Pve Queues, Am I the Only One???

dinkydr2

T5U Ship mk 13 and 14 gear, Fed if it matters, lvl 60+10. Just participated in Borg alert -normal. It was over in less than 3 mins-but, I got my marks.

Went to run Tholian alert, It was completed by 4 Ships not including mine, in under 2 minutes-no marks-not enough damage- well I guess not when "1" ship took out 15 enemy ships. My Question is: Shouldn't these people be required to run this in Advanced??? I've been playing for Four years and never, never, saw such ridiculous OP.

Please don't say Fleet consoles, 5 of my characters got shafted by CR@##$ fleets.

evilmark444

When you get into a red alert or a CCA immediately point your ship at the closest enemies, hit full impulse, click FAW, and mash space bar and you'll at least get your marks.

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risian4

Power creep is a real issue in the game, certainly since the skill revamp.

In this case I would say the problem is with the content though - these Red Alerts are quite old and indeed, there is only normal difficulty for them.

It is therefore not surprising that the content doesn't really fit the current state of the game and the players' power.

dinkydr2

coldnapalm wrote: »

There is no advanced tholian red alerts...and how did you get an AFK penalty for those?!? I tested em a while back being ACTUALLY AFK and it still gave me rewards. For normal queue...yeah I agree they shouldn't be there...but red alerts have one difficulty setting. And we play them because they are one of the faster popping queues...and their dil rewards is stupid crazy good...and the mark option ain't bad either.

I have no idea, bad server connection? i'm LTS, so it should be good?

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meimeitoo

Patrols don't give you an AFK Penalty. Period.

And there's no Tholian Advanced queue. But, in general, I wouldn't be opposed to introducing a system which would bar people from doing queued PUG missions on Normal when they do like 51% of the Team damage (and then consistently, like at least 3 times). At that time, the system ought to lock you out from Normals. And the same for Advanced -> Elites, of course.

Problem with such an approach of course is, that you might wind up being screwed if you're unfortunate enough to have queued with a team of people who all only do like 10K: then you'd get barred from Normals unfairly. Which is why the 'easy' solutions rarely really work.

warpangel

"These people" were happy doing the alerts solo before Cryptic changed it to require we queue up for a full team.

Complain to Cryptic, they deserve it.

lucho80

The problem is that red alerts are now PvE queues, and Red alerts are even easier than a normal Borg or CE PvE. On one hand, it fixes the problem if "every man for himself" where sometimes one person would get 90% or more of the XP by blowing everything up himself since teaming up wasn't mandatory. On the other hand, people with insane DPS can pretty much scr#w the rest of the team over if they don't push their ship up to enemies immediately and smash that space bar. Making one person get an AFK penalty in these cases sucks for the person that gets hit with it as they didn't do anything wrong except get randomly teamed up with Mr. DPS.

ssbn655

dinkydr2 wrote: »

T5U Ship mk 13 and 14 gear, Fed if it matters, lvl 60+10. Just participated in Borg alert -normal. It was over in less than 3 mins-but, I got my marks.

Went to run Tholian alert, It was completed by 4 Ships not including mine, in under 2 minutes-no marks-not enough damage- well I guess not when "1" ship took out 15 enemy ships. My Question is: Shouldn't these people be required to run this in Advanced??? I've been playing for Four years and never, never, saw such ridiculous OP.

Please don't say Fleet consoles, 5 of my characters got shafted by CR@##$ fleets.

Oh one of these special snowflake rants ...Yeah force folks into a different quque yeah watch how fast the game collapses. Second big hint upgrade upgrade upgrade. And hey to bad you got the shaft on some fleets but that is no reason to be so negative about fleet gear. Besides that a good percentage is out sahdowed by crafted and lock box nowadays.

ssbn655

meimeitoo wrote: »

Patrols don't give you an AFK Penalty. Period.

And there's no Tholian Advanced queue. But, in general, I wouldn't be opposed to introducing a system which would bar people from doing queued PUG missions on Normal when they do like 51% of the Team damage (and then consistently, like at least 3 times). At that time, the system ought to lock you out from Normals. And the same for Advanced -> Elites, of course.

Problem with such an approach of course is, that you might wind up being screwed if you're unfortunate enough to have queued with a team of people who all only do like 10K: then you'd get barred from Normals unfairly. Which is why the 'easy' solutions rarely really work.

So throw a penalty on folks that take the time and effort to build decent ships but on occasion run normals for quick rep points all because special snowflakes get upset? Wow what a brillant idea to shaft the players who more then likely spend boat loads of real money in the game. Oh yes sometimes players just don't have the time due to being on lunch break but want a quick and nasty smash and grab instead of waiting for a decent group in an advanced or elite. Have you even looked at the pve quques?

seaofsorrows

warpangel wrote: »

"These people" were happy doing the alerts solo before Cryptic changed it to require we queue up for a full team.

Complain to Cryptic, they deserve it.

Bingo!

If I could do Red Alerts solo, I absolutely would. Since I can't though, I have to do the same alerts as everyone else. Yeah, I'm one of those guys that destroys a cube before I'm even fully decloaked, and sometimes other players get annoyed. If I could run a harder one or solo it, I absolutely would. I do sometimes try and pull back though to make sure people can get some kills. There is no AFK penalty for Red Alerts though, so sounds like you got a weird bug or something.

asuran14

Issue with mandatory difficulty blocking, where once you meet certain levels of gear ro dps it will bar you from certain difficulties, is that it would splinter the population. This would make certain difficulty levels of the ques become even harder to have pop as you see players pushed out of them by their gear or dps score. Might sound weird to suggest it, but in some ways it might be better to implement a system of performance capping, or performance scaling that syncs the players a bit closer (like trying to keep everyone within 10-15% of each other in performance.). Both of these though I don't think would be done unless something changed with how things have been done.

alcyoneserene

Leveling my 2 newest alts (rom engi kdf-aligned) using Red Alerts proved to be well tuned for it, and a lot of fun. We had plenty of failures since there wasn't enough DPS to go around or enough tankiness and heals. A few times we finished literally with 2 seconds on the clock, at other times we needed only a few more seconds. That's using MK10 VR crafted gear, a few good traits like the engineering career space power boosters, and tank-heavy boff loadouts to be able to at least tank and even heal.

I really don't want to be cut off from having access to the Borg, Tholian, and even Nakuhl STFs, but at the same time, yes, power creep and min-maxing that is allowed so much leeway does turn these from active participating to watching a cut-scene of everything being vaporized, whether its us doing this or not.

dinkydr2

Well thank you for all the responses, much appreciated. It appears my mouse was flaking out and didn't let me know about it.
Since I went LTS I am spending oodles more money than I ever did before.

P.S. should I get in a fleet that's just starting out, or one that's been around awhile?
The one I had the bad experience with was only a month old. Almost started from the ground up. No, I won't name and shame them, but I had five characters donating everyday. No, I didn't hear a "whisper" and no written warning. I don't have Teamspeak running correctly yet. I only started with fleets about a month ago.

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theanothername

To those who constantly claim there is no AFK penalty in red alerts: test it; its easy: do nothing. It is there. I got one in a Borg RA; had a slight fight with the controls of a rarely used char/ship but that was enough to not being able to catch up. The potential damage would have been enough, just was no chance to apply it; even the unimatrix got slapped just in seconds.

That was only a one time occasion; not a big deal for me but it tells me that this is a problem for less experienced players and count that double if they like me sacrifice, or plain do not bother with, OP stuff and just happy to get most out of the "canon trek feeling" ship (ie. Galaxy with Phasers and Torp front and back).

Kudos to seaofsorrows for occasionally restraining yourself and letting other shot some stuff before going into it yourself.

meimeitoo

ssbn655 wrote: »

meimeitoo wrote: »

Patrols don't give you an AFK Penalty. Period.

And there's no Tholian Advanced queue. But, in general, I wouldn't be opposed to introducing a system which would bar people from doing queued PUG missions on Normal when they do like 51% of the Team damage (and then consistently, like at least 3 times). At that time, the system ought to lock you out from Normals. And the same for Advanced -> Elites, of course.

Problem with such an approach of course is, that you might wind up being screwed if you're unfortunate enough to have queued with a team of people who all only do like 10K: then you'd get barred from Normals unfairly. Which is why the 'easy' solutions rarely really work.

So throw a penalty on folks that take the time and effort to build decent ships but on occasion run normals for quick rep points all because special snowflakes get upset? Wow what a brillant idea to shaft the players who more then likely spend boat loads of real money in the game. Oh yes sometimes players just don't have the time due to being on lunch break but want a quick and nasty smash and grab instead of waiting for a decent group in an advanced or elite. Have you even looked at the pve quques?

Sigh. You really didn't get my post at all, did you?! LOL. My point was to come up with an 'easy' solution, and then show, in the next paragraph, just giving a single objection, why the typical, so-called 'easy-solutions' don't work.

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theanothername

coldnapalm wrote: »

theanothername wrote: »

To those who constantly claim there is no AFK penalty in red alerts: test it; its easy: do nothing. It is there. I got one in a Borg RA; had a slight fight with the controls of a rarely used char/ship but that was enough to not being able to catch up. The potential damage would have been enough, just was no chance to apply it; even the unimatrix got slapped just in seconds.

That was only a one time occasion; not a big deal for me but it tells me that this is a problem for less experienced players and count that double if they like me sacrifice, or plain do not bother with, OP stuff and just happy to get most out of the "canon trek feeling" ship (ie. Galaxy with Phasers and Torp front and back).

Kudos to seaofsorrows for occasionally restraining yourself and letting other shot some stuff before going into it yourself.

I did. I cloaked and did nothing else. So unless cloaking counts as DPS...there is no AFK penalty unless they changed it recently.

Maybe its different with Tholian. As said, had it only once and that was in the BA. I still got the initial Omega marks reward; just not the secondary where you can choose marks. I only found out about the penalty when I tried to join the TA right after that.

peterconnorfirst

dinkydr2 wrote: »

Please don't say Fleet consoles, 5 of my characters got shafted by CR@##$ fleets.

Sorry to say it but while fleet stuff is not the only gear in game leading to OPness it certainly is a solid part of it.

- Embassy Sci consoles
- Superior Romulan Operatives for fed/kdf
- Spire Tac consoles
- Active doff slots
- Passive reputation power slots
- 5th active reputation power slot
- 5th ship trait slot
- Weekly performance boost projects
- Superior Traits

You are always welcome to join my fleet. No needs to socialize with anything or anybody there but if you do please be polite.

protoneous

dinkydr2 wrote: »

I've been playing for Four years and never, never, saw such ridiculous OP.

Was just pondering the wide damage (dps) variance between players last night. 2k to almost 200K in the same queue after playing it twice.

Can't really fault the players for being good at what they do. If you do get with an OP group you shouldn't get the afk penalty as long as you shoot at something. Never had one even with groups that finish queues that used to take minutes in seconds. Don't dilly-dally.

dinkydr2 wrote: »

It appears my mouse was flaking out and didn't let me know about it.

e30ernest

If it wasn't already being checked, I think the AFK Penalty system should be expanded to check if at least one of the following are achieved:

• 1% of team damage
• 1% of enemy attacks-in to the team
• 1% of enemy damage dealt towards the team
• 1% of total team heals

IMO 1 of any of the above should be enough not to qualify you as AFK. That way if you couldn't deal enough damage, then at least you can catch up by healing, or by taking enemy fire.

For example, in my last ISA parsed run, someone only dealt 0.48% of the team damage which may or may not have given him an AFK penalty. However, he also got 3.1% of all enemy attacks in, and he also healed the most of anyone in the team. Under the above system, he wouldn't get an AFK.

warpangel

e30ernest wrote: »

If it wasn't already being checked, I think the AFK Penalty system should be expanded to check if at least one of the following are achieved:

• 1% of team damage
• 1% of enemy attacks-in to the team
• 1% of enemy damage dealt towards the team
• 1% of total team heals

IMO 1 of any of the above should be enough not to qualify you as AFK. That way if you couldn't deal enough damage, then at least you can catch up by healing, or by taking enemy fire.

For example, in my last ISA parsed run, someone only dealt 0.48% of the team damage which may or may not have given him an AFK penalty. However, he also got 3.1% of all enemy attacks in, and he also healed the most of anyone in the team. Under the above system, he wouldn't get an AFK.

An "AFK penalty" should only be given for being AFK. For not playing the game at all. Nothing at all should "qualify" someone as AFK, if they were honestly trying their best. The way the AFK penalty is currently implemented is a farce in every possible way.

Whether there should be a "you suck penalty" for being totally useless in a mission despite actively playing, may be up for debate (though I wouldn't expect the devs to warm up to that idea), but it should never be called an AFK penalty.

feiqa

Personally an AFK penalty should be only for what Coldnapalm experimented with. Sitting there doing nothing. Full penalties.

But damage dealt. I a pretty sure many here will say it is not hard at all to get to 60 with doffing and story missions. So you never need to see real damage output.
So why not a measure that parses all the players. If the top of the pack was 30% or better than 2nd in the pack. Don't count him for averaging the damage. That way one OP player dropped into a Pug does not hurt players that tried. But it should also give you rankings so you can see where your performance is. So if you only did 2% of the damage and were in last place. You might be given a hint to try a little harder.

carcosa

I'm happy with the game the way it is.

dinkydr2

feiqa wrote: »

Personally an AFK penalty should be only for what Coldnapalm experimented with. Sitting there doing nothing. Full penalties.

But damage dealt. I a pretty sure many here will say it is not hard at all to get to 60 with doffing and story missions. So you never need to see real damage output.
So why not a measure that parses all the players. If the top of the pack was 30% or better than 2nd in the pack. Don't count him for averaging the damage. That way one OP player dropped into a Pug does not hurt players that tried. But it should also give you rankings so you can see where your performance is. So if you only did 2% of the damage and were in last place. You might be given a hint to try a little harder.

Like the sort of system they have in "Neverwinter". When you're finished with a PVE ....there is a status screen at the end- that shows who did what- Damage, Heals, Enemy's destroyed, How many times you were healed. It is very helpful to be able to tell where you stood in comparison to others.
if and how you did.

echatty

Sometimes I'll do a combat log just to see where I stood in a queue. My DPS is nothing to brag about but I do get to the mobs before they're destroyed and get my shots in.

Mostly I just do the logs to see where I can improve. I have enough to get through content, nothing to compare to the mega-dpsers.

xyquarze

warpangel wrote: »

"These people" were happy doing the alerts solo before Cryptic changed it to require we queue up for a full team.

Thing is, I was able to solo both of them, at least on my most developed toons. It wasn't a blastfest in thirty seconds or even two minutes, but I could do it. Depending on whether I was in it for the marks or for the exp I liked it more - I always had fun doing that though.

Still, some queues I feel (I am not running DPS-o-meters, so no hard data) like I am contributing basically nothing. I seem to always get my 1%, never got an AFK, even with the worst lags, except for the "1h offline" after leaving a Tzenkethi without dreadnought the other day. Still, it is kind of less fun.

I don't blame the players, though. Everybody will try their best, and for some that is way more than for others, but why should they hold back artificially?

What gets overlooked IMO in the "power creep debate" is not so much consoles and items, but player skill. Not the setup skill - many gather their ideas from reddit or whathaveyou and will have decent enough builds, although often not tailored to them and misunderstanding why some deviate. Actual player skill. A lot of extra high DPS depends not so much on plain stats but on the ability to know in which situation you should use what skill, how to maximize synergies, which skills to "keep on rotation" an which to hold back for when they're needed, combined with monitoring the battlefield and your ship status. Heck, even flying a ship so that it is in a good position is not done equally by everybody. And let's not start about "tracking the actual mission goal" - easy in Tholian, less so in quite a few queues.

And while it may occasionally be fun for a sunday side to play a pro team, in the long run it isn't. (And there's a looong stretch of capability inbetween, which wouldn't enjoy either opponent that much). See me play ground and laugh your <censored> off how I fail to do anything useful with all the nice gadgets I have. And this kind of skill difference will remain, no matter how much you can curtail the power creep in items - even with identical setups some players will always outdo others, and that gap only widens the more options you get.

And this could never be addressed by any gear checks, only by tracking player progress in some matter. Which probably wouldn't be easy, which probably would be abusable, which probably would rile both players thinking they are "playing too high" as well as "too low".

mirrorterran

Want to instantly solve this problem? Get rid of the whole private queue system. People are constantly leaving the game thinking it's dead because all the public queue's are empty. Heaven forbid all the dps'ers have to play the game with the rest of the unwashed masses. It would improve the quality of the game for everyone, and maybe, just maybe, we could get the 20 player maps going again. At that point, no one would give a damn about the stupid red alerts.