E.g. Like you need to win 10 times on normal, without dying once, then you are alowed to play on advance. Same to be promoted from adv to elite.
And if you die in adv or elite you get demoted.
Then totally defeat it with this:
Just cruise a bit in it. Have holliday, die a couple of times respawn, just do enough damage to not get penalized, and e.g. let all the others do all the work, but still get all the marks and rewards, while drinking coffee.
You're showing here how your own idea will not work.
You totaly did not understand it if you say this. Please read again and check my further remarks in this topic.
The first remarks referst to "with ratingsystem" the second to "without rating". So logicaly they opposite.
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,687Community Moderator
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
You totaly did not understand it if you say this. Please read again and check my further remarks in this topic.
The first remarks referst to "with ratingsystem" the second to "without rating". So logicaly they opposite.
Your OP isn't my post, it's yours. All I did was point out that you're explaining how your own idea won't work as it was presented.
You're saying people right now can join a queue, contribute the bare minimum, not die and have the match considered a success. Following your logic, this would count as a "win" for the player and up their rating.
Sounds to me like all anyone would need to do is join a few normal queues, do a little bit here and there and their rating would go up thanks to the efforts of others and grant said player access to advanced queues. This process can rinse/repeat at the advanced level too. So you have players moving along to advanced and elite level without being really prepared for it.
I think that's counter to the spirit of your idea.
"this would count as a "win" for the player and up their rating" yes but only if the team succeeds to finish the PVE. The higher the difficulty level the harder it is to just sit more or less idle and still win. Also not only wins count in the rating calculation. I never wrote only wins determain the rating calculation. For the rating formular other also logged parameters can be taken into account.
Even hypothical if only a certain amount of succesive wins would count for the rating, than still at some point some runs will statiscaly not be succesfull because team is to weak to complete the PVE when people sit more or less idle. And in PVE's which require muliple tasks and players need to spread out will more likely fail in such cases, which will have a negative effect on your rating.
"this would count as a "win" for the player and up their rating" yes but only if the team succeeds to finish the PVE. The higher the difficulty level the harder it is to just sit more or less idle and still win. Also not only wins count in the rating calculation. I never wrote only wins determain the rating calculation. For the rating formular other also logged parameters can be taken into account.
Even hypothical if only a certain amount of succesive wins would count for the rating, than still at some point some runs will statiscaly not be succesfull because team is to weak to complete the PVE when people sit more or less idle. And in PVE's which require muliple tasks and players need to spread out will more likely fail in such cases, which will have a negative effect on your rating.
What other logged parameters? DPS? Healing?
It's possible right now to sit back and not do a whole heck of a lot on a team and still easily complete an advanced queue with all optionals.
And if I'm understanding your correctly, 1 fail will knock people back to the beginning level? If so, how are you going to account for deaths due to non-player caused situations like lag and server disconnects or game bugs?
The impact of those will not be big. Because a rating system formula adds or detracts points based on several parameters. You need to reach a treshhold a mark, to get access to the next difficulty level that has better loot. Only if you just reached the mark then maybe someone can notice a setback in case of the circumstances you described (unless there is a perfect solution for it). But Just have some more runs and you will gain rating again. Off course deliberate disconnecting will set you back as well.
Probably something like XVM in World of Tanks, where a complex formula is created to determine who is l33t and who is a scrub in the creators opinion, then everyone is color coded to determine how a player ranks on the scale. It even tells you how likely you are to win the game based on the rank of both teams. It fosters corrosively toxic gameplay and chat but the l33t players all swear by it.
These are things that can be worked out but to keep it simple, have it a set amount of victories. A simple number like five for example on each difficulty would be optimum for difficulty unlocks
You do know the game can consider you've won a queue even if you've done absolutely nothing as long as your team wins, Mirror Invasion being the most infamous example?
That's why a more stringent AFK system needs to be in place that takes lag and connection into account. Adding a combat log in on the dev's side of things would also identify AFKers and not award the AFKer if they did nothing at all, to get a victory you have to participate actively.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
I don't think Advanced or Elite should be earned. You can't lock out people from playing content. The issue isn't always are they geared enough or put the points in the right skill tree. The biggest issues are players ability to read the situation, to learn what preset attack patterns and weapon types the NPC uses, and these are the 2 biggest problems being aware of what's going on around them and playing as part of a team
Running normal's isn't going to ness teach someone any of these qualities. It comes down to the individuals attitude and behaviours and realizing that they are playing in a team with 4/9/19 other players and learning to play well with others.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
These are things that can be worked out but to keep it simple, have it a set amount of victories. A simple number like five for example on each difficulty would be optimum for difficulty unlocks
You do know the game can consider you've won a queue even if you've done absolutely nothing as long as your team wins, Mirror Invasion being the most infamous example?
That's why a more stringent AFK system needs to be in place that takes lag and connection into account. Adding a combat log in on the dev's side of things would also identify AFKers and not award the AFKer if they did nothing at all, to get a victory you have to participate actively.
I don't think Advanced or Elite should be earned. You can't lock out people from playing content. The issue isn't always are they geared enough or put the points in the right skill tree. The biggest issues are players ability to read the situation, to learn what preset attack patterns and weapon types the NPC uses, and these are the 2 biggest problems being aware of what's going on around them and playing as part of a team
Running normal's isn't going to ness teach someone any of these qualities. It comes down to the individuals attitude and behaviours and realizing that they are playing in a team with 4/9/19 other players and learning to play well with others.
I disagree, let me tell you why. In a progression system, you learn as you progress, or at least you should, running X on "normal" SHOULD teach you mechanics etc.....yes it comes down to attitudes and behavior also, but learning also. Progression isn't about "locking out" its about preparing you for success in harder missions.
Look at it like this, you learn to crawl, walk then run...I could use hundreds of examples, but you get the point. Its progression.......
Also, and this TBH, really depends on the player, but I know when I ran a guild in EQ1, seeing guild members kill X mob on hard mode for the first time was GREAT....you build friendships/teamwork etc...
No, not everyone will like it, but IMHO, there are few alternatives.
Just my opinions and thoughts.
OK more edits...
As to your comment about not being geared enough.....THATS one of the goals of progression, to gear you better, teach you about the skills needed etc.....done right, its great. Its not easy, but its rewarding as hell (and not just in loot). Look, its not for everyone, not saying it is....progression is also about setting goals etc (if thats what you want) take down X (or beat X STF) and then...X STF on Advanced, then on Elite...
Look, I get PUGS can be tough and harsh, but THIS also can address that problem, part of this also gets you working with others as a team, which, the goal is to , work through the progression with. Now, I know this sounds like a guild or fleet and what they SHOULD be doing.....well, yea
People want to "save the game" its not about locking people out or isolating a certain group, or jumping into a Norma/Advanced/Elite running it without saying a word in chat to others then going your separate ways...its about working with others.
Now, that said, if you/me/whoever wants to "space barbie" and solo their way through ...that's cool also, BUT WAIT YOU SAY....us "space barbies" (BTW I don't say that to put anyone down...I am right in there also) also want the possibility to get that super shiny new weapon that ONLY drops from X STF....you make that possible, but along a much longer route. For a working example of that, look at how swtor does it......it works there, really.
OK...tired of typing for now and wanna go kill borg.
I don't think Advanced or Elite should be earned. You can't lock out people from playing content. The issue isn't always are they geared enough or put the points in the right skill tree. The biggest issues are players ability to read the situation, to learn what preset attack patterns and weapon types the NPC uses, and these are the 2 biggest problems being aware of what's going on around them and playing as part of a team
Running normal's isn't going to ness teach someone any of these qualities. It comes down to the individuals attitude and behaviours and realizing that they are playing in a team with 4/9/19 other players and learning to play well with others.
I disagree, let me tell you why. In a progression system, you learn as you progress, or at least you should, running X on "normal" SHOULD teach you mechanics etc.....yes it comes down to attitudes and behavior also, but learning also. Progression isn't about "locking out" its about preparing you for success in harder missions.
Look at it like this, you learn to crawl, walk then run...I could use hundreds of examples, but you get the point. Its progression.......
Also, and this TBH, really depends on the player, but I know when I ran a guild in EQ1, seeing guild members kill X mob on hard mode for the first time was GREAT....you build friendships/teamwork etc...
No, not everyone will like it, but IMHO, there are few alternatives.
Just my opinions and thoughts.
OK more edits...
As to your comment about not being geared enough.....THATS one of the goals of progression, to gear you better, teach you about the skills needed etc.....done right, its great. Its not easy, but its rewarding as hell (and not just in loot). Look, its not for everyone, not saying it is....progression is also about setting goals etc (if thats what you want) take down X (or beat X STF) and then...X STF on Advanced, then on Elite...
Look, I get PUGS can be tough and harsh, but THIS also can address that problem, part of this also gets you working with others as a team, which, the goal is to , work through the progression with. Now, I know this sounds like a guild or fleet and what they SHOULD be doing.....well, yea
People want to "save the game" its not about locking people out or isolating a certain group, or jumping into a Norma/Advanced/Elite running it without saying a word in chat to others then going your separate ways...its about working with others.
Now, that said, if you/me/whoever wants to "space barbie" and solo their way through ...that's cool also, BUT WAIT YOU SAY....us "space barbies" (BTW I don't say that to put anyone down...I am right in there also) also want the possibility to get that super shiny new weapon that ONLY drops from X STF....you make that possible, but along a much longer route. For a working example of that, look at how swtor does it......it works there, really.
OK...tired of typing for now and wanna go kill borg.
Peace Out
Ok I understand what you are saying, and yes players should learn as they progress, they should be learning really through the Feature Episodes, as a lot of the NPC's in them use the same powers and tactics in STF's.
NPC's in this game I think we can agree are as smart as a lobotomized Pakled. So its not hard to work out what they throw at you and be prepared 99% of the time unless its a OP'ed cheap 1 shot power. Most NPC's are a 1 trick pony
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
Now everyone can join ADV or PVE queue's. Just cruise a bit in it. Have holliday, die a couple of times respawn, just do enough damage to not get penalized, and e.g. let all the others do all the work, but still get all the marks and rewards, while drinking coffee.
Wouldn't it be much nicer if you need to be qualified to run ADV and ELITE queue's? What if there would be a kind of a promotion/demotion system?
E.g. Like you need to win 10 times on normal, without dying once, then you are alowed to play on advance. Same to be promoted from adv to elite.
And if you die in adv or elite you get demoted.
Or better. Sto gives players a rating nummer. Succesfull runs and surviving adds points to it. Failing runs and dying subtract points for it. If you have enough points on normal, then playing adv c.q elite queues are opened to you. If your rating number gets below the mark, then you will have to earn your points again in lower difficulty runs.
Because when every rating is in place (wich is an eval number per player wich increases or decrease depending on performance), there is an incentive to perform and improve. You will have stronger teams running adv/elite queues because people who dont reach mark will be excluded but sill can enjoy playing on normal till their rating improves.
When rating is in place also adv and elite queues will be populated more with players who understand the fail conditions in a adv elite pve, and dont want to risk falingen them because that affects their rating. Team play will improve because if a PVE for example has 3 area's where people should split up to people will do so instead of not splitting up because they dont know it is required to not fail the PVE. etc. Also this would give devs more creativity to make more complex PVE's people will need to learn how to play them to get the goodies.
What does the community think about it? Would it iomprove team play and fun? What parameters should be included for calculating your personal rating? What criteria some one needs to meet to advance?
Far too arbitrary and ultimately it will just add confusion and even more resentment to the already depleted PvE queue.
your idea requires the compliance of PuG player allies to pick up the slack as much as you and if one shold fail, you all fail. Why should others suffer because one person who failed the team and why should that one person become the target of abuse because the others have to run through another ten advanced runs? Also what about circumstances beyond control, like disconnections, server outages and what not that will force the game to consider your disconnection from the server as an automatic failure?
A Rating system wouldn't work as it would be a fertile ground for abuse by the players to shun those outside a specific number where others would climb over their own friends to reach number 1 on the list. It would be less about the PvE queues and more about personal point of pride.
It won't force players to learn how to play the game as it will just add gates to each bit of content for no real purpose.
I am proposing a rating system not a ranking system. This rating can be a calculation on the bacground just to calculate if player still has enough rating to play adv c.q. elite PVE's. Player just gets a message like "You now can play adv queue" as soon as rating is high enough. Or "you no longer can play advanced queues" if your rating has dropped.
So in fact less reason for insults and abuse because you will more likely play with people who qualify for a certain PVE difficulty level, and as said its not a ranking system so its not about being the number 1 on the list or "climbing over their own friends" as you wrote.
Rating system can easily lead to a ranking system, you rate the performance of a group of people and they are put in ranks appropriate to where they are. i hope there are safe guards in place to keep it from being anything more than a behind the scenes numbers game for the server to work out.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Those who are good enough to play advanced, should have no trouble carrying one or two less well performing team mates. If that is a problem, then they have no right to complain since they're not that good either. In my opinion.
I agree with this post 100%
Perhaps if things were different and the queues would be filled with life I’d agree more with the OP.
As things are now in PvE however we can be happy for each and every individual signing up for this content and getting the respective maps to pop.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I am with ratty. If every random player in a queue was pre-vetted then I might as well be flying with my fleet or a group from a DPS channel. If you want a guarantee of a base level of skill from your team, then fly with a premade. You can do that right now, no developer time needed.
But if you add skill gates then I wont be able to boost my ego by effectively soloing group content with teams of useless strangers any more. Don't take away my ego trip dood.
I will say one thing that defeats the idea of a vetting type system, and that is that with the current system dps can basically make most content, and even optional objectives irrelevant. If there were a form of damage-output cap system in place for the different difficulties (and even different stfs), than you might see such a system make more sense. Also a ranking system would then be able to have more than just a dps-rank viewed as important actually. as well as the fact that a high-dps player could not carry a group skewing the vetting process actually.
Now with such a fact in place I will say that you could merely use the preexisting optional-objectives in stfs as a form of vetting system for gaining access to high difficulties of the stfs. In the concept of the player would need to finish x-number of that stf with all it's associated optional objectives intact to gain access to the higher difficulty. In this way the player would need to learn the actual stf, objectives, and not have to go online to learn it via vids (Which many do in a casual game hate).
Also i would say that just because the stfs are in their current state with population, is not a good reason to leave things to stagnate, since that would be like not setting a broken leg or getting rid of a virus on your computer. Most likely it will just get worse over time till the issue boils over. Though it will take more than just a single group of changes to fix things, the changes would need to be done slowly allowing the devs to actually balance them a bit after implementing them.
Totally yes. 3 times normal success for unlocking the advanced version and 4 times success on the advanced to unlock elite. And beefing up rewards to stimulate this.
This might make all of the queues playable again while giving hefty rewards to help newbies progress and learn the game content meanwhile. And for each elite completed first time an achievement with a 10k dil ore. Sounds fair, sounds like hell yeah!
Those who are good enough to play advanced, should have no trouble carrying one or two less well performing team mates. If that is a problem, then they have no right to complain since they're not that good either. In my opinion.
Well I admit all of my toons have Mk XIV Ultra or Legendary gear if not exclusively... ...yet sometimes the damage they do contrast to a NPC is outrageous. Honestly too many Advanced and especially Elite Queue's are already too dead unless you queue with friends or fleetmates - even then participation for fleet organized events has been reduced a lot in the last year or two. Also there are far too many posts you see commenting about many slow queue load times.
Those who are in the DPS League (100k - 400k club) mostly get there with Legendary Lockbox / Lobi Ships who exclusively earn Starship trait's far superior to the CSTORE variants available on a single character. That's not a good standard to set to compete in an Advanced or Elite Space Queue. I've seen many who have purchased countless ship packs or bundles having invested hundred's of dollars but still in the 50k (+/- 10k) range...
Let's try not to forget the future Gene Roddenberry envisioned for the Human Race where disease, hunger, shelter, and education were available for all. Well I realize Cryptic needs to pay the bills as well, hopefully Roddenberry's vision isn't forgotten a quarter century after passing on, and that Humanity can still continue to transition toward.
The OP for this thread, and in other threads he/she has posted lately, is clearly either a troll of an undercover Perfect World employee attempting to garner information about how people feel about STO as it is right now.
I suspect it is the latter. Do not be fooled by the poor use of English or the grammatical errors. These are camoflage to throw off the unsuspecting. Why would Perfect World do this? How many people really take the time to fill out those pop up surveys on the Internet?
The OP has posted threads which by their title are guaranteed to provoke a reaction. Both for and against the topic in question. So naturally people here dive in all guns blazing in support of their viewpoint.
Please stop being misled. If the Marketing Team at Perfect World wants to know what we think about STO as it is, they could do a far better job than some guy with a low post count pretending English isn't his native language.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
Those who are good enough to play advanced, should have no trouble carrying one or two less well performing team mates. If that is a problem, then they have no right to complain since they're not that good either. In my opinion.
Well I admit all of my toons have Mk XIV Ultra or Legendary gear if not exclusively... ...yet sometimes the damage they do contrast to a NPC is outrageous. Honestly too many Advanced and especially Elite Queue's are already too dead unless you queue with friends or fleetmates - even then participation for fleet organized events has been reduced a lot in the last year or two. Also there are far too many posts you see commenting about many slow queue load times.
Those who are in the DPS League (100k - 400k club) mostly get there with Legendary Lockbox / Lobi Ships who exclusively earn Starship trait's far superior to the CSTORE variants available on a single character. That's not a good standard to set to compete in an Advanced or Elite Space Queue. I've seen many who have purchased countless ship packs or bundles having invested hundred's of dollars but still in the 50k (+/- 10k) range...
Let's try not to forget the future Gene Roddenberry envisioned for the Human Race where disease, hunger, shelter, and education were available for all. Well I realize Cryptic needs to pay the bills as well, hopefully Roddenberry's vision isn't forgotten a quarter century after passing on, and that Humanity can still continue to transition toward.
Power creep is definitely easily bought in this game, that I can agree with. But that 50k damage you mention that can be obtained without spending huge amounts of resources or money on special ships just to gettraits or gear of good quality, is good enough for most advanced content. And probably elite too, if you have a team that knows what they're doing.
My own Vesta probably has somewhere close to 50k DPS as a record in non-Crystalline entity missions. A ship that only costs 2400 Zen during a sale, and I use two more C-store ship traits (All hands on Deck and Reciprocity). All other stuff is mainly reputation gear and some fleet research lab consoles, plus a PEP and a Polaron omni-beam from the exchange. Stuff that is thus easily obtainable for everyone and nowadays easily upgraded too when the Phoenix event happens. I got most of my gear at mk 13 UR (thanks to the AoY reputation boost) and got it further to epic Mk 14 just by using Phoenix tech upgrades.
Now, all this may not make PUGging elites easy, but those aren't really meant for PUGging anyway as stated at the time of their release (unless you're maybe very powerful, but that will always be an exception) after DR and the re-doing of difficulties. Besides, ground elites are relatively easy to get in to compared to their space counterparts because there is less stuff to upgrade on the ground. That's probably why there's also much more activity in those missions, compared to things like Korfez, Hive space elite or Counterpoint elite.
So, to conclude: those who try to PUG elite should know that there is a chance of failure - that's part of the design and pushing others away from it won't change that. These missions simply weren't made for PUGging, except if you want a real challenge - so why remove the challenge that is presented when a sub-optimal group makes up your team? All other content doesn't need restrictions either as there's nothing to lose in those queues except or a few marks maybe. Besides, normal is way too easy anyway so restricting people to those missions won't help anyone, nor serve as good practice. Normal should be made more the standard before it's a good idea to restrict access to advanced content, like we had shortly after DR. No one probably wants to go back to that though as the idea that anyone should be able to play advanced (indeed, that advanced is in fact the norm or normal content) is too deeply settled in the mind of this playerbase to make drastic changes like the ones proposed in the OP.
Basically, my main message is that this change would require a very different way of thinking about the difficulties where normal becomes the new norm. Then you can restrict access to other content. But that's unlikely to happen because for most people, advanced content is 'normal'.
Further, if you can't carry a team in Elite (which 99% of the playerbase can't and should not be able to do), don't PUG elite. There is a risk of getting less well performing team mates, such is the life of us PUGgers. If you can't carry a team on advanced, then you need to improve as well. And possibly stop worrying as you won't lose anything anyway since the missions cannot fail (with small exceptions like Cure space maybe).
Those who are good enough to play advanced, should have no trouble carrying one or two less well performing team mates. If that is a problem, then they have no right to complain since they're not that good either. In my opinion.
I agree with this post 100%
Perhaps if things were different and the queues would be filled with life I’d agree more with the OP.
As things are now in PvE however we can be happy for each and every individual signing up for this content and getting the respective maps to pop.
The sad truth.
Even though I agree with OP to some extent, and with @surgh 's (EverQuest example)...
You totaly did not understand it if you say this. Please read again and check my further remarks in this topic.
The first remarks referst to "with ratingsystem" the second to "without rating". So logicaly they opposite.
Your OP isn't my post, it's yours. All I did was point out that you're explaining how your own idea won't work as it was presented.
You're saying people right now can join a queue, contribute the bare minimum, not die and have the match considered a success. Following your logic, this would count as a "win" for the player and up their rating.
Sounds to me like all anyone would need to do is join a few normal queues, do a little bit here and there and their rating would go up thanks to the efforts of others and grant said player access to advanced queues. This process can rinse/repeat at the advanced level too. So you have players moving along to advanced and elite level without being really prepared for it.
I think that's counter to the spirit of your idea.
Its a good point. People could game the system just as easily if the rating criteria is not comprehensive enough.
They'd need to consider such things as;
- Self & Team Heals - Total Team %
- Damage Output - Total Team %
- # of Mobs/Single targets engaged by Team %
- Time to Completion for normal, adv, elite content. (Average completion time per difficulty level - Pro rated based on average completions time as seen in the Queue UI)
- Mission objectives participated in (based on the optionals of each mission)
- + a plethora of other criteria I'm not even thinking of at the moment.
Also at what point would all these criteria come into play ? 10 queues as a base ? 20 ?
Comments
You totaly did not understand it if you say this. Please read again and check my further remarks in this topic.
The first remarks referst to "with ratingsystem" the second to "without rating". So logicaly they opposite.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
"this would count as a "win" for the player and up their rating" yes but only if the team succeeds to finish the PVE. The higher the difficulty level the harder it is to just sit more or less idle and still win. Also not only wins count in the rating calculation. I never wrote only wins determain the rating calculation. For the rating formular other also logged parameters can be taken into account.
Even hypothical if only a certain amount of succesive wins would count for the rating, than still at some point some runs will statiscaly not be succesfull because team is to weak to complete the PVE when people sit more or less idle. And in PVE's which require muliple tasks and players need to spread out will more likely fail in such cases, which will have a negative effect on your rating.
Is this THE say no post to ADDITIONs without affecting current things, some one like me likes to see in STO?
Well what the heck lets just say NO to all additions and expansions then. Stop all development, and lets all play with a cat.
The impact of those will not be big. Because a rating system formula adds or detracts points based on several parameters. You need to reach a treshhold a mark, to get access to the next difficulty level that has better loot. Only if you just reached the mark then maybe someone can notice a setback in case of the circumstances you described (unless there is a perfect solution for it). But Just have some more runs and you will gain rating again. Off course deliberate disconnecting will set you back as well.
What would you like to see taken into consideration?
> Rating based on ?
Probably something like XVM in World of Tanks, where a complex formula is created to determine who is l33t and who is a scrub in the creators opinion, then everyone is color coded to determine how a player ranks on the scale. It even tells you how likely you are to win the game based on the rank of both teams. It fosters corrosively toxic gameplay and chat but the l33t players all swear by it.
That's why a more stringent AFK system needs to be in place that takes lag and connection into account. Adding a combat log in on the dev's side of things would also identify AFKers and not award the AFKer if they did nothing at all, to get a victory you have to participate actively.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Running normal's isn't going to ness teach someone any of these qualities. It comes down to the individuals attitude and behaviours and realizing that they are playing in a team with 4/9/19 other players and learning to play well with others.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
I agree about the AFK idea.....
I disagree, let me tell you why. In a progression system, you learn as you progress, or at least you should, running X on "normal" SHOULD teach you mechanics etc.....yes it comes down to attitudes and behavior also, but learning also. Progression isn't about "locking out" its about preparing you for success in harder missions.
Look at it like this, you learn to crawl, walk then run...I could use hundreds of examples, but you get the point. Its progression.......
Also, and this TBH, really depends on the player, but I know when I ran a guild in EQ1, seeing guild members kill X mob on hard mode for the first time was GREAT....you build friendships/teamwork etc...
No, not everyone will like it, but IMHO, there are few alternatives.
Just my opinions and thoughts.
OK more edits...
As to your comment about not being geared enough.....THATS one of the goals of progression, to gear you better, teach you about the skills needed etc.....done right, its great. Its not easy, but its rewarding as hell (and not just in loot). Look, its not for everyone, not saying it is....progression is also about setting goals etc (if thats what you want) take down X (or beat X STF) and then...X STF on Advanced, then on Elite...
Look, I get PUGS can be tough and harsh, but THIS also can address that problem, part of this also gets you working with others as a team, which, the goal is to , work through the progression with. Now, I know this sounds like a guild or fleet and what they SHOULD be doing.....well, yea
People want to "save the game" its not about locking people out or isolating a certain group, or jumping into a Norma/Advanced/Elite running it without saying a word in chat to others then going your separate ways...its about working with others.
Now, that said, if you/me/whoever wants to "space barbie" and solo their way through ...that's cool also, BUT WAIT YOU SAY....us "space barbies" (BTW I don't say that to put anyone down...I am right in there also) also want the possibility to get that super shiny new weapon that ONLY drops from X STF....you make that possible, but along a much longer route. For a working example of that, look at how swtor does it......it works there, really.
OK...tired of typing for now and wanna go kill borg.
Peace Out
So I will leave you with this.
Ok I understand what you are saying, and yes players should learn as they progress, they should be learning really through the Feature Episodes, as a lot of the NPC's in them use the same powers and tactics in STF's.
NPC's in this game I think we can agree are as smart as a lobotomized Pakled. So its not hard to work out what they throw at you and be prepared 99% of the time unless its a OP'ed cheap 1 shot power. Most NPC's are a 1 trick pony
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
Rating system can easily lead to a ranking system, you rate the performance of a group of people and they are put in ranks appropriate to where they are. i hope there are safe guards in place to keep it from being anything more than a behind the scenes numbers game for the server to work out.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I agree with this post 100%
Perhaps if things were different and the queues would be filled with life I’d agree more with the OP.
As things are now in PvE however we can be happy for each and every individual signing up for this content and getting the respective maps to pop.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I am with ratty. If every random player in a queue was pre-vetted then I might as well be flying with my fleet or a group from a DPS channel. If you want a guarantee of a base level of skill from your team, then fly with a premade. You can do that right now, no developer time needed.
But if you add skill gates then I wont be able to boost my ego by effectively soloing group content with teams of useless strangers any more. Don't take away my ego trip dood.
Now with such a fact in place I will say that you could merely use the preexisting optional-objectives in stfs as a form of vetting system for gaining access to high difficulties of the stfs. In the concept of the player would need to finish x-number of that stf with all it's associated optional objectives intact to gain access to the higher difficulty. In this way the player would need to learn the actual stf, objectives, and not have to go online to learn it via vids (Which many do in a casual game hate).
Also i would say that just because the stfs are in their current state with population, is not a good reason to leave things to stagnate, since that would be like not setting a broken leg or getting rid of a virus on your computer. Most likely it will just get worse over time till the issue boils over. Though it will take more than just a single group of changes to fix things, the changes would need to be done slowly allowing the devs to actually balance them a bit after implementing them.
This might make all of the queues playable again while giving hefty rewards to help newbies progress and learn the game content meanwhile. And for each elite completed first time an achievement with a 10k dil ore. Sounds fair, sounds like hell yeah!
Well I admit all of my toons have Mk XIV Ultra or Legendary gear if not exclusively... ...yet sometimes the damage they do contrast to a NPC is outrageous. Honestly too many Advanced and especially Elite Queue's are already too dead unless you queue with friends or fleetmates - even then participation for fleet organized events has been reduced a lot in the last year or two. Also there are far too many posts you see commenting about many slow queue load times.
Those who are in the DPS League (100k - 400k club) mostly get there with Legendary Lockbox / Lobi Ships who exclusively earn Starship trait's far superior to the CSTORE variants available on a single character. That's not a good standard to set to compete in an Advanced or Elite Space Queue. I've seen many who have purchased countless ship packs or bundles having invested hundred's of dollars but still in the 50k (+/- 10k) range...
Let's try not to forget the future Gene Roddenberry envisioned for the Human Race where disease, hunger, shelter, and education were available for all. Well I realize Cryptic needs to pay the bills as well, hopefully Roddenberry's vision isn't forgotten a quarter century after passing on, and that Humanity can still continue to transition toward.
I suspect it is the latter. Do not be fooled by the poor use of English or the grammatical errors. These are camoflage to throw off the unsuspecting. Why would Perfect World do this? How many people really take the time to fill out those pop up surveys on the Internet?
The OP has posted threads which by their title are guaranteed to provoke a reaction. Both for and against the topic in question. So naturally people here dive in all guns blazing in support of their viewpoint.
Please stop being misled. If the Marketing Team at Perfect World wants to know what we think about STO as it is, they could do a far better job than some guy with a low post count pretending English isn't his native language.
Catians are awesome, you should definitely create one.
Besides that, the cat has spoken. You can't ignore or counter these creatures.
Power creep is definitely easily bought in this game, that I can agree with. But that 50k damage you mention that can be obtained without spending huge amounts of resources or money on special ships just to gettraits or gear of good quality, is good enough for most advanced content. And probably elite too, if you have a team that knows what they're doing.
My own Vesta probably has somewhere close to 50k DPS as a record in non-Crystalline entity missions. A ship that only costs 2400 Zen during a sale, and I use two more C-store ship traits (All hands on Deck and Reciprocity). All other stuff is mainly reputation gear and some fleet research lab consoles, plus a PEP and a Polaron omni-beam from the exchange. Stuff that is thus easily obtainable for everyone and nowadays easily upgraded too when the Phoenix event happens. I got most of my gear at mk 13 UR (thanks to the AoY reputation boost) and got it further to epic Mk 14 just by using Phoenix tech upgrades.
Now, all this may not make PUGging elites easy, but those aren't really meant for PUGging anyway as stated at the time of their release (unless you're maybe very powerful, but that will always be an exception) after DR and the re-doing of difficulties. Besides, ground elites are relatively easy to get in to compared to their space counterparts because there is less stuff to upgrade on the ground. That's probably why there's also much more activity in those missions, compared to things like Korfez, Hive space elite or Counterpoint elite.
So, to conclude: those who try to PUG elite should know that there is a chance of failure - that's part of the design and pushing others away from it won't change that. These missions simply weren't made for PUGging, except if you want a real challenge - so why remove the challenge that is presented when a sub-optimal group makes up your team? All other content doesn't need restrictions either as there's nothing to lose in those queues except or a few marks maybe. Besides, normal is way too easy anyway so restricting people to those missions won't help anyone, nor serve as good practice. Normal should be made more the standard before it's a good idea to restrict access to advanced content, like we had shortly after DR. No one probably wants to go back to that though as the idea that anyone should be able to play advanced (indeed, that advanced is in fact the norm or normal content) is too deeply settled in the mind of this playerbase to make drastic changes like the ones proposed in the OP.
Further, if you can't carry a team in Elite (which 99% of the playerbase can't and should not be able to do), don't PUG elite. There is a risk of getting less well performing team mates, such is the life of us PUGgers. If you can't carry a team on advanced, then you need to improve as well. And possibly stop worrying as you won't lose anything anyway since the missions cannot fail (with small exceptions like Cure space maybe).
The sad truth.
Even though I agree with OP to some extent, and with @surgh 's (EverQuest example)...
Its a good point. People could game the system just as easily if the rating criteria is not comprehensive enough.
They'd need to consider such things as;
- Self & Team Heals - Total Team %
- Damage Output - Total Team %
- # of Mobs/Single targets engaged by Team %
- Time to Completion for normal, adv, elite content. (Average completion time per difficulty level - Pro rated based on average completions time as seen in the Queue UI)
- Mission objectives participated in (based on the optionals of each mission)
- + a plethora of other criteria I'm not even thinking of at the moment.
Also at what point would all these criteria come into play ? 10 queues as a base ? 20 ?