There are tons of ships and tons of different gear. So, how can PvP ever be balanced?
Easy, remove the variables, that being the different stats between ships and gear.
All PvE content would be disabled, that includes ship traits, captain traits and skills, duty officers, bridge officer traits, spec trees and reputation traits and abilities. All replaced by new PvP versions of the above mentioned. A new captain skill tree dedicated to PvP bound to ship with no zen respect cost, new PvP orientated gear, duty officers, bridge officers, PvP reputation and PvP spec tree.
What I mean is:
-PvP class system: All ships have a class, independently of its stats, a ship might be a cruiser, a dreadnought, a destroyer, etc. but each ship has individual stats. Get rid of individual ship stats, make all ships of the same class have the same stats during PvP. That way you don’t have to balance 350+ ships, just a handful of classes.
-PvP gear: Same as before, there are lots of different gear with different stats and modifiers. That problem can be solved with PvP exclusive ship gear, bridge officers, PvP captain, ship and reputation traits, PvP specializations, duty officers, devices, etc. The basic stuff should be available for energy credits, the more advanced stuff could require dilithium, PvP credits, competitive points or whatever, to purchase, upgrade and modify.
-PvP ship loadouts: To add some diversity and customization this is when loadouts make their appearance, in the form of specialization abilities, bridge officer seats and console slots. Your ship’s class and tier will determine a baseline for seats and consoles, but there should be a certain degree of customization, allowing to trade in some seats and console types for others. This also includes specialization seats.
There are up to 6 specialization seats you can distribute at will, the final number will depend on your ship’s class, the specialization type and how many different specializations you want to add.
Finally, you can choose which specialization abilities your ship will have. This is based on your specialization seating choice, if you picked only intelligence seats, then your ship will have the intel abilities, if you picked intel and command seats then you get to choose which of those two ability sets you want.
As a practical example:
A T6 escort’s baseline console setup could be 4 tactical 1 engineer 1 science and 5 universal slots. The 5 console type limit still applies, that means you can have a maximum of 5 tactical consoles for example.
A T6 escort’s baseline seating setup could be 1 commander tactical and 1 lieutenant engineer with 7 free seatings you can distribute, the limit of 1 commander and 5 bridge officers still applies, for this example that means you can either have 2 lieutenant commanders and 1 ensign or 1 lieutenant commander and 2 lieutenants.
PvP battlegrounds: Similar to PvE battlegrounds, 2 teams, objectives like capture the flag, playload escort, attack-defend, king of the hill, map domination, etc. A place to have fun, test stuff and get some PvP credits. You can swap ships from your active ship roster in your respawn area.
Arena: The current maps we have now, Deathmatch, less players than battlegrounds and no respawning or a limited number of respawns. For example, you can pick up to 3 ships to queue and once you lose 1 you respawn with another one. Casual mode is for practice and fun, competitive awards competitive points to purchase, upgrade and modify gear.
There's no need to argue about PvP. The lead Dev doesn't care about STO, PvErs only care about themselves and far too loud a voice (it was their constant nagging That made the trinity nonexistent now) and 90% of the good PvPrs that didn't abuse broken game mechanics and gimmicks are gone.
Wait for Star Citizen, it's going to be 10x the game STO ever will be and no DPS loving, FAW wielding, space-barbie loving PvEr will touch it with a barge-pole because they are far too afraid of a game where something more intelligent than STO's AI on easy can beat them and their far to afraid of balance to even try it.
Nobody wants to play with griefer trolls who knowingly exploit broken mechanics and take pleasure in annoying others over the safety of the internet. The biggest flaws in STO PvP are the players themselves.
That's very true because pvp players made the game mechanics broken not the developers .
You should all go see about getting a doctoret in Literature and Writing, present this thread as your disertation.
TL;DR:
PVP is dying
Its PVEers fault, **** you
Its PVPers fault, no **** you
Its the Devs fault
Somehow its the dves fault because they ignored KDF
Some good juicy gossop about devs (someone should make Developers, like a General Hospital{thats a drama, right?} but set in Cryptic...)
Console players see biohazard hitting the fan(<- my new favourite saying!) and they are walken'
Perhaps if the console players walk it could be the wake up call Cryptic needs.
I almost want it to happen.
This will happen. Along about the time LoR and Delta hit Console. I'm saving my pocket change already. I'll need it to buy the massive amounts of popcorn and drink, that will be required for it.
I'm not a console player myself. Though having spent 11 years in the U.S. Army, I did get to hang out with quite a few console players. Their talk was split fairly evenly. Mostly about games that were coming out, games they had played, what one could do in those games, and pvp.
There is one aspect of PvP that hasn't been mentioned. And it's the one that is good for everyone involved. The Streamers. Most streamers don't stream PvE, they stream PvP. As STO is right now, the only thing that's really worth streaming is the working in the Foundry. Unless you want to stream PvE to show the rest of the world how boring the PvE pewpew is. But this just turns more people away from the game.
I'm not expecting that big of a reaction. Why not? because PvP in STO is not really worth anything but bragging rights.
i think it really comes to down to a question of demand and possible profit to be made. and there console additions comes into play. if the pressure comes, if it grows big enough and if an estimated profit justifies the assignment of ressources, it may even come one day. for sure the former progression on pc made it more than unlikely for such pressure to come from there. also the question is how such assignments would be taken by the existing community. that we yet not have seperated forums f.e., not helps here i'd say.
so, however, i wouldn't bet on it either.
I'm not expecting that big of a reaction. Why not? because PvP in STO is not really worth anything but bragging rights.
i think it really comes to down to a question of demand and possible profit to be made. and there console additions comes into play. if the pressure comes, if it grows big enough and if an estimated profit justifies the assignment of ressources, it may even come one day. for sure the former progression on pc made it more than unlikely for such pressure to come from there. also the question is how such assignments would be taken by the existing community. that we yet not have seperated forums f.e., not helps here i'd say.
so, however, i wouldn't bet on it either.
The "Smart" direction to bet, is no development-everything from the basis of the Cryptic "Free to play" model, to the mindset of the most influential Cryptic employees, to what may be influence from CBS requiring a "Family values friendly" situation argues against any sort of positive change wrt PvP.
If STO fails on Console, or doesn't generate "Estimate" yeild monetarily, or worse, picks up the kind of negative press it did in 2010?
odds are more likely that they'll pull the plug, than look at PvP. It's a shame, and it might not seem fair, but that's the way they've addressed situations before.
^2ned. one though keeps the right to stand by the cause i'd say. and even only to look by now and then and remind of better times in here. no matter it's stays a videogame and only ever has been like a passionated hobby. so, in the end.... what gives ;D...
Star Citizen is to STO what Valiance Online is to CO - the Wonder Game that's gonna kill Cryptic for good, when one day all the vapor actually coalesces and a real game suddenly appears, handed down to us by the Gaming Gods...
1. A lot of STO players aren't gamers, they're Star Trek fans.
2. STO is ridiculously casual and some people still find it too hard.
3. Computer requirements.
Which is a shame because Star Citizen, when/if it comes out, will have exploration. What we can play is a portion of a star system (and that portion is huge), yet the emergent gameplay is really impressive.
As for STO's PvP, it's frankly screwed. All the speculating about what cryptic can do to fix it is a waste of time. Cryptics not interested. They neither have the time, the knowledge or desire to do anything with PvP. They had enough trouble just adding a PvP map, which they eventually had to cancel.
If they found adding a PvP map too much trouble, they aren't going to revamp PvP.
Anyway, it's less PvP that needs a fix than the whole game. The powercreep has gotten so bad the Crystalline Entity is dying in 10 seconds. One match it didn't even get a chance for a pulse. Mostly down to exotic particle attacks, rather than torpedo attacks.
I used to love PvP. I was addicted to it from the day the game was launched. My first time in the game I LEVELED in PvP, without playing a single mission after doomsday. It was fun, it was challenging and was the best endgame this game had. Oh there were silly overpowered abilities (most of which actually got fixed, rather than buffed), but overall PvP was somewhat sensible.
Seriously, guys, I and much of my tribe PLAY Star Citizen right now and have a good time doing it. The vaporware argument is flatly untrue, and while players have the privilege of sticking their heads in the sand, they could also be maybe just the tiniest bit grateful that the immanent arrival of a new AAA space/sci-fi experience is absolutely putting the spurs to the STO team and likely has a hand in their getting the funds/re-investment that's letting them try to branch out to consoles. Because while you're ignoring the progress being made over there, and pretending that other companies aren't lining up to pay tens of millions for access to the 64-bit engine that's changed the maximum box size all games have been constrained to from 4x4km to holding entire solar systems in a single frame of reference, those other companies are ABSOLUTELY aware they have to step up their value proposition.
It's not a zero sum game - having sci-fi be more healthy and vibrant helps ALL games drawing on that genre. I will still be logging in here to have a more streamlined capital-ship based experience when I'm not exploring the far reaches of space in a heavy fighter/corvette-based game.
Wow, some here need to do research before they type. Granted Star Citizen has a couple of years at least until released but in its 2 year development it has artist driven procedurally generated tech that has been demonstrated. Not only does it work but it looks good. That tech will be in playable alpha by the end of the year.
More importantly, the Dev team actively talk to the community, they listen and respect the need for balance in the game. STO doesn't and that has ruined what would've been a great game.
If you read one of my comments on another thread you posted on a little while ago, you would know that the last time I played was last Friday for about 45mins and before that was February. I don't play STO on a regular basis now. I've given up. I was hopeful for a good couple of years that Geko would come to his senses and realise that PvP is an important part of STO, it brings in money and creates fun in a game with no end content, that alienating an entire faction is a stupid idea and deserves a revamp, that conflict between 2 factions creates more revenue and could lead to something like territory control. It could lead to even more revenue. I've given up now. There's no point.
I'll pop in every now and then to see how things are but until PvP is rebalanced, revamped and the KDF are given a revamp and attention (then they'll make the money they used to) I won't come back daily like I used to.
stripped off from all the pay2win magic stuff, and raw ship class/roles forcing peeps to work together
So you want to make the devs an cryptic see pvp as even less of a good investment choice? I mean admittedly minimizing the amount of power that a player can gain via the store is a good idea to keep pvp appealing to new an old players, as many times a lot of newer pvpers can feel put off by having no chance against an opponent. Yet completely stripping any degree of value out of buying something in the store, because it will not benefit you in pvp is just counter productive as than why should cryptic or the devs put resources into pvp at all. I do agree that the players that have played longer, and paid more should have a advantage over the purely free to play players, but the fact for me is how much of an advantage they should have.
I definitely think having more types of pvp match types, that make merely killing the other players secondary, but winning the match is more about other things you can do is a good idea. Example would be things like area capture maps, a capture the flag like mode (like attacking a flagship an escorting back to your main base), which shifts the objective a bit away from just destroying the enemy.
In many ways it does feel like the pvp system needs to be taken out of the game, and then rebuild from the ground up. With the idea of both balance in mind, but also keep it that buying items out of the c-store gives you an advantage without it being such a huge advantage that it imbalances the matches. Though as stated it is very unlikely going to happen, unless of course we see some really big interest in pvp happen, and calls from many players asking for it that shows such a undertaking would lead to a payoff in the end.
Star Citizen is to STO what Valiance Online is to CO - the Wonder Game that's gonna kill Cryptic for good, when one day all the vapor actually coalesces and a real game suddenly appears, handed down to us by the Gaming Gods...
I just noticed something I about Star Citizen I never caught before: the concept of ship insurance. Why is this a thing? Because you have to re-buy your ship if it is destroyed. That right there ends any desire I had whatsoever for ever giving that game a chance. I want no part of that mentality.
The insurance is a minor pay that you'll easily afford with ingame currency and it insures your cargo so if you're destroyed by pirates you don't loose your ship, the cargo you were hauling and the money you would've earned for doing the cargo run. It's a inhale currency sink like dilithium, ec, rep marks, etc... It's the only planned currency sink. STO has way more!
And if you don't have enough for that "minor pay," you cannot fly your own ship. Currency sinks are one thing, but losing access to something you've already bought is unacceptable. This has ended any interest I ever had in that game.
Comments
There are tons of ships and tons of different gear. So, how can PvP ever be balanced?
Easy, remove the variables, that being the different stats between ships and gear.
All PvE content would be disabled, that includes ship traits, captain traits and skills, duty officers, bridge officer traits, spec trees and reputation traits and abilities. All replaced by new PvP versions of the above mentioned. A new captain skill tree dedicated to PvP bound to ship with no zen respect cost, new PvP orientated gear, duty officers, bridge officers, PvP reputation and PvP spec tree.
What I mean is:
-PvP class system: All ships have a class, independently of its stats, a ship might be a cruiser, a dreadnought, a destroyer, etc. but each ship has individual stats. Get rid of individual ship stats, make all ships of the same class have the same stats during PvP. That way you don’t have to balance 350+ ships, just a handful of classes.
The classes are based on starship masteries:
Battle Cruiser
Cruiser
Destroyer & Warship
Dreadnought
Escort & Raptor
Escort Carrier & Flight-Deck Raptor
Flight Deck Cruiser
Raider
Science Vessel
Dreadnought Carrier
Engineering Carrier
Science Carrier
Engineering Warbird
Science Warbird
Science Carrier Warbird
Tactical Warbird
-PvP gear: Same as before, there are lots of different gear with different stats and modifiers. That problem can be solved with PvP exclusive ship gear, bridge officers, PvP captain, ship and reputation traits, PvP specializations, duty officers, devices, etc. The basic stuff should be available for energy credits, the more advanced stuff could require dilithium, PvP credits, competitive points or whatever, to purchase, upgrade and modify.
-PvP ship loadouts: To add some diversity and customization this is when loadouts make their appearance, in the form of specialization abilities, bridge officer seats and console slots. Your ship’s class and tier will determine a baseline for seats and consoles, but there should be a certain degree of customization, allowing to trade in some seats and console types for others. This also includes specialization seats.
There are up to 6 specialization seats you can distribute at will, the final number will depend on your ship’s class, the specialization type and how many different specializations you want to add.
Finally, you can choose which specialization abilities your ship will have. This is based on your specialization seating choice, if you picked only intelligence seats, then your ship will have the intel abilities, if you picked intel and command seats then you get to choose which of those two ability sets you want.
As a practical example:
A T6 escort’s baseline console setup could be 4 tactical 1 engineer 1 science and 5 universal slots. The 5 console type limit still applies, that means you can have a maximum of 5 tactical consoles for example.
A T6 escort’s baseline seating setup could be 1 commander tactical and 1 lieutenant engineer with 7 free seatings you can distribute, the limit of 1 commander and 5 bridge officers still applies, for this example that means you can either have 2 lieutenant commanders and 1 ensign or 1 lieutenant commander and 2 lieutenants.
So you can make the following escort:
5 tactical 3 engineer 3 science consoles. 1 commander tactical pilot 1 lieutenent engineer intel, 1 lieutenant commander tactical, 1 lieutenant commander science, 1 ensign engineer. Pilot abilities.
Someone else might do:
4 tactical 5 engineer 2 science. 1 commander tactical, 1lieutenant engineer command, 1 lieutenant commander tactical intel, 1 lieutenant science and 1 lieutenant tactical. Intel abilities.
There are tons of possibilities.
PvP battlegrounds, casual and competitive arena.
PvP battlegrounds: Similar to PvE battlegrounds, 2 teams, objectives like capture the flag, playload escort, attack-defend, king of the hill, map domination, etc. A place to have fun, test stuff and get some PvP credits. You can swap ships from your active ship roster in your respawn area.
Arena: The current maps we have now, Deathmatch, less players than battlegrounds and no respawning or a limited number of respawns. For example, you can pick up to 3 ships to queue and once you lose 1 you respawn with another one. Casual mode is for practice and fun, competitive awards competitive points to purchase, upgrade and modify gear.
[http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1223418/ship-pvp-revamp-idea]
Also, this game has ground PvP.... what would you do there?
My character Tsin'xing
Wait for Star Citizen, it's going to be 10x the game STO ever will be and no DPS loving, FAW wielding, space-barbie loving PvEr will touch it with a barge-pole because they are far too afraid of a game where something more intelligent than STO's AI on easy can beat them and their far to afraid of balance to even try it.
In what? 18-36 months until a complete and fully functional version is sold?
Enh.. maybe, maybe not.
Honestly I'm not expecting all that many people to run to starcitizen... it'd need to actually be good for that....
My character Tsin'xing
That's very true because pvp players made the game mechanics broken not the developers .
This will happen. Along about the time LoR and Delta hit Console. I'm saving my pocket change already. I'll need it to buy the massive amounts of popcorn and drink, that will be required for it.
I'm not a console player myself. Though having spent 11 years in the U.S. Army, I did get to hang out with quite a few console players. Their talk was split fairly evenly. Mostly about games that were coming out, games they had played, what one could do in those games, and pvp.
There is one aspect of PvP that hasn't been mentioned. And it's the one that is good for everyone involved. The Streamers. Most streamers don't stream PvE, they stream PvP. As STO is right now, the only thing that's really worth streaming is the working in the Foundry. Unless you want to stream PvE to show the rest of the world how boring the PvE pewpew is. But this just turns more people away from the game.
My character Tsin'xing
i think it really comes to down to a question of demand and possible profit to be made. and there console additions comes into play. if the pressure comes, if it grows big enough and if an estimated profit justifies the assignment of ressources, it may even come one day. for sure the former progression on pc made it more than unlikely for such pressure to come from there. also the question is how such assignments would be taken by the existing community. that we yet not have seperated forums f.e., not helps here i'd say.
so, however, i wouldn't bet on it either.
^2ned. one though keeps the right to stand by the cause i'd say. and even only to look by now and then and remind of better times in here. no matter it's stays a videogame and only ever has been like a passionated hobby. so, in the end.... what gives ;D...
1. A lot of STO players aren't gamers, they're Star Trek fans.
2. STO is ridiculously casual and some people still find it too hard.
3. Computer requirements.
Which is a shame because Star Citizen, when/if it comes out, will have exploration. What we can play is a portion of a star system (and that portion is huge), yet the emergent gameplay is really impressive.
As for STO's PvP, it's frankly screwed. All the speculating about what cryptic can do to fix it is a waste of time. Cryptics not interested. They neither have the time, the knowledge or desire to do anything with PvP. They had enough trouble just adding a PvP map, which they eventually had to cancel.
If they found adding a PvP map too much trouble, they aren't going to revamp PvP.
Anyway, it's less PvP that needs a fix than the whole game. The powercreep has gotten so bad the Crystalline Entity is dying in 10 seconds. One match it didn't even get a chance for a pulse. Mostly down to exotic particle attacks, rather than torpedo attacks.
I used to love PvP. I was addicted to it from the day the game was launched. My first time in the game I LEVELED in PvP, without playing a single mission after doomsday. It was fun, it was challenging and was the best endgame this game had. Oh there were silly overpowered abilities (most of which actually got fixed, rather than buffed), but overall PvP was somewhat sensible.
Now it's beyond saving.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
It's not a zero sum game - having sci-fi be more healthy and vibrant helps ALL games drawing on that genre. I will still be logging in here to have a more streamlined capital-ship based experience when I'm not exploring the far reaches of space in a heavy fighter/corvette-based game.
Joking of course. :P
stripped off from all the pay2win magic stuff, and raw ship class/roles forcing peeps to work together
And then they balance for em..
Granted Star Citizen has a couple of years at least until released but in its 2 year development it has artist driven procedurally generated tech that has been demonstrated. Not only does it work but it looks good. That tech will be in playable alpha by the end of the year.
More importantly, the Dev team actively talk to the community, they listen and respect the need for balance in the game. STO doesn't and that has ruined what would've been a great game.
I don't play STO on a regular basis now. I've given up. I was hopeful for a good couple of years that Geko would come to his senses and realise that PvP is an important part of STO, it brings in money and creates fun in a game with no end content, that alienating an entire faction is a stupid idea and deserves a revamp, that conflict between 2 factions creates more revenue and could lead to something like territory control.
It could lead to even more revenue.
I've given up now. There's no point.
I'll pop in every now and then to see how things are but until PvP is rebalanced, revamped and the KDF are given a revamp and attention (then they'll make the money they used to) I won't come back daily like I used to.
So you want to make the devs an cryptic see pvp as even less of a good investment choice? I mean admittedly minimizing the amount of power that a player can gain via the store is a good idea to keep pvp appealing to new an old players, as many times a lot of newer pvpers can feel put off by having no chance against an opponent. Yet completely stripping any degree of value out of buying something in the store, because it will not benefit you in pvp is just counter productive as than why should cryptic or the devs put resources into pvp at all. I do agree that the players that have played longer, and paid more should have a advantage over the purely free to play players, but the fact for me is how much of an advantage they should have.
I definitely think having more types of pvp match types, that make merely killing the other players secondary, but winning the match is more about other things you can do is a good idea. Example would be things like area capture maps, a capture the flag like mode (like attacking a flagship an escorting back to your main base), which shifts the objective a bit away from just destroying the enemy.
In many ways it does feel like the pvp system needs to be taken out of the game, and then rebuild from the ground up. With the idea of both balance in mind, but also keep it that buying items out of the c-store gives you an advantage without it being such a huge advantage that it imbalances the matches. Though as stated it is very unlikely going to happen, unless of course we see some really big interest in pvp happen, and calls from many players asking for it that shows such a undertaking would lead to a payoff in the end.
I just noticed something I about Star Citizen I never caught before: the concept of ship insurance. Why is this a thing? Because you have to re-buy your ship if it is destroyed. That right there ends any desire I had whatsoever for ever giving that game a chance. I want no part of that mentality.
It's the only planned currency sink. STO has way more!