I just hope that nobody around here or in game is fooled into believing that anything of that has changed with S13. The whole nerf is just a “make space” for more power creep while still having us exists in the same game instances as noobs. Next lock box is just around the corner. Fun to wait how long it will take and how much it will cost to rebuy the lost 40% Deeps.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I think (Hypothesis now) that a large chunk of what has so many of you so upset, is that Cryptic hired someone who can parse your data, compare it to intent, and understood what he was looking at, and gave him the authority act on that.
which is a first for this game in a long time-hence, the depth of the cuts made for Season 13's rebalance-Crypticspartan actually looked at the publicly-available DPS data, he actually consulted with live players that were active, he actually spent time in mufti playing the game and testing out these combinations before he made these decisions, rather than just talking with a buddy or two who told him everything was awesome. (Unlike, say, Borticus, who only talks to people who tell him what an awesome job he's doing-even when he's flat wrong.)
The content was never designed to handle the level of power the DPS kids are tossing about, because that level of power was never intended to exist in the first place, the synergies t hat achieve it were never intended to happen, this is why the stuff got a balance pass.
Leech, for example, was never intended to let you keep all your subsystem power at maxed-out-green for the duration of an engagement, it was meant to be a mild boost only. FBP was never supposed to be producing six-to-seven-digit damage off of four digit hits (it was doing exactly that, in one case an FBP build with partigens did a fourteen million point pulse on an unbuffed hit...), it was certainly not meant to be the 'core' of someone's record-setting build, ergo, it gets a correction. Immunities were supposed to be a 'sometimes' thing, not a constant state. BFAW was supposed to be "A" tactical ability, not "The" tactical ability, an option, not a requirement...
and so on.
Trust me, if Sparty actually had any real authority over balancing, I'm pretty sure we "DPSers" would be fairly happy with the balance in game.
I think (Hypothesis now) that a large chunk of what has so many of you so upset, is that Cryptic hired someone who can parse your data, compare it to intent, and understood what he was looking at, and gave him the authority act on that.
which is a first for this game in a long time-hence, the depth of the cuts made for Season 13's rebalance-Crypticspartan actually looked at the publicly-available DPS data, he actually consulted with live players that were active, he actually spent time in mufti playing the game and testing out these combinations before he made these decisions, rather than just talking with a buddy or two who told him everything was awesome. (Unlike, say, Borticus, who only talks to people who tell him what an awesome job he's doing-even when he's flat wrong.)
Why, he certainly didn't consult with me. Not that I would have cared for such interaction, really; but my point is, that he colluded with a select group of people (like you, not to put too fine a point on it), already predetermined to nerf as much as they could. Not something I'd be proud of, personally.
Leech, for example, was never intended to let you keep all your subsystem power at maxed-out-green for the duration of an engagement, it was meant to be a mild boost only. FBP was never supposed to be producing six-to-seven-digit damage off of four digit hits (it was doing exactly that, in one case an FBP build with partigens did a fourteen million point pulse on an unbuffed hit...), it was certainly not meant to be the 'core' of someone's record-setting build, ergo, it gets a correction. Immunities were supposed to be a 'sometimes' thing, not a constant state. BFAW was supposed to be "A" tactical ability, not "The" tactical ability, an option, not a requirement...
Thing just is, Cryptic really *did* design it all like that themselves. Throwing their hands up in the air, saying "Oh my, look at all this power creep!", that's not really becoming them. At each power item they sold, the impulse to make the extra buck invariably trumped their common sense to not let the power creep get out of hand.
I'm no longer upset over it, btw: the dastardly deed was done, and I decided to keep playing, after all. But if not upset, I'm certainly annoyed with the queues being as good as empty now. I loved a bit mindless pew-pewing; which is why I often queued for CSA, for instance. Now it takes like half-an-hour so to pop. You got your nerfs. Good on you. But, to paraphrase you, it was never intended to nerf the player numbers themselves, was it?
Well, the unfortunate consequences of all that is that is that they effectively clobbered everything, and despite the unusual outcomes accomplished by a few outliers, most of those outcomes were not really replicable by the general public. The end result is that the the severely decreased carrying capacities of the middle to higher performers, even missions which were formerly doable are no longer successful propositions. Which results in dead queues, that results in disinterested players, that results in dead queues even in ground queues that weren't directly affected by the Grand Nerfing.
Meanwhile, options for creating functional ships have actually significantly decreased, and most of the "post-nerf" builds are essentially a rollback to older builds. The gap between low-cost and high-cost options has gotten even wider. The threat of continuing nerfing on top of the extreme costs of doing anything at all is simply giving people cold feet about building anything anymore.
The combination of all these effects is a game that has lost a lot of popularity. People who still appear are mostly in stationkeeping mode. Many no longer appear. I know this because I rob fleet banks for a living, and as a professional graverobber, I know when the death rates are up.
^^ This was one of your better posts, IMHO! Good analysis.
can't help you m8, all i see is that the game is getting better and better. sure the game have flaws, and it dose not have 200k players at any moment, but reality is that Star Trek is a niche game, maybe in some future, things will change, but it will never be Star Citizen, it is not the point of the game, it never was.
for me this game miss exploration system (that is very hard to do, and i really dont know how they will solved it) and active pvp for end game (prolonging the game life for players), and that is something that it seams to be working on, the new competition system is a step in a right direction.
but over all the game is fine, and people that did left the game, left it, because they finished it. you can do only so much once you finished story mode, and made you 100k boat. and you can clearly see, even before summer event that there are new players in the game.
sadly friend, you have probably finished the game, and there is nothing you or cryptic can do about it, maybe the new season whit the new Endeavor System will give you something new to do in the game.
as long as ZEN is not 500, that means that there are enough people in this game to keep it alive and healthy.
Well, the unfortunate consequences of all that is that is that they effectively clobbered everything, and despite the unusual outcomes accomplished by a few outliers, most of those outcomes were not really replicable by the general public. The end result is that the the severely decreased carrying capacities of the middle to higher performers, even missions which were formerly doable are no longer successful propositions. Which results in dead queues, that results in disinterested players, that results in dead queues even in ground queues that weren't directly affected by the Grand Nerfing.
Meanwhile, options for creating functional ships have actually significantly decreased, and most of the "post-nerf" builds are essentially a rollback to older builds. The gap between low-cost and high-cost options has gotten even wider. The threat of continuing nerfing on top of the extreme costs of doing anything at all is simply giving people cold feet about building anything anymore.
The combination of all these effects is a game that has lost a lot of popularity. People who still appear are mostly in stationkeeping mode. Many no longer appear. I know this because I rob fleet banks for a living, and as a professional graverobber, I know when the death rates are up.
Yep, they pretty much nerfed the fun with everything else.
The game is still playable, sure. I can still log on and fly around and shoot stuff just like I always could, but it's a lot less fun. And if I find my current build under performing, I certainly won't spend any resources to fix it. I have gone from using my Dilitihium to upgrade items to play around with them, to banking it all and waiting for Phoenix Boxes so I can turn it all into Zen.
Honestly, I could currently play STO from a mobile phone. It's just log in, queue up Doff/Admiralty, refine dilitihum and done for the day.
I'm very happy with the dps changes. I hated HAVING to use only those darn plasma consoles in my sci slots. now I can use a ton of the console sets in those slots. I love the variety. Now the new Q system is 70% **** garbage. The system can't remember your settings once you close it. No countdown timer. No UI indication of your team being in a team. They got rid of categories that were great. But added others that we needed. So that was a push. This is the only mmo I've ever played that refuses to improve 100%, and chooses to improve 50/50. By taking away 50% things that work. But giving 50% improvements. DON'T TAKE AWAY THINGS THAT WORK. KEEP THEM AND IMPROVE UPON THEM.
I think (Hypothesis now) that a large chunk of what has so many of you so upset, is that Cryptic hired someone who can parse your data, compare it to intent, and understood what he was looking at, and gave him the authority act on that.
which is a first for this game in a long time-hence, the depth of the cuts made for Season 13's rebalance-Crypticspartan actually looked at the publicly-available DPS data, he actually consulted with live players that were active, he actually spent time in mufti playing the game and testing out these combinations before he made these decisions, rather than just talking with a buddy or two who told him everything was awesome. (Unlike, say, Borticus, who only talks to people who tell him what an awesome job he's doing-even when he's flat wrong.)
The content was never designed to handle the level of power the DPS kids are tossing about, because that level of power was never intended to exist in the first place, the synergies t hat achieve it were never intended to happen, this is why the stuff got a balance pass.
Leech, for example, was never intended to let you keep all your subsystem power at maxed-out-green for the duration of an engagement, it was meant to be a mild boost only. FBP was never supposed to be producing six-to-seven-digit damage off of four digit hits (it was doing exactly that, in one case an FBP build with partigens did a fourteen million point pulse on an unbuffed hit...), it was certainly not meant to be the 'core' of someone's record-setting build, ergo, it gets a correction. Immunities were supposed to be a 'sometimes' thing, not a constant state. BFAW was supposed to be "A" tactical ability, not "The" tactical ability, an option, not a requirement...
and so on.
Exactly this. The extreme numbers were NEVER INTENDED TO BE POSSIBLE. Some people with immense amounts of time on their hands devoted themselves to analyzing with NASA-like thoroughness every possible combination of every possible item, skill, trait, etc looking for the spots where the math went wonky and allowed for outsized results compared to the vast majority of other combinations. Guess what?
THOSE AVERAGE RESULTS OF THE MAJORITY OF COMBINATIONS IS WHAT THE DEVELOPERS INTENDED.
The outlier results were NOT. They were game breakers. And you used them gleefully to break the ever living hell out of the game. You pushed it and pushed it until they had to take the time out of their schedules to undertake a study to find out what the hell was going on and fix it. They had to take billable hours that the company paid for, hours and funds that thereby could not go towards creating content, to fix your mess.
And you have the audacity to whine about it? Spock you.
Working as intended my aft shuttlebay. The developers didn't take the time and effort to correct more than the worst instances before now because their time costs money and they already have work up to their eyeballs creating content with such a small staff. The rest of us paid for your breaking of the game in terms of lost content due to those work hours and funds out of the budget that had to pay to fix the game you broke. How dare you then complain, and claim they had no right and everyone else is the problem. You're lucky they didn't ban you. And if you throw a temper tantrum and take your ball and go home, don't be surprised when you're told to not let the door hit you on the way out.
This is a STAR TREK game. It's supposed to be a simulation in MMO form of living the exciting life of a Starship Captain, doing the awesome and interesting things we all saw on the television shows and movies and read in the novels and tech manuals. It is not, and was never intended to be, Combat Spreadsheet Numbers Maximizer 2000 (tm). You poured your hours and resources into breaking the game, costing the developers their time and resources to fix it. How dare you whine about them fixing the mess you made. How dare you.
The devs won't tell you this, so I will. Take your hyper-competitive, numbers obsessed self-centered combat metrics chasing "gameplay" to EVE where that kind of thing belongs. The rest of us, here for the Star Trek experience, won't miss you.
"I fight for the Users!" - Tron
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
Exactly this. The extreme numbers were NEVER INTENDED TO BE POSSIBLE. Some people with immense amounts of time on their hands devoted themselves to analyzing with NASA-like thoroughness every possible combination of every possible item, skill, trait, etc looking for the spots where the math went wonky and allowed for outsized results compared to the vast majority of other combinations. Guess what?
THOSE AVERAGE RESULTS OF THE MAJORITY OF COMBINATIONS IS WHAT THE DEVELOPERS INTENDED.
The outlier results were NOT. They were game breakers. And you used them gleefully to break the ever living hell out of the game. You pushed it and pushed it until they had to take the time out of their schedules to undertake a study to find out what the hell was going on and fix it. They had to take billable hours that the company paid for, hours and funds that thereby could not go towards creating content, to fix your mess.
And you have the audacity to whine about it? Spock you.
Working as intended my aft shuttlebay. The developers didn't take the time and effort to correct more than the worst instances before now because their time costs money and they already have work up to their eyeballs creating content with such a small staff. The rest of us paid for your breaking of the game in terms of lost content due to those work hours and funds out of the budget that had to pay to fix the game you broke. How dare you then complain, and claim they had no right and everyone else is the problem. You're lucky they didn't ban you. And if you throw a temper tantrum and take your ball and go home, don't be surprised when you're told to not let the door hit you on the way out.
This is a STAR TREK game. It's supposed to be a simulation in MMO form of living the exciting life of a Starship Captain, doing the awesome and interesting things we all saw on the television shows and movies and read in the novels and tech manuals. It is not, and was never intended to be, Combat Spreadsheet Numbers Maximizer 2000 (tm). You poured your hours and resources into breaking the game, costing the developers their time and resources to fix it. How dare you whine about them fixing the mess you made. How dare you.
The devs won't tell you this, so I will. Take your hyper-competitive, numbers obsessed self-centered combat metrics chasing "gameplay" to EVE where that kind of thing belongs. The rest of us, here for the Star Trek experience, won't miss you.
Yeah, not "The developers [who] didn't take the time and effort" to do their JOB properly broke the game, but those pesky DPS-ers eager to learn the ins and outs of the game are to blame, right? LOL. Spock you right back!
For the record, I'm not a high DPS-ers (not by any stretch of the imagination, even). I nonetheless love to tinker on my builds, learn new things, and enjoy seeing the results thereof. It's a sad day when jelly people start to bash those who were willing and able to L2P. For shame, for shame.
Yeah, not "The developers [who] didn't take the time and effort" to do their JOB properly broke the game, but those pesky DPS-ers eager to learn the ins and outs of the game are to blame, right? LOL. Spock you right back!
For the record, I'm not a high DPS-ers (not by any stretch of the imagination, even). I nonetheless love to tinker on my builds, learn new things, and enjoy seeing the results thereof. It's a sad day when jelly people start to bash those who were willing and able to L2P. For shame, for shame.
While I wouldn't say "didn't take the time and effort to do their job properly" - yeah, it was devs who made these numbers possible in the first place. But that shouldn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to correct their mistakes.
Also it is - for me - still not about "L2P" at all. Those should, I repeat, perform better, but...
So...your version of IDIC is agree with my way to play this game or you are wrong. K. You really should remove your banner. And seriously, if the devs were thinking that the average player was what this game system was suppose to do, the devs were COMPLETE morons. I could easily do 3 times the average using mission drops only and boff skills from the vendor only. Not even touching their gamble box and lobi items? 10 times that. And this isn't using some super munchkiny NASA level spreadsheet math. It's by application of BASIC game theory. And this even is taking into account that my reflexes suck and I am a terrible pilot. Yeah, the system should be more normalized...but the average player in this game is just plain terrible...and having a game balanced for terrible players makes a terrible game.
... by as much as they do. Outperforming and winning, even easily winning, is all fine and dandy. Outperforming by factors of 10, 20, 50 IMO isn't. Because sports and games that lopsided are not really fun.
I am not for equalizing everything. I am in favor of reigning in the ludicrous differences possible.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
Why, he certainly didn't consult with me. Not that I would have cared for such interaction, really; but my point is, that he colluded with a select group of people (like you, not to put too fine a point on it), already predetermined to nerf as much as they could. Not something I'd be proud of, personally.
I think this was a bad, bad idea.
Spartan, although probably well-intentioned, apparently spent too much time listening to people who were
1. Getting bored because everything had already been figured out, and was therefore too easy for them
2. Buying anything and everything possible if it was deemed the best at improving damage, including "throwaway" lockbox/lobi ships
3. Adamant that "nerfing TAC too much" would cause (their) people to leave en masse
4. Upgrading everything obsessively to Epic quality, and would continue to do so
5. Admittedly a minority in the game
Seemingly basing an entire rebalance on a tiny minority of obsessive people, who also were borderline threatening to leave if certain things were touched, isn't really the best idea, in my opinion.
If balance was indeed the issue (I'm not convinced that it was), one would only look at the tiny majority of number crunchers as something to curb.
If the intent was to change the meta to make more money from new offerings (which is likely, at least in part), than basing decisions on a tiny minority is not really wise, either, unless that tiny minority is so obsessive that they far outspend everyone else to fuel their number-crunching (which may or may not be the case, no one knows), to the point that they are the majority funding of the game.
The reality is, that, either way, it didn't really work as intended. Unless
1. They didn't care about average player spending on upgrades, items, etc.
2. The empty queues were inconsequential to them
3. Losing even some of the minority's spending (because of trust issues) did little to affect the bottom line
Whether or not the DPS people are "bad" (most aren't) is largely irrelevant. It's just not wise to spend so much time and effort looking at, and catering to, a minority. This is the excuse everyone uses as to "why KDF [x] doesn't get attention," yet it somehow doesn't apply in this case?
The end result is that most people aren't happy. You can blame the "DPS people," or you can be one of the "DPS people" who give them all a bad name and say "It's because I'm great and you suck." Still doesn't change the fact that most people don't like it.
I think the rebalance, as a whole, was done in a hamfisted, clumsy way, and it came out pretty terribly, but that's just me. Add in the new, crappy, Queue UI, and Season 13 pretty much sucks. It's at least as bad as DR, if not worse.
So...your version of IDIC is agree with my way to play this game or you are wrong. K. You really should remove your banner. And seriously, if the devs were thinking that the average player was what this game system was suppose to do, the devs were COMPLETE morons. I could easily do 3 times the average using mission drops only and boff skills from the vendor only. Not even touching their gamble box and lobi items? 10 times that. And this isn't using some super munchkiny NASA level spreadsheet math. It's by application of BASIC game theory. And this even is taking into account that my reflexes suck and I am a terrible pilot. Yeah, the system should be more normalized...but the average player in this game is just plain terrible...and having a game balanced for terrible players makes a terrible game.
I was about to post a very similar response, but it's so much easier to just quote yours.
I don't know Patrick... someone with your posting history shouldn't be criticising anyone else because they "howl like their children are being eaten".
Meimei, no-one in developer land is talking to me, or ever has. (for one thing, my hours and theirs don't coincide.) However, he is known to have worked with people, including PvP people with proven reputations for both supporting, and criticizing, Cryptic and their policies.
and here's something else, if you want to go that route...
You are always expected to howl like your children are being eaten, when the developers correct anything that is broken. You howled over Kemocite
you howled over Embassy Consoles
you howled over the "black poo" console
you howled over Ionic Turbulence.
You forgot SS3. How could you forget SS3!? Tsk!
Now for some corrections:
* I was never against the Kemocite fixes (even posted to that effect, a few posts up); but, as usual, Bort went overboard the other way, and totally neutered it (in a second round, after the first fixes, pre-S13 still).
* Embassy Consoles?! LOL, no; never really used them. I had like 10 or so (all Epic even, with + and - [Threat]); but somehow always decided I wanted to slot my 'standard' consoles more.
* 'Black poo' console?! Never even heard of it. Which means likely don't even have it.
* Ionic Turbulance? Yes, didn't like that one; SS3 included. That was Bort giving in to you, and a handful of other PvP-ers, screaming off the top of your lungs, to nerf it to death, whereas the rest of the PvE community was having a blast with it. Intel was a refreshing diversion from the usual BFAW builds; and finally came with a nice Commander level Tact skill. I really loved having an alernative meta. But you couldn't have that, could you? Intel had to be killed, at every cost. And, as usual, you got your way.
even if and when it's only broken in a context that doesn't matter to your declared play style (iow abilities that are broken, but only against other players being altered in ways that retain their PvE capability, such as Ionic Turbulence.)
I'll give you that I didn't want Ionic Turbulence broken for PvE. Nor Intel killed as a whole. Your position is always clear, though: "If it can kill me in PvP, I must make it my prime task to take it away for everyone else."
Ironically, you should be very happy with all these nerfs. But you are not; because, as you've stated on many occassions, you always think they didn't go far enough. And *that* is why I always loudly protest, and will continue to do so. And I'd like to think community protests against the many nerfs at least resorted in them taking the edge off a bit.
what I don't do, is predict the death of the game when the developers do something with the mechanics. certain posters in this thread do that as apparently a reflex, since they do so so very, very, often, usually ignoring externalities like events that shift the public (Mirror invasion, Sompek, etc. etc., summer events, winter events...) from the main queue list, or who ignore ongoing problems (the empty queue lists? not new guys. it's practically a "Frequently posted topic" since at least late 2013.)
Because last year MI wasn't running, right?! And I suppose there was no Summer Event either, no?!
Queues are simply very empty, post-S13, period. And I see nobody even remotely spelling doom for this game. I do, however, see many ppl be genuinely concerned, and speaking out on it, because even the most die-hard optimists are beginning to scratch their head over it. And, as I've been saying, it seems, by introdcing the individual Endeavor System, Cryptic is no longer in total denial over it, either.
YOu're not being 'stolen from' when your leech goes from infinity power levels to a 7.5% bonus, and you're not being stolen from even if you blew half a billion EC on it with the expectation that you would get infinite po wer from it-because the expectation was fundamentally WRONG and relied on what is, well... an exploitive attitude seeking an advantage you KNOW you shouldn't have.
I invariably find myself amused at how you always manage to twist things totally around.
If there's any 'exploitive attitude', then it's Cryptic's, always inventing new consoles and abilities that are often, arguably a bit too much, so that you'll be inclined to buy them. They're not the victim in this: they deliberately design their stuff that way. And your notion that players 'seeking advantage' somehow, having the miraculously 'wrong' expectation of actually getting what they paid for, is ludicrous on all counts.
Leech was such a very good console. You can't just revisit the item, 3 years later, saying you suddenly realized it's OP. That is BS. Barring obviously needed fixes, the longer you wait with 'fixing' an item any further, the more justified players are in thinking the item must now be WAI. Like them Plasma 'Exploders': Bort nerfed them, massively, like 2 years or so ago. People grumbled a bit, but generally understood the explosions were a bit too much. So, especially after they already got nerfed, and 2 years later, those using them were again entirely justified in thinking they were now working as intended. And now they're suddenly had to be made into vendor trash?!
And if you're thiniking Cryptic back-tracked on its mistakes, making necessary nerfs, then you're grossly mistaken yourself; all the nerfs serve only 1 goal: to reboot the cycle of selling you new power creep all over again.
I'm rather in favour of a lot of things that quite routinely DO take me out-but chained disables that can't be cleansed isn't one of those. anything that makes another player genuinely and truly helpless (the unfortunate Drain situation that Spartan actually fixed AFTER 13 released here-I was basically killing enemies with a single tykens and it was so fast the player had no chance to even TRY to get out of it. That's fundamentally unfair, can you dig that? is it even possible for you to understand the concept?)
And -- looking for some common ground -- when I learned Tyken's could rapidly suck another player totally dry, with even 0 points in DrainX, I too was onboard with normalizing Tyken's a bit (I myself suggested you would need at least like 600 in DrainX to be able to start doing some real harm). No one should get freebies like that. Like that Photon torp that drained for millions of HP; things like that always ought to be fixed. Or all your copies of Kemo proccing when you didn't even active them. Those are simply fixes, and welcomed.
Comments
I just hope that nobody around here or in game is fooled into believing that anything of that has changed with S13. The whole nerf is just a “make space” for more power creep while still having us exists in the same game instances as noobs. Next lock box is just around the corner. Fun to wait how long it will take and how much it will cost to rebuy the lost 40% Deeps.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/L0ZJ4YP.png[/img][/center]
Trust me, if Sparty actually had any real authority over balancing, I'm pretty sure we "DPSers" would be fairly happy with the balance in game.
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Why, he certainly didn't consult with me.
Thing just is, Cryptic really *did* design it all like that themselves. Throwing their hands up in the air, saying "Oh my, look at all this power creep!", that's not really becoming them. At each power item they sold, the impulse to make the extra buck invariably trumped their common sense to not let the power creep get out of hand.
I'm no longer upset over it, btw: the dastardly deed was done, and I decided to keep playing, after all. But if not upset, I'm certainly annoyed with the queues being as good as empty now. I loved a bit mindless pew-pewing; which is why I often queued for CSA, for instance. Now it takes like half-an-hour so to pop. You got your nerfs. Good on you. But, to paraphrase you, it was never intended to nerf the player numbers themselves, was it?
^^ This was one of your better posts, IMHO! Good analysis.
for me this game miss exploration system (that is very hard to do, and i really dont know how they will solved it) and active pvp for end game (prolonging the game life for players), and that is something that it seams to be working on, the new competition system is a step in a right direction.
but over all the game is fine, and people that did left the game, left it, because they finished it. you can do only so much once you finished story mode, and made you 100k boat. and you can clearly see, even before summer event that there are new players in the game.
sadly friend, you have probably finished the game, and there is nothing you or cryptic can do about it, maybe the new season whit the new Endeavor System will give you something new to do in the game.
as long as ZEN is not 500, that means that there are enough people in this game to keep it alive and healthy.
Yep, they pretty much nerfed the fun with everything else.
The game is still playable, sure. I can still log on and fly around and shoot stuff just like I always could, but it's a lot less fun. And if I find my current build under performing, I certainly won't spend any resources to fix it. I have gone from using my Dilitihium to upgrade items to play around with them, to banking it all and waiting for Phoenix Boxes so I can turn it all into Zen.
Honestly, I could currently play STO from a mobile phone. It's just log in, queue up Doff/Admiralty, refine dilitihum and done for the day.
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
Yeah, not "The developers [who] didn't take the time and effort" to do their JOB properly broke the game, but those pesky DPS-ers eager to learn the ins and outs of the game are to blame, right? LOL. Spock you right back!
For the record, I'm not a high DPS-ers (not by any stretch of the imagination, even). I nonetheless love to tinker on my builds, learn new things, and enjoy seeing the results thereof. It's a sad day when jelly people start to bash those who were willing and able to L2P. For shame, for shame.
While I wouldn't say "didn't take the time and effort to do their job properly" - yeah, it was devs who made these numbers possible in the first place. But that shouldn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to correct their mistakes.
Also it is - for me - still not about "L2P" at all. Those should, I repeat, perform better, but...
... by as much as they do. Outperforming and winning, even easily winning, is all fine and dandy. Outperforming by factors of 10, 20, 50 IMO isn't. Because sports and games that lopsided are not really fun.
I am not for equalizing everything. I am in favor of reigning in the ludicrous differences possible.
Spartan, although probably well-intentioned, apparently spent too much time listening to people who were
1. Getting bored because everything had already been figured out, and was therefore too easy for them
2. Buying anything and everything possible if it was deemed the best at improving damage, including "throwaway" lockbox/lobi ships
3. Adamant that "nerfing TAC too much" would cause (their) people to leave en masse
4. Upgrading everything obsessively to Epic quality, and would continue to do so
5. Admittedly a minority in the game
Seemingly basing an entire rebalance on a tiny minority of obsessive people, who also were borderline threatening to leave if certain things were touched, isn't really the best idea, in my opinion.
If balance was indeed the issue (I'm not convinced that it was), one would only look at the tiny majority of number crunchers as something to curb.
If the intent was to change the meta to make more money from new offerings (which is likely, at least in part), than basing decisions on a tiny minority is not really wise, either, unless that tiny minority is so obsessive that they far outspend everyone else to fuel their number-crunching (which may or may not be the case, no one knows), to the point that they are the majority funding of the game.
The reality is, that, either way, it didn't really work as intended. Unless
1. They didn't care about average player spending on upgrades, items, etc.
2. The empty queues were inconsequential to them
3. Losing even some of the minority's spending (because of trust issues) did little to affect the bottom line
Whether or not the DPS people are "bad" (most aren't) is largely irrelevant. It's just not wise to spend so much time and effort looking at, and catering to, a minority. This is the excuse everyone uses as to "why KDF [x] doesn't get attention," yet it somehow doesn't apply in this case?
The end result is that most people aren't happy. You can blame the "DPS people," or you can be one of the "DPS people" who give them all a bad name and say "It's because I'm great and you suck." Still doesn't change the fact that most people don't like it.
I think the rebalance, as a whole, was done in a hamfisted, clumsy way, and it came out pretty terribly, but that's just me. Add in the new, crappy, Queue UI, and Season 13 pretty much sucks. It's at least as bad as DR, if not worse.
I was about to post a very similar response, but it's so much easier to just quote yours.
Thank you.
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You forgot SS3. How could you forget SS3!? Tsk!
Now for some corrections:
* I was never against the Kemocite fixes (even posted to that effect, a few posts up); but, as usual, Bort went overboard the other way, and totally neutered it (in a second round, after the first fixes, pre-S13 still).
* Embassy Consoles?! LOL, no; never really used them.
* 'Black poo' console?! Never even heard of it. Which means likely don't even have it.
* Ionic Turbulance? Yes, didn't like that one; SS3 included. That was Bort giving in to you, and a handful of other PvP-ers, screaming off the top of your lungs, to nerf it to death, whereas the rest of the PvE community was having a blast with it. Intel was a refreshing diversion from the usual BFAW builds; and finally came with a nice Commander level Tact skill. I really loved having an alernative meta. But you couldn't have that, could you? Intel had to be killed, at every cost. And, as usual, you got your way.
I'll give you that I didn't want Ionic Turbulence broken for PvE. Nor Intel killed as a whole. Your position is always clear, though: "If it can kill me in PvP, I must make it my prime task to take it away for everyone else."
Ironically, you should be very happy with all these nerfs. But you are not; because, as you've stated on many occassions, you always think they didn't go far enough. And *that* is why I always loudly protest, and will continue to do so. And I'd like to think community protests against the many nerfs at least resorted in them taking the edge off a bit.
Because last year MI wasn't running, right?! And I suppose there was no Summer Event either, no?!
Queues are simply very empty, post-S13, period. And I see nobody even remotely spelling doom for this game. I do, however, see many ppl be genuinely concerned, and speaking out on it, because even the most die-hard optimists are beginning to scratch their head over it. And, as I've been saying, it seems, by introdcing the individual Endeavor System, Cryptic is no longer in total denial over it, either.
I invariably find myself amused at how you always manage to twist things totally around.
If there's any 'exploitive attitude', then it's Cryptic's, always inventing new consoles and abilities that are often, arguably a bit too much, so that you'll be inclined to buy them. They're not the victim in this: they deliberately design their stuff that way. And your notion that players 'seeking advantage' somehow, having the miraculously 'wrong' expectation of actually getting what they paid for, is ludicrous on all counts.
Leech was such a very good console. You can't just revisit the item, 3 years later, saying you suddenly realized it's OP. That is BS. Barring obviously needed fixes, the longer you wait with 'fixing' an item any further, the more justified players are in thinking the item must now be WAI. Like them Plasma 'Exploders': Bort nerfed them, massively, like 2 years or so ago. People grumbled a bit, but generally understood the explosions were a bit too much. So, especially after they already got nerfed, and 2 years later, those using them were again entirely justified in thinking they were now working as intended. And now they're suddenly had to be made into vendor trash?!
And if you're thiniking Cryptic back-tracked on its mistakes, making necessary nerfs, then you're grossly mistaken yourself; all the nerfs serve only 1 goal: to reboot the cycle of selling you new power creep all over again.
And -- looking for some common ground -- when I learned Tyken's could rapidly suck another player totally dry, with even 0 points in DrainX, I too was onboard with normalizing Tyken's a bit (I myself suggested you would need at least like 600 in DrainX to be able to start doing some real harm). No one should get freebies like that.