The bosses in this game are not that challenging; they just take a little longer to kill. Sure, you have Romulans with their close proximity advantage. And you have the Na’Kuhl with their warp shadows or whatever. But none of them really seem like they are a threat. They don’t come at you (bro) with any concerted effort. They turn, fire some torps, and just fly in a circle until you kill them.
How hard would it be to make them more challenging? Program their boff abilities to actually boost the right abilities. Train them to use speed boosts to get behind you and lay down fire instead of flying in circles. Just some basics tactics that would give them a chance.
I know some people are still working their way up. They’ll be like, “Oh, I get killed all the time. What’s this dude going on about?” But really, anyone can speed away and peck at any enemy with next to no DPS. It’s not a matter of you can’t kill an NPC, it’s just that it’s easier for you to fly in guns blazing and respawn after you blow your load. The only difference in a DPS-er and a noob is the time it takes til you get your killz. But that’s not exactly a test of skill.
You almost have to try to get killed in this game. And there have to be ways to tweak the AI besides adding ridiculous amounts of hit points. It seems like with each season they get more hitpoints or some sort of immunity granting pet or power. The offensive capability of the enemy never increases.
You can say it’s too much programming, but what are working with here? Computers in 2017. The bosses on Punch Out on my NES were smarter than these Star Trek enemies. I know by the time PS1 came around the NPCs were stalking prey or countering attacks.
Make the AI scare me it is so good. I want to have nightmares about a super smart Klingon stalking me in the cold dead of space, not day dreams while I park and wait for my weapons to drain the hitpoint sacks to death.
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There was a time when Armek ws brutal, but power creep neutered him.
Manus was pretty nasty at one time. Power Creep neutered her.
At least the more recent enemy groups had interesting mechanics that meant needing different tactics other than just pure pewpew DPS
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
If you're in a T4 or lower ship, yes. Anything above that.. meh.. steamroll whatever and move on.
Tanking Aramek.. that's something I haven't done in years.
Manus, that one was a bit of pain for the optional. Though the boss could be a pain, if you were to close to one another. The fun part was when the mobs would respawn during the fight.
Yea... now they go down pretty quickly due to TR-116 rifles.
Actually... it is. Specifically the final part where you're fighting the boss ship. I recently went in with a fleet group, very good players with three of them using Megawell builds, and we couldn't even get the dreadnaught down to 90%! We failed because we not only couldn't kill the dread, we couldn't even dent the warheads it launches at the star! And this is with 3 ships with epic sized gravity wells causing direct damage to the Dread's hull through the shields.
Apparently according to an older Reddit thread, you can barely eek by a victory if you have a full group doing 75k DPS. EACH.
Suffice it to say... we were not happy as it felt like we were in T1 ships with Mk II gear when we're rocking T6 ships with mk XIV gear.
It completely negates the entire game mechanic that make the Borg unique to fight.
On ground
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Because ground combat, like the KDF, is one of the red-headed step-children of STO.
But mainly, because they're still based of the old system. Where you only got 15 traits total. Now you can 20 ground traits and all the NPCs get are static stat buffs/nerfs. So there is a serious imbalance of strength between the two.
The same applies to space.
Cryptic has taken STO from a fun game pre-LoR and turned it into a 3D Star Trek themed Farmville. Which is what the majority of the players cried and whined to get.
All it's missing are Doff assignments of "Deliver Fertilizer To Your Neighbor." Wait no.. that basically covered in the Trade/Diplomacy ones of "Deliver Bajoran Barret Incense" and such.
Of course it also doesn't help they sold out to Preferred Wallet Entertainment.
You could always go equip Mk X common stuff on your ship. That might make things a bit harder.
Or go use that T3 or T4 ship with Mk VIII commons.
Because all the whiners and crybabies who bitched and whined about content being “too hard” would pick up their toys and go home... and play Facebook games again.
It is what it is because of the possible loss of revenue from those people, and it is a noticeable portion of the playerbase.
Join Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010
I'll bet you fill all the weapon slots with that Mk II gear, instead of just using one white beam array.
One Mk II beam array is all a good player needs.
.
.
Of six different energy types.
And name the ship.
Taste The Rainbow.
Still feasible. It's just not the DPS output that almost everyone chases.
But if you're looking for a challenge. Set your episode difficulty to elite and play them all in a shuttle.
As for the ease of the game, if you don't want to give yourself a challenge by making yourself weaker, there isn't much that can be done about your problem. Though I do somewhat doubt whether or not you've done many elite queues, OP.
@coldnapalm
Actually turrets are quite viable as are single cannons, but it requires a different focus. Think spamming plasma explosion.
Protopolaron turrets with plasma explosions on a high crit build are pretty awesome, especially if its a drain boat
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Furthermore, if they try to rein things back to a more manageable and standardized level.. the game gets flooded with more salt and posterior friction than the river styx.
I'm thinking a Season 5 server would be great, STF revamp and Doff system introduction, but before Legacy of Romulus and the beginning of the reputation and trait system.
It was a time when content actually was truly "challenging" and PvP was fun.
If they did. I'd have all my characters copied/moved to that server.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
It was fun. You actually had to approach the STFs in a more tactical manner. Back when threat and crowd control were just as important as damage.
The main thing I'd see people complaining about with this though is the following question, "Why do we only get 15 traits total?"
Back when you had to pick half you traits for ground and half for space, and you could atually point in to threat generation. Which was helpful for those that could tank Aramek, Manus, and such.