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'.
Of course Advanced is Normal. Cryptic made Advanced Normal by removing the fail conditions. Might as well have removed Normal completely for all it's worth anymore.
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).
Yes, that's the point. If there were properly set up unlock conditions, people could pug Elite, because everyone in the queue would be at least nominally ready for it.
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'.
Of course Advanced is Normal. Cryptic made Advanced Normal by removing the fail conditions. Might as well have removed Normal completely for all it's worth anymore.
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).
Yes, that's the point. If there were properly set up unlock conditions, people could pug Elite, because everyone in the queue would be at least nominally ready for it.
But isn't part of the fun experience in PUGging that you never know what kind of team mates you will get? For me at least, that's what makes PUGging fun.
If I wanted an easy mission I could always do a pre-made.
Restricting access to certain difficulties would only make things boring imo.
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 ?
Trying to come up with a system that can not be "gamed" is impossible....ANY system can be gamed....if that's your criteria, the system can not be gamed....might as well not bother.
Also, you need to consider how difficult/time/worthwhile said system would be to come up with/implement for the devs.
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'.
Of course Advanced is Normal. Cryptic made Advanced Normal by removing the fail conditions. Might as well have removed Normal completely for all it's worth anymore.
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).
Yes, that's the point. If there were properly set up unlock conditions, people could pug Elite, because everyone in the queue would be at least nominally ready for it.
But isn't part of the fun experience in PUGging that you never know what kind of team mates you will get? For me at least, that's what makes PUGging fun.
If I wanted an easy mission I could always do a pre-made.
Restricting access to certain difficulties would only make things boring imo.
I don't think I advocated for "restricting it" per se, I advocated for allowing it after X conditions are met, (in my example, unlocked or keys gathered etc...)
I think that's very different than pre-mades. pre-mades , imho, are a grp of people that play together, run the STF's together a LOT, know each others play style etc.....where a PUG of people (for lack of better term, an old EQ term, keyed for the area), all you really know is that they have done whats required to enter the zone...
Look, I never said the idea was perfect, I am only going from my experiance with a system like that , it worked THERE....it MIGHT work here...but, it also comes down to, does Cryptic want to do all that re-work.
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'.
Of course Advanced is Normal. Cryptic made Advanced Normal by removing the fail conditions. Might as well have removed Normal completely for all it's worth anymore.
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).
Yes, that's the point. If there were properly set up unlock conditions, people could pug Elite, because everyone in the queue would be at least nominally ready for it.
But isn't part of the fun experience in PUGging that you never know what kind of team mates you will get? For me at least, that's what makes PUGging fun.
If I wanted an easy mission I could always do a pre-made.
Restricting access to certain difficulties would only make things boring imo.
I don't think I advocated for "restricting it" per se, I advocated for allowing it after X conditions are met, (in my example, unlocked or keys gathered etc...)
I think that's very different than pre-mades. pre-mades , imho, are a grp of people that play together, run the STF's together a LOT, know each others play style etc.....where a PUG of people (for lack of better term, an old EQ term, keyed for the area), all you really know is that they have done whats required to enter the zone...
Look, I never said the idea was perfect, I am only going from my experiance with a system like that , it worked THERE....it MIGHT work here...but, it also comes down to, does Cryptic want to do all that re-work.
Fair enough.
You are not the first to propose this though. It has been suggested many times and we've yet to see anything like this being implemented. Personally I don't think it's going to happen.
Never gonna happen. Seen this come up enough over the years and there's just no traction.
Look at it this way, if you want elite queues 'qualified' then how many times are people going to sit in a pug queue forever because there are 4 uber one shot ninja death dealers who could solo the darn thing but no fifth qualified player to be found. The queues are already anemic enough as it is. Even back when they queues were full enough that ISE could kick off in 2-3 minutes my dps log usually showed only two people over 20k one in the teens and two down around 5-7k.
Most of the queues I do, Borg stuff mostly, can be speed ran by two semi-decent pilots running okay gear and 3 chortleheads in mkX rainbow boats. Get a dps guru with his full loadout of mkXIV epics, perfected skills/boffs and keybinds on your team and everyone else can just sit back and watch the explosions for the minute or so it takes him to clear the map.
Before I took my last break that lasted a couple of years I was doing fairly well in carrying teams. It's a learned skill and worth the effort to be able to go into a pug and know that your team is going to grab the loot and it's nice to have people occasionally thank you when they realize you carried them.
As someone else pointed out, the queue content isn't that hard. If you are on teams that can't clear an elite queue, you are most likely part of the problem. If you are in a tank that doesn't die, are you sure you are pulling enough aggro to keep those little glass escorts safe so they can unload some hate on the bad guys? Having a huge hull with massive regens is useless to your team if you aren't pulling the aggro to make use of it.
There are lots of online resources out there that will walk you through how to configure character and ship to be the most effective. Watch some dps videos, usually the biggest trick to clearing queues is knowing when to be where. That would probably be a better use of your time than advocating for a queue restriction that isn't going to happen.
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 ?
I can think of a few....
Average DPS
Average Re-spawns/mission
Avg % of secondary objectives accomplished/mission
Avg kills/respawn
Avg % Team heals outbound/inbound
Avg Level of difficulty played at
But really, what is needed is for a group of "elite" players to come together and work out what qualities a "elite" player demonstrates, and create the criteria from there, Once these are determined, then they would need cooperation from Cryptic to to make them permanent, running stats that are collected and tracked from the creation of the toon, and make them generally available to the internet through a API. That way, l33t players could set up websites devoted to tracking and interpreting said stats...and enabling them to bring up the stats of a particular player at will...and use them to remind "inferior" players of their "inferiority" in chat during PuGs. Eventually, someone will create a program that overlays the UI and color-codes each player with their "rating" (red for awful to dark purple for super l33t players) so at any given moment you can see if the other players you're teamed with are up to snuff or not. Eventually they may even refine that program to the point it can predict the likelihood of completing the mission based on the "skill" of the team....so if you get teamed with scrubs you can just warp out and not waste your time.
Turn on friendly fire so you can eliminate scrubs to get them out of your way and It would be just like World of Tanks, which makes me wonder why the people who want permadeath for characters and draconian conditions to play ADV or Elite ques aren't there already.
Never gonna happen. Seen this come up enough over the years and there's just no traction.
Look at it this way, if you want elite queues 'qualified' then how many times are people going to sit in a pug queue forever because there are 4 uber one shot ninja death dealers who could solo the darn thing but no fifth qualified player to be found. The queues are already anemic enough as it is. Even back when they queues were full enough that ISE could kick off in 2-3 minutes my dps log usually showed only two people over 20k one in the teens and two down around 5-7k.
Most of the queues I do, Borg stuff mostly, can be speed ran by two semi-decent pilots running okay gear and 3 chortleheads in mkX rainbow boats. Get a dps guru with his full loadout of mkXIV epics, perfected skills/boffs and keybinds on your team and everyone else can just sit back and watch the explosions for the minute or so it takes him to clear the map.
Before I took my last break that lasted a couple of years I was doing fairly well in carrying teams. It's a learned skill and worth the effort to be able to go into a pug and know that your team is going to grab the loot and it's nice to have people occasionally thank you when they realize you carried them.
As someone else pointed out, the queue content isn't that hard. If you are on teams that can't clear an elite queue, you are most likely part of the problem. If you are in a tank that doesn't die, are you sure you are pulling enough aggro to keep those little glass escorts safe so they can unload some hate on the bad guys? Having a huge hull with massive regens is useless to your team if you aren't pulling the aggro to make use of it.
There are lots of online resources out there that will walk you through how to configure character and ship to be the most effective. Watch some dps videos, usually the biggest trick to clearing queues is knowing when to be where. That would probably be a better use of your time than advocating for a queue restriction that isn't going to happen.
Um......why exactly are you advocating that I "Watch some dps videos, usually the biggest trick to clearing queues is knowing when to be where. That would probably be a better use of your time than advocating for a queue restriction that isn't going to happen"
Are you making the assumption that I don't have a clue to what I am doing ?
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'.
Of course Advanced is Normal. Cryptic made Advanced Normal by removing the fail conditions. Might as well have removed Normal completely for all it's worth anymore.
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).
Yes, that's the point. If there were properly set up unlock conditions, people could pug Elite, because everyone in the queue would be at least nominally ready for it.
But isn't part of the fun experience in PUGging that you never know what kind of team mates you will get? For me at least, that's what makes PUGging fun.
If I wanted an easy mission I could always do a pre-made.
Restricting access to certain difficulties would only make things boring imo.
No. Ending up with useless teammates is not part of any fun. If I want to run a mission with no help, I want to do it alone, not with 4 random tagalongs. Which, incidentally, should also be an option...running the queues alone or with a short team.
The queue system is meant to smooth the mission start by not requiring players to ask around for teammates every time. If the result is something that "99% of the playerbase can't and should not be able to do" then it's obviously not working.
I like the idea someone else had, with a twist. Go into each STF map, and at the start of it separate the players into self-contained holding cells. Spawn a set number of mission appropriate enemies. If the player can’t kill the initial batch of enemies they can’t leave the holding cell, and if they don’t leave the holding cell they don’t get any rewards. If they die, they get dropped and someone else gets added.
If the player can’t kill the initial batch of enemies they can’t leave the holding cell, and if they don’t leave the holding cell they don’t get any rewards.
And woe to the science captains out there who can lock down enemies so they can't shoot or move but rely on teammates to do the killin'
If the player can’t kill the initial batch of enemies they can’t leave the holding cell, and if they don’t leave the holding cell they don’t get any rewards.
And woe to the science captains out there who can lock down enemies so they can't shoot or move but rely on teammates to do the killin'
Sci's can use their career abilities to kill as well though. And although Sci ships tend to have less weapons than the average ship, they still got at least six of those pretty useful weapon slots
So there's no reason to rely on others to kill stuff.
That being said though, I agree that the ability to deal damage shouldn't be the only factor taken into account.
If you’re playing the game and you can’t kill enemies you are doing it wrong. Healing and disabling should be secondary.
Not in team content. Disabling, for instance, Tzenkethi shields makes them much more vulnerable and removes some of their immunities.
Healing/protection objectives are part of multiple missions such as Cure space, Counterpoint, Gravity Kills. Even in ISA, crowd control can help. Someone who deals a bit less damage than average can still make himself useful and only judging players based on their ability to kill while on their own, doesn't do justice to the wide diversity of content we have in the game - and where players can legitimally specialise in a certain role.
Well if playing advance or elite PVE queues should NOT be earned, as some people want, why do we then need 3 difficulty settings for PVE?
If people with low contribution to a run, anyway want to queue up for elite, because it gives better rewards, and others will carry them anyway. Then just and only having Elite PVE queue's would be sufficient. Even the word ELITE could be skipped then.
> @fleetcaptain5#1134 said: > usskentucky wrote: » > > If you’re playing the game and you can’t kill enemies you are doing it wrong. Healing and disabling should be secondary. > > > > > Not in team content. Disabling, for instance, Tzenkethi shields makes them much more vulnerable and removes some of their immunities. > > Healing/protection objectives are part of multiple missions such as Cure space, Counterpoint, Gravity Kills. Even in ISA, crowd control can help. Someone who deals a bit less damage than average can still make himself useful and only judging players based on their ability to kill while on their own, doesn't do justice to the wide diversity of content we have in the game - and where players can legitimally specialise in a certain role.
But really, though, you should be able to kill at least a handful of enemies, right? I’m not saying you should be capable of soloing the mission.
Well if playing advance or elite PVE queues should NOT be earned, as some people want, why do we then need 3 difficulty settings for PVE?
If people with low contribution to a run, anyway want to queue up for elite, because it gives better rewards, and others will carry them anyway. Then just and only having Elite PVE queue's would be sufficient. Even the word ELITE could be skipped then.
Here's a conspiracy thought. Maybe the PVE Elites give you sucky bot teammates to "prove you are elite" and deserve to be there?
I can see such a system being trolled so badly, just to keep others out of going to the next rank of que.
Everything can be trolled. Also now people can spoil runs on normal, adv, or elite if they want. And there will always be some trolls. However most people don't.
When there is a rating system these trolls will have low ratings because their contribution to PVE is low. Aka less trolling possible and it makes less fun to troll.
Like dirt in a bottle they will sink to the bottom.
If the player can’t kill the initial batch of enemies they can’t leave the holding cell, and if they don’t leave the holding cell they don’t get any rewards.
And woe to the science captains out there who can lock down enemies so they can't shoot or move but rely on teammates to do the killin'
Ehhh Science captains dish out great damage now, if synergized well. In fact last time I checked the DPS boards like a month ago, a Sci was sitting a top the SCM leaderboards.
just bring back fail conditions for advanced. in other games the boss might just kill you (always a good sign that you're not good enough/you did something wrong).
just bring back fail conditions for advanced. in other games the boss might just kill you (always a good sign that you're not good enough/you did something wrong).
Yes and no. There should be harsher penalties for failure but this would kill pugging for good. It didn't help after Delta Rising and it wouldn't help now.
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.
If you’re playing the game and you can’t kill enemies you are doing it wrong. Healing and disabling should be secondary.
Not in team content. Disabling, for instance, Tzenkethi shields makes them much more vulnerable and removes some of their immunities.
Healing/protection objectives are part of multiple missions such as Cure space, Counterpoint, Gravity Kills. Even in ISA, crowd control can help. Someone who deals a bit less damage than average can still make himself useful and only judging players based on their ability to kill while on their own, doesn't do justice to the wide diversity of content we have in the game - and where players can legitimally specialise in a certain role.
Crowd control can "help," but never as much as killing the enemies would. Similarly, if you kill the enemies, you don't need to heal the objectives.
just bring back fail conditions for advanced. in other games the boss might just kill you (always a good sign that you're not good enough/you did something wrong).
Yes and no. There should be harsher penalties for failure but this would kill pugging for good. It didn't help after Delta Rising and it wouldn't help now.
first of, the delta rising values for the enemies where completly correct and good. just the communication from cryptics side was not that great at all (telling everything will be the same without saying that it will be the same when you're on lvl 60 and not with 50^^). bringing back those values would be good.
and during the time we had the fail conditions for advanced (isa as example) people just started to use the old tactics again like 10% rule. didnt take that long so why not? and there are always strategies to counter failconditions (one person knowing what to do using a grav well or other stuff like that). there was absolutly no real reason (beside forum qq) to remove them.
OP, I have not read all of the other replies, but my 2 cents is __NO__ to this request.
It would have been OK back when STO had a large population, before the power creep, before the incessant events and grind but the queues barely pop, and now you want to make it more difficult for people (especially new toons) to get the ancient powercell, assessed stratagems, etc.. to get rep gear?
non-qualified players have always plagued the advanced level queues.. that is why there is an AFK penalty now, but as you know, it has not curtailed the problem.
Even if the abusers worked their way up to the elite queues, a cumulative average of their damage should be taken into account.. so if they work through normal, advanced, and elite, and then when at elite, they just stop contributing in order to get the higher rewards with no effort, then their average would start lowering as well as their status and they would be demoted to the lower queues. Again, this would make the higher queues pop less frequently.
Having said all of that, and agreeing with you that it would have been a good thing for Cryptic to have implemented in the beginning, the benefit of such a plan has diminished over time and would not be good today.
Not to mention, I am tired of grinding this game.
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
just bring back fail conditions for advanced. in other games the boss might just kill you (always a good sign that you're not good enough/you did something wrong).
Yes and no. There should be harsher penalties for failure but this would kill pugging for good. It didn't help after Delta Rising and it wouldn't help now.
It doesn't need any penalties. Not getting the reward for winning is penalty enough. What it needs is proper performance feedback. Starting with a results screen at end of queue that tells in no uncertain terms why you won or lost, preferably with detailed statistics on how much you personally contributed. The old 10 mark "reward" for losing, with the exact same text as you'd get for winning, didn't help anyone.
The goal is to inform clueless players that when they go into a hard mission with some <1k boat and don't even care to read the objectives, it's entirely their own fault the mission fails. Or similarly if they win, that the "totally easy mission I was totally ready for" was only easy because some high-powered player(s) did 99% of the work for them.
And simple, single-player unlock conditions to ensure players have at least some basic level of performance and mission understanding before they get into content that requires such would be useful.
Comments
Yes, that's the point. If there were properly set up unlock conditions, people could pug Elite, because everyone in the queue would be at least nominally ready for it.
But isn't part of the fun experience in PUGging that you never know what kind of team mates you will get? For me at least, that's what makes PUGging fun.
If I wanted an easy mission I could always do a pre-made.
Restricting access to certain difficulties would only make things boring imo.
Trying to come up with a system that can not be "gamed" is impossible....ANY system can be gamed....if that's your criteria, the system can not be gamed....might as well not bother.
Also, you need to consider how difficult/time/worthwhile said system would be to come up with/implement for the devs.
I don't think I advocated for "restricting it" per se, I advocated for allowing it after X conditions are met, (in my example, unlocked or keys gathered etc...)
I think that's very different than pre-mades. pre-mades , imho, are a grp of people that play together, run the STF's together a LOT, know each others play style etc.....where a PUG of people (for lack of better term, an old EQ term, keyed for the area), all you really know is that they have done whats required to enter the zone...
Look, I never said the idea was perfect, I am only going from my experiance with a system like that , it worked THERE....it MIGHT work here...but, it also comes down to, does Cryptic want to do all that re-work.
Fair enough.
You are not the first to propose this though. It has been suggested many times and we've yet to see anything like this being implemented. Personally I don't think it's going to happen.
Look at it this way, if you want elite queues 'qualified' then how many times are people going to sit in a pug queue forever because there are 4 uber one shot ninja death dealers who could solo the darn thing but no fifth qualified player to be found. The queues are already anemic enough as it is. Even back when they queues were full enough that ISE could kick off in 2-3 minutes my dps log usually showed only two people over 20k one in the teens and two down around 5-7k.
Most of the queues I do, Borg stuff mostly, can be speed ran by two semi-decent pilots running okay gear and 3 chortleheads in mkX rainbow boats. Get a dps guru with his full loadout of mkXIV epics, perfected skills/boffs and keybinds on your team and everyone else can just sit back and watch the explosions for the minute or so it takes him to clear the map.
Before I took my last break that lasted a couple of years I was doing fairly well in carrying teams. It's a learned skill and worth the effort to be able to go into a pug and know that your team is going to grab the loot and it's nice to have people occasionally thank you when they realize you carried them.
As someone else pointed out, the queue content isn't that hard. If you are on teams that can't clear an elite queue, you are most likely part of the problem. If you are in a tank that doesn't die, are you sure you are pulling enough aggro to keep those little glass escorts safe so they can unload some hate on the bad guys? Having a huge hull with massive regens is useless to your team if you aren't pulling the aggro to make use of it.
There are lots of online resources out there that will walk you through how to configure character and ship to be the most effective. Watch some dps videos, usually the biggest trick to clearing queues is knowing when to be where. That would probably be a better use of your time than advocating for a queue restriction that isn't going to happen.
I can think of a few....
Average DPS
Average Re-spawns/mission
Avg % of secondary objectives accomplished/mission
Avg kills/respawn
Avg % Team heals outbound/inbound
Avg Level of difficulty played at
But really, what is needed is for a group of "elite" players to come together and work out what qualities a "elite" player demonstrates, and create the criteria from there, Once these are determined, then they would need cooperation from Cryptic to to make them permanent, running stats that are collected and tracked from the creation of the toon, and make them generally available to the internet through a API. That way, l33t players could set up websites devoted to tracking and interpreting said stats...and enabling them to bring up the stats of a particular player at will...and use them to remind "inferior" players of their "inferiority" in chat during PuGs. Eventually, someone will create a program that overlays the UI and color-codes each player with their "rating" (red for awful to dark purple for super l33t players) so at any given moment you can see if the other players you're teamed with are up to snuff or not. Eventually they may even refine that program to the point it can predict the likelihood of completing the mission based on the "skill" of the team....so if you get teamed with scrubs you can just warp out and not waste your time.
Turn on friendly fire so you can eliminate scrubs to get them out of your way and It would be just like World of Tanks, which makes me wonder why the people who want permadeath for characters and draconian conditions to play ADV or Elite ques aren't there already.
Um......why exactly are you advocating that I "Watch some dps videos, usually the biggest trick to clearing queues is knowing when to be where. That would probably be a better use of your time than advocating for a queue restriction that isn't going to happen"
Are you making the assumption that I don't have a clue to what I am doing ?
Pretty much.
Edit - Just saw you weren't the OP, surgh. My bad. My post was directed at the original statement.
The queue system is meant to smooth the mission start by not requiring players to ask around for teammates every time. If the result is something that "99% of the playerbase can't and should not be able to do" then it's obviously not working.
And woe to the science captains out there who can lock down enemies so they can't shoot or move but rely on teammates to do the killin'
Sci's can use their career abilities to kill as well though. And although Sci ships tend to have less weapons than the average ship, they still got at least six of those pretty useful weapon slots
So there's no reason to rely on others to kill stuff.
That being said though, I agree that the ability to deal damage shouldn't be the only factor taken into account.
Not in team content. Disabling, for instance, Tzenkethi shields makes them much more vulnerable and removes some of their immunities.
Healing/protection objectives are part of multiple missions such as Cure space, Counterpoint, Gravity Kills. Even in ISA, crowd control can help. Someone who deals a bit less damage than average can still make himself useful and only judging players based on their ability to kill while on their own, doesn't do justice to the wide diversity of content we have in the game - and where players can legitimally specialise in a certain role.
If people with low contribution to a run, anyway want to queue up for elite, because it gives better rewards, and others will carry them anyway. Then just and only having Elite PVE queue's would be sufficient. Even the word ELITE could be skipped then.
> usskentucky wrote: »
>
> If you’re playing the game and you can’t kill enemies you are doing it wrong. Healing and disabling should be secondary.
>
>
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>
> Not in team content. Disabling, for instance, Tzenkethi shields makes them much more vulnerable and removes some of their immunities.
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> Healing/protection objectives are part of multiple missions such as Cure space, Counterpoint, Gravity Kills. Even in ISA, crowd control can help. Someone who deals a bit less damage than average can still make himself useful and only judging players based on their ability to kill while on their own, doesn't do justice to the wide diversity of content we have in the game - and where players can legitimally specialise in a certain role.
But really, though, you should be able to kill at least a handful of enemies, right? I’m not saying you should be capable of soloing the mission.
Here's a conspiracy thought. Maybe the PVE Elites give you sucky bot teammates to "prove you are elite" and deserve to be there?
Everything can be trolled. Also now people can spoil runs on normal, adv, or elite if they want. And there will always be some trolls. However most people don't.
When there is a rating system these trolls will have low ratings because their contribution to PVE is low. Aka less trolling possible and it makes less fun to troll.
Like dirt in a bottle they will sink to the bottom.
Ehhh Science captains dish out great damage now, if synergized well. In fact last time I checked the DPS boards like a month ago, a Sci was sitting a top the SCM leaderboards.
ingame: @Felisean
Yes and no. There should be harsher penalties for failure but this would kill pugging for good. It didn't help after Delta Rising and it wouldn't help now.
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.
first of, the delta rising values for the enemies where completly correct and good. just the communication from cryptics side was not that great at all (telling everything will be the same without saying that it will be the same when you're on lvl 60 and not with 50^^). bringing back those values would be good.
and during the time we had the fail conditions for advanced (isa as example) people just started to use the old tactics again like 10% rule. didnt take that long so why not? and there are always strategies to counter failconditions (one person knowing what to do using a grav well or other stuff like that). there was absolutly no real reason (beside forum qq) to remove them.
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Bring back advanced fail conditions!
ingame: @Felisean
It would have been OK back when STO had a large population, before the power creep, before the incessant events and grind but the queues barely pop, and now you want to make it more difficult for people (especially new toons) to get the ancient powercell, assessed stratagems, etc.. to get rep gear?
non-qualified players have always plagued the advanced level queues.. that is why there is an AFK penalty now, but as you know, it has not curtailed the problem.
Even if the abusers worked their way up to the elite queues, a cumulative average of their damage should be taken into account.. so if they work through normal, advanced, and elite, and then when at elite, they just stop contributing in order to get the higher rewards with no effort, then their average would start lowering as well as their status and they would be demoted to the lower queues. Again, this would make the higher queues pop less frequently.
Having said all of that, and agreeing with you that it would have been a good thing for Cryptic to have implemented in the beginning, the benefit of such a plan has diminished over time and would not be good today.
Not to mention, I am tired of grinding this game.
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
The goal is to inform clueless players that when they go into a hard mission with some <1k boat and don't even care to read the objectives, it's entirely their own fault the mission fails. Or similarly if they win, that the "totally easy mission I was totally ready for" was only easy because some high-powered player(s) did 99% of the work for them.
And simple, single-player unlock conditions to ensure players have at least some basic level of performance and mission understanding before they get into content that requires such would be useful.