while back. Its a good point and should not be forgotten.
I switched 2 of my alts from BFAW boats to faster ships running cannons, they haven't missed a beat.
Anyone that thinks FAW is required or the only way is completely and totally wrong. Sure, the cannon builds are a little harder to play, they take a bit more skill and better positioning. This however, is still STO and nothing in this game is actually hard given at least a minimal amount of effort.
Of course FAW is not required. I do like the last sentence in your comment though. Especially considering that some people here are complaining that correcting the insane power creep would be punishing players for 'being good'.
That's just... it has to be the joke of the year. Cause you're right, nothing is actually hard (or at least the 90% of the game content that is becoming way too easy and topic of debate here) and yet people are living with the illusion that they're good at something and that there is some skill involved.
Maybe there was the first time they were figuring things out, but after that first time it's hardly an accomplishment to steamroll everything. Especially considering that there are so many ways to do it.
In other words: it's not possible to punish players for being good. That would imply that the core of the problem is too many skilled players. It may simply be that I have some very different views on our playerbase, but I don't think that some surplus of skill is the problem here...
Not when you consider that, with a few exceptions like those that are exploring new ways do reach those numbers - let's call them the innovators - most of those other players who are actively causing power creep to be a problem in the queues are actually good copy-cats at best.
One problem I have throughout this thread is everyone is using ISA as a baseline.
My highest parse was a CSA run where I did 98k. Highest on ISA is like 77.4k
But lets remember. There are more enemies then just the Borg.
It doesn't mean I'm capable of doing 98k or even 77.4k all of the time against every enemy type.
Borg have been made into player punching bags.
Maybe that's an issue in and of itself. As they were scary as frack in TNG.
But almost any other enemy types use immunities and other such voodoo, which makes scoring high dps a chore.
Part of the reason Borg Queues are great to parse is because of their punching bag likeness, and isa is a nice compact level, which gives fairly reliable results.
I think @snoggymack22 had mentioned this in a FaW thread a while back.
Its a good point and should not be forgotten.
Well I'm not so sure about that first statement. Almost all missions I've been in lately were done considerably faster than before, and there's more powerful players in almost all of them. Fleet alert, Azure Nebula, Undine Assault, Crystalline Entity (not just the event, also the regular missions) and even ground missions are showing the same thing.
And while I almost never parse anything beside ISA, the fact that my performance (as well as those other things I've noticed in the queues) in that mission went up by almost 50% without making any changes to my build except respeccing after the skill revamp went live, shows that it must have something to do with the skill revamp and the stacking of even more penetration, shield weakening, extra effects and new abilities on top of all the stuff we already had.
In other words: it's not possible to punish players for being good. That would imply that the core of the problem is too many skilled players. It may simply be that I have some very different views on our playerbase, but I don't think that some surplus of skill is the problem here...
Not when you consider that, with a few exceptions like those that are exploring new ways do reach those numbers - let's call them the innovators - most of those other players who are actively causing power creep to be a problem in the queues are actually good copy-cats at best.
As I said, success is success is success.
There are those who know how to be successful at the game, and do so. And then there are those who demand that they be nerfed because they're not being successful the "right" way.
And the core of the problem is precisely that there are too many skilled players, playing easy content designed for casual newbies to grind auto-win for their standard reward.
One problem I have throughout this thread is everyone is using ISA as a baseline.
My highest parse was a CSA run where I did 98k. Highest on ISA is like 77.4k
But lets remember. There are more enemies then just the Borg.
It doesn't mean I'm capable of doing 98k or even 77.4k all of the time against every enemy type.
Borg have been made into player punching bags.
Maybe that's an issue in and of itself. As they were scary as frack in TNG.
But almost any other enemy types use immunities and other such voodoo, which makes scoring high dps a chore.
Part of the reason Borg Queues are great to parse is because of their punching bag likeness, and isa is a nice compact level, which gives fairly reliable results.
I think @snoggymack22 had mentioned this in a FaW thread a while back.
Its a good point and should not be forgotten.
Well I'm not so sure about that first statement. Almost all missions I've been in lately were done considerably faster than before, and there's more powerful players in almost all of them. Fleet alert, Azure Nebula, Undine Assault, Crystalline Entity (not just the event, also the regular missions) and even ground missions are showing the same thing.
And while I almost never parse anything beside ISA, the fact that my performance (as well as those other things I've noticed in the queues) in that mission went up by almost 50% without making any changes to my build except respeccing after the skill revamp went live, shows that it must have something to do with the skill revamp and the stacking of even more penetration, shield weakening, extra effects and new abilities on top of all the stuff we already had.
Edit: spelling
I'd love to know what ground missions are turning out better and by how much. That's got me very curious. The effects of 11.5 are pretty well documented in terms of ISA and CCA. But there hasn't been much of any chatter on how it affected the ground.
In terms of ISA, also don't forget, Cryptic gifted us all a free Borg Damage Boosting DOFF. And then did the skill tree revamp. Combined, it created a really big difference in ISA ... I've not noticed as much of a difference in Counterpoint.
One problem I have throughout this thread is everyone is using ISA as a baseline.
My highest parse was a CSA run where I did 98k. Highest on ISA is like 77.4k
But lets remember. There are more enemies then just the Borg.
It doesn't mean I'm capable of doing 98k or even 77.4k all of the time against every enemy type.
Borg have been made into player punching bags.
Maybe that's an issue in and of itself. As they were scary as frack in TNG.
But almost any other enemy types use immunities and other such voodoo, which makes scoring high dps a chore.
Part of the reason Borg Queues are great to parse is because of their punching bag likeness, and isa is a nice compact level, which gives fairly reliable results.
I think @snoggymack22 had mentioned this in a FaW thread a while back.
Its a good point and should not be forgotten.
Well I'm not so sure about that first statement. Almost all missions I've been in lately were done considerably faster than before, and there's more powerful players in almost all of them. Fleet alert, Azure Nebula, Undine Assault, Crystalline Entity (not just the event, also the regular missions) and even ground missions are showing the same thing.
And while I almost never parse anything beside ISA, the fact that my performance (as well as those other things I've noticed in the queues) in that mission went up by almost 50% without making any changes to my build except respeccing after the skill revamp went live, shows that it must have something to do with the skill revamp and the stacking of even more penetration, shield weakening, extra effects and new abilities on top of all the stuff we already had.
Edit: spelling
I'd love to know what ground missions are turning out better and by how much. That's got me very curious. The effects of 11.5 are pretty well documented in terms of ISA and CCA. But there hasn't been much of any chatter on how it affected the ground.
In terms of ISA, also don't forget, Cryptic gifted us all a free Borg Damage Boosting DOFF. And then did the skill tree revamp. Combined, it created a really big difference in ISA ... I've not noticed as much of a difference in Counterpoint.
I've mostly been playing Khitomer and Infected ground. I don't parse ground missions so perhaps it's just a misconception on my part, or perhaps I've just been lucky to have many powerful players on the team.
It's just the general experience and a raw estimate I make based on how well and quick things are done, player deaths - which is often related to how powerful players are -, use of abilities, how quick enemies die and such. I can't really provide concrete numbers.
You're really just sparking my curiosity here. Because I (and alot of others) spent a TON of time worrying, and tweaking, and playing with the space skills in the new tree. But I admit I've not spent nearly as much time trying to harness the Ground changes, and one of the big features of the change was that it was supposed to streamline both sides of the tree.
I think I know what I'm going to start playing around with this week! Heh.
@sophlogimo how do I do soo.much damage? Easy! I have a PartG stat of 484 (iirc haven't looked at it in ages) and I use Gravity Well , TBR (Graga mal) , Subspace Vortex II, Destabilizing Resonance Beam III, and Torpedo Spread 2&3 (with various torpedoes) that's how. I'm not stacking 15 buffs to give me +800% damage. And if you try to say that's stacking that needs to be limited then I say that your beam weapons need to be put on a global cooldown so only 1 front and 1 back can fire at the same time! It's the AoE aspect that's hitting multiple targets (sometimes 5 or more) that gives me.my damage not a beam FAW popping 2 targets for 80k per beam shot
Another item of interest we must consider when talking about a high DPS player;
-Resources used in build: How much dil, ec, fleetcred, Zen is required to obtain a High DPS build ?
In my case (wh not even that high at 77.4k ISA) I've spent approximately 2, 500,000 - 3,000,000 Dil. Could be even higher, its hard to tell with all the upgrading I've done. 95% of the items I use "regularly" are Epic. It costs a small fortune to bring 1 item to epic. Try bringing a warp core to epic, itll take 100-200k dil, and depending on how unlucky you are, coule be even higher.
In terms of EC, ive spent approximately 2+ billion EC (since I started playing 3.5 years ago) Couple traits, leetch and kemo and youre already at 1 billion EC.
Fleetcred, probably somewhere in the ballpark of 3+ millon give or take 500k.
Zen, I've bought 5 ships on purpose, since traits were introduced. On sale at 2400 Zen = 12000 Pretty shameful on my part. Chasing power like a fat kid in candy store.
^ In any case that's a lot of grinding for any one human being. It took me a long time, and logging in everyday, doing doff/admiralty/events on 5 toons to get to that point. And it only furnishes 1 toon to my satisfaction. I have a secondary main, but its super slow progress on her.
At this point, I feel like I can take on elites after all that work. But, if I go all "glass cannon", ill pop, pop, pop. Even with my fancy gold gear.
Problem is, nobody does elites anyway ! The channels are mostly doing ADV because its quicker and more profitable. And facerolling stuff IS fun (from time to time). Its so rare to get a callout for Elites...you might get the occasional Fez, or VEE, but those should actually be ADV++ and not even Elite. They're the easiest of the bunch. But even at that, its still no cake walk.
Anyway, until I see more people doing elites in the channels, AND facerolling them. I'm not going to get all excited and demand nerfs.
How is making existing content more difficult by scaling down some player stats punishing them? These two things are basically the same.
I'd be careful about making existing (Normal/Advanced) content more difficult because not everyone finds them easy. And we all know what happened when these content was last made more difficult (Delta Rising).
I stand by my previous comments that harder content should be in Elite, and not in Normal/Advanced. As evidenced by the quote below, the majority of the players aren't even good enough to do Elite or think Elite is too difficult a challenge for their time and the rewards they get so maybe it's not time for a general nerf.
Anyway, until I see more people doing elites in the channels, AND facerolling them. I'm not going to get all excited and demand nerfs.
I noticed the calls for elites doesn't happen in normal DPS channels. It tends to happen on the new 100k channel or on specialty channels (Aggronauts or even more private channels). I only tend to join Elite runs with people I know, because the last time I joined a DPS Channel Elite run that wasn't Korfez, half the team did not know what they were doing and were just FAWing their way to their own deaths.
The game is neither too easy or difficult. Players *can* gain access to insanely overpowered gear (overpowered as in unfair towards PvE-enemies). Then again, Players can choose to do content with low-end gear and ships.
My actual problem is that there is no proper reason to play Sci or Eng.
Both have more interesting abilities (especially on ground), but also, their kits are rather weak compared to Tac. My FED-main is a Sci, and while I do understand that a Tac's job is to do more damage than others (at least with conventional weapons) I don't get why Sci-abilities can't get anywhere near on their own (non-conventional weapons) level. Yeah, STO doesn't have a classic trinity-System of classes like other (MMO-)RPG's, but Tac, Sci and Eng should be equally powerful in their specific ways.
My actual problem is that there is no proper reason to play Sci or Eng.
Both have more interesting abilities (especially on ground), but also, their kits are rather weak compared to Tac. My FED-main is a Sci, and while I do understand that a Tac's job is to do more damage than others (at least with conventional weapons) I don't get why Sci-abilities can't get anywhere near on their own (non-conventional weapons) level. Yeah, STO doesn't have a classic trinity-System of classes like other (MMO-)RPG's, but Tac, Sci and Eng should be equally powerful in their specific ways.
Well if one strives for DPS you are right with what you say. The game itself also does not really offer any reason not to strive for DPS so tac is the most obvious choice.
Reason I ended up with 3 tacs, engineers and scis each is simply variety and keeping the game fresh for me. Only the captain’s powers make up the difference here but in PvE there is defiantly the option to go for tank or sci supporter. Both roles are not required but do work (!!!) and have an heavy impact on team interaction and map-conclusion. More than that they are fun.
Edit, for all peeps concerned with non tac DPS and how good it can get. Here are numbers from the metal league:
Top ISA Sci: 193k DPS
Top ISA Eng: 164k DPS (think it’s even above 180k in numbers league)
With the current Tac DPS record of 267k those numbers are behind a bit yes but not by that much. In any case it’s not as if not all three classes could not do like 15 times more DPS than required for advanced content and like 3-4 times more than it is for elite.
Post edited by peterconnorfirst on
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
As a low DPS, non min maxer scrub lord I think the wrong question has been asked. The question in my opinion (am I allowed to have one?) should be "is the game fun?". Before Delta it was, I played a ton had a great time and because of that I spent money on the game. Now not so much. What is the point of doing STFs that are over in less than 5 minutes or just ignore the optionals because some folks have this need to blow through content like they are on a speed trip. LOL, if I had my druthers they would do away with normal, advance, elite and the game would parse folks DPS and separate folks by their DPS. That way STFs would populate and create each run by folks DPS. High DPS folks get the tough stuff and low DPS folks get the easier stuff. Equalize the rewards and there you go, the high DPS folks would not have to deal with the low DPS folks. Low DPS folks would actually see an STF that is not over in less than 5 min and maybe tactics on how to complete each STF would be a thing again.
So you are not stacking stuff that buffs your EPG skill, and you are not setting aux power to maximum on top of that? Of course you are. The question is: Did the devs even anticipate that anyone would do that when they added all those buffs to EPG?
That is easy to answer since it was the exact topic of discussion during the testing of the skill tree revamp. YES, a resounding YES. Exotic Particle Generation was tested, tweaked and worked on directly during the skill tree revamp. It is absolutely intended to work the way it works right now. Does that absolve it from future tweaks? No. Not at all. But the current state of that ability was considered, tested and put forth with the development team knowing exactly what it does and how it would affect gameplay.
When people get all angsty about stacking they are typically referring to attack pattern alpha stacking in ways that they never really thought it would, and they are getting upset that the tactical career choice can effectively pump out more raw damage per second because of that one buff than the other choices can. That's the most common complaint about stacking. Then there's the stacking issues that come out of testing. And people breaking open new combinations that stack in ways no one realized. Those sometimes get adjusted back down. That's 95% of the stacking debate I've seen over the years.
But someone building 400 points into a skill is not part of that discussion. That's someone making a conscious build choice using the tools they've been given to make their character with. Suggesting the person be penalized for that will get you a lot of push back in these forums (which you should have noticed by now). And it's also spitting into the wind since this example, the devs are both very much aware of and had a direct hand in creating that state of the game. They may change it someday, but don't try to suggest EPG skill of 400+ is some twisted form of stacking that makes the game unbalanced. That's just people building a character to do a specific thing and that's been given the green light by the development team as fine by them. It's no different with people building out max hull, hull regen, energy weapons damage, power levels, critical severity. It's all intended.
I don't think it needs to be limited if you confine yourself to Elite queues with that build or go only into private matches. But do you? Because if you PUG with it, you will break the mission as a combat mission and make it, as warpangel put it so eloquently, "pest control".
And it's comments like that which are going to get you embroiled in long drawn out and very contentious debates. You're trying to regulate peoples' play options because they used the skill system to build a character in one specific way (Exotic damage). You're trying to penalize them for playing the game the way it was designed.
That won't fly with people. You're not fixing a problem with the game (EPG was addressed very specifically just two months ago in Tribble by both testers and the devs). You're just trying to penalize players.
I don't think those 400 point stem from the skill revamp. Putting three points in the EPG tree just gives you 100 EPG, unless I am totally missing something here. And Borticus explicitly stated that the point of the skill revamp playtest was not to nerf things, but to have a new and more streamlined skill system afterwards.
Prior to the skill revamp, exotic damage builds were around. Were a staple. Were talked about. Were parsed. Were shared. Players and Devs were well aware of the potential that EPG skill could do. Most of it came from Development changes over the years, all in an effort to make science more competitive in the only metric that mattered, damage capability. This was, and still is a combination of skills and gear.
During the skill revamp some testing and tweaking was needed because the changes affected Damage from EPG sources. This was discussed thoroughly between the devs and the players.
What launched was definitely intended.
So if you now want to go down the path where you feel Gravity Well needs a nerf, again, I say good luck with that! You're not going to get much support with that.
@sophlogimo so are you saying you don't have stacking consoles on your ship? You don't have multiple consoles boosting a damage type? You don't have multiple armor consoles? Cause it sounds like you are trying to say players should only have 1 type of consoles in each slot ( 1 damage boosters , 1 stat booster , 1 resistance booster) cause of that's the case your idea is against the very design of the game.
Comments
Sensor Scan
Overload Subsystem Safeties III
Chronometric Energy Converter
That's it!
Also how is adding more difficult content punishing to good players???
My highest parse was a CSA run where I did 98k. Highest on ISA is like 77.4k
But lets remember. There are more enemies then just the Borg.
It doesn't mean I'm capable of doing 98k or even 77.4k all of the time against every enemy type.
Borg have been made into player punching bags.
Maybe that's an issue in and of itself. As they were scary as frack in TNG.
But almost any other enemy types use immunities and other such voodoo, which makes scoring high dps a chore.
Part of the reason Borg Queues are great to parse is because of their punching bag likeness, and isa is a nice compact level, which gives fairly reliable results.
I think @snoggymack22 had mentioned this in a FaW thread a while back.
Its a good point and should not be forgotten.
Of course FAW is not required. I do like the last sentence in your comment though. Especially considering that some people here are complaining that correcting the insane power creep would be punishing players for 'being good'.
That's just... it has to be the joke of the year. Cause you're right, nothing is actually hard (or at least the 90% of the game content that is becoming way too easy and topic of debate here) and yet people are living with the illusion that they're good at something and that there is some skill involved.
Maybe there was the first time they were figuring things out, but after that first time it's hardly an accomplishment to steamroll everything. Especially considering that there are so many ways to do it.
Not when you consider that, with a few exceptions like those that are exploring new ways do reach those numbers - let's call them the innovators - most of those other players who are actively causing power creep to be a problem in the queues are actually good copy-cats at best.
Edit: clearing up
Well I'm not so sure about that first statement. Almost all missions I've been in lately were done considerably faster than before, and there's more powerful players in almost all of them. Fleet alert, Azure Nebula, Undine Assault, Crystalline Entity (not just the event, also the regular missions) and even ground missions are showing the same thing.
And while I almost never parse anything beside ISA, the fact that my performance (as well as those other things I've noticed in the queues) in that mission went up by almost 50% without making any changes to my build except respeccing after the skill revamp went live, shows that it must have something to do with the skill revamp and the stacking of even more penetration, shield weakening, extra effects and new abilities on top of all the stuff we already had.
Edit: spelling
Why that one in particular ? Not that its a bad idea...
You know, I haven't run many patrols on elite, ill try it and let you know how I make out.
There are those who know how to be successful at the game, and do so. And then there are those who demand that they be nerfed because they're not being successful the "right" way.
And the core of the problem is precisely that there are too many skilled players, playing easy content designed for casual newbies to grind auto-win for their standard reward.
I'd love to know what ground missions are turning out better and by how much. That's got me very curious. The effects of 11.5 are pretty well documented in terms of ISA and CCA. But there hasn't been much of any chatter on how it affected the ground.
In terms of ISA, also don't forget, Cryptic gifted us all a free Borg Damage Boosting DOFF. And then did the skill tree revamp. Combined, it created a really big difference in ISA ... I've not noticed as much of a difference in Counterpoint.
I've mostly been playing Khitomer and Infected ground. I don't parse ground missions so perhaps it's just a misconception on my part, or perhaps I've just been lucky to have many powerful players on the team.
It's just the general experience and a raw estimate I make based on how well and quick things are done, player deaths - which is often related to how powerful players are -, use of abilities, how quick enemies die and such. I can't really provide concrete numbers.
I think I know what I'm going to start playing around with this week! Heh.
-Resources used in build:
How much dil, ec, fleetcred, Zen is required to obtain a High DPS build ?
In my case (wh not even that high at 77.4k ISA)
I've spent approximately 2, 500,000 - 3,000,000 Dil. Could be even higher, its hard to tell with all the upgrading I've done. 95% of the items I use "regularly" are Epic.
It costs a small fortune to bring 1 item to epic.
Try bringing a warp core to epic, itll take 100-200k dil, and depending on how unlucky you are, coule be even higher.
In terms of EC, ive spent approximately 2+ billion EC (since I started playing 3.5 years ago)
Couple traits, leetch and kemo and youre already at 1 billion EC.
Fleetcred, probably somewhere in the ballpark of 3+ millon give or take 500k.
Zen, I've bought 5 ships on purpose, since traits were introduced. On sale at 2400 Zen = 12000
Pretty shameful on my part. Chasing power like a fat kid in candy store.
^
In any case that's a lot of grinding for any one human being.
It took me a long time, and logging in everyday, doing doff/admiralty/events on 5 toons to get to that point.
And it only furnishes 1 toon to my satisfaction.
I have a secondary main, but its super slow progress on her.
At this point, I feel like I can take on elites after all that work.
But, if I go all "glass cannon", ill pop, pop, pop. Even with my fancy gold gear.
Problem is, nobody does elites anyway !
The channels are mostly doing ADV because its quicker and more profitable. And facerolling stuff IS fun (from time to time).
Its so rare to get a callout for Elites...you might get the occasional Fez, or VEE, but those should actually be ADV++ and not even Elite. They're the easiest of the bunch. But even at that, its still no cake walk.
Anyway, until I see more people doing elites in the channels, AND facerolling them. I'm not going to get all excited and demand nerfs.
I'd be careful about making existing (Normal/Advanced) content more difficult because not everyone finds them easy. And we all know what happened when these content was last made more difficult (Delta Rising).
I stand by my previous comments that harder content should be in Elite, and not in Normal/Advanced. As evidenced by the quote below, the majority of the players aren't even good enough to do Elite or think Elite is too difficult a challenge for their time and the rewards they get so maybe it's not time for a general nerf.
I noticed the calls for elites doesn't happen in normal DPS channels. It tends to happen on the new 100k channel or on specialty channels (Aggronauts or even more private channels). I only tend to join Elite runs with people I know, because the last time I joined a DPS Channel Elite run that wasn't Korfez, half the team did not know what they were doing and were just FAWing their way to their own deaths.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
My actual problem is that there is no proper reason to play Sci or Eng.
Both have more interesting abilities (especially on ground), but also, their kits are rather weak compared to Tac. My FED-main is a Sci, and while I do understand that a Tac's job is to do more damage than others (at least with conventional weapons) I don't get why Sci-abilities can't get anywhere near on their own (non-conventional weapons) level. Yeah, STO doesn't have a classic trinity-System of classes like other (MMO-)RPG's, but Tac, Sci and Eng should be equally powerful in their specific ways.
Well if one strives for DPS you are right with what you say. The game itself also does not really offer any reason not to strive for DPS so tac is the most obvious choice.
Reason I ended up with 3 tacs, engineers and scis each is simply variety and keeping the game fresh for me. Only the captain’s powers make up the difference here but in PvE there is defiantly the option to go for tank or sci supporter. Both roles are not required but do work (!!!) and have an heavy impact on team interaction and map-conclusion. More than that they are fun.
Edit, for all peeps concerned with non tac DPS and how good it can get. Here are numbers from the metal league:
Top ISA Sci: 193k DPS
Top ISA Eng: 164k DPS (think it’s even above 180k in numbers league)
With the current Tac DPS record of 267k those numbers are behind a bit yes but not by that much. In any case it’s not as if not all three classes could not do like 15 times more DPS than required for advanced content and like 3-4 times more than it is for elite.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Cirran
That is easy to answer since it was the exact topic of discussion during the testing of the skill tree revamp. YES, a resounding YES. Exotic Particle Generation was tested, tweaked and worked on directly during the skill tree revamp. It is absolutely intended to work the way it works right now. Does that absolve it from future tweaks? No. Not at all. But the current state of that ability was considered, tested and put forth with the development team knowing exactly what it does and how it would affect gameplay.
When people get all angsty about stacking they are typically referring to attack pattern alpha stacking in ways that they never really thought it would, and they are getting upset that the tactical career choice can effectively pump out more raw damage per second because of that one buff than the other choices can. That's the most common complaint about stacking. Then there's the stacking issues that come out of testing. And people breaking open new combinations that stack in ways no one realized. Those sometimes get adjusted back down. That's 95% of the stacking debate I've seen over the years.
But someone building 400 points into a skill is not part of that discussion. That's someone making a conscious build choice using the tools they've been given to make their character with. Suggesting the person be penalized for that will get you a lot of push back in these forums (which you should have noticed by now). And it's also spitting into the wind since this example, the devs are both very much aware of and had a direct hand in creating that state of the game. They may change it someday, but don't try to suggest EPG skill of 400+ is some twisted form of stacking that makes the game unbalanced. That's just people building a character to do a specific thing and that's been given the green light by the development team as fine by them. It's no different with people building out max hull, hull regen, energy weapons damage, power levels, critical severity. It's all intended.
And it's comments like that which are going to get you embroiled in long drawn out and very contentious debates. You're trying to regulate peoples' play options because they used the skill system to build a character in one specific way (Exotic damage). You're trying to penalize them for playing the game the way it was designed.
That won't fly with people. You're not fixing a problem with the game (EPG was addressed very specifically just two months ago in Tribble by both testers and the devs). You're just trying to penalize players.
Good luck with that.
Prior to the skill revamp, exotic damage builds were around. Were a staple. Were talked about. Were parsed. Were shared. Players and Devs were well aware of the potential that EPG skill could do. Most of it came from Development changes over the years, all in an effort to make science more competitive in the only metric that mattered, damage capability. This was, and still is a combination of skills and gear.
During the skill revamp some testing and tweaking was needed because the changes affected Damage from EPG sources. This was discussed thoroughly between the devs and the players.
What launched was definitely intended.
So if you now want to go down the path where you feel Gravity Well needs a nerf, again, I say good luck with that! You're not going to get much support with that.