Y'know, I'm going to go right out and say it: these discussions are absolutely pointless. Do I think the power creep is a tad out of control? Yes. Do I think FAW is overpowered? Yes; and with my next ship I'm putting my build where my mouth is and using a mix of Overload and Surgical Strikes instead. Do I think the power creep is anywhere near as bad as these threads tend to claim? No. I hold to a large degree with those who believe the biggest problem is with people simply not understanding the system.
But the only question that really matters is: do I think the devs are going to do anything about it, no matter how much people whine? The answer is a resounding No. Six years on, and while many adjustments have certainly been made over the years, the consistent trend is ever higher numbers.
Six years of precedent. Why does anyone think there is any chance at all of that changing?
Is this ANOTHER one of those "Waaaaah that guy does a million deeps but I only do 20 thousand! Nerf him!" Threads????
Yes. And they get tiresome. There's nothing in this thread that couldn't have just been posted by the OP in THIS THREAD.
I'm also extremely disappointed in the OP. Taking swipes at Fire at Will and Attack Patterns is the easy path. I was hoping they would have been a bit more up to date and forward thinking and ask for the skill revamp to be nerfed instead, since the 11.5 skill revamp has been the most recent example of power creep.
because i have been working a low level toon, and have not even looked at the skill trees other than a couple posts on here.. I Simply used the common examples I have seen in the forum. I had HOPED there could be a discussion, but the DPS and power creep fans are too busy preening themselves and slapping down threads like this. Since you brought it up, what changes to he skill tree would you suggest?
Well DPS across the board went up. For everyone. From the 3k parses in ISA to the 175k parses. 11.5 was a boost. And so far the players are speaking favorably about it.
And that's the issue you face. It's not that people are fans of this or preening about that. It's that your plan to make the game harder will not be popular. Nerfing things is not a popular tactic.
I'm not here to offer ideas to curb power creep. Me? I'm squarely in the middle. Very average. And I don't really care about this monotonous discussion. Most of the suggestions have been covered ad nauseum.
What I think gets overlooked though is much of the real engine behind power creep comes from the resource-required or monetized parts of the game. People pay for that power. And people pay quite a bit. And that feeds the success of this game. That lobi console, Zen purchase T6 ship with trait you want or lockbox ship you desire all contain the key to more power. And that nets the company a lot of profit. And that's not going away anytime soon.
Nerfing Fire at Will is a drop in the bucket in terms of power creep. Which has already been analyzed to death. By the same DPS "experts" you likely have beef with. STObuilds reddit is pretty damn extensive in its knowledge of where power comes from. Parsing tools show you exactly what powers are doing what. You can gauge, test, and measure what you are getting your performance from. And the people in that reddit will gladly sit down and go over the math with you in excruciating detail. And you'll walk out of that conversation realizing that yeah, Fire at Will is a powerful skill. But the top DPS parsing is coming from more. So much more.
Back to the skill tree:
New tactical powers boosted DPS. On the basic level, 2 levels in a particular skill put you at about where you were in the past. 3 levels puts you ahead in quite a few cases. Then there's new powers added to the trees. More penetration. They reduced the distance penalty. Then there's the ultimates, specifically the tactical ultimate and its damage potential for you and your team. Or the science ultimate which has a good effect on a lot of builds too. And then there's the combination of many science skills and the boost those got from the skill revamp.
It's a lot of little things here and there. But the changes combined with the streamlining has led to a solid boost in damage potential for everyone.
And the new specialization tree added some damage potential on both high aggro and low aggro sides.
11.5 brought power creep.
You want to really get up to snuff on this debate I say start there. And work your way back to fire at will, which is ground that's been well covered to date.
I have a few ideas, most of which will be shot down here. They're not all so much about controlling the power creep as that should be a natural part of the game (within reason), they are more to add some form of skill and thought to the end-game builds. A lot of people just stack multiples of items/doffs/trait classes and spam abilities. Things like BFAW don't require any actually skill to use reasonably well. If we are to truly be competitive in elite content I think the game needs to evolve more in a skill direction rather than just pouring in more powerful toys each season/lockbox/c-store ship.
1) make BFAW only target ships in an arc (say 180 degrees) around your primary target. That way it is still useful but it cuts down some of the spam we see as you need to be more selective in its use. Targeting actually maters then but it can still be used to clear clutter from the map.
2) add a serious aggro component to BFAW so that it's use becomes a tradeoff and not everyone will spam it constantly. It then becomes primarily a cruiser ability as they want the aggro and they need an AOE attack due to low turnrates. It makes it less attractive to escorts etc who won't want the aggro of the entire map on them. Add the same to CSV and TS but to a lesser extent.
3) add diminishing returns onto tac consoles. Why should everything else have it but not tac stuff?
4) although I use it myself on my main tac flying a sci boat, stop APA buffing exotic/sci stuff unless it comes from an actual weapon.
5) lower the rank of cannon abilities to open up more built variety and give people with low tac seating a realistic alternative to BFAW.
6) add in abilities that cover the areas that are missing for cannons & beams. So we need a rapid-fire mode for beams to take out single targets, and an overload/heavy mode for cannons to match what BO does currently. This way it stops BFAW being the "one ability to rule them all" as it currently is and allows more build variety. Put simply BFAW should not be suitable and outclass other abilities in every situation.
7) limit the number of doffs of each type that can be slotted. So lets only have one projectile doff and one technician etc. It allows for more variety and would rein in some of the ridiculous builds that can for abilities near constantly.
8) new endgame content that actually requires the trinity to be completed with max rewards. Yes the trinity is hated by some but this game could be so much more if healers, engineers, crowd controllers , debuffers etc actually added something to the missions rather than being just oddball builds. I mean you start out at Lv 1 and are allowed to pick a class but by Lv 60 everyone realizes it just doesn't matter and the tac/damage side is all that matters. Content that doesn't require the trinity to compete, but requires it for max marks etc, or that offer alternate rewards to those completing the non-tac objectives or helping the team.
Your last point after #8 I disagree with. I rolled a tac got tomlevel.30 got bored.and dumped it and went right back to my Science officer. And as a Science Captian flying a Science Torp Boat Annorax (Mind boggling I know!) I do more damage than all but the Super DPS crowd Tac BFAW/TS3 Spammers and if I get around to making all my weapons and consoles Epic im.sure id be pulling 100K+ (but that's not extremely important to me as 80K is more than overkill)
This thread will probably be shot down as any other of these similar threads about DPS and power creep that seem to be posted just about once or twice every week. People are so concerned or rather obsessed with the whole damage aspect of this game that they seem to be letting it ruin their gaming experience... which is sad... really sad.
I have a few ideas, most of which will be shot down here. They're not all so much about controlling the power creep as that should be a natural part of the game (within reason), they are more to add some form of skill and thought to the end-game builds. A lot of people just stack multiples of items/doffs/trait classes and spam abilities. Things like BFAW don't require any actually skill to use reasonably well. If we are to truly be competitive in elite content I think the game needs to evolve more in a skill direction rather than just pouring in more powerful toys each season/lockbox/c-store ship.
1) make BFAW only target ships in an arc (say 180 degrees) around your primary target. That way it is still useful but it cuts down some of the spam we see as you need to be more selective in its use. Targeting actually maters then but it can still be used to clear clutter from the map.
2) add a serious aggro component to BFAW so that it's use becomes a tradeoff and not everyone will spam it constantly. It then becomes primarily a cruiser ability as they want the aggro and they need an AOE attack due to low turnrates. It makes it less attractive to escorts etc who won't want the aggro of the entire map on them.
Add the same to CSV and TS but to a lesser extent.
3) add diminishing returns onto tac consoles. Why should everything else have it but not tac stuff?
4) although I use it myself on my main tac flying a sci boat, stop APA buffing exotic/sci stuff unless it comes from an actual weapon.
5) lower the rank of cannon abilities to open up more built variety and give people with low tac seating a realistic alternative to BFAW.
6) add in abilities that cover the areas that are missing for cannons & beams. So we need a rapid-fire mode for beams to take out single targets, and an overload/heavy mode for cannons to match what BO does currently.
This way it stops BFAW being the "one ability to rule them all" as it currently is and allows more build variety. Put simply BFAW should not be suitable and outclass other abilities in every situation.
7) limit the number of doffs of each type that can be slotted. So lets only have one projectile doff and one technician etc. It allows for more variety and would rein in some of the ridiculous builds that can for abilities near constantly.
8) new endgame content that actually requires the trinity to be completed with max rewards. Yes the trinity is hated by some but this game could be so much more if healers, engineers, crowd controllers , debuffers etc actually added something to the missions rather than being just oddball builds.
I mean you start out at Lv 1 and are allowed to pick a class but by Lv 60 everyone realizes it just doesn't matter and the tac/damage side is all that matters.
Content that doesn't require the trinity to compete, but requires it for max marks etc, or that offer alternate rewards to those completing the non-tac objectives or helping the team.
I do believe that point number 3 is about the only one I take any issue with, and I have to concede that may be sheer bias on my part. I certainly agree on the matter of BFAW. As others have said, it's not quite the be-all-end-all DPS tool the "nerf the DPSers!" say it is, but it does certainly contribute to a certain laziness with maneuvering; I'm removing it from my own next ship for that very reason. (Not doing it till then simply because of the complicated process of redoing my keybinds, etc., and my current ship can't actually use one of the powers I'll be replacing FAW with.)
Other than that... Yeah. Sounds about right. Some of it may even be implemented; I know the relative strengths of beams and cannons have fluctuated a fair bit over the years. The game was nicknamed "Escorts Online" back when I started, with DHCs being king, yet that situation did eventually change.
I have a few ideas, most of which will be shot down here. They're not all so much about controlling the power creep as that should be a natural part of the game (within reason), they are more to add some form of skill and thought to the end-game builds. A lot of people just stack multiples of items/doffs/trait classes and spam abilities. Things like BFAW don't require any actually skill to use reasonably well. If we are to truly be competitive in elite content I think the game needs to evolve more in a skill direction rather than just pouring in more powerful toys each season/lockbox/c-store ship.
1) make BFAW only target ships in an arc (say 180 degrees) around your primary target. That way it is still useful but it cuts down some of the spam we see as you need to be more selective in its use. Targeting actually maters then but it can still be used to clear clutter from the map.
2) add a serious aggro component to BFAW so that it's use becomes a tradeoff and not everyone will spam it constantly. It then becomes primarily a cruiser ability as they want the aggro and they need an AOE attack due to low turnrates. It makes it less attractive to escorts etc who won't want the aggro of the entire map on them.
Add the same to CSV and TS but to a lesser extent.
3) add diminishing returns onto tac consoles. Why should everything else have it but not tac stuff?
4) although I use it myself on my main tac flying a sci boat, stop APA buffing exotic/sci stuff unless it comes from an actual weapon.
5) lower the rank of cannon abilities to open up more built variety and give people with low tac seating a realistic alternative to BFAW.
6) add in abilities that cover the areas that are missing for cannons & beams. So we need a rapid-fire mode for beams to take out single targets, and an overload/heavy mode for cannons to match what BO does currently.
This way it stops BFAW being the "one ability to rule them all" as it currently is and allows more build variety. Put simply BFAW should not be suitable and outclass other abilities in every situation.
7) limit the number of doffs of each type that can be slotted. So lets only have one projectile doff and one technician etc. It allows for more variety and would rein in some of the ridiculous builds that can for abilities near constantly.
8) new endgame content that actually requires the trinity to be completed with max rewards. Yes the trinity is hated by some but this game could be so much more if healers, engineers, crowd controllers , debuffers etc actually added something to the missions rather than being just oddball builds.
I mean you start out at Lv 1 and are allowed to pick a class but by Lv 60 everyone realizes it just doesn't matter and the tac/damage side is all that matters.
Content that doesn't require the trinity to compete, but requires it for max marks etc, or that offer alternate rewards to those completing the non-tac objectives or helping the team.
2- Adding aggro to BFAW is unlikely to have any noticeable effect. The way threatening stance and the skills already work, combined with threat nullifiers and threat amplifiers, it ends up being really binary. If you want aggro you can get it or get in a situation where you are competing with the other people who want it. If you want to shed it, you can get in a situation where you are shedding it. There's no real need for aggro management in this game.
5- Bort has danced around this a few times and it really boils down to the development team doesn't seem too likely to reorganize that specific set of skills. They may change their minds, but thus far, it's not something that I've seen gain much traction.
They knocked BFAW down a peg. Cannons have come up a notch. This can no longer be a discussion about BFAW. I used to run BFAW all the time and now no longer even use it, preferring Beam Overload. I do better DPS with Beam Overload than I did with BFAW. The best thing they could do is not nerf any player abilities, but increase the damage that enemies in the game do...and maybe a slight increase in enemy shield and hull. That would be all that's needed. And they would only have to do that in the normal setting.
increase the damage that enemies in the game do...and maybe a slight increase in enemy shield and hull.
I'd like to see the NPCs get access to the full suite of abilities we have, not ridiculous cheat versions (like Donatra's cloak that ignores anything that should stop her cloaking) but actualy player equivalents. Then allow them to use them more than once.
Adding HP's to hull and shields....no chance. That just ends up with missions becoming a pain in the TRIBBLE for anyone who's not packing a bazillion DPS. I don't mind my enemies being tough and hard to kill but when it comes down to parking up and slogging at them for 5 mins before they die (KSA gates for example) it just becomes tedious. A challenging fight should be something where I don't know if i'll live or die, not one which just turns into the inevitable grind of slamming volley after volley into it.
Plus the HP boosts have really messed up some missions. Just look at CCA, the entity dies within minutes but a Recluse can take 4-5 guys just as long to kill because its health has been buffed up to stupid levels.
Actually, bringing up NPC resistances along with their damage output will make pure DPS setups less practical (see HSE nerf as proof). Tougher to kill NPCs will mean trying to out damage it before it dies would end up with you dead first. If not higher resistances, giving them Sci, Tac and Eng teams with some other basic heals and higher base damage would go a long way.
But the average player won't want that so bring those changes to Elite and give us more Elites instead.
The best way to deal with power creep is build your captain the way you want, and don't worry about what everyone else does. The biggest impact this has on you is that if you que for an event, you might finish it quickly and get free rewards. It could be worse.
yes, but it is impossible to enjoy a stf, when the average duration is 3 or 4 minutes.
Like I said in the other thread, don't PUG then. If a huge chunk of players agree with your assessment regarding power creep, then it shouldn't be an issue finding like minded players to form teams or even create dedicated channels.
Power creep, what to do? Nothing. Take what's given, go with the flow, and if it doesn't flow for you, there are thousand of other games available to be played.
Retired. I'm now in search for that perfect space anomaly.
The best way to deal with power creep is build your captain the way you want, and don't worry about what everyone else does. The biggest impact this has on you is that if you que for an event, you might finish it quickly and get free rewards. It could be worse.
yes, but it is impossible to enjoy a stf, when the average duration is 3 or 4 minutes.
Impossible for you only, not for everyone.
To me, 5-6 minutes is the perfect duration for an STF, I like to get in, do my thing and get out. I'm prefectly happy with spending 4 minutes in an STF.
If that bothers you, then do an STF with fleet mates or find a channel for people using non DPS oriented builds like the Canon Build Channel. There are options, if you don't use them, that's on you.
If you're doing PUG's you take what you get. You might be done in 4 minutes, it might take you a half hour. That's how it works when you que up public. I have said this before, I'll say it a thousand more times..
Anyone looking for a specific experience of any kind in an STF should not be doing Public Ques. That goes for those looking for speed runs as well as those looking for long tactical battles. It is not the responsibility of those in public ques to meet your expectations of a proper mission experience.
To me, 5-6 minutes is the perfect duration for an STF, I like to get in, do my thing and get out. I'm prefectly happy with spending 4 minutes in an STF.
If there's one thing Cryptic's metrics have told them which is true is that seaofsorrows represents the majority of players in terms of actual behavior. I'm the same way. I don't want to spend 20 minutes or more in a fight. 5 minutes is juuuuust right. 3 to 4 minutes? I'm fine with that.
And you can see that behavior reinforced indirectly in the queues. And how people PUG in this game. The ones that consistently pop and are filled with people PUGging? Are the ones that are over as quick as possible.
Forced grouping, time-gates, this is stuff that none of us really like to do. Talking about wanting more challenge on the forums is one thing. Having to wade through 20 minutes of challenge, and then having the option to fail because of player error?
if you think 4-5 min is bad, imagine getting in a public queue with 2 guys averaging 150k each. Before I finish turning on all my powers, they've already finished one side and heading to the other side. Everything gets done in 2 min, there's literally nothing left for me to shoot at.
4 of these guys?, you've certainly got unlucky. I don't think I've ever gotten 4 of them, at most 2. I think with 4, you'd end up with them cannibalising their own dps.
4 of these guys?, you've certainly got unlucky. I don't think I've ever gotten 4 of them, at most 2. I think with 4, you'd end up with them cannibalising their own dps.
Actually with 2 of them on, they're already cannibalizing each other's DPS to an extent. Unless everyone else was less than 10k...
On the subject of DPS, skill and gear...
I was looking at some past logs and noticing a trend for those at 10-20k and those just below 10k. Looking at the DPS graphs, they generally start really low and hold that level up to the midpoint where they start rising up to finally end at 10k. Sometimes they hover at the 2-5k range up until the end. This tells me a few things I think:
They are geared enough to hit well above 10k.
They have trouble laying down their potential firepower up to the midpoint of ISA because up to this point, they are moving (to the left for the first transformer and to the right for the next) and are dealing with moving targets at the same time (spheres) which tells me it's a piloting issue.
Their uptick towards the end is due to the fact they are now facing immobile objects (gate and tac cube). Remember why gate doping was a thing? It's an easy target with lots of HP.
This is evident even in high-end builds with the exception of "spike builds" which tend to taper off at the end.
My conclusion, many of the players have ships capable of dishing damage above 10k, they just can't apply that damage effectively.
Your last point after #8 I disagree with. I rolled a tac got tomlevel.30 got bored.and dumped it and went right back to my Science officer. And as a Science Captian flying a Science Torp Boat Annorax (Mind boggling I know!) I do more damage than all but the Super DPS crowd Tac BFAW/TS3 Spammers and if I get around to making all my weapons and consoles Epic im.sure id be pulling 100K+ (but that's not extremely important to me as 80K is more than overkill)
4 of these guys?, you've certainly got unlucky. I don't think I've ever gotten 4 of them, at most 2. I think with 4, you'd end up with them cannibalising their own dps.
Actually with 2 of them on, they're already cannibalizing each other's DPS to an extent. Unless everyone else was less than 10k...
On the subject of DPS, skill and gear...
I was looking at some past logs and noticing a trend for those at 10-20k and those just below 10k. Looking at the DPS graphs, they generally start really low and hold that level up to the midpoint where they start rising up to finally end at 10k. Sometimes they hover at the 2-5k range up until the end. This tells me a few things I think:
They are geared enough to hit well above 10k.
They have trouble laying down their potential firepower up to the midpoint of ISA because up to this point, they are moving (to the left for the first transformer and to the right for the next) and are dealing with moving targets at the same time (spheres) which tells me it's a piloting issue.
Their uptick towards the end is due to the fact they are now facing immobile objects (gate and tac cube). Remember why gate doping was a thing? It's an easy target with lots of HP.
This is evident even in high-end builds with the exception of "spike builds" which tend to taper off at the end.
My conclusion, many of the players have ships capable of dishing damage above 10k, they just can't apply that damage effectively.
Yep. A lot of low damage ain't the ship or the gear...it's pure operator error.
Which comes back to what I have been saying in all the other power creep threads... The people that complain about the power creep don't know or don't want to admit that they are benefiting from it too.
There are more people that do above 50k for sure today than last year, but they are still a minority in the game. They are only more visible now because many of them stopped playing in the DPS channels due to the lag (the DPS channels have been way more silent since the revamp) and are moving to PUGs to escape that lag. Case and point, it is now faster to just PUG an ISA than it is to form a group in the DPS channels. Given that "LF4M ISA" is the "DPSers' mating call", that just shows how little interest the guys in the channels now have at running inside that channel.
I have been doing mostly PUGs since playing this game (despite having access to the DPS channels) and last year I'd be seeing new people over and over. Now it's the same people running in PUGs, the same people that you would normally find in the DPS league runs. I think that when we see that lag fixed, you'll be seeing less of these DPS folks in PUGs and you can have your 30-minute ISAs back.
The power creep is fine... just give the high-end guys proper Elite queues to play in.
I personally can't fathom why anyone who's spent upwards of $100-200 on a build only wants to spend their time doing sub-5 min runs. I mean I understand if you are grinding something out like a rep or earning stuff to upgrade to epic on all items. But once you reach the top why would you still be wanting these ridiculous speed runs for the majority of your playtime. I'd much rather take my expensive hard worked on build into an epic 10-15 min fight where I can really test it, than a 2 min blitz where most of my powers get activated maybe once or twice at most. Sees to me like a 2 min ISA run just isnt challenging that build you spend all that hard earned cash and time on. No point buying a Ferrari if all you do is drive it 2 mins up the road to the corner shop. A solution is to add more top end content so that you don't go in knowing it'll be over in 2 mins. Then you'll have a decent challenge.
I personally can't fathom why anyone who's spent upwards of $100-200 on a build only wants to spend their time doing sub-5 min runs.
I mean I understand if you are grinding something out like a rep or earning stuff to upgrade to epic on all items. But once you reach the top why would you still be wanting these ridiculous speed runs for the majority of your playtime.
I'd much rather take my expensive hard worked on build into an epic 10-15 min fight where I can really test it, than a 2 min blitz where most of my powers get activated maybe once or twice at most.
Sees to me like a 2 min ISA run just isnt challenging that build you spend all that hard earned cash and time on. No point buying a Ferrari if all you do is drive it 2 mins up the road to the corner shop.
A solution is to add more top end content so that you don't go in knowing it'll be over in 2 mins. Then you'll have a decent challenge.
For me it depends. I don't mind long queues (Counterpoint is one of my favorites) but the missions themselves have to be fulfilling. I hate Gateway to Gre'thor for example because I find the gateway closing mind-numbingly boring. At the same time, I hate the changes they made to HSE which turned it into a 5-min run vs the 10-15mins of attrition it used to be.
I personally spent time and money on my builds because I like seeing how far I can push my chosen ships in my chosen meta (I don't build towards the current meta). For that I'd prefer to be able to run in higher-end content (Elites) so I think adding Elites is better (moving the game forward) rather than blanket nerfs (which moves the game backward in my opinion).
[...]Which comes back to what I have been saying in all the other power creep threads... The people that complain about the power creep don't know or don't want to admit that they are benefiting from it too.
[...]
No one is benefitting from a game that doesn't offer you any chance of knowing in advance what kind of game experience (boring, so-la-la, challenging, impossible) you get when you queue up.
Hence my suggestion... if you don't like the randomness of PUGs, form a pre-made. It's what people told DPS'ers before when they complain about bad PUG teams, and it holds true for people that hate super teams as well.
Comments
But the only question that really matters is: do I think the devs are going to do anything about it, no matter how much people whine? The answer is a resounding No. Six years on, and while many adjustments have certainly been made over the years, the consistent trend is ever higher numbers.
Six years of precedent. Why does anyone think there is any chance at all of that changing?
Well DPS across the board went up. For everyone. From the 3k parses in ISA to the 175k parses. 11.5 was a boost. And so far the players are speaking favorably about it.
And that's the issue you face. It's not that people are fans of this or preening about that. It's that your plan to make the game harder will not be popular. Nerfing things is not a popular tactic.
I'm not here to offer ideas to curb power creep. Me? I'm squarely in the middle. Very average. And I don't really care about this monotonous discussion. Most of the suggestions have been covered ad nauseum.
What I think gets overlooked though is much of the real engine behind power creep comes from the resource-required or monetized parts of the game. People pay for that power. And people pay quite a bit. And that feeds the success of this game. That lobi console, Zen purchase T6 ship with trait you want or lockbox ship you desire all contain the key to more power. And that nets the company a lot of profit. And that's not going away anytime soon.
Nerfing Fire at Will is a drop in the bucket in terms of power creep. Which has already been analyzed to death. By the same DPS "experts" you likely have beef with. STObuilds reddit is pretty damn extensive in its knowledge of where power comes from. Parsing tools show you exactly what powers are doing what. You can gauge, test, and measure what you are getting your performance from. And the people in that reddit will gladly sit down and go over the math with you in excruciating detail. And you'll walk out of that conversation realizing that yeah, Fire at Will is a powerful skill. But the top DPS parsing is coming from more. So much more.
Back to the skill tree:
New tactical powers boosted DPS. On the basic level, 2 levels in a particular skill put you at about where you were in the past. 3 levels puts you ahead in quite a few cases. Then there's new powers added to the trees. More penetration. They reduced the distance penalty. Then there's the ultimates, specifically the tactical ultimate and its damage potential for you and your team. Or the science ultimate which has a good effect on a lot of builds too. And then there's the combination of many science skills and the boost those got from the skill revamp.
It's a lot of little things here and there. But the changes combined with the streamlining has led to a solid boost in damage potential for everyone.
And the new specialization tree added some damage potential on both high aggro and low aggro sides.
11.5 brought power creep.
You want to really get up to snuff on this debate I say start there. And work your way back to fire at will, which is ground that's been well covered to date.
1) make BFAW only target ships in an arc (say 180 degrees) around your primary target. That way it is still useful but it cuts down some of the spam we see as you need to be more selective in its use. Targeting actually maters then but it can still be used to clear clutter from the map.
2) add a serious aggro component to BFAW so that it's use becomes a tradeoff and not everyone will spam it constantly. It then becomes primarily a cruiser ability as they want the aggro and they need an AOE attack due to low turnrates. It makes it less attractive to escorts etc who won't want the aggro of the entire map on them.
Add the same to CSV and TS but to a lesser extent.
3) add diminishing returns onto tac consoles. Why should everything else have it but not tac stuff?
4) although I use it myself on my main tac flying a sci boat, stop APA buffing exotic/sci stuff unless it comes from an actual weapon.
5) lower the rank of cannon abilities to open up more built variety and give people with low tac seating a realistic alternative to BFAW.
6) add in abilities that cover the areas that are missing for cannons & beams. So we need a rapid-fire mode for beams to take out single targets, and an overload/heavy mode for cannons to match what BO does currently.
This way it stops BFAW being the "one ability to rule them all" as it currently is and allows more build variety. Put simply BFAW should not be suitable and outclass other abilities in every situation.
7) limit the number of doffs of each type that can be slotted. So lets only have one projectile doff and one technician etc. It allows for more variety and would rein in some of the ridiculous builds that can for abilities near constantly.
8) new endgame content that actually requires the trinity to be completed with max rewards. Yes the trinity is hated by some but this game could be so much more if healers, engineers, crowd controllers , debuffers etc actually added something to the missions rather than being just oddball builds.
I mean you start out at Lv 1 and are allowed to pick a class but by Lv 60 everyone realizes it just doesn't matter and the tac/damage side is all that matters.
Content that doesn't require the trinity to compete, but requires it for max marks etc, or that offer alternate rewards to those completing the non-tac objectives or helping the team.
I do believe that point number 3 is about the only one I take any issue with, and I have to concede that may be sheer bias on my part. I certainly agree on the matter of BFAW. As others have said, it's not quite the be-all-end-all DPS tool the "nerf the DPSers!" say it is, but it does certainly contribute to a certain laziness with maneuvering; I'm removing it from my own next ship for that very reason. (Not doing it till then simply because of the complicated process of redoing my keybinds, etc., and my current ship can't actually use one of the powers I'll be replacing FAW with.)
Other than that... Yeah. Sounds about right. Some of it may even be implemented; I know the relative strengths of beams and cannons have fluctuated a fair bit over the years. The game was nicknamed "Escorts Online" back when I started, with DHCs being king, yet that situation did eventually change.
2- Adding aggro to BFAW is unlikely to have any noticeable effect. The way threatening stance and the skills already work, combined with threat nullifiers and threat amplifiers, it ends up being really binary. If you want aggro you can get it or get in a situation where you are competing with the other people who want it. If you want to shed it, you can get in a situation where you are shedding it. There's no real need for aggro management in this game.
5- Bort has danced around this a few times and it really boils down to the development team doesn't seem too likely to reorganize that specific set of skills. They may change their minds, but thus far, it's not something that I've seen gain much traction.
I'd like to see the NPCs get access to the full suite of abilities we have, not ridiculous cheat versions (like Donatra's cloak that ignores anything that should stop her cloaking) but actualy player equivalents. Then allow them to use them more than once.
Adding HP's to hull and shields....no chance. That just ends up with missions becoming a pain in the TRIBBLE for anyone who's not packing a bazillion DPS. I don't mind my enemies being tough and hard to kill but when it comes down to parking up and slogging at them for 5 mins before they die (KSA gates for example) it just becomes tedious. A challenging fight should be something where I don't know if i'll live or die, not one which just turns into the inevitable grind of slamming volley after volley into it.
Plus the HP boosts have really messed up some missions. Just look at CCA, the entity dies within minutes but a Recluse can take 4-5 guys just as long to kill because its health has been buffed up to stupid levels.
But the average player won't want that so bring those changes to Elite and give us more Elites instead.
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The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
yes, but it is impossible to enjoy a stf, when the average duration is 3 or 4 minutes.
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The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
Impossible for you only, not for everyone.
To me, 5-6 minutes is the perfect duration for an STF, I like to get in, do my thing and get out. I'm prefectly happy with spending 4 minutes in an STF.
If that bothers you, then do an STF with fleet mates or find a channel for people using non DPS oriented builds like the Canon Build Channel. There are options, if you don't use them, that's on you.
If you're doing PUG's you take what you get. You might be done in 4 minutes, it might take you a half hour. That's how it works when you que up public. I have said this before, I'll say it a thousand more times..
Anyone looking for a specific experience of any kind in an STF should not be doing Public Ques. That goes for those looking for speed runs as well as those looking for long tactical battles. It is not the responsibility of those in public ques to meet your expectations of a proper mission experience.
If there's one thing Cryptic's metrics have told them which is true is that seaofsorrows represents the majority of players in terms of actual behavior. I'm the same way. I don't want to spend 20 minutes or more in a fight. 5 minutes is juuuuust right. 3 to 4 minutes? I'm fine with that.
And you can see that behavior reinforced indirectly in the queues. And how people PUG in this game. The ones that consistently pop and are filled with people PUGging? Are the ones that are over as quick as possible.
Forced grouping, time-gates, this is stuff that none of us really like to do. Talking about wanting more challenge on the forums is one thing. Having to wade through 20 minutes of challenge, and then having the option to fail because of player error?
People will HATE that.
Actually with 2 of them on, they're already cannibalizing each other's DPS to an extent.
On the subject of DPS, skill and gear...
I was looking at some past logs and noticing a trend for those at 10-20k and those just below 10k. Looking at the DPS graphs, they generally start really low and hold that level up to the midpoint where they start rising up to finally end at 10k. Sometimes they hover at the 2-5k range up until the end. This tells me a few things I think:
My conclusion, many of the players have ships capable of dishing damage above 10k, they just can't apply that damage effectively.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
TorpArax is a thing, don't you know?
Fleet Defiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support | Fleet Manticore Kinetic Strike Ship | Tactical Command Kinetic Siege Refit | Fleet Defiant Quantum Phase Escort | Fleet Valiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support
Turning the Galaxy-X into a Torpedo Dreadnought & torpedo tutorial, with written torpedo guide.
"A good weapon and a great strategy will win you many battles." - Marshall
I knew using Kinetics would be playing the game on hard mode, but what I didn't realize was how bad the deck is stacked against Kinetics.
Which comes back to what I have been saying in all the other power creep threads... The people that complain about the power creep don't know or don't want to admit that they are benefiting from it too.
There are more people that do above 50k for sure today than last year, but they are still a minority in the game. They are only more visible now because many of them stopped playing in the DPS channels due to the lag (the DPS channels have been way more silent since the revamp) and are moving to PUGs to escape that lag. Case and point, it is now faster to just PUG an ISA than it is to form a group in the DPS channels. Given that "LF4M ISA" is the "DPSers' mating call", that just shows how little interest the guys in the channels now have at running inside that channel.
I have been doing mostly PUGs since playing this game (despite having access to the DPS channels) and last year I'd be seeing new people over and over. Now it's the same people running in PUGs, the same people that you would normally find in the DPS league runs. I think that when we see that lag fixed, you'll be seeing less of these DPS folks in PUGs and you can have your 30-minute ISAs back.
The power creep is fine... just give the high-end guys proper Elite queues to play in.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
I mean I understand if you are grinding something out like a rep or earning stuff to upgrade to epic on all items. But once you reach the top why would you still be wanting these ridiculous speed runs for the majority of your playtime.
I'd much rather take my expensive hard worked on build into an epic 10-15 min fight where I can really test it, than a 2 min blitz where most of my powers get activated maybe once or twice at most.
Sees to me like a 2 min ISA run just isnt challenging that build you spend all that hard earned cash and time on. No point buying a Ferrari if all you do is drive it 2 mins up the road to the corner shop.
A solution is to add more top end content so that you don't go in knowing it'll be over in 2 mins. Then you'll have a decent challenge.
For me it depends. I don't mind long queues (Counterpoint is one of my favorites) but the missions themselves have to be fulfilling. I hate Gateway to Gre'thor for example because I find the gateway closing mind-numbingly boring. At the same time, I hate the changes they made to HSE which turned it into a 5-min run vs the 10-15mins of attrition it used to be.
I personally spent time and money on my builds because I like seeing how far I can push my chosen ships in my chosen meta (I don't build towards the current meta). For that I'd prefer to be able to run in higher-end content (Elites) so I think adding Elites is better (moving the game forward) rather than blanket nerfs (which moves the game backward in my opinion).
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
Hence my suggestion... if you don't like the randomness of PUGs, form a pre-made. It's what people told DPS'ers before when they complain about bad PUG teams, and it holds true for people that hate super teams as well.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!