It's become easier over time due to a few things
- players acquiring better gear through rep/upgrades over time
- the new skill system so people make "less bad" choices
- passive buffs through spec trees and T6 ship traits
[CrtD]x3 prices have dropped on the exchange considerably since the crafting system began, allowing players to purchase them easier. The [Dmg] fix makes [Crtd]x2 [Dmg] just as viable, and at an even lower cost. As the dil market approaches 500, it's more and more common to place the dil where you get the most benefit, which becomes upgrades. Which will then flood the market since people have to make EC somehow, and drive exchange prices even lower for quality endgame gear.
And then people will still complain that the game is too hard because they don't know how to build a ship. Or defeat annoying mechanics like the Nakul clones and beamspam instead of focusing fire or still attack the target while it's invulnerable. Group ground at this point is more interesting to play than space, but there's not enough reward for ground missions. So everyone does space. Then Cryptic focuses more on space because everyone plays it more, and neglects ground.
Just like those exploration missions we were supposed to be getting after sector space was combined.
Do I think the game is probably too easy? Well, in the OP's situation it wasn't; going into a queue and then spending time rearranging your gear/tray during the mission probably increases the difficulty level of accomplishing anything. For the OP's teammates it probably was; there is no CCE for the upper end of the playerbase, and they want the Event reward too... not only does the console increase Antiproton damage in a non-Tac slot (though with enough Cat 1 increases you might be better off with more CritD/H), you also get a healthy chunk of dilithium. Should DPS folks be excluded from the Event because someone forgot to set up their ship? Would we really want that, when it's the DPS folks that make it a relatively quick Event as opposed to the enforced time-gate of Mirror?
That isn't to say that the game as a whole is terribly difficult, and I'll admit the prevalence of DPS has meant that most teams seem to have forgotten old tactics (like not sucking Nanite Spheres into the Transformer with a 12km GravWell ) for accomplishing Optionals, etc. for when the team doesn't overwhelm the mission. Not that Optionals really matter that much anymore, and often by ignoring them you get a faster mission with the same dilithium reward. Meh, they could always "normalize" weapon damage in the same manner in which they "normalized" Science damage; increase base damage, diminish slope, diminish the effect of weapon power on damage, etc. and it becomes a bit easier to create content that retains some challenge. Honestly, it seemed like a bad idea to halfass the whole thing by limiting that to Science and tacking it on to something that wasn't supposed to change the underlying mechanics, but I digress...
In the end, the devs have a tough task if they do want to try tackling it. Do they want to fully "normalize" things, diminishing the benefit of all the time and resources for high-end characters (the ones more likely to be funding the game to acquire their high-end toys), while making the game easier for the Average Joe (who may or may not be fundng the game via Zen purchases or dilithium sales)? They already killed off most PvP in the game, which rather limits sales of competitive advantages there as a potential revenue stream... so do they want to try that with DPS next? Do they want to spawn another meme by buffing NPC hitpoints again? Maybe it's better to just leave things as they are, where enough DPS makes players complain about the game being too easy and too little makes them complain about elitism? Do they want to limit buff stacking and grossly diminish the value of Captain abilities for Tactical, which is the primary Profession in STO specifically because of buff stacking? Can they accomplish anything or nothing without pissing off the playerbase, and which option pisses off the least of us (or at least doesn't TRIBBLE us off enough to go play something else)?
Fun stuff. I'm going to go back to shooting the Crystalline Entity now.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Uhmmmm....yup. As I said before in this thread, a team of 10 in CE Advanced might take down the entity in three minutes, but what no one is seeing is that three of those ten players are doing 60% - 70% of the damage.
Actually in CCA, it's not too uncommon for one of the "easy" runs to be where 1 person does 60-70% of the team damage. I parse almost all my CCA runs. I've seen parses where there is one 6-digit runner and one more with 5-digits in CCA with the rest below 7k. The run probably was easy for 8/10 of the players in that instance.
so, when I do a stf, I just want to enjoy it normally, without power creep. give me something else to do, and I would stop to be pissed off.
I remember the time when people would rant about the quality of PUGs and be called elitists for calling unprepared players out in advanced. The advice then? Don't PUG.
[In other words: We need ways to determine what we get when we queue up.
You do...
If you really want runs where you get to run with people with like mindsets, then your best bet is to form a premade. Make a channel. If there are as many people as you think who want to run the way you want to then you should have no problem populating it.
If you PUG, you get random people. That's how it is. If you PUG and get bad players don't complain, some people call that elitism. If you PUG and get good players, don't complain either, that's just as elitist as the people complaining about the low-end players.
STO is far too easy now, I played two years ago and went off for a break, returned recently and without upgrading any of my build and missions that used to take 30mins, now take 5mins.... even playing harder difficulties.
Also just leveled a new toon up to 60 and it happened far too quick... much quicker than the time my other toons took to level.... what's happening? Where's the challenge for players that don't PVP?
STO is far too easy now, I played two years ago and went off for a break, returned recently and without upgrading any of my build and missions that used to take 30mins, now take 5mins.... even playing harder difficulties.
Also just leveled a new toon up to 60 and it happened far too quick... much quicker than the time my other toons took to level.... what's happening? Where's the challenge for players that don't PVP?
In the other thread on the front page that complains the game is too hard....
Threads like this and that make me think that the game is fine and all we need are elites. People that think the game is too easy can go to the elites while people that think the game is too hard can stick to the lower difficulty levels. People that want that extra bit of challenge can form low-end build private runs in elite.
Too easy NOW, compared to when it wasn't easy?
Ignoring talk about DPS and everything... simple point of the matter is that the game (and all games using WoW's design model) is created to be too easy for everybody. It's impossible to die. It's impossible to fail most missions. The missions in which you can fail are only the optional objectives in a handful of queues.
So it takes a few more seconds for some people to kill the same number of bad guys as another player... That's not a matter of easy, it's simply math & mechanics.
There is no skill involved. No risk. No potential that you might lose your ship, lose your character, and have to start over again. There's no way to fail.... THAT, fundamentally, made the entire game too easy, by design, from day-one.
If the enemy ships actually had better AI, a group should move toward you , that would make it a lot harder. I doubt the devs will ever improve the AI.
An AI update on both space and ground would be great. I also think that ground combat as a whole should be rethought.
@semalda226
Yat number shows there's a real problem.
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.
So you just figured out that its possible to kill gates without popping the generators? Pretty much been doing that in my fleet for three years or so.
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.
So you want the fiasco of DR back with mega HP Borg and all and stupid optionals that if you skipped them was a fail for the whole STF?
Too easy NOW, compared to when it wasn't easy?
Ignoring talk about DPS and everything... simple point of the matter is that the game (and all games using WoW's design model) is created to be too easy for everybody. It's impossible to die. It's impossible to fail most missions. The missions in which you can fail are only the optional objectives in a handful of queues.
So it takes a few more seconds for some people to kill the same number of bad guys as another player... That's not a matter of easy, it's simply math & mechanics.
There is no skill involved. No risk. No potential that you might lose your ship, lose your character, and have to start over again. There's no way to fail.... THAT, fundamentally, made the entire game too easy, by design, from day-one.
All, IMHO, of course.
Well, that's easy enough to solve. If you die, delete your character. Everything's gone. There, now you have the level of difficulty you're after!
Oh please "becoming too easy"? This MMO has been the definition of "easy mode" since the day it launched. In other words, it's never been hard/challenging when compared to 99.99% of the other MMOs out there. Hell, you have players complaining on day one of new end game STF content release if they can't beat easily it by their third try.
For this MMO to be getting "too easy"; it would need to have been "Hard" at some point and that's never been the case for STO.
[Yes, kids, in the halcyon days of EverQuest or even Vanilla World of Warcraft - some endgame content took MONTHS to both gear up for; and figure out how to beat.]
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 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..."
A hard cap on damage is a stupid idea. Balancing is the first thing to do at this point and controlling power-creep.
People here aren't wrong when they say content is too easy, it is and laughably so. You can do elite content in white mk12 gear. Advanced content should require high level gear and elite content should require upgraded rep gear or fleet equivalent. It should be difficult enough that it should take about 10-15 mins to complete.
Sadly content isn't difficult enough in terms of A.I. with it's all time gates and HP.
Not only that but with every class doing the escort damage role, what is the point of having intelligent content. Just trying to introduce a complex AI that would require a healer/control and a tank as well as a couple of escorts in a team would throw everyone into a fit of rage because they can't do their DPS. The standard by which they measure themselves and their abilities.
Not a very impressive standard but well done, whatever makes you happy.
The very fact someone said that they need to do damage with their science ship is laughable because that isn't the purpose of the science class.
However everyone wants their cake and eat it too. Gecko has made it so easy for us to do this that changing the current dynamic would cause mass rage from people who feel they have every right to get all rewards of elite content for 3 minutes of mashing the spacebar without having to think.
Wrong! We should have to work for an elite reward. You want to sit, point and shoot? Go to normal content and do that in 3 minutes with elite gear. You want to play science as tac? Go to normal content. You want to 1-shot kill everything? Allow me to introduce you to the unbalanced and broken mess of PvP.
Sadly however this'll never happen because players don't want it to happen. People want to do the damage role in every class. They want to know they're doing elite content without effort. They don't want to feel like they can only do normal or advanced because all they can do is sit, point, shoot and mash the spacebar.
Yeah, you are a hero of truth. Except you have neither shown that you know anything at all about the game nor are willing to communicate cooperatively.
It is thus best to ignore you until you change that.
Says the guy who complains about the same things over and over again and doesn't ever listen to one single word of anyone that thinks otherwise.
No, it's not asking too much at all. The game has 3 difficulty settings. That should give players of all skill levels an appropriate level of challenge (and if 3 wasn't enough, they could always add more). But instead, the options are babymode, easy, and maybe-sorta-medium.
I suspect that perception ("babymode, easy,....") is only for the better players. If you're one of the people who show up parsing 3k DPS in an STF, I'd bet that you don't find Advanced to be "easy". /shrug
And that's why they have babymode.
Let the 3k's have their Normal. Higher levels should be appropriate for more skilled players.
Posted this in another thread but will post here as well since this thread is more active on the topic.
All.this talk about Caps on damage Diminishing console returns and nerfs in general needs a little realism so here goes.
You want damage Hard Caps?
Let's say the absolute maximum DPS you can do is capped to 50k (Advanced requires around 18K-ish DPS to steamroll and Elite about 35k-40k) this means the 75k+ players will be performing their absolute maximum @50k dps AND will be able to.cut off the now Useless consoles/powers that have no additional effect allowing them.to slot other powers /skills to improve survivability or just throw in gimmicks to have more fun with a build BUT the lower dps crowd will not change and the lower dps crowd (60-70% of the players) won't be able to slot all that extra stuff because they haven't hit that hard cap! "THAT'S NOT FAIR! HE HAS ALL THOSE COOL POWERS AND DOES ALL THAT DAMAGE!"
Let's look at diminishing returns instead.
Let's say Cryptic does this and gives a diminishing return that cuts current Damage stacking by half (so 100% becomes 50%) well let's say a "Elite" players current weapon damage dps is 80k and the average guy is rocking 20k (both are stacking tactical consoles and Attack Patterns for damage boosts) well that 80k player just dropped to 40k (wow his damage went way down! Now he won't steam roll the game woot!) But hey look at 20k dps guy...he's now down to 10k and can't do Advanced content anymore....hmm ain't that funny? "BUT LOOK AT 80K DPS GUY!! He can still do Advanced AND Elite just fine!!!! THAT'S NOT FAIR!!!!"
Still like the idea???? Everyone is soo laser line focused on the uber DPS crowd they don't see how much they would cripple themselves while mildly inconveniencing the higher Dps players.
No, it's not asking too much at all. The game has 3 difficulty settings. That should give players of all skill levels an appropriate level of challenge (and if 3 wasn't enough, they could always add more). But instead, the options are babymode, easy, and maybe-sorta-medium.
I suspect that perception ("babymode, easy,....") is only for the better players. If you're one of the people who show up parsing 3k DPS in an STF, I'd bet that you don't find Advanced to be "easy". /shrug
And that's why they have babymode.
Let the 3k's have their Normal. Higher levels should be appropriate for more skilled players.
Except that there are people who complain that babymode is too hard. You seem to fail to grasp that there are really...and I mean REALLY terrible players in this game...and in no small numbers who finds normal content too hard. You really think the devs can with players like that to the 270k DPS folks who can solo elite content? Even with different difficulty levels, that gap is just too damn big to things effectively with.
I'd need to see some threads or posts of people complaining about normal mode content. I find that a little hard to believe. But could be wrong, this game always surprises me. So anyone got some links of people claiming normal mode content is too tough?
No, it's not asking too much at all. The game has 3 difficulty settings. That should give players of all skill levels an appropriate level of challenge (and if 3 wasn't enough, they could always add more). But instead, the options are babymode, easy, and maybe-sorta-medium.
I suspect that perception ("babymode, easy,....") is only for the better players. If you're one of the people who show up parsing 3k DPS in an STF, I'd bet that you don't find Advanced to be "easy". /shrug
And that's why they have babymode.
Let the 3k's have their Normal. Higher levels should be appropriate for more skilled players.
Except that there are people who complain that babymode is too hard. You seem to fail to grasp that there are really...and I mean REALLY terrible players in this game...and in no small numbers who finds normal content too hard. You really think the devs can with players like that to the 270k DPS folks who can solo elite content? Even with different difficulty levels, that gap is just too damn big to things effectively with.
I'd need to see some threads or posts of people complaining about normal mode content. I find that a little hard to believe. But could be wrong, this game always surprises me. So anyone got some links of people claiming normal mode content is too tough?
Well, we'll get those, "The New Featured Episode" is too hard threads every now and again.
So I guess it happens, as I consider the Featured episodes, super easy content (if set to normal difficulty).
People complained about the Voth when they first appeared. They could t handle the sci abilities they were throwing out. A bit of forum rage here and there and cryptic brought out the nerf bat.
People complained about the Voth when they first appeared. They could t handle the sci abilities they were throwing out. A bit of forum rage here and there and cryptic brought out the nerf bat.
A bit of truth in there.
Being around STO since beta, the game has changed a LOT. Trust me when I say that every suggestion here I've seen (short of AI revamp) the Devs have tried.
They can't do much of anything if at all about the AI difficulty, they've said it numerous times throughout the years and its unfortunate. So they did what they could with mission requirements, adding optionals, teamwork incentives, fetch quests, high damage dealing foes, HP buffs, etc
The game more or less started out with the "Trinity" system, tanks, healers, damage dealers. That somehow became too complex for some and they complained about it, quite a bit actually, and a few revamps here and there herded more people into Tactical specializations than anything else. CE was basically unbeatable (Was bugged the first few weeks of launch) but it was moreso due to the fact that there was a learning curve and through communication (yelling over teamchat) it was finally understood how the mechanics worked.
Coming from a raid perspective, the above situation was normal for any MMO vets coming over, you get spanked a couple of times and somewhere in between reading and communicating with your buddies you figure out how to handle the adds from the boss and his behavior, so on and so forth.
This sort of thing remained the same for a bulk of early game.
Then the "Trinity" evaporated, and with that I feel strategy and teamwork with it. It didnt matter who the Cruiser was and who was in the Intrepid, apart from who had dual heavy cannons (re: tac herding) the game was gearing more and more to the casual crowd who just wanted to fly their favorite ship. Right or wrong, business wise it made sense, the days of taking 1-3 hours of your time for a planned raid with your buddies were becoming less of a thing and more of a nuisance. Instant gratification through minimal work became the brand.
Don't get me wrong the game wasn't nearly as complex as it could have been, at the end of the day its always going to be a bit more arcade like. The AI, the bugs, every MMO from start evolves into something else based on feedback, data, what have you.
But I gotta say and many of you will disagree, the Devs for this game more or less listened to the playerbase almost every step of the way for STO, and its been a roller coaster. Plenty of companies have a "open and shut" door policy when it comes to listening to the players for a number of reasons that can be argued.
Don't like being boxed in a Science ship with science abilities and having to perform a role? No problem
Don't like being in a Galaxy class and not being able to blow everything you see sky high in less than 10 seconds? No problem
Don't like having to read objective details and information as to how to complete said objective and just mash spacebar? No problem.
Team building? Nope.
TLDR; We are exactly where we want to be. Everytime they adjust the difficulty of missions/STFs through requirements, enemy damage/health buffs and "normalizing" do-it-all abilities its considered to be an outrage.
to be honest i dont have any complaints wether the game is easy or not,thing is i just play like for a week when i feel the need to run some space battles,after that i uninstall the game since it doesnt really hold my interest.
sto has been a huge let down,its all about pew pew pew while forgetting about two of the main pillars and essence of what star trek really is,exploration and diplomacy.
installed the game again because i heard good things of the admiralty system and oh my god more of the same,its just a glorified doff click click grind,same thing with doffs but with ships,wow you guys really got a good think tank over at cryptic huh?
and now we getting agents of yesterday which to be honest seems like a snooze fest,to level one more character for what reason? a couple of new missions and thats about it...
and then we have the good ol' mighty content in the form of yeah you guessed it....SHIPS,its their way of making money but it isnt content,but people keep on buying them so here they are releasing new ones over and over...
i guess ill just have to wait a couple of years until this game gets shut down,hopefully then we will be able to get a proper mmo that does the star trek ip some justice.
sto has been a huge let down,its all about pew pew pew while forgetting about two of the main pillars and essence of what star trek really is,exploration and diplomacy.
I've seen that complaint before. What I have yet to see is anyone make a suggestion that would actually work from a gameplay/coding perspective. Diplomacy and "gameplay" are two words that do not go together very well, and would not be terribly interesting without, forgive me, much better writing than we see in a typical featured episode.
Exploration? How, pray tell? I honestly don't see any way to do it without a massive investment of time and resources by the devs. And no, bringing back the exploration clusters is not the answer. I played around with those myself back in the day, and they were randomly-generated regular missions, only with even more generic writing. I really don't see any way to make the concept practical in gaming at all, without a massive technological breakthrough. Cardinal, STO does not have.
Comments
- players acquiring better gear through rep/upgrades over time
- the new skill system so people make "less bad" choices
- passive buffs through spec trees and T6 ship traits
[CrtD]x3 prices have dropped on the exchange considerably since the crafting system began, allowing players to purchase them easier. The [Dmg] fix makes [Crtd]x2 [Dmg] just as viable, and at an even lower cost. As the dil market approaches 500, it's more and more common to place the dil where you get the most benefit, which becomes upgrades. Which will then flood the market since people have to make EC somehow, and drive exchange prices even lower for quality endgame gear.
And then people will still complain that the game is too hard because they don't know how to build a ship. Or defeat annoying mechanics like the Nakul clones and beamspam instead of focusing fire or still attack the target while it's invulnerable. Group ground at this point is more interesting to play than space, but there's not enough reward for ground missions. So everyone does space. Then Cryptic focuses more on space because everyone plays it more, and neglects ground.
Just like those exploration missions we were supposed to be getting after sector space was combined.
That isn't to say that the game as a whole is terribly difficult, and I'll admit the prevalence of DPS has meant that most teams seem to have forgotten old tactics (like not sucking Nanite Spheres into the Transformer with a 12km GravWell
In the end, the devs have a tough task if they do want to try tackling it. Do they want to fully "normalize" things, diminishing the benefit of all the time and resources for high-end characters (the ones more likely to be funding the game to acquire their high-end toys), while making the game easier for the Average Joe (who may or may not be fundng the game via Zen purchases or dilithium sales)? They already killed off most PvP in the game, which rather limits sales of competitive advantages there as a potential revenue stream... so do they want to try that with DPS next? Do they want to spawn another meme by buffing NPC hitpoints again? Maybe it's better to just leave things as they are, where enough DPS makes players complain about the game being too easy and too little makes them complain about elitism? Do they want to limit buff stacking and grossly diminish the value of Captain abilities for Tactical, which is the primary Profession in STO specifically because of buff stacking? Can they accomplish anything or nothing without pissing off the playerbase, and which option pisses off the least of us (or at least doesn't TRIBBLE us off enough to go play something else)?
Fun stuff. I'm going to go back to shooting the Crystalline Entity now.
Actually in CCA, it's not too uncommon for one of the "easy" runs to be where 1 person does 60-70% of the team damage. I parse almost all my CCA runs. I've seen parses where there is one 6-digit runner and one more with 5-digits in CCA with the rest below 7k. The run probably was easy for 8/10 of the players in that instance.
I remember the time when people would rant about the quality of PUGs and be called elitists for calling unprepared players out in advanced. The advice then? Don't PUG.
You do...
If you really want runs where you get to run with people with like mindsets, then your best bet is to form a premade. Make a channel. If there are as many people as you think who want to run the way you want to then you should have no problem populating it.
If you PUG, you get random people. That's how it is. If you PUG and get bad players don't complain, some people call that elitism. If you PUG and get good players, don't complain either, that's just as elitist as the people complaining about the low-end players.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
Also just leveled a new toon up to 60 and it happened far too quick... much quicker than the time my other toons took to level.... what's happening? Where's the challenge for players that don't PVP?
Threads like this and that make me think that the game is fine and all we need are elites. People that think the game is too easy can go to the elites while people that think the game is too hard can stick to the lower difficulty levels. People that want that extra bit of challenge can form low-end build private runs in elite.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
Ignoring talk about DPS and everything... simple point of the matter is that the game (and all games using WoW's design model) is created to be too easy for everybody. It's impossible to die. It's impossible to fail most missions. The missions in which you can fail are only the optional objectives in a handful of queues.
So it takes a few more seconds for some people to kill the same number of bad guys as another player... That's not a matter of easy, it's simply math & mechanics.
There is no skill involved. No risk. No potential that you might lose your ship, lose your character, and have to start over again. There's no way to fail.... THAT, fundamentally, made the entire game too easy, by design, from day-one.
All, IMHO, of course.
An AI update on both space and ground would be great. I also think that ground combat as a whole should be rethought.
So you want the fiasco of DR back with mega HP Borg and all and stupid optionals that if you skipped them was a fail for the whole STF?
For this MMO to be getting "too easy"; it would need to have been "Hard" at some point and that's never been the case for STO.
[Yes, kids, in the halcyon days of EverQuest or even Vanilla World of Warcraft - some endgame content took MONTHS to both gear up for; and figure out how to beat.]
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..."
People here aren't wrong when they say content is too easy, it is and laughably so. You can do elite content in white mk12 gear. Advanced content should require high level gear and elite content should require upgraded rep gear or fleet equivalent. It should be difficult enough that it should take about 10-15 mins to complete.
Sadly content isn't difficult enough in terms of A.I. with it's all time gates and HP.
Not only that but with every class doing the escort damage role, what is the point of having intelligent content. Just trying to introduce a complex AI that would require a healer/control and a tank as well as a couple of escorts in a team would throw everyone into a fit of rage because they can't do their DPS. The standard by which they measure themselves and their abilities.
Not a very impressive standard but well done, whatever makes you happy.
The very fact someone said that they need to do damage with their science ship is laughable because that isn't the purpose of the science class.
However everyone wants their cake and eat it too.
Gecko has made it so easy for us to do this that changing the current dynamic would cause mass rage from people who feel they have every right to get all rewards of elite content for 3 minutes of mashing the spacebar without having to think.
Wrong!
We should have to work for an elite reward.
You want to sit, point and shoot? Go to normal content and do that in 3 minutes with elite gear.
You want to play science as tac? Go to normal content.
You want to 1-shot kill everything?
Allow me to introduce you to the unbalanced and broken mess of PvP.
Sadly however this'll never happen because players don't want it to happen.
People want to do the damage role in every class.
They want to know they're doing elite content without effort.
They don't want to feel like they can only do normal or advanced because all they can do is sit, point, shoot and mash the spacebar.
Says the guy who complains about the same things over and over again and doesn't ever listen to one single word of anyone that thinks otherwise.
Pot.. Kettle.. Black.
Let the 3k's have their Normal. Higher levels should be appropriate for more skilled players.
All.this talk about Caps on damage Diminishing console returns and nerfs in general needs a little realism so here goes.
You want damage Hard Caps?
Let's say the absolute maximum DPS you can do is capped to 50k (Advanced requires around 18K-ish DPS to steamroll and Elite about 35k-40k) this means the 75k+ players will be performing their absolute maximum @50k dps AND will be able to.cut off the now Useless consoles/powers that have no additional effect allowing them.to slot other powers /skills to improve survivability or just throw in gimmicks to have more fun with a build BUT the lower dps crowd will not change and the lower dps crowd (60-70% of the players) won't be able to slot all that extra stuff because they haven't hit that hard cap! "THAT'S NOT FAIR! HE HAS ALL THOSE COOL POWERS AND DOES ALL THAT DAMAGE!"
Let's look at diminishing returns instead.
Let's say Cryptic does this and gives a diminishing return that cuts current Damage stacking by half (so 100% becomes 50%) well let's say a "Elite" players current weapon damage dps is 80k and the average guy is rocking 20k (both are stacking tactical consoles and Attack Patterns for damage boosts) well that 80k player just dropped to 40k (wow his damage went way down! Now he won't steam roll the game woot!) But hey look at 20k dps guy...he's now down to 10k and can't do Advanced content anymore....hmm ain't that funny? "BUT LOOK AT 80K DPS GUY!! He can still do Advanced AND Elite just fine!!!! THAT'S NOT FAIR!!!!"
Still like the idea???? Everyone is soo laser line focused on the uber DPS crowd they don't see how much they would cripple themselves while mildly inconveniencing the higher Dps players.
I'd need to see some threads or posts of people complaining about normal mode content. I find that a little hard to believe. But could be wrong, this game always surprises me. So anyone got some links of people claiming normal mode content is too tough?
Well, we'll get those, "The New Featured Episode" is too hard threads every now and again.
So I guess it happens, as I consider the Featured episodes, super easy content (if set to normal difficulty).
A bit of truth in there.
Being around STO since beta, the game has changed a LOT. Trust me when I say that every suggestion here I've seen (short of AI revamp) the Devs have tried.
They can't do much of anything if at all about the AI difficulty, they've said it numerous times throughout the years and its unfortunate. So they did what they could with mission requirements, adding optionals, teamwork incentives, fetch quests, high damage dealing foes, HP buffs, etc
The game more or less started out with the "Trinity" system, tanks, healers, damage dealers. That somehow became too complex for some and they complained about it, quite a bit actually, and a few revamps here and there herded more people into Tactical specializations than anything else. CE was basically unbeatable (Was bugged the first few weeks of launch) but it was moreso due to the fact that there was a learning curve and through communication (yelling over teamchat) it was finally understood how the mechanics worked.
Coming from a raid perspective, the above situation was normal for any MMO vets coming over, you get spanked a couple of times and somewhere in between reading and communicating with your buddies you figure out how to handle the adds from the boss and his behavior, so on and so forth.
This sort of thing remained the same for a bulk of early game.
Then the "Trinity" evaporated, and with that I feel strategy and teamwork with it. It didnt matter who the Cruiser was and who was in the Intrepid, apart from who had dual heavy cannons (re: tac herding) the game was gearing more and more to the casual crowd who just wanted to fly their favorite ship. Right or wrong, business wise it made sense, the days of taking 1-3 hours of your time for a planned raid with your buddies were becoming less of a thing and more of a nuisance. Instant gratification through minimal work became the brand.
Don't get me wrong the game wasn't nearly as complex as it could have been, at the end of the day its always going to be a bit more arcade like. The AI, the bugs, every MMO from start evolves into something else based on feedback, data, what have you.
But I gotta say and many of you will disagree, the Devs for this game more or less listened to the playerbase almost every step of the way for STO, and its been a roller coaster. Plenty of companies have a "open and shut" door policy when it comes to listening to the players for a number of reasons that can be argued.
Don't like being boxed in a Science ship with science abilities and having to perform a role? No problem
Don't like being in a Galaxy class and not being able to blow everything you see sky high in less than 10 seconds? No problem
Don't like having to read objective details and information as to how to complete said objective and just mash spacebar? No problem.
Team building? Nope.
TLDR; We are exactly where we want to be. Everytime they adjust the difficulty of missions/STFs through requirements, enemy damage/health buffs and "normalizing" do-it-all abilities its considered to be an outrage.
sto has been a huge let down,its all about pew pew pew while forgetting about two of the main pillars and essence of what star trek really is,exploration and diplomacy.
installed the game again because i heard good things of the admiralty system and oh my god more of the same,its just a glorified doff click click grind,same thing with doffs but with ships,wow you guys really got a good think tank over at cryptic huh?
and now we getting agents of yesterday which to be honest seems like a snooze fest,to level one more character for what reason? a couple of new missions and thats about it...
and then we have the good ol' mighty content in the form of yeah you guessed it....SHIPS,its their way of making money but it isnt content,but people keep on buying them so here they are releasing new ones over and over...
i guess ill just have to wait a couple of years until this game gets shut down,hopefully then we will be able to get a proper mmo that does the star trek ip some justice.
I've seen that complaint before. What I have yet to see is anyone make a suggestion that would actually work from a gameplay/coding perspective. Diplomacy and "gameplay" are two words that do not go together very well, and would not be terribly interesting without, forgive me, much better writing than we see in a typical featured episode.
Exploration? How, pray tell? I honestly don't see any way to do it without a massive investment of time and resources by the devs. And no, bringing back the exploration clusters is not the answer. I played around with those myself back in the day, and they were randomly-generated regular missions, only with even more generic writing. I really don't see any way to make the concept practical in gaming at all, without a massive technological breakthrough. Cardinal, STO does not have.