[...] if u klick at the middle link of my signature you find that those players you often see at the top of the DPS leader boards are capable of much more than DPS.
Excellent. Then they won't be bothered by a serious DPS nerf. I know I won't, even on those characters that made medium investements into it.
Finally we agree with each other. If they cut back the power in a dimension you propose the DPSer are unlikely to have a problem.
Only those who populate the queues do. If they are good enough they may play in the DPS channels, if not they will likely pursue other activity besides teamed PvE.
In case you haven’t noticed, maps that take 15 minutes and which have a fair chance of failing get labeled - : - under number of peeps in queue. We have plenty of those. Make ISA and CCA like them and they get - : - as well.
Right now DPS is optional if you wish to play ISA and CCA, then it’s not.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
There are ways to cut the extremes without hurting the average. The devs certainly have several options in mind. After all, they can do it with damage resistance, so they could just as well do it with damage. Just for another possible solution out of the many they will have come up with in brainstorming sessions.
Your childlike faith in the devs is cute, but likely unfounded.
There is not going to be any extreme damage nerf. They're limiting the stacking of certain powers so they can keep selling ever more of them without eventually making players 100% invincible. Basically the same as the rep traits nerf of 2014, done so that they could keep adding an indefinite number of reps.
And there is not going to be any meaningful challenge added either. Delta Rising was the only instance the game ever got a difficulty increase and Cryptic was obviously discouraged by the endless whining about it, because they've constantly been making everything easier ever since. Reducing enemy stats and removing fail conditions, despite the player power curve clearly demanding the opposite.
The present problems are not caused by that class imbalance. The 200k dps engineer is just as annoying and fun-stealing to a PUG as the 500k dps tac.
You can't peg a 500k DPS Tactical down to reasonable levels without severely gimping Engineers unless you address class balance too.
Sure one can. A simple way, for instance, would be to just say "when you have done 30k damage in a given second, no matter what you do, you will not do any more damage in that second".
But that's just a crude example, of course. Simply preventing multiple DoT effects to stack (or establish diminishing returns on them) would do wonder. As would changes to the way damage resistance debuffs stack. And so on.
A DPS cap of 30K would mostly just shift the kinds of ships people fly. 30K of antiproton damage is not the same as 30K of exotic damage. If you have to destroy the shields before the hull but I can ignore the shields and go right to the hull I will kill faster even at the same DPS. If you put in a hard dps cap you will favor exotic damage torpedo boats and drain boats. A drain boat can trivially hit 30K and keep a tac cube shut down indefinitely. You then have the same situation as the exotic damage ship where the enemies are sitting without shields, weapons, engines and you are hitting them straight to the hull. I would expect one of the most popular weapons to end up being the dominion polaron weapons.
Even now if you compare an antiproton ship that does 500K dps and an exotic damage ship at 200K dps the kill speeds are pretty similar. Based on the last parse I did my weapons ignore about 99.9% of shields.
Also: the reason so many great queues are dead is exactly because of the DPS FREAKS.
Now players only sign up to the queues that give the best reward for the least work and who is leading this reign of Ferengi like cheap opportunism?... The DPS FREAKS & their monster friends- THATS WHO!
If all queues had a cap on dps then some of our fav beautiful queues will come alive such as breaking the planet or the mine mission or even starbase 24!
Why? - because once dps is no longer an issue & enemies arent so hard to kill (if youre under 50k dps) the waves of followers will disban and even dps freaks will lose interest in getting the most first for the least work. The dynamics will switch back to focusing on team work and making friends and enjoying the essence of the actual mission!
Cryptic: take my advice on this and ignore the whimpers of the spoiled power hungry egotistical gamers who care less for trek than they do appearing all mighty... I for one wont be sad to see DPS freaks leave the game and move on to hack another mmo. This is star trek... The very core of it is about team work. Dpsers specifically & unapologetically are antithetical to treks core values.
(notice my tongue and cheek above. Everyone has their own playstyle but public queues should still have a dps cap because the point of public queues is to experience team play. Sorry for dpsers who are gonna have to show off in other ways such as private pvp matches.)
Also: the reason so many great queues are dead is exactly because of the DPS FREAKS.
Now players only sign up to the queues that give the best reward for the least work and who is leading this reign of Ferengi like cheap opportunism?... The DPS FREAKS & their monster friends- THATS WHO!
If all queues had a cap on dps then some of our fav beautiful queues will come alive such as breaking the planet or the mine mission or even starbase 24!
I don't think nerfing people will get the queues played. Many of the older players mostly just have nothing to play for anymore. There is no real endgame. If you notice most of the newer queues are time gated and more dps does not really help that much. Even if you have a team where everyone does 200K+ you don't cut that much time off most missions, instead you just sit around.
I think the game needs a reincarnation system. You can get to the level cap, complete a quest for Q and start back over at the beginning with a different class, race, side etc and you would keep something from your previous life. Maybe you should choose to keep a single captain power each time or something. The point is for something to do once you are basically maxed out since there is very little else to do.
If Cryptic had unlimited money they could hire so many devs that they could pump out new content weekly, alas they do not.
All mmo's suffer the end-game cunundrum.
My solution for this is to go back and update/add more timeless elements. Sto originally promised to give players homes. In elder scrolls online you can buy mansions and huts. In STO we were to make our ship a home. The resson it failed is because theres nothin to do onboard. See my thread on interiors for amazing ideas.
Theres also the foundry (which needs to be a little more customizable).
Ultimately those of us who get to end game have to take breaks and wait for new content. One of my personal fav past times is to recruit my friends to join sto and create a new toon to play with them. I also hunt down newbs and give them awesome gear or 2 mil energy credits "just cuz*
Meanwhile I fly along in my gorgeous little intrepid shooting my authentic amber federation phasers, and I cant make a dent in the enemy shields!?
Last night i went up against a mesely zenkethi frigate with a FLEET HEAVY CRUISER EXCELSIOR decked out completely with epic level phasers and fleet phaser modules also at epic and red matter capacitor etc etc and it took 10 minutes for me to break them!!!!!!!!
Oh boy, what I just read there hurt my head much more than...
DPS FREAKS
Most DPSers are barely trek fans.
the screams of outrage by self righteous dpsers
...hurt my feelings!
Neither canon builds nor canon ships are a reason for being that bad. As trek fan shouldn’t there be some tiny urge in you to get better and improve? As a start you could consider setting weapons power to 100% during combat situations captain.
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Lol omg!!! I was trying to be funny and play along with the attitude DPSers always give when they boast via juxtaposition. I specifically pointed out my tongue and cheek and acknowledged playstyle! Hahaha. Sorry dont take me seriously.
But truly, a nerf/cap on public queues is not unreasonable imo. Sure that cap can allow for some advantage to those who worked hard but there need be a range that allows for everyone in the queue to deal effectively.
The point missed here is: queues are about team work. It should be more about each of the 5 players knowing and doing their specific part effectively. By not capping dps in public queues we lost the dynamic & essence of the missions.
Of course now that the "damage is done" (hue hue hue dpsers will cry for realz if we get a cap... Its a dilly of a pickle indeed!
Some suffer much worse than others though. In ESO you have the champion point system that applies to all of your other characters, you do have a lot of end game dungeons and other stuff to do and lets be honest ESO has VASTLY more content than STO does. ESO is also open world and level scaled so level 50 with 400 champion points are seen playing side by side with level 10 characters all over the game. STO does not really have open areas like that.
Dungeon and Dragons Online tackles the problem another way by allowing you to reincarnate and keep a permanent buff for each class you have played up to the level cap and you get a little stronger each time.
EQ1 and EQ2 have a ridiculous amount of content and the alternate advancement system. Hitting the level cap in those games is barely the beginning.
One of the things I have always wanted to STO is an exploration and colonization system. Where you could explore an area, go to a planet, survey it, create a colony and run it like a 4x strategy game where you could upgrade various aspects of it. Make large tech trees where your could have a colony focused on mining, science, money etc. People could even put those trade ships to use by running as traders between systems. You could also add a massive number of skills very easily that are all designed for colony management.
The whole system would be based on random seeds and once you scouted a system you could name it and it would go in as a system that others could visit. From time to time disasters would happen and you would need to help your colony.
Lol omg!!! I was trying to be funny and play along with the attitude DPSers always give when they boast via juxtaposition. I specifically pointed out my tongue and cheek and acknowledged playstyle! Hahaha. Sorry dont take me seriously.
But truly, a nerf/cap on public queues is not unreasonable imo.
Sure that cap can allow for some advantage to those who worked hard but there need be a range that allows for everyone in the queue to deal effectively.
The point missed here is: queues are about team work. It should be more about each of the 5 players knowing and doing their specific part effectively. By not capping dps in public queues we lost the dynamic & essence of the missions.
Of course now that the "damage is done" (hue hue hue dpsers will cry for realz if we get a cap... Its a dilly of a pickle indeed!
*pets his dps friends on the shoulder*
No prob bro, I rather have peeps mad than bad in STO.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
2 things tho: get ready to be trolled for even hinting at STO becoming a "sandbox" For some reason some players hate when sandboxesque suggestions are made.
Also: starfleet captains werent in charge of creating and managing colonies (especially not personal ones.) Not to dismiss your great idea- but it doesnt fit in Star Trek.
While colonies existed: trek treats them like *frontier towns* in old western movies... The federation council grants permission to citizen groups who petition to leave the federation & start their own world .. Starfleet captains would occasionally be given orders to visit said colonies once every few decades or if a humanitarian aid mission was required (in the event of a disaster as you pointed out.)
The federation agrees to leave colonies alone and subjects them to the prime directive (for the most part), which is to not interfere in their progress...
Essentially your idea here could be worked in to fleet starbase mechanics. Starfleet does have planetary starbases.since your solution is geared to end-game enrichment, its reasonable only fleet admirals could form a planet side starbase and all your ideas could be implemented there.
Also: the reason so many great queues are dead is exactly because of the DPS FREAKS.
Wrong. The only reason most of the queues are dead is because a few fast easy ones give disproportionately higher rewards per time and effort invested.
Also: the reason so many great queues are dead is exactly because of the DPS FREAKS.
Wrong. The only reason most of the queues are dead is because a few fast easy ones give disproportionately higher rewards per time and effort invested.
So far though the approach seems to be to try and nerf those queues so people don't play them as much. Instead what happens is fewer people play queues at all and go find something else to do.
Also: the reason so many great queues are dead is exactly because of the DPS FREAKS.
Wrong. The only reason most of the queues are dead is because a few fast easy ones give disproportionately higher rewards per time and effort invested.
So far though the approach seems to be to try and nerf those queues so people don't play them as much. Instead what happens is fewer people play queues at all and go find something else to do.
No such thing has happened. Only thing they've done to ISA/CCA is make them easier so people focus on them even more.
Meanwhile new queues basically all have timers and such that ensure they take at least 5-10x longer, without giving any higher rewards in return. So naturally nobody plays them.
Also: the reason so many great queues are dead is exactly because of the DPS FREAKS.
Wrong. The only reason most of the queues are dead is because a few fast easy ones give disproportionately higher rewards per time and effort invested.
So far though the approach seems to be to try and nerf those queues so people don't play them as much. Instead what happens is fewer people play queues at all and go find something else to do.
No such thing has happened. Only thing they've done to ISA/CCA is make them easier so people focus on them even more.
Meanwhile new queues basically all have timers and such that ensure they take at least 5-10x longer, without giving any higher rewards in return. So naturally nobody plays them.
Pretty much. That’s why I’m so skeptical.
A mission with a fixed duration is basically the hard cap to DPS the OP is asking for.
Nobody plays those maps! Those who don’t have enough DPS fail them and don’t play them again. Those who do have enough DPS don’t play them because it simply does not matter that they do.
I get some fun out of them if I go in with mixed teams when I don’t have anything better to do but there are not many like me around in game. I can’t blame anybody for that. He who works for his builds wants better reward perspectives than offered there and he who wants to test his capabilities does not want a preset timer hard capping his performance.
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It was delta rising's hard fails that did murderous violence to public queues by making it impossible to do them with PUGs.
Yup! And if Cryptic isn't careful with the changes, it might go back to that. Some changes are needed, but it shouldn't go too far. The queues are in a precarious state as it is. It's only now that many of them are PUGgable by the many.
Considering with how many ideas (ehm, examples!) you come up with to change the game you are playing to your advantage instead of simply becoming good at it yourself it’s basically hilarious.
The present problems are not caused by that class imbalance. The 200k dps engineer is just as annoying and fun-stealing to a PUG as the 500k dps tac.
You can't peg a 500k DPS Tactical down to reasonable levels without severely gimping Engineers unless you address class balance too.
Sure one can. A simple way, for instance, would be to just say "when you have done 30k damage in a given second, no matter what you do, you will not do any more damage in that second".
But that's just a crude example, of course. Simply preventing multiple DoT effects to stack (or establish diminishing returns on them) would do wonder. As would changes to the way damage resistance debuffs stack. And so on.
A DPS cap of 30K would mostly just shift the kinds of ships people fly.
I would stop you right here, before you try to even think about that further:
Is anyone aware of any computer game, or any MMO, that has an actual DPS cap?
It's a TRIBBLE idea, and it doesn't get less TRIBBLE the more often someone brings it up. Just put in the pile of ideas that won't happen. Imagine the completely unintuitive gameplay when you suddenly stop dealing damage despite firing off powers and weapons just because the DPS meter deemed you being too efficient. That is not something that would actually fly with anyone. It would decouple actions you take in the game from their effect. You could as well program the game that enemies explode after a fixed amount of time, regardless of what players are doing. That would be "balanced" in some sense, but obviously completely unfun. It's not a game anymore, it's a movie.
The ultimate goal of balancing things will have to be to make the differences in effectiveness smaller, that will require buffs and nerfs, but it will probably also require looking at the complex interactions involved.
BFAw on its own for example isn't that powerful. It only becomes powerful when you add stuff like reduced weapon power drain, overcapping, procs from abilities like the Embassy console, high energy transfer rate and things like that.
Diminishing returns on damage, by renaming what is now "damage" (when it hits the actual target's hitpoints) into "damage rating", and apply a formula similar to the one for damage resistance, with a properly selected asymptote so that effectively, DPS beyond 30k gets harder and harder to achieve.
Remove the diminishing returns from armor and the shield resistance cap
This also seems to be betray a misconception about what diminishing returns mean.
Removing diminishing returns from armor or shield resistance is also a non-solution. The thing that many people that see dimimishing returns for armor or shield resistnace as unfair don't understand is that damage reduction is not symmetric to a damage buff. I give you a simple set of examles:
Imagine you had 100 hit points. If someone deals 100 damage to you, you die.
If you had 10 % damage reduction, someone would need to deal 111 damage to kill you.
If you had 80 % damage reduction, someone would need to deal 500 damage to kill you.
If you add 10 % damage reduction to the 80 % damage reduction, someone would need to deal 1000 damage to kill you
If you add 10 % damage reduction to the 90 % damage reduction, you can't be killed at all!
The more damage reduction you have, the more value each point has. Diminishing returns exist to avoid that!
Contrast that with damage buffs.
If you have buffs in one category:
You try to kill someone that has 100 hit points. You deal 10 DPS normally, so you need 10 seconds to kill them.
If you have a 100 % damage buff, you need 5 seconds.
If you have a 200 % damage buff, you need ~3.33 seconds.
If you have a 1,000% damage buff, you would need 1 second.
Damage buffs already have diminishing returns built in, the first 100 % spared you 5 seconds, the second 100 % brought you only 1.67 seconds, respectively another 900 % where needed to get just 4 seconds.
That is also the reason basically why some DPSler trying to use only Mark II items ended up with relatively small reduction in overall DPS - the total of damage multiplier is really big already, so losing the mark component of damage buffs is not a big effect anymore.
The only non-diminishing returns for damage buffs are the different damage categories the game has, since these add multiplicatively and are thus not subject to diminishing returns. If you add 100 % damage and add 100 % damage on that, it's the same as if you had gotten a 400 % damage buff of the first category (10 DPS turned into 40 DPS, so a 100 hit point foe would die in 2.5 instead of 10 seconds. But Cryptic has those category multipliers under very tight control.
and give NPC's lots of those.
This is the same as giving them more hit points, unless you make the resistance conditional. I think giving NPCs more active abilities that buff them would be nice, it makes at least Subnucleonic Beam and Wave more useful in PvE. That could help the Tac/Sci imbalance, but won't do all that much in total.
Post edited by mustrumridcully0 on
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Finally we agree with each other. If they cut back the power in a dimension you propose the DPSer are unlikely to have a problem.
Only those who populate the queues do. If they are good enough they may play in the DPS channels, if not they will likely pursue other activity besides teamed PvE.
In case you haven’t noticed, maps that take 15 minutes and which have a fair chance of failing get labeled - : - under number of peeps in queue. We have plenty of those. Make ISA and CCA like them and they get - : - as well.
Right now DPS is optional if you wish to play ISA and CCA, then it’s not.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
There is not going to be any extreme damage nerf. They're limiting the stacking of certain powers so they can keep selling ever more of them without eventually making players 100% invincible. Basically the same as the rep traits nerf of 2014, done so that they could keep adding an indefinite number of reps.
And there is not going to be any meaningful challenge added either. Delta Rising was the only instance the game ever got a difficulty increase and Cryptic was obviously discouraged by the endless whining about it, because they've constantly been making everything easier ever since. Reducing enemy stats and removing fail conditions, despite the player power curve clearly demanding the opposite.
Personally, I can't find myself to be too optimistic about the idea of Cryptic shooting their business model in the foot.
A DPS cap of 30K would mostly just shift the kinds of ships people fly. 30K of antiproton damage is not the same as 30K of exotic damage. If you have to destroy the shields before the hull but I can ignore the shields and go right to the hull I will kill faster even at the same DPS. If you put in a hard dps cap you will favor exotic damage torpedo boats and drain boats. A drain boat can trivially hit 30K and keep a tac cube shut down indefinitely. You then have the same situation as the exotic damage ship where the enemies are sitting without shields, weapons, engines and you are hitting them straight to the hull. I would expect one of the most popular weapons to end up being the dominion polaron weapons.
Even now if you compare an antiproton ship that does 500K dps and an exotic damage ship at 200K dps the kill speeds are pretty similar. Based on the last parse I did my weapons ignore about 99.9% of shields.
Now players only sign up to the queues that give the best reward for the least work and who is leading this reign of Ferengi like cheap opportunism?... The DPS FREAKS & their monster friends- THATS WHO!
If all queues had a cap on dps then some of our fav beautiful queues will come alive such as breaking the planet or the mine mission or even starbase 24!
Why? - because once dps is no longer an issue & enemies arent so hard to kill (if youre under 50k dps) the waves of followers will disban and even dps freaks will lose interest in getting the most first for the least work.
The dynamics will switch back to focusing on team work and making friends and enjoying the essence of the actual mission!
Cryptic: take my advice on this and ignore the whimpers of the spoiled power hungry egotistical gamers who care less for trek than they do appearing all mighty... I for one wont be sad to see DPS freaks leave the game and move on to hack another mmo. This is star trek... The very core of it is about team work. Dpsers specifically & unapologetically are antithetical to treks core values.
I don't think nerfing people will get the queues played. Many of the older players mostly just have nothing to play for anymore. There is no real endgame. If you notice most of the newer queues are time gated and more dps does not really help that much. Even if you have a team where everyone does 200K+ you don't cut that much time off most missions, instead you just sit around.
I think the game needs a reincarnation system. You can get to the level cap, complete a quest for Q and start back over at the beginning with a different class, race, side etc and you would keep something from your previous life. Maybe you should choose to keep a single captain power each time or something. The point is for something to do once you are basically maxed out since there is very little else to do.
Indeed... Thats a classic mmo phenomenon.
If Cryptic had unlimited money they could hire so many devs that they could pump out new content weekly, alas they do not.
All mmo's suffer the end-game cunundrum.
My solution for this is to go back and update/add more timeless elements. Sto originally promised to give players homes.
In elder scrolls online you can buy mansions and huts.
In STO we were to make our ship a home. The resson it failed is because theres nothin to do onboard. See my thread on interiors for amazing ideas.
Theres also the foundry (which needs to be a little more customizable).
Ultimately those of us who get to end game have to take breaks and wait for new content.
One of my personal fav past times is to recruit my friends to join sto and create a new toon to play with them.
I also hunt down newbs and give them awesome gear or 2 mil energy credits "just cuz*
Go make the game fun for newbies.
Oh boy, what I just read there hurt my head much more than...
...hurt my feelings!
Neither canon builds nor canon ships are a reason for being that bad. As trek fan shouldn’t there be some tiny urge in you to get better and improve? As a start you could consider setting weapons power to 100% during combat situations captain.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Lol omg!!! I was trying to be funny and play along with the attitude DPSers always give when they boast via juxtaposition. I specifically pointed out my tongue and cheek and acknowledged playstyle! Hahaha. Sorry dont take me seriously.
But truly, a nerf/cap on public queues is not unreasonable imo.
Sure that cap can allow for some advantage to those who worked hard but there need be a range that allows for everyone in the queue to deal effectively.
The point missed here is: queues are about team work. It should be more about each of the 5 players knowing and doing their specific part effectively. By not capping dps in public queues we lost the dynamic & essence of the missions.
Of course now that the "damage is done" (hue hue hue
*pets his dps friends on the shoulder*
Some suffer much worse than others though. In ESO you have the champion point system that applies to all of your other characters, you do have a lot of end game dungeons and other stuff to do and lets be honest ESO has VASTLY more content than STO does. ESO is also open world and level scaled so level 50 with 400 champion points are seen playing side by side with level 10 characters all over the game. STO does not really have open areas like that.
Dungeon and Dragons Online tackles the problem another way by allowing you to reincarnate and keep a permanent buff for each class you have played up to the level cap and you get a little stronger each time.
EQ1 and EQ2 have a ridiculous amount of content and the alternate advancement system. Hitting the level cap in those games is barely the beginning.
One of the things I have always wanted to STO is an exploration and colonization system. Where you could explore an area, go to a planet, survey it, create a colony and run it like a 4x strategy game where you could upgrade various aspects of it. Make large tech trees where your could have a colony focused on mining, science, money etc. People could even put those trade ships to use by running as traders between systems. You could also add a massive number of skills very easily that are all designed for colony management.
The whole system would be based on random seeds and once you scouted a system you could name it and it would go in as a system that others could visit. From time to time disasters would happen and you would need to help your colony.
No prob bro, I rather have peeps mad than bad in STO.
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I love love love it!
2 things tho: get ready to be trolled for even hinting at STO becoming a "sandbox"
For some reason some players hate when sandboxesque suggestions are made.
Also: starfleet captains werent in charge of creating and managing colonies (especially not personal ones.)
Not to dismiss your great idea- but it doesnt fit in Star Trek.
While colonies existed: trek treats them like *frontier towns* in old western movies... The federation council grants permission to citizen groups who petition to leave the federation & start their own world
..
Starfleet captains would occasionally be given orders to visit said colonies once every few decades or if a humanitarian aid mission was required (in the event of a disaster as you pointed out.)
The federation agrees to leave colonies alone and subjects them to the prime directive (for the most part), which is to not interfere in their progress...
Essentially your idea here could be worked in to fleet starbase mechanics. Starfleet does have planetary starbases.since your solution is geared to end-game enrichment, its reasonable only fleet admirals could form a planet side starbase and all your ideas could be implemented there.
Im all for it.
So far though the approach seems to be to try and nerf those queues so people don't play them as much. Instead what happens is fewer people play queues at all and go find something else to do.
Meanwhile new queues basically all have timers and such that ensure they take at least 5-10x longer, without giving any higher rewards in return. So naturally nobody plays them.
Pretty much. That’s why I’m so skeptical.
A mission with a fixed duration is basically the hard cap to DPS the OP is asking for.
Nobody plays those maps! Those who don’t have enough DPS fail them and don’t play them again. Those who do have enough DPS don’t play them because it simply does not matter that they do.
I get some fun out of them if I go in with mixed teams when I don’t have anything better to do but there are not many like me around in game. I can’t blame anybody for that. He who works for his builds wants better reward perspectives than offered there and he who wants to test his capabilities does not want a preset timer hard capping his performance.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Yup! And if Cryptic isn't careful with the changes, it might go back to that. Some changes are needed, but it shouldn't go too far. The queues are in a precarious state as it is. It's only now that many of them are PUGgable by the many.
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Considering with how many ideas (ehm, examples!) you come up with to change the game you are playing to your advantage instead of simply becoming good at it yourself it’s basically hilarious.
I’m certain of that! Just as I am certain that none of those changes will make you happy. For me on the other hand it will just be a Thursday’s patch.
How about we just wait and see? In the end the game will proof us right or wrong.
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Is anyone aware of any computer game, or any MMO, that has an actual DPS cap?
It's a TRIBBLE idea, and it doesn't get less TRIBBLE the more often someone brings it up. Just put in the pile of ideas that won't happen. Imagine the completely unintuitive gameplay when you suddenly stop dealing damage despite firing off powers and weapons just because the DPS meter deemed you being too efficient. That is not something that would actually fly with anyone. It would decouple actions you take in the game from their effect. You could as well program the game that enemies explode after a fixed amount of time, regardless of what players are doing. That would be "balanced" in some sense, but obviously completely unfun. It's not a game anymore, it's a movie.
The ultimate goal of balancing things will have to be to make the differences in effectiveness smaller, that will require buffs and nerfs, but it will probably also require looking at the complex interactions involved.
BFAw on its own for example isn't that powerful. It only becomes powerful when you add stuff like reduced weapon power drain, overcapping, procs from abilities like the Embassy console, high energy transfer rate and things like that.
This also seems to be betray a misconception about what diminishing returns mean.
Removing diminishing returns from armor or shield resistance is also a non-solution. The thing that many people that see dimimishing returns for armor or shield resistnace as unfair don't understand is that damage reduction is not symmetric to a damage buff. I give you a simple set of examles:
Imagine you had 100 hit points. If someone deals 100 damage to you, you die.
If you had 10 % damage reduction, someone would need to deal 111 damage to kill you.
If you had 80 % damage reduction, someone would need to deal 500 damage to kill you.
If you add 10 % damage reduction to the 80 % damage reduction, someone would need to deal 1000 damage to kill you
If you add 10 % damage reduction to the 90 % damage reduction, you can't be killed at all!
The more damage reduction you have, the more value each point has. Diminishing returns exist to avoid that!
Contrast that with damage buffs.
If you have buffs in one category:
You try to kill someone that has 100 hit points. You deal 10 DPS normally, so you need 10 seconds to kill them.
If you have a 100 % damage buff, you need 5 seconds.
If you have a 200 % damage buff, you need ~3.33 seconds.
If you have a 1,000% damage buff, you would need 1 second.
Damage buffs already have diminishing returns built in, the first 100 % spared you 5 seconds, the second 100 % brought you only 1.67 seconds, respectively another 900 % where needed to get just 4 seconds.
That is also the reason basically why some DPSler trying to use only Mark II items ended up with relatively small reduction in overall DPS - the total of damage multiplier is really big already, so losing the mark component of damage buffs is not a big effect anymore.
The only non-diminishing returns for damage buffs are the different damage categories the game has, since these add multiplicatively and are thus not subject to diminishing returns. If you add 100 % damage and add 100 % damage on that, it's the same as if you had gotten a 400 % damage buff of the first category (10 DPS turned into 40 DPS, so a 100 hit point foe would die in 2.5 instead of 10 seconds. But Cryptic has those category multipliers under very tight control.
This is the same as giving them more hit points, unless you make the resistance conditional. I think giving NPCs more active abilities that buff them would be nice, it makes at least Subnucleonic Beam and Wave more useful in PvE. That could help the Tac/Sci imbalance, but won't do all that much in total.
At the moment I take their changes to ground combat as reference what is likely to expect in space. You find them in todays patch notes.
I find most changes reasonable and look especially forward to the buffs my engineering toons receive.
My favorites are faster firing mortars and faster arming mines.
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