While there have been some good suggestions made I would go so far as putting perma-death into the normal play of the game. I would argue that since this game has become F2P the casual community probably far outweighs the top tier player. In saying that Cryptic stands to lose a lot more by adding perma-death considering that if its true the casual player base is the largest once they started to lose money to revive their character or retain things they spent real money on then people will stop playing and the game will die. The elite community will not be enough to sustain this game. That being said a rebalance or an addition to queues wouldnt be a horrible thing. Think something like hardcore elite where as mentioned you do less damage and the enemies have more HP. Of course they would need to add appropriate awards because why run it if it isnt worth your time. Maybe also another thought could be overpowered "overworld" bosses that pop up like the alerts that take a large amount of players to take out and I believe as trennan mentioned have them have a small percentage of dropping a rare item. At least it would be something fresh for people to do. Just my opinion though
"The fact they have listened to and gave the X players what they wanted, is the reason the game is in the sorry state that it is in". I agree but as suggested and not by you (you strike me as wanting rebalance), reversing those changes in sway of Y players would ultimately result in the same thing. Cryptic really needs to just evaluate how they can balance the content that serves both player bases.
No, its the 90/10 rule, Cryptic needs to serve the part of the base that pays most of the bills. Its basic economics. You can never please the 10% without pissing off the 90%, and which loss would hurt more, loosing 10% or Loosing 90%.
The ONLY way to do that would be to , as you suggest, add a "hardcore elite mode", or a "nightmare mode" if you will, and apply those "rules" to those modes, and not change the existing ones.
Well that was kind of my point. Maybe its context or the wording I used. To me adding a hardcore mode would be a part of "balancing" out the content and serving both communities. Casuals would have their content and hardcore players would have theirs. I didn't mean numerical balancing. More or less just being able to have a choice of content depending on your play style. And lets not kid ourselves. Cryptic is making plenty of money to be able to make proper changes/additions to this game.
"The fact they have listened to and gave the X players what they wanted, is the reason the game is in the sorry state that it is in". I agree but as suggested and not by you, reversing those changes in sway of Y players would ultimately result in the same thing. Cryptic really needs to just evaluate how they can balance the content that serves both player bases.
Well, yeah, I've never suggested they reverse those changes. I've always looked for way they could adapt to and balance out those changes. I might reference a point in the past and say perhaps they should bring this back. But that's from a game mechanic point of view.
I certainly understand and agree with things that both you napalm and trennan are saying about the balance. Getting back onto the original topic though I dont believe the OPs suggestion of a perma-death system would benefit either player bases.. One of the two would not be satisfied with this solution and stop playing basically sinking this game. When that happens nothing the pro perma-death can do to keep the game alive.
Why does someone who’s casual have to be assumed to be someone who doesn’t want a challenge?
I don’t really play all that much but I enjoy a good challenge in a game. What I don’t enjoy is hardcore mechanics forced on a whole player base who don’t want them. Having varying difficulties caters to all players from the super casual “once a week for lols” players, to the daily RP’er living a second life, to the hardcore number chaser looking for a huge challenge. But forcing mechanics on a whole player base is never going to actually improve the game. Remember when they forced all that DR hitpoint bloat on us - players left. And when the great balance pass of 2017 came to be - players left. I wonder what forcing insta-death on the game would do......
Well that was kind of my point. Maybe its context or the wording I used. To me adding a hardcore mode would be a part of "balancing" out the content and serving both communities. Casuals would have their content and hardcore players would have theirs. I didn't mean numerical balancing. More or less just being able to have a choice of content depending on your play style.
They HAD balance when advanced and elite actually MEANT something. Than they gave in and power creeped the players and nerfed the content to all be the same. They don't need to add anything. They need to make advanced and elite mean something again.
What they HAD is immaterial, does not matter, pointless, water under the bridge, etc....that will NOT change because going back to that would cost them. What CAN be done is adding content for the "elite/hardcore" crowd. BUT what you fail to realize, what will happen, again, eventually, is that it will also get "nerfed/changed/watered down" eventually, because, again as I have said, where most of their income comes from is the casual base, and they will ALWAYS have the bigger voice because of that fact.
This is a casual MMO, very casual, and will always reflect that. Right or wrong, that is how it is, and TBH, I appreciate that, if I want hard core, there are other games I play.
Nope, its a common business ratio.....but whatever. Your comments became worthless as soon as you stated could determine who was "undesirable" and who wasn't.
STO has backed itself into a corner - appease a loud subset of players who want to maintain a mindless game (always demanding more), or drop the niche players and focus on core gameplay to bring back the various communities chased away (DPS, PvP, etc).
Permanent death isn't just a solution to the problem, it's the ultimate solution. Devs need to display some direction and leadership.
(Emphasis mine)
Hint: there won't be much gameplay if a toon is permanently dead.
@baddmoonrizin This idiocy has gone on long enough. Please close this thread, before someone takes it seriously and instates changes which will drive away a majority of paying players and kill the game.
Fomenting excessive and continued undue forum discontent, is something you like to act upon, so IMHO, time for you to act.
Post edited by silverlobes#2676 on
"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
The only thing preventing anyone from utilizing permanent death right now is the individual. Anyone is free to delete their toon and start over upon being defeated right now.
And I would argue that the same logic applies to those who don't want to deal with 'undesirables'. Those players can always decide to leave themselves.
The ONLY way to do that would be to , as you suggest, add a "hardcore elite mode", or a "nightmare mode" if you will, and apply those "rules" to those modes, and not change the existing ones.
And that's what I said on page 1.
8 pages later...the debate is still raging.
On another note, You know what makes me personally not want to go the "Team Play/Trinity" play style in STO ?
All the junk on screen, all the visual effects blinding me, all the tray clicking a player has to do if they're not keybind Kings.
It's funny, because 90% of a PvE mission I'm looking at my tray and clicking it continuously. And trying to guide my ship "by feel" into the proper (general) direction.
I honestly barely see anything when playing queues other then my tray.
How am I supposed to know when someone is in trouble ? The answer is by looking at my Team HUD... but you know what ? I rarely get that opportunity while in the heat of the battle.
Maybe if there was some type of alarm when your teammates are low on life it would help greatly, but as it is there's just too much visual junk going on. And if you don't keybind, you're going to be clicking the tray a lot.
And I'd wager that 90%+ of the player base doesn't keybind.
The real team play in STO is bringing enough DPS to a team so you can contribute and do your part.
The whole game would have to be rebuilt from the ground up to facilitate a Team Play/Trinity style system in STO.
This conversation is interesting, but again, I'm still waiting for Elite difficulties for every queue, and more importantly a rebalance of rewards. The harder longer missions are not worth playing.
You've got "normal" capable players going straight to ADV for the Elite Rep tokens and they have no business being there.
So let's jus put the Elite Rep tokens into Normal already so those players can stick to normal, and not ruin everyone else's pug experiences.
The PUGS are just horrid these days.
At one point, 1 or 2 players could carry a very bad pug in ADV so I myself had no problems with the sub 10k players joining. But since the balance pass 2017, this is not the case anymore. But the "normal" capable players still keep flocking to ADV or Elite content in hopes they can be carried once again.
It's getting annoying. We need a way to keep the casuals out of ADV and Elite if theyre not ready for it.
So just give them the Rep tokens in normal already.
Further to this, if someone does less then 10% of the total team damage in ADV or Elite, they should get absolutely Nothing as a reward.
This, along with the Rep Tokens being added as a reward to normal queues would go a long way in discouraging the normal level players from joining and ruining the ADV/Elite queues for everybody else.
The ONLY way to do that would be to , as you suggest, add a "hardcore elite mode", or a "nightmare mode" if you will, and apply those "rules" to those modes, and not change the existing ones.
On another note, You know what makes me personally not want to go the "Team Play/Trinity" play style in STO ?
All the junk on screen, all the visual effects blinding me, all the tray clicking a player has to do if they're not keybind Kings.
It's funny, because 90% of a PvE mission I'm looking at my tray and clicking it continuously. And trying to guide my ship "by feel" into the proper (general) direction.
I honestly barely see anything when playing queues other then my tray.
How am I supposed to know when someone is in trouble ? The answer is by looking at my Team HUD... but you know what ? I rarely get that opportunity while in the heat of the battle.
Maybe if there was some type of alarm when your teammates are low on life it would help greatly, but as it is there's just too much visual junk going on. And if you don't keybind, you're going to be clicking the tray a lot.
They seem to be making a start with addressing this. At least they changed some icons and visuals in a recent patch.
Hopefully they've got a solution in mind cause I completely agree.
The ONLY way to do that would be to , as you suggest, add a "hardcore elite mode", or a "nightmare mode" if you will, and apply those "rules" to those modes, and not change the existing ones.
And that's what I said on page 1.
8 pages later...the debate is still raging.
On another note, You know what makes me personally not want to go the "Team Play/Trinity" play style in STO ?
All the junk on screen, all the visual effects blinding me, all the tray clicking a player has to do if they're not keybind Kings.
It's funny, because 90% of a PvE mission I'm looking at my tray and clicking it continuously. And trying to guide my ship "by feel" into the proper (general) direction.
I honestly barely see anything when playing queues other then my tray.
How am I supposed to know when someone is in trouble ? The answer is by looking at my Team HUD... but you know what ? I rarely get that opportunity while in the heat of the battle.
Maybe if there was some type of alarm when your teammates are low on life it would help greatly, but as it is there's just too much visual junk going on. And if you don't keybind, you're going to be clicking the tray a lot.
And I'd wager that 90%+ of the player base doesn't keybind.
The real team play in STO is bringing enough DPS to a team so you can contribute and do your part.
The whole game would have to be rebuilt from the ground up to facilitate a Team Play/Trinity style system in STO.
This conversation is interesting, but again, I'm still waiting for Elite difficulties for every queue, and more importantly a rebalance of rewards. The harder longer missions are not worth playing.
You've got "normal" capable players going straight to ADV for the Elite Rep tokens and they have no business being there.
So let's jus put the Elite Rep tokens into Normal already so those players can stick to normal, and not ruin everyone else's pug experiences.
The PUGS are just horrid these days.
At one point, 1 or 2 players could carry a very bad pug in ADV so I myself had no problems with the sub 10k players joining. But since the balance pass 2017, this is not the case anymore. But the "normal" capable players still keep flocking to ADV or Elite content in hopes they can be carried once again.
It's getting annoying. We need a way to keep the casuals out of ADV and Elite if theyre not ready for it.
So just give them the Rep tokens in normal already.
Further to this, if someone does less then 10% of the total team damage in ADV or Elite, they should get absolutely Nothing as a reward.
This, along with the Rep Tokens being added as a reward to normal queues would go a long way in discouraging the normal level players from joining and ruining the ADV/Elite queues for everybody else.
Very simple solution to that...don't PUG. Go with fleet mates/group of friends/regulars etc...
Just bring back fail conditions for advanced again and revert all the changes made after DR to the values we got directly with DR for advanced because they were calculated propperly (just to stop instant kills of the poor entity as example!)
I say no to fail conditions, but when it comes to the entity of like to see the return of original version, which had mechanics you absolutely had to follow if you wanted to complete the encounter. Had more than a few runs that got it to 10% health, only for someone to **** up and let it heal back to 100%. With the right tuning it would be a lot of fun, and better than the current mindless DPS race.
why no fail conditions for ADVANCED. its called ADVANCED and not free loot for everyone. we still have normal, thats the free loot for everyone part. right now we could just delete normal bc beside some minor differences in hp there is absolutly no difference. => Bring back advanced fail conditions
hell during the time we had them, weaker people actually used tactics again like the 10% rule for isa ^^
Because fail conditions with a 30 minute timer are stupid and enable trolls. I never once had a Borg Disconnected Advanced succeed with the fail conditions, because I was always the only player liberating Borg ships and no one was reaching my chat messages.
Which, I would say, is more appropriate for a mission labeled "Advanced" than its current state where all you have to do is wait out the timers and it succeeds automatically no matter what the players did or didn't do.
BDA did not enable trolls, although some poorly thought out missions did (like ISA). The correct solution to clueless players unable to deal with missions where they'd be actually required to do something to win, would've been to direct (and possibly force with unlock conditions) them to stay in Normal until they learned to play.
Discussion and healthy debate is a good thing. Disagreement isn't flaming or trolling, personal jabs and insults are, though. Maybe some people need to take a step back for moment and let their emotions cool on this one before continuing...
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator and Resident She-Wolf
Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
Do you approve of this line of conversation, and want to see permadeath initiated?
No, I don't agree with the idea. However, I'm all for discussion of the topic and allowing those who are keen on the idea to speak their mind. I don't think a thread should be closed simply because some folk do not agree with the topic.
There's not only no point in discussing what is only being said as a blatant incitement, but it's also dangerous, because it could potentially make devs think "They're talking about this, must be some interest #SeemsLegit..." and before we know it, it's permadeath on any and all content on even the normal settings. I don't know about you, but I'm not prepared to waste money buying pixels which could potentially be wiped out any time I engage any game content, nor to even engage game content which could wipe out what I've already purchased. I believe that the implementation such an idea, would kill the game, because I suspect, that the majority of paying players, will also not want to risk items on a game which could take them away at any unfortunate outcome. Doorbell or phone rings, cat jumps on the keyboard, and BANG, YOU'RE DEAD. Potentially years worth of acquired content GONE. That, is not an acceptable situation.
As mentioned, if someone wants to delete their character and start over because they get killed, they already can (That actually sounds like an interesting challenge in itself just as an experiment to see how far one can progress, but not at the expense of gear. Yes, anything can be ground for eventually, but a lot of stuff is also simply easier to buy outright with the lowest amount of zen. It's not much, but I'm not prepared to risk even that little money on something which is potentially going to be lost. I notice that nabreeki is being very coy about if a character's resources and assets get wiped back to zero as well. I doubt that someone with such an aversion to the SpacePoor, would want to become one himself. I also know that buying Elite Shinies eats through resources. Having to continually do that, will soon turn a SpaceRich, into a SpacePoor.
It's a very dangerous idea, and IMO needs to be squashed, before it's taken seriously, and we ALL get impacted.
By all means bring in a SuperEliteNightmareMode, which someone can only enter if they have X Qualifications/gear, but the idea of permadeath on Everyone? Utter insanity, and it deserves to be treated accordingly.
"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
The ONLY way to do that would be to , as you suggest, add a "hardcore elite mode", or a "nightmare mode" if you will, and apply those "rules" to those modes, and not change the existing ones.
And that's what I said on page 1.
8 pages later...the debate is still raging.
On another note, You know what makes me personally not want to go the "Team Play/Trinity" play style in STO ?
All the junk on screen, all the visual effects blinding me, all the tray clicking a player has to do if they're not keybind Kings.
It's funny, because 90% of a PvE mission I'm looking at my tray and clicking it continuously. And trying to guide my ship "by feel" into the proper (general) direction.
I honestly barely see anything when playing queues other then my tray.
How am I supposed to know when someone is in trouble ? The answer is by looking at my Team HUD... but you know what ? I rarely get that opportunity while in the heat of the battle.
Maybe if there was some type of alarm when your teammates are low on life it would help greatly, but as it is there's just too much visual junk going on. And if you don't keybind, you're going to be clicking the tray a lot.
And I'd wager that 90%+ of the player base doesn't keybind.
The real team play in STO is bringing enough DPS to a team so you can contribute and do your part.
The whole game would have to be rebuilt from the ground up to facilitate a Team Play/Trinity style system in STO.
This conversation is interesting, but again, I'm still waiting for Elite difficulties for every queue, and more importantly a rebalance of rewards. The harder longer missions are not worth playing.
You've got "normal" capable players going straight to ADV for the Elite Rep tokens and they have no business being there.
So let's jus put the Elite Rep tokens into Normal already so those players can stick to normal, and not ruin everyone else's pug experiences.
The PUGS are just horrid these days.
At one point, 1 or 2 players could carry a very bad pug in ADV so I myself had no problems with the sub 10k players joining. But since the balance pass 2017, this is not the case anymore. But the "normal" capable players still keep flocking to ADV or Elite content in hopes they can be carried once again.
It's getting annoying. We need a way to keep the casuals out of ADV and Elite if theyre not ready for it.
So just give them the Rep tokens in normal already.
Further to this, if someone does less then 10% of the total team damage in ADV or Elite, they should get absolutely Nothing as a reward.
This, along with the Rep Tokens being added as a reward to normal queues would go a long way in discouraging the normal level players from joining and ruining the ADV/Elite queues for everybody else.
The one point you bring here, is the amount of abilities. Personally, this doesn't bother me much. I don't use macro's or anything, though I could. But then I also don't haphazardly click my skills and abilities. I prefer to choose when to use them, instead of just using them. The only reason I don't pay much attention to what's going on around me, is all the screen junk flashing across my screen from all the abilities. They really need to work on cleaning this us. I don't watch what's going on, just so I can save my eyes the pain of actually having to look at it. It's not even nice to look at, it's just clogging up the screen, in an attempt to make thing "look good." But at the same times, it actually makes one look away from what's going on, because it hurts the player's eyes.
There's just so much overwhelming "pretty" junk on the screen, that is turns every combat in to a dancing disco ball of pain and torment to watch.
Sure back until the start of the Fleet power creep, we has a trinity of sorts. It wasn't exactly the trinity that people are talking about. Since, everyone can carry survival abilities. It was more of mix of crowd control, damage, and surviving. Sure you had those that would pull threat and act as a healer. But, to use Cure Found, or CSA, as an example here. You had to prevent the NPC ship from being destroyed, while also taking care of the borg generators and cubes. Generally, you "healer" and one other that was guarding the NPC, the "healer" mainly healing the NPC and using crowd control abilities. The other usually working toward the more tank/damage side of guarding it. In this, if the NPC died, you failed the STF.
Now, jump forward to Dranuur Gauntlet. You can literally park and not even bother with this map. It doesn't matter if you fight, activate the satellites, or do anything in general. All you have to do is wait out the timer. In other words, queue up, get in the map, and then go to the bathroom, make a snack, come back and collect your rewards.
At this rate, all they need to do for PvE is give us Space and Ground A.I.s that play the maps for us. Since, you can get rewarded for doing nothing. Might as well make it to where the player's don't even need to play, unless they want to. An AFK bot, so to speak. Wait, no... this doesn't work. Because the bot would actually be useful and help out. Scratch this idea.
As far as the rewards, while they all do need a major overhaul. I wouldn't place the elite token in normal. Instead for Adv/Elite I'd put in a reward increase and decrease. For example, the optional becomes optional. Failing it isn't an autofail for the entire STF. It just means you're rewards will be cut by a certain percent. Then in that, time limit and number of deaths can also be used to further reduce the reward. This means, now the player has to focus, and learn how to do the stfs, to get the better rewards. This way, the better you do, the higher your reward and the worse that you do, the lower your reward.
How would you react to that? Say, doing a ISA, you fail the optional, die a few times, but manage to complete the STF. You're reward is 5 marks and no elite mark. Would you not work to learn the STF and how to get the better reward?
Comments
Finally, someone "gets it".
The ONLY way to do that would be to , as you suggest, add a "hardcore elite mode", or a "nightmare mode" if you will, and apply those "rules" to those modes, and not change the existing ones.
Well, yeah, I've never suggested they reverse those changes. I've always looked for way they could adapt to and balance out those changes. I might reference a point in the past and say perhaps they should bring this back. But that's from a game mechanic point of view.
I don’t really play all that much but I enjoy a good challenge in a game.
What I don’t enjoy is hardcore mechanics forced on a whole player base who don’t want them.
Having varying difficulties caters to all players from the super casual “once a week for lols” players, to the daily RP’er living a second life, to the hardcore number chaser looking for a huge challenge.
But forcing mechanics on a whole player base is never going to actually improve the game.
Remember when they forced all that DR hitpoint bloat on us - players left.
And when the great balance pass of 2017 came to be - players left.
I wonder what forcing insta-death on the game would do......
What they HAD is immaterial, does not matter, pointless, water under the bridge, etc....that will NOT change because going back to that would cost them. What CAN be done is adding content for the "elite/hardcore" crowd. BUT what you fail to realize, what will happen, again, eventually, is that it will also get "nerfed/changed/watered down" eventually, because, again as I have said, where most of their income comes from is the casual base, and they will ALWAYS have the bigger voice because of that fact.
This is a casual MMO, very casual, and will always reflect that. Right or wrong, that is how it is, and TBH, I appreciate that, if I want hard core, there are other games I play.
(Emphasis mine)
Hint: there won't be much gameplay if a toon is permanently dead.
Fomenting excessive and continued undue forum discontent, is something you like to act upon, so IMHO, time for you to act.
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
And I would argue that the same logic applies to those who don't want to deal with 'undesirables'. Those players can always decide to leave themselves.
And that's what I said on page 1.
8 pages later...the debate is still raging.
On another note, You know what makes me personally not want to go the "Team Play/Trinity" play style in STO ?
All the junk on screen, all the visual effects blinding me, all the tray clicking a player has to do if they're not keybind Kings.
It's funny, because 90% of a PvE mission I'm looking at my tray and clicking it continuously. And trying to guide my ship "by feel" into the proper (general) direction.
I honestly barely see anything when playing queues other then my tray.
How am I supposed to know when someone is in trouble ? The answer is by looking at my Team HUD... but you know what ? I rarely get that opportunity while in the heat of the battle.
Maybe if there was some type of alarm when your teammates are low on life it would help greatly, but as it is there's just too much visual junk going on. And if you don't keybind, you're going to be clicking the tray a lot.
And I'd wager that 90%+ of the player base doesn't keybind.
The real team play in STO is bringing enough DPS to a team so you can contribute and do your part.
The whole game would have to be rebuilt from the ground up to facilitate a Team Play/Trinity style system in STO.
This conversation is interesting, but again, I'm still waiting for Elite difficulties for every queue, and more importantly a rebalance of rewards. The harder longer missions are not worth playing.
You've got "normal" capable players going straight to ADV for the Elite Rep tokens and they have no business being there.
So let's jus put the Elite Rep tokens into Normal already so those players can stick to normal, and not ruin everyone else's pug experiences.
The PUGS are just horrid these days.
At one point, 1 or 2 players could carry a very bad pug in ADV so I myself had no problems with the sub 10k players joining. But since the balance pass 2017, this is not the case anymore. But the "normal" capable players still keep flocking to ADV or Elite content in hopes they can be carried once again.
It's getting annoying. We need a way to keep the casuals out of ADV and Elite if theyre not ready for it.
So just give them the Rep tokens in normal already.
Further to this, if someone does less then 10% of the total team damage in ADV or Elite, they should get absolutely Nothing as a reward.
This, along with the Rep Tokens being added as a reward to normal queues would go a long way in discouraging the normal level players from joining and ruining the ADV/Elite queues for everybody else.
They seem to be making a start with addressing this. At least they changed some icons and visuals in a recent patch.
Hopefully they've got a solution in mind cause I completely agree.
Very simple solution to that...don't PUG. Go with fleet mates/group of friends/regulars etc...
BDA did not enable trolls, although some poorly thought out missions did (like ISA). The correct solution to clueless players unable to deal with missions where they'd be actually required to do something to win, would've been to direct (and possibly force with unlock conditions) them to stay in Normal until they learned to play.
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
Moderation Problems/Issues? Please contact the Community Manager
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As mentioned, if someone wants to delete their character and start over because they get killed, they already can (That actually sounds like an interesting challenge in itself just as an experiment to see how far one can progress, but not at the expense of gear. Yes, anything can be ground for eventually, but a lot of stuff is also simply easier to buy outright with the lowest amount of zen. It's not much, but I'm not prepared to risk even that little money on something which is potentially going to be lost. I notice that nabreeki is being very coy about if a character's resources and assets get wiped back to zero as well. I doubt that someone with such an aversion to the SpacePoor, would want to become one himself. I also know that buying Elite Shinies eats through resources. Having to continually do that, will soon turn a SpaceRich, into a SpacePoor.
It's a very dangerous idea, and IMO needs to be squashed, before it's taken seriously, and we ALL get impacted.
By all means bring in a SuperEliteNightmareMode, which someone can only enter if they have X Qualifications/gear, but the idea of permadeath on Everyone? Utter insanity, and it deserves to be treated accordingly.
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
The one point you bring here, is the amount of abilities. Personally, this doesn't bother me much. I don't use macro's or anything, though I could. But then I also don't haphazardly click my skills and abilities. I prefer to choose when to use them, instead of just using them. The only reason I don't pay much attention to what's going on around me, is all the screen junk flashing across my screen from all the abilities. They really need to work on cleaning this us. I don't watch what's going on, just so I can save my eyes the pain of actually having to look at it. It's not even nice to look at, it's just clogging up the screen, in an attempt to make thing "look good." But at the same times, it actually makes one look away from what's going on, because it hurts the player's eyes.
There's just so much overwhelming "pretty" junk on the screen, that is turns every combat in to a dancing disco ball of pain and torment to watch.
Sure back until the start of the Fleet power creep, we has a trinity of sorts. It wasn't exactly the trinity that people are talking about. Since, everyone can carry survival abilities. It was more of mix of crowd control, damage, and surviving. Sure you had those that would pull threat and act as a healer. But, to use Cure Found, or CSA, as an example here. You had to prevent the NPC ship from being destroyed, while also taking care of the borg generators and cubes. Generally, you "healer" and one other that was guarding the NPC, the "healer" mainly healing the NPC and using crowd control abilities. The other usually working toward the more tank/damage side of guarding it. In this, if the NPC died, you failed the STF.
Now, jump forward to Dranuur Gauntlet. You can literally park and not even bother with this map. It doesn't matter if you fight, activate the satellites, or do anything in general. All you have to do is wait out the timer. In other words, queue up, get in the map, and then go to the bathroom, make a snack, come back and collect your rewards.
At this rate, all they need to do for PvE is give us Space and Ground A.I.s that play the maps for us. Since, you can get rewarded for doing nothing. Might as well make it to where the player's don't even need to play, unless they want to. An AFK bot, so to speak. Wait, no... this doesn't work. Because the bot would actually be useful and help out. Scratch this idea.
As far as the rewards, while they all do need a major overhaul. I wouldn't place the elite token in normal. Instead for Adv/Elite I'd put in a reward increase and decrease. For example, the optional becomes optional. Failing it isn't an autofail for the entire STF. It just means you're rewards will be cut by a certain percent. Then in that, time limit and number of deaths can also be used to further reduce the reward. This means, now the player has to focus, and learn how to do the stfs, to get the better rewards. This way, the better you do, the higher your reward and the worse that you do, the lower your reward.
How would you react to that? Say, doing a ISA, you fail the optional, die a few times, but manage to complete the STF. You're reward is 5 marks and no elite mark. Would you not work to learn the STF and how to get the better reward?