As much as i'd love to see more challenge in the game and for everyone to improve their game over time, penalizing any particular playstyle is just nonsense that has no place in STO.
OP says healers are slackers....typical trollish statement we've come to expect from his kind.
OP says DPS is THE only measure in the game yet nobody has ever seen one of his parses to see if he lives up to his own ramblings.
The game may seem to be all DPS oriented but there are so many other ways to play if you put your mind to it.
In a game filled with any number of missions where DPS is either not required, or actually harms the effort why should alternatives not be worthy of rewards.
Like someone above said, they drop SA on everything which increases everyone else's DPS, yet the OP argues they don't deserve any recognition.
Or the guy who drops a massive GW3 on enemies to make moping them up even easier for the DPS guys?
Or the drain boat that leaves that boss ship a helpless hulk waiting to be picked off with its shields down?
Thankfully Cryptic seem to be of the opposite opinion these days, releasing things like the new MW ships and spec which is essentially the opposite of pure DPS by being mostly about support.
Yeah it seems that everything that doesn't kill, isn't appreciated. Even when it does help others increasing their damage. They probably just don't notice or realise its importance.
I've been in many missions where some DPS monster killed everything in his path - I think you've seen it, someone who shoots beams in all directions, ignoring his low hull and just keep firing without withdrawing. Plenty of times my polaron subsystem targeting abilities, Tyken's rift and Chronometric inversion field were the only things that kept such players alive and able to keep pew pew-ing. I doubt they realise though.
For all the talk about healers helping DPS'ers survive in Queues..
It literally never happens for me.
Example (Tholian Red Alert)
I go in and take all the aggro from the motherships and mobs surrounding them because my DPS is high and I'm spraying FaW everywhere with Beta and Coalition Disruptors..
Start getting hammered by every enemy ship in the immediate area. High Yields coming my way like no tomorrow.
Can I rely on my non aggro'd teammates healing me ? Noooooo of course not, their completely oblivious.
I have to pop off BFI, Polarize hull, Hazard emitters, Tac Team + Evasive on myself just to survive the onslaught and finish nuking the boss mob.
Look around at my 4 oblivious teammates who did absolutely nothing to help me out Heal-wise or damage-wise.
Make a face
Move on to the last mob. Slaughter them before any of my teammates even get there.
Leave Queue smh.
These "healers" either don't exist or I've never run across them in 4 years of playing this game PvE side.
Only time I've ever seen a heal come my way was in PvP. Which is no surprise because these players are the most educated players (usually).
PvE side, healers may as well not exist for the amount of times they've "saved my hide".
If your DPS is so high you manage to do everything before they fire a single shot or get in firing range, then it shouldn't be a surprise or a problem.
Never said I wipe the boss packs before anyone fires a shot. Only the secondary group.
So, if my group is taking on the boss pack (TRA) and I'm doing the majority of damage output (getting all the aggro), it sure would be nice to see a heal come my way every once in a while when I'm low on HP.
Never does.
I may as well solo it for all the times a "healer" has helped me out in PvE.
Only time I've ever seen a Tank/Healer have any use whatsoever is in Hive ADV/Elite. Even then, they have to have decent damage output to draw some of the fire.
Ground is a different story, Tanks and healers can actually be of use there.
Maybe they're just thinking that you could manage on your own. They may have been impressed if you can survive long enough while aggro'ing most enemies.
When a player is in trouble, I tend to help. It also depends on their own behaviour though. If a player does stuff like flying close to the gateway while going from left to right in ISA - or not withdrawing a bit when being low on hull - basically, if a player doesn't seem to care about his survival him or herself, then why should I care?
Similarly, if a player unnecessarily tries to shoot in all directions, he or she shouldn't be surprised that they get in trouble. I don't think it's another player's reponsibility to correct for such... stupidity that some players tend to display.
Lastly, I've been in instances where I would heal someone who had aggro, then he died and then I'm the next target - with all my heals on cooldown. So in some cases players might have reason to believe that unnecessary risk taking from the current aggro-holder, combined with them healing such a player, would quickly lead to their own dead when the unnecessary risk-taking ultimately fails.
I don't know if any of this applies to your playstyle, but I've seen plenty of players that behaved such that healing them would be an irrational thing to do.
Your abilities kept someone alive..great. what happens when that player dies? He or she waits a few seconds, respawns, and continues to blast away. You maybe helped win the game by 10 seconds, you you didn't contribute towards actually defeating anything.
You falsely assume that I can't kill stuff while doing the other things I described.
> @baudl said:
> fleetcaptain5#1134 wrote: »
>
> baudl wrote: »
>
> fleetcaptain5#1134 wrote: »
>
> Performance based reward structures are in principle a good thing. The only problem though: how would a bad player earn the resources needed to get better if he is never awarded properly because he doesn't have good gear?
>
>
> Also, this likely wouldn't be accepted by most players who would start demanding that it be changed back to how things are now. Want evidence of the spoiled attitude many players have? Take a look at the Mirror Invasion thread where, despite the rewards being account-wide unlocks now, players are still complaining about the time it takes to complete one mission.
>
> And the AFK thing's still an issue there of course, though that might be solved by the OP's idea but for now it's just more evidence of a playerbase that won't accept Cryptic daring to touch their rewards.
>
> Edit: spelling
>
>
>
>
> easy...story missions and learning to use his abilities. No srsly, most story content gives EXCELLENT rewards and sifting through builds and asking other how to get better helps more than advanced STF gear. Many of the best gear choices also come from fleet stores or are crafted. Then there is the exchange...the possible ways to get gear, rather cheaply is huge in STO.
>
>
>
>
> For fleet gear and crafted stuff, as for exchange stuff, you'll need resources though. And while those can be obtained from episodes, getting them there is less easy and efficient than playing a PvE queue which completes much faster.
>
>
>
>
> yeah, resources that require farming easy content...the only easier option would be to hand it to the player as a gift for installing the game. There really isn't anything easier than getting fleet gear considering that you only need to join a fleet and farm fleet marks.
> And there is always the exchange, where you can get high end gear for really cheap. Sure it ain't top notch, but within the reach of a new player after he/she reached max level.
> So, no, you are wrong, there really is quite a lot that is much easier to get than PVE queues and reputation gear. PVE queu gear also takes a really long time anyway to get to, since it is locked behind a time gate, which makes it actually the last option for new players who want to get their hands on good gear, and fleet gear is just a very simple method (if you want to join a fleet) to get high end gear easily.
Two sides of the sword I see with this is casual vs dedicated playing. As someone who doesn't actually have the time to grind/farm the easy content because it's a such a time hog, the PvE queues are way more appealing to get gear.
Compared to the amount of time it takes to farm stuff, I'd much rather get a group together and do the PvE queues than do a pain in the butt farming mission on count of the lack of time I have.
If things get killed fast they dont have time to do damage back. Hence tanking only needed if all have low damage output in most PVE's. In a team of 5 high DPS-ers you dont need tanks and healers in most PVE's.
I'm sorry you haven't had the opportunity to play with a team dynamic where this set up actually works really well. We play with each other's strengths and weaknesses to have a greater teamwork dynamic when we play. Why should I be penalized for assisting my team in an area where I tend to be better at? In a grouo that plays very casually and for fun, the draw aggro concept works extremely well us. We're, more often than not, able to complete advanced and elite PvE queues with Mk XII and Mk XIII gear because of how our team dynamic works.
More than one way to skin a cat here, and more DPS isn't the way I feel like a lot of people roll.
Which brings me to the directed energy build I used to play once upon a time before university studies went into overdrive and claimed a lot of what little free time I had. I was able to chop down twice as much stuff in the same amount of time with half of the raw damage output. The shear damage numbers don't mean jack diddly squat if you plan and stragetize well. So by your logic of revampimg the rewards presented here of more damge, more rewards, despite the fact I could carry a PvE instance by wiping a lot of stuff quickly and efficiently with low amounts of overall raw damage, I would get shafted in rewards because I had an efficient and low damage output. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I've been reading into this thread.
>@totenmet said: >If things get killed fast they dont have time to do damage back. Hence tanking only needed if all have low damage output in most PVE's. In a team of 5 high DPS-ers you dont need tanks and healers in most PVE's.
Most of the people I play with are not high DPSers. Not everyone spends every free moment they have to want to be a high DPS build. That's the point I'm trying to get at. Not everyone has or wants a high DPS build.
Most of the people I've had the privilege to play with have builds that are fun for them, and most if not all of them don't get a lot of enjoyment out of high DPS builds. Yeah it's nice at first, but after five minutes it gets really old. We work with what we have, and we make it work well. More often than not, that means we're taking "sub-par" gear from a high DPS standpoint (because none of us have the time nor resources to grind out anything else) and using it to its fullest extent in a way we find fun. Ultimately, I think that's what games should be about. Having fun. Not having to slave to have a high DPS build because that's how the game "works" when we clearly have done everything an alternate way to great success.
For all the talk about healers helping DPS'ers survive in Queues..
It literally never happens for me.
Example (Tholian Red Alert)
I go in and take all the aggro from the motherships and mobs surrounding them because my DPS is high and I'm spraying FaW everywhere with Beta and Coalition Disruptors..
Start getting hammered by every enemy ship in the immediate area. High Yields coming my way like no tomorrow.
Can I rely on my non aggro'd teammates healing me ? Noooooo of course not, their completely oblivious.
I have to pop off BFI, Polarize hull, Hazard emitters, Tac Team + Evasive on myself just to survive the onslaught and finish nuking the boss mob.
Look around at my 4 oblivious teammates who did absolutely nothing to help me out Heal-wise or damage-wise.
Make a face
Move on to the last mob. Slaughter them before any of my teammates even get there.
Leave Queue smh.
These "healers" either don't exist or I've never run across them in 4 years of playing this game PvE side.
Only time I've ever seen a heal come my way was in PvP. Which is no surprise because these players are the most educated players (usually).
PvE side, healers may as well not exist for the amount of times they've "saved my hide".
I used to go in to Kerrat and heal with my engineer but the DPS vape race got way out there and I gave it up after a while ago.
I do not trust Cryptic to be able to implement any of this correctly. Case in point, the Tier Reward assignment after the Terran Counter-attack phase in the Badlands.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
It's fine if you're not doing 70k dps and not focused primarily on DPS, but there is no excuse for 5k.
so true. actually its pretty difficult to do 5k to be fair. using fleet support as example (improved fleet support trait) could do between 10-20k dps on its own
yesterday, we saw one (not hangar it was just 1 ship) droneship doing 14k dps on its own, the second one was 10k or so. or some fighters doing 2k dps per ship (6 in a hangar ^^).
so in general we might need a more detailed ingame mission debriefing at the end with some more informations how good someone performed
It's fine if you're not doing 70k dps and not focused primarily on DPS, but there is no excuse for 5k.
Correct. There really isn't any excuse for doing 5k DPS while playing endgame content. because by the time you become elegible to play endgame content, there is enough good mission reward gear to put together a decent build which should do a lot better than 5K DPS. But the quality of the player is also a big determinant in how much DPS a build puts out. A poor player will accomplish some things with a maxxed out rig. But he/she will never fully realize the potential of such a build. A good player can make a sub optimal build perform far above expectations. Whenever there is talk of DPS this, that, or the the other, piloting skills always seems to be left out of the discussion. I suspect it is because the vast majority of people who play this game are really terrible at ship driving and currently have little incentive to improve their skills.
I stay out of Elite content because my builds and my skill set are not good enough -yet- to be able to carry my share of the work. And damned if I'm gonna mess up someone else's enjoyment of this game. Normal and Advanced are good enough for now. In these, I can comfortably get the job done and help out someone who may be just having a bad day.
DPS is an easily detectable and quantifiable method of determining how much a player contributes to whatever multiplayer mission. In game design you can have fast, cheap, or working. Pick any two. So this is why the devs use it. It isn't a perfect solution but it will do nicely until something better occurs.
Nabreeki's idea of merit based rewards is a good one. If properly implemented, it might solve a lot more problems than it creates. But merit should be based on a player's complete contribution not just how fast their trigger finger reflexes are. CC is a decent enough example. I can routinely achieve 1st place by healing more than I shoot. I still have to shoot though. Otherwise I get the AFK Penalty.
I could get behind and would gladly participate in a merit based reward system applied to STO. Because the people who do more should get more. The problem with expecting other people to carry you through content you've not trained or equipped to successfully deal with is eventually you are going to run out of other people. Which is bad for the game in the long run.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
I'm relatively flexible with how a merit-based rewards system can or should function; DPS happens to be, as thunder said, the general standard when quantifying contributions. People don't like it, but that's the way the game has been for years. The Miracle Worker build or whatever won't replace that.
I like the DPS idea because there ARE players who not only routinely do 10K or less DPS, but double down on it as "not part of my playstyle." Sorry, that's not acceptable. When DPS is the primary metric of contribution (and the most effective), then you can argue playstyles all you want but take that nonsense to Normal; you don't belong in advanced or elite queues.
Actually, your example is a better reason as to why DPS needs to be capped. It is the top 1% that blow through content in ways PWE didn't consider and usually have to keep nerfing things because of unforeseen side effects. A DPS cap would also set a bar for players that they know they need to meet for a particular level. If a few people with builds only putting out 5k is enough to pass what they are playing. The issue obviously isn't them.
DPS'ers need to stop being bitter and whining because people don't want to play the game the way they do!
Builds putting out 5k are not enough to pass - they're being carried by the team.
There is an easy solution to your problem. Don't PuG STFs/Red Alerts. Make a premade team of people you know can do the DPS and you'll never have the problem of people learning/not understanding/don't care DPS'rs.
Builds putting out 5k are not enough to pass - they're being carried by the team.
Sure it is! Optionals are optional! It might take a team of 5k DPS players longer but it is possible. There have been teams of shuttles that can complete STF's on Elite easily enough.
Another easy solution: don't play advanced or elite if you know you can't handle it. It's so easy to think up simple solutions!
Simple? Yes.
Practical? Nope.
People will still queue with the 5K dps and you won't get away from that by continuing to PuG STF's like you are. Get buddies and queue as a full group if you want to completely avoid those people at those difficulties. Besides you are in a fleet and it shouldn't be to hard to get people to run STFs so you have no PuG players doing 5K dps.
I don't think dps/damage output needs to be capped outright, but that it would help if dps/damage output were capped on a individual case based off the stf an difficulty in question. I can see Elite being a case of being completely uncapped or having an extremely high cap.
The fact is many players that go into advanced stfs without the needed damage/dps output normally are going into it for the Elite rep-mark that they can get without fail from it, and even though you can convert reg rep-marks into elite rep-marks the cd on such a conversion makes doing the advanced stf both more reliable an quicker. This is one of the reasons that was sated for why players hated the fail conditions, as it made the progression of their character in their eyes to come to a halt.
This fact is part of why it would be nice to have it that a normal stf completed with the optionals succeeded should reward slightly more than a advanced stf with the optionals failed, which would only really take adding in that the normal stf gives out a elite mark on completion with the optionals succeeded. Could even make it that advanced with having the optionals succeeded gives out two elite marks, and elite difficulty gives out three elite marks.
With all the talk of DPS being the "one metric to rule them all" when it comes to contribution to content, how are players supposed to see how much they do if you can't even see your DPS without some third party software, completely unsupported by the developers.
I mean if Cryptic wanted to make metric X the main means of calculating contributions then they need to provide an in-game means for players to check their standing.
Honestly I don't think that it would be that hard to create a reward system that takes into account a lot of different forms of contributions. We already know that they can do it for healing as in CC stf both your dps output an healing determines your ranking, but the hard one would be how to determine contribution you get for optionals that are not done thru interacting with something in the stf. I mean in borg-disconnect you can tie how many coup borg-ships a player saves, and how much damage done to or attacks/damage taken from the different dreadnoughts too.
The game is already far too much of a one-dimensional DPS race. Incentivizing that is just going to make it worse. Rewarding overall contribution (DPS, group healing, damage taken) would possibly avoid that.
That said, ever since the competetive queues/reputation were release, I've started feeling that the ability to choose the tier (Normal, Advanced, Elite) you join should be removed, in favor of being assigned to the one you're suited to... assuming the system could ever be "trained" well enough to handle the task. Unfortunately, I wouldn't bet anything on such a system working that well.
Not really...the people who are geared to hell for DPS also have those traits and skills will still get all of the loot.
They do the most damage thus get the most agro thus heal themselves...still just asking for a DPS machine to get all of the rewards.
Can't have a honest conversation because of a white knight with power
I personally think that a lowgear user who parses under 10k spacewise ISA and under 100 dps on NTTE is clearly being carried most of the time. I believe with the actual setup, these low-tier numbers are more than fair to decide where you're at. At 20k +ISA and 200+ dps in NTTE, you're present in the fight. And at the 40k+ ISA and 400+ in NTTE you are clearly a determined effort contributor.
Something I just thought of - wouldn't merit/contribution based rewards also be self-policing? We all want to get the best rewards with the minimum amount of time invested, don't we? If I learn signing up for Hive Elite is not going to get me a bunch of Dil and Marks, due to my gear or my skillset not being good enough to significantly contribute to success, then I am probably not going to que for it again. At least until after I re-examine/improve my ship and my piloting abilities. So the odds are good when I eventually do go back into Hive Elite or Battle for Korfez as part of a pug, the others in the same group should be at least as competent and equipped as I am. Yeah, yeah. I can already hear somebody saying something to disagree with this. Especially people who are all hot for some type of gear score or vote kick scheme.
The reason I thought of this is because it takes developer man hours to create anything in the game and there is always the certainty new stuff will TRIBBLE up old stuff already in game or not work correctly in the first place. The Devs also want to get the best reward for the minimum amount of time invested, don't they? Crystalline Catastrophe already had a very limited merit based reward system in place. So the concept is valid and proven ingame. Seems to me the path of least resistance would be to take this and enhance it then apply it to all of the STFs.
The Devs are still going to be tinkering with a large part of the game. No matter what. And so the potential for problems is large. I think it would be better though to use something already working (sort of) ingame than to make something up from scratch. Or three somethings if Cryptic decides to implement some sort of gear score system or vote kick system as well as merit based rewards.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
Seems like a composite metric would be most appropriate here to keep people from gaming it by DPS-ing insta-heal NPCs, or by "killcount++"-ing scouts/pets, or APS-ing everything in sight.
I'll disagree here. I see it all the time, somebody shows up and they're spamming BFAW everywhere and doing pretty much nothing, while someone else comes at things strategically, and while they're not firing at everything on t he map, they're killing everything they shoot at.
You've actually got this backward. Going in with a simple plan like "circle nearest group of things, FAW/heal until group is dead, move on to the next group of things, repeat" is strategic in nature (and doesn't involve much precise calculation to be effective) while "determine target, intercept, hit-and-run until dead, repeat" is tactical in nature (and involves a considerable amount of precise calculation to be effective). Most players combine the two playstyles to some degree, but taken to their extremes they can easily skew the numbers heavily in one direction or another, so the performance metric should be based on a simple and reasonable model that closely matches how much the player actually contributed to ending the mission (irregardless of their epic space captainry, their epic space maneuvers, or their epic space fireworks).
Let's make no bones about it, the performance metric for a 5k DPSer should be quite low, irregardless of whether they're FAWing or doing epic space hit-and-run trench runs.
Comments
Yeah it seems that everything that doesn't kill, isn't appreciated. Even when it does help others increasing their damage. They probably just don't notice or realise its importance.
I've been in many missions where some DPS monster killed everything in his path - I think you've seen it, someone who shoots beams in all directions, ignoring his low hull and just keep firing without withdrawing. Plenty of times my polaron subsystem targeting abilities, Tyken's rift and Chronometric inversion field were the only things that kept such players alive and able to keep pew pew-ing. I doubt they realise though.
Maybe they're just thinking that you could manage on your own. They may have been impressed if you can survive long enough while aggro'ing most enemies.
When a player is in trouble, I tend to help. It also depends on their own behaviour though. If a player does stuff like flying close to the gateway while going from left to right in ISA - or not withdrawing a bit when being low on hull - basically, if a player doesn't seem to care about his survival him or herself, then why should I care?
Similarly, if a player unnecessarily tries to shoot in all directions, he or she shouldn't be surprised that they get in trouble. I don't think it's another player's reponsibility to correct for such... stupidity that some players tend to display.
Lastly, I've been in instances where I would heal someone who had aggro, then he died and then I'm the next target - with all my heals on cooldown. So in some cases players might have reason to believe that unnecessary risk taking from the current aggro-holder, combined with them healing such a player, would quickly lead to their own dead when the unnecessary risk-taking ultimately fails.
I don't know if any of this applies to your playstyle, but I've seen plenty of players that behaved such that healing them would be an irrational thing to do.
You falsely assume that I can't kill stuff while doing the other things I described.
If things get killed fast they dont have time to do damage back. Hence tanking only needed if all have low damage output in most PVE's. In a team of 5 high DPS-ers you dont need tanks and healers in most PVE's.
> Lol at "pull aggro" builds.
I'm sorry you haven't had the opportunity to play with a team dynamic where this set up actually works really well. We play with each other's strengths and weaknesses to have a greater teamwork dynamic when we play. Why should I be penalized for assisting my team in an area where I tend to be better at? In a grouo that plays very casually and for fun, the draw aggro concept works extremely well us. We're, more often than not, able to complete advanced and elite PvE queues with Mk XII and Mk XIII gear because of how our team dynamic works.
More than one way to skin a cat here, and more DPS isn't the way I feel like a lot of people roll.
Which brings me to the directed energy build I used to play once upon a time before university studies went into overdrive and claimed a lot of what little free time I had. I was able to chop down twice as much stuff in the same amount of time with half of the raw damage output. The shear damage numbers don't mean jack diddly squat if you plan and stragetize well. So by your logic of revampimg the rewards presented here of more damge, more rewards, despite the fact I could carry a PvE instance by wiping a lot of stuff quickly and efficiently with low amounts of overall raw damage, I would get shafted in rewards because I had an efficient and low damage output. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I've been reading into this thread.
>@totenmet said:
>If things get killed fast they dont have time to do damage back. Hence tanking only needed if all have low damage output in most PVE's. In a team of 5 high DPS-ers you dont need tanks and healers in most PVE's.
Most of the people I play with are not high DPSers. Not everyone spends every free moment they have to want to be a high DPS build. That's the point I'm trying to get at. Not everyone has or wants a high DPS build.
Most of the people I've had the privilege to play with have builds that are fun for them, and most if not all of them don't get a lot of enjoyment out of high DPS builds. Yeah it's nice at first, but after five minutes it gets really old. We work with what we have, and we make it work well. More often than not, that means we're taking "sub-par" gear from a high DPS standpoint (because none of us have the time nor resources to grind out anything else) and using it to its fullest extent in a way we find fun. Ultimately, I think that's what games should be about. Having fun. Not having to slave to have a high DPS build because that's how the game "works" when we clearly have done everything an alternate way to great success.
I used to go in to Kerrat and heal with my engineer but the DPS vape race got way out there and I gave it up after a while ago.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
so true. actually its pretty difficult to do 5k to be fair. using fleet support as example (improved fleet support trait) could do between 10-20k dps on its own
yesterday, we saw one (not hangar it was just 1 ship) droneship doing 14k dps on its own, the second one was 10k or so. or some fighters doing 2k dps per ship (6 in a hangar ^^).
so in general we might need a more detailed ingame mission debriefing at the end with some more informations how good someone performed
ingame: @Felisean
Correct. There really isn't any excuse for doing 5k DPS while playing endgame content. because by the time you become elegible to play endgame content, there is enough good mission reward gear to put together a decent build which should do a lot better than 5K DPS. But the quality of the player is also a big determinant in how much DPS a build puts out. A poor player will accomplish some things with a maxxed out rig. But he/she will never fully realize the potential of such a build. A good player can make a sub optimal build perform far above expectations. Whenever there is talk of DPS this, that, or the the other, piloting skills always seems to be left out of the discussion. I suspect it is because the vast majority of people who play this game are really terrible at ship driving and currently have little incentive to improve their skills.
I stay out of Elite content because my builds and my skill set are not good enough -yet- to be able to carry my share of the work. And damned if I'm gonna mess up someone else's enjoyment of this game. Normal and Advanced are good enough for now. In these, I can comfortably get the job done and help out someone who may be just having a bad day.
DPS is an easily detectable and quantifiable method of determining how much a player contributes to whatever multiplayer mission. In game design you can have fast, cheap, or working. Pick any two. So this is why the devs use it. It isn't a perfect solution but it will do nicely until something better occurs.
Nabreeki's idea of merit based rewards is a good one. If properly implemented, it might solve a lot more problems than it creates. But merit should be based on a player's complete contribution not just how fast their trigger finger reflexes are. CC is a decent enough example. I can routinely achieve 1st place by healing more than I shoot. I still have to shoot though. Otherwise I get the AFK Penalty.
I could get behind and would gladly participate in a merit based reward system applied to STO. Because the people who do more should get more. The problem with expecting other people to carry you through content you've not trained or equipped to successfully deal with is eventually you are going to run out of other people. Which is bad for the game in the long run.
Actually, your example is a better reason as to why DPS needs to be capped. It is the top 1% that blow through content in ways PWE didn't consider and usually have to keep nerfing things because of unforeseen side effects. A DPS cap would also set a bar for players that they know they need to meet for a particular level. If a few people with builds only putting out 5k is enough to pass what they are playing. The issue obviously isn't them.
DPS'ers need to stop being bitter and whining because people don't want to play the game the way they do!
There is an easy solution to your problem. Don't PuG STFs/Red Alerts. Make a premade team of people you know can do the DPS and you'll never have the problem of people learning/not understanding/don't care DPS'rs.
Sure it is! Optionals are optional! It might take a team of 5k DPS players longer but it is possible. There have been teams of shuttles that can complete STF's on Elite easily enough.
Simple? Yes.
Practical? Nope.
People will still queue with the 5K dps and you won't get away from that by continuing to PuG STF's like you are. Get buddies and queue as a full group if you want to completely avoid those people at those difficulties. Besides you are in a fleet and it shouldn't be to hard to get people to run STFs so you have no PuG players doing 5K dps.
The fact is many players that go into advanced stfs without the needed damage/dps output normally are going into it for the Elite rep-mark that they can get without fail from it, and even though you can convert reg rep-marks into elite rep-marks the cd on such a conversion makes doing the advanced stf both more reliable an quicker. This is one of the reasons that was sated for why players hated the fail conditions, as it made the progression of their character in their eyes to come to a halt.
This fact is part of why it would be nice to have it that a normal stf completed with the optionals succeeded should reward slightly more than a advanced stf with the optionals failed, which would only really take adding in that the normal stf gives out a elite mark on completion with the optionals succeeded. Could even make it that advanced with having the optionals succeeded gives out two elite marks, and elite difficulty gives out three elite marks.
I mean if Cryptic wanted to make metric X the main means of calculating contributions then they need to provide an in-game means for players to check their standing.
Not really...the people who are geared to hell for DPS also have those traits and skills will still get all of the loot.
They do the most damage thus get the most agro thus heal themselves...still just asking for a DPS machine to get all of the rewards.
The reason I thought of this is because it takes developer man hours to create anything in the game and there is always the certainty new stuff will TRIBBLE up old stuff already in game or not work correctly in the first place. The Devs also want to get the best reward for the minimum amount of time invested, don't they? Crystalline Catastrophe already had a very limited merit based reward system in place. So the concept is valid and proven ingame. Seems to me the path of least resistance would be to take this and enhance it then apply it to all of the STFs.
The Devs are still going to be tinkering with a large part of the game. No matter what. And so the potential for problems is large. I think it would be better though to use something already working (sort of) ingame than to make something up from scratch. Or three somethings if Cryptic decides to implement some sort of gear score system or vote kick system as well as merit based rewards.
You've actually got this backward. Going in with a simple plan like "circle nearest group of things, FAW/heal until group is dead, move on to the next group of things, repeat" is strategic in nature (and doesn't involve much precise calculation to be effective) while "determine target, intercept, hit-and-run until dead, repeat" is tactical in nature (and involves a considerable amount of precise calculation to be effective). Most players combine the two playstyles to some degree, but taken to their extremes they can easily skew the numbers heavily in one direction or another, so the performance metric should be based on a simple and reasonable model that closely matches how much the player actually contributed to ending the mission (irregardless of their epic space captainry, their epic space maneuvers, or their epic space fireworks).
Let's make no bones about it, the performance metric for a 5k DPSer should be quite low, irregardless of whether they're FAWing or doing epic space hit-and-run trench runs.