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Constructive criticism: WHY Nerf through "balancing" might alienate hardcore playerbase.
bubblegirl2015
Member Posts: 830 Arc User
Let's try this again with being "constructive" rather than just whine about the balancing act of these days.
The positives:
1-IMO to entertain perhaps a new playerbase to start playing STO and to focus on those "casual" players who do not have the time to embark themselves in costly builds or search for the "I win" button.
2-At least it shows Devs are willing to try something else besides the status quo.
3-Devs might be looking for a parallel balancing system that could be adapted easily to both platform XBOX/PS2 and PC play.
4- Newer ways to sell consoles or tag new skills to go with similar planning as it was from ships going from T5 to T6? Say calling this balancing V2?
Negatives:
Where to start...
1- Increase "Fun". This is a very subjective terms and should not be used. For those who were here on Delta Rising we heard "Best Expansion ever and players love it".
These statements should not used or could be misconstrued by the hardcore playerbase who might not find this balancing as a "Fun"
2- Balancing will affect MANY systems currently in place. For instance take the plasmoic leech...Some might think it is not "just" the plasmoic leech being nerfed though, or even the plasma consoles, its everything else associated with them.
Many powers and abilities are being nerfed into the ground. See tribble for more details.
This will necessarily cause literally to become "obsolete builds" and creating less diversity.
3- Builds and past investments to collect them will be broken. This might cause a flood of players exiting STO since this will not go well to those hardcore players who slaved to have the latest and best builds ever.
I could go on with more criticism but will leave to others to add either positive or negative.
Will this be the "only" time skills get re-balanced this way or will there be more versions in the future. I know PWE is a private company and can do whatever they want but would be nice if they can acknowledge the fact that many players have spent countless of hours/time and resources into builds. To make those obsolete for the mere sake of balancing is to some degree sending a bad signal.
Why have skills anyways or encourage players to dwell in getting the latest shinies or consoles if they know they might get nerf anytime?
But let's keep it constructive and do hope Cryptic does communicate "better" with the playerbase in the future. Communication and constructive feedback from both ends is what could ease this new balancing from being detrimental to players.
Disclaimer....I dont speak for you and only represent myself. However, please disagree respectfully if you must.
The positives:
1-IMO to entertain perhaps a new playerbase to start playing STO and to focus on those "casual" players who do not have the time to embark themselves in costly builds or search for the "I win" button.
2-At least it shows Devs are willing to try something else besides the status quo.
3-Devs might be looking for a parallel balancing system that could be adapted easily to both platform XBOX/PS2 and PC play.
4- Newer ways to sell consoles or tag new skills to go with similar planning as it was from ships going from T5 to T6? Say calling this balancing V2?
Negatives:
Where to start...
1- Increase "Fun". This is a very subjective terms and should not be used. For those who were here on Delta Rising we heard "Best Expansion ever and players love it".
These statements should not used or could be misconstrued by the hardcore playerbase who might not find this balancing as a "Fun"
2- Balancing will affect MANY systems currently in place. For instance take the plasmoic leech...Some might think it is not "just" the plasmoic leech being nerfed though, or even the plasma consoles, its everything else associated with them.
Many powers and abilities are being nerfed into the ground. See tribble for more details.
This will necessarily cause literally to become "obsolete builds" and creating less diversity.
3- Builds and past investments to collect them will be broken. This might cause a flood of players exiting STO since this will not go well to those hardcore players who slaved to have the latest and best builds ever.
I could go on with more criticism but will leave to others to add either positive or negative.
Will this be the "only" time skills get re-balanced this way or will there be more versions in the future. I know PWE is a private company and can do whatever they want but would be nice if they can acknowledge the fact that many players have spent countless of hours/time and resources into builds. To make those obsolete for the mere sake of balancing is to some degree sending a bad signal.
Why have skills anyways or encourage players to dwell in getting the latest shinies or consoles if they know they might get nerf anytime?
But let's keep it constructive and do hope Cryptic does communicate "better" with the playerbase in the future. Communication and constructive feedback from both ends is what could ease this new balancing from being detrimental to players.
Disclaimer....I dont speak for you and only represent myself. However, please disagree respectfully if you must.
Wiki editor http://sto.gamepedia.com
Original STO beta tester.
Original STO beta tester.
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Your negatives:
>> 1- Increase "Fun". This is a very subjective terms and should not be used.
Fun is a valid design goal, it is reasonable to use it.
>> 2- Balancing will affect MANY systems currently in place. For instance take the plasmoic leech...Some might think it is not "just" the plasmoic leech being nerfed though, or even the plasma consoles, its everything else associated with them.
Many powers and abilities are being nerfed into the ground. See tribble for more details.
OK, more than one thing is being rebalanced. That isn't really a negative except for those leaning on the overpowered gear.
"Nerfed into the ground" is a subjective term so you should not use it
>> This will necessarily cause literally to become "obsolete builds" and creating less diversity.
Less diversity? Taking away BFAW spam cookie cutter builds will at least lead to new cookie cutter builds.
>> 3- Builds and past investments to collect them will be broken. This might cause a flood of players exiting STO since this will not go well to those hardcore players who slaved to have the latest and best builds ever.
More overstatement. Gear will become less powerful, it will not become "broken." Something shifting from best-in-set to second- or third-best-in-set does not mean your DPS will drop to 1K.
Again, I disagree that the 1% of min-maxers should hold the game design hostage because some of them might be upset. I also doubt many will leave because of this despite some forum drama.
Also, most MMOs do change what is the best gear over and over. SWTOR just did this with a new level cap and higher level gear. STO's rebalancing might make min-maxers replace some gear but they will not need to buy T7 ships, or create Mark 18 beams. It might just now be the case (for example) that having 1 x Acc mod will improve damage slightly over having none. Maybe.
>> Will this be the "only" time skills get re-balanced this way or will there be more versions in the future.
Most MMOs change "what is best in life" fairly often, because they do want to hear the lamentations of the hardcore.
Or perhaps they want to keep the game fresh, so those same hardcore stop complaining about having nothing to do.
As for diversity: there are a lot of builds out there that aren't viable in the old scheme, which may become viable with a new setup. This will counter old builds which will lose power. That's not reduced diversity.
Personally, I predict I'll be somewhat annoyed at the hot restart timeout, completely ignore the damage adjustments (because the game's easy) and end up with a net negative experience of the whole thing.
But of the goals this if anything is the one I disagree with: IMO this should not be true. Rare and expensive choices should objectively be at least almost always better than common ones. This is a game where the acquisition of things (by whatever means) is in an important position, that means the things you acquire should not be mere "options."
Time will only tell. However, based on my conversations with people who have been in this game for a long while there is a sense of complete dissapointment of what is coming. This can be correlated with feedback so far collected in Tribble and Reddit. No doubt this will affect lots of people but not sure if will be quantified.
TBH, there are people who are in either category:
1- Whine no matter what at any change
2- Realistically concerned and opting perhaps to take time off from this MMO until they sort out final bugs.
3- Casual players who might not be affected at all but see how other friends will be affected
4- Players who no matter what happens manage to find a silver lining in any change.
5- Those who dont care at all or engage.
If history serves well to this MMO, this will happen no matter what. Cryptic has already invested time and resources. The final question is what group will remain here to see the next stage of evolution or devolution (depending on your views) of this MMO.
Original STO beta tester.
6. People who see this an improvement, without any need to find a "silver lining."
Your categories presuppose that the changes are bad. [ Citation Needed ]
Same, Things change, new additions, buffs/reductions to current standing abilities, changes on BOFF interactions. New weapons, changes to old, new consoles, changes to old.
You investigate, you adapt, and continue to move forward. I for one, cant wait to see how these changes the playerbases builds, meta and in some queues, tactics
And FAW's needing is relatively mild, especially if you make sure you boost your accurcy.
Both are still good, not they have been toned down so that other builds have a chance to complete.
Look everybody and their siblings knew that these we're overpowered, that the game was so unbalanced that PVP had largely died off.
I know a lot of people are freaking out, but this balance check is long over due, something's were way over powered, other were way under powered and just about everybody knew about it, but the only people who we're really bent about it, were the PVPers, because you could usually play the PvE content with most sub par builds well enough.
Also somethings sound like they we're nerfed, GW, but in practice weren't because you have to take in other variables that compensated for that or even had a greater effect, such as the increased benefit of Aux power levels on it, over coming the raw damage decrease. You can now do more damage as I understand it with gravity well, but the GW beast most be fed AUX power to do so. It's an interesting trade off.
I think people are calling this space rebalance a nerf, but while there are elements of this, the truth is as a whole it's far more naunced then that.
My original post was to make this "neutral".
Personally I'm glad I have not invested time/effort/money in getting the latest shiniest consoles or work harder towards getting those flamboyant builds. I did spend quite a lot of money only in ships. Some people will troll those who attain highest DPS builds and that wasnt the intent but to give a respectful way to question Cryptic.
I for one will be around no matter... as I was before Delta Rising. However, it is very sad that some great players felt dissapointed in whats coming. Again, I would direct anyone to Tribble or Reditt for more specifics than just take my word for it.
Original STO beta tester.
Sorry, but I gotta tell you that you failed. So you tried putting a list of positives and negatives, but immediately devalued most of the positives:
"At least" already casts a negative light. They can't do it properly, but they're "willing to try". Fun fact: if you wrote something akin to that on a resume for a former employee here in Germany, it would be struck down by courts as being too negative (we have a law that forces resumes to keep a positive tone, which of course meant that some kind of code exists to cover the negative things)
Assuming "devs might" and ending a point with question marks shows that you don't believe in them. If trying to give a business presentation about positives and negatives, this is when you consult your co workers to help you out.
And then the negatives:
is all you need to read. There's so many of them, they are all so bad that I can't even properly list them.
Don't get me wrong please, you have an opinion about the changes which is most probably negative - that's totally okay, it's your opinion, and as long as you don't make up wrong facts or similar, it's just as valid as any other. That's why we have discussions.
But you stated that you wanted to make it sound "neutral" for discussion purposes - a laudable goal for sure. You just didn't accomplish it with this post.
A "DOOM!" thread which doesn't use the word directly and only infers or implies it is still a "DOOM!" thread.
Adapt or die.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
The leech nerf itself isn't the problem, its that they completely reworked how it works so it no longer benefits from the DrainX stat, which in itself DOES destroy and make a number of builds useless.
I know my Science captains Command Warbird will be complete junk now with over a 60% reduction in its sub-100k DPS output, while my Engineer and Tac captains Fed and KDF ships will only take a minor hit.
DrainX has literally become a useless stat for my Romulan build since NOTHING else on my ship uses it in any form whatsoever, so with the leech change all the resources I spent on my DrainX gear is going completely to waste.
This is not in any way an exaggeration.
^^ This man gets it. Hear ye him!
In my little universe, hardcore players are the ones to jump back up to top percentile performance the fastest after a change.
It's a little sad you literally cannot hear yourself laying out the exact reason the change is being made - that people are building their entire ship around a single console and stacking a stat not for the purpose it's in the game (drain others/avoid being drained), but because that item transforms it into an entirely different purpose (amplify your own power levels).
You won. You reached out and broke the game's neck. Celebrate your victory, for it is so grand and vast the Devs have been force to re-write a chunk of the game to make it stop. BUT, that ****'s time is done. And no matter how many times you try to browbeat them with "abusing the snot out of this IS 'my fun'", its still better for the game that combination is gone. Its so much better for the game in fact that they're willing to risk alienating a ton of players who have come to rely on it. That's how bad it is. Breath it in. Feel the full measure of how long and deep this thing has festered.
You really do love trying to twist things don't you?
Yes I built a single ship build focused around the Plasmonic Leech, so what? I could also build a ship centered entirely around the thaloron weapon if I wanted, or any number of powers and abilities. My KDF toons ship is built entirely around a single power, Surgical Strikes III. None of this is inherently broken or "wrong", it is a "choice" that we make, and none of them are optimal epic DPS builds. But they are still "viable" and "fun".
If your build used drainx for the sole purpose of plasmonic leech, then I have no sympathy for you. Those of us who used it as part of an overall science drain boat build are the ones getting the shaft.
Because clearly "my fun is wrong", right?
Correct. Your fun IS wrong and it's being purged. Ball's in your court what you're gonna do next.
WoW didn't have an online store selling tier gear along with a lottery lockbox system that could have players potentially spending lots of cash to get keys to participate in. Comparing WoW to STO isn't the same thing unless STO became more like WoW or the reverse happened. Also unlike Cryptic/PWE, Blizzard didn't shaft it's lower population factions as much as Cryptic/PWE has because $$$. Blizzard invested in their lower population factions to not only balance them out more in offerings but populations as well.
Yeah about that:
Oops!
That statement is so messed up...
News flash buddy: Been there, done that.
There are exceptions, such as when allowing your fun takes away from the fun of many other players.