That’s the sort of changes the game needs and someone needs to start thinking outside the box and looking at what players really seek. Currently I’m not elite ready, I used to be but things have become too hard for my skill at the game. Give me an incentive to aim higher, something I can actually achieve in the game and wear as a badge of honour and I think I’d be persuaded to push myself a bit harder.
What this game lacks is a sense of progression for my character. Grinding marks or buying more and more ships etc doesn’t really make me feel like I’ve achieved something.
People in these here forums often saying this and that is just slowing them down, not real difficulty. But isn't it?
What else are the enemies going to do? "Killing" a player means basically nothing with infinite respawns. All the enemies can do is slow the players down long enough to hit a fail condition. If there is one.
If killing enemies in some timeframe is required (such as before a time limit is reached or before they can perform some action of their own), then more HP is diffculty. Not being able to kill the enemies fast enough will make you lose. Delta Rising's HP sponges were definitely difficulty before they axed the fail conditions. Now, not so much.
Similarly, enemies interrupting your interacts makes the interacts take longer to finish. Players have to either take the time to clear the area of enemies first, or retry the interact until they avoid being interrupted. If this slows them down too much, they lose.
The real difficulty IS the stuff you have difficulty with. Powerful attacks that one-shot newbies, hitpoint sponges that take "too long" to kill for some, enemies interrupting your actions, enemies having invulnerable or damage-reflecting states you can't DPS your way through, its all real difficulty.
On the other hand, consider that if it's impossible to lose a mission, then victory is a foregone conclusion and everything is just making it take longer. So just making things take longer can't be all bad either, or everything in those missions would be bad.
People in these here forums often saying this and that is just slowing them down, not real difficulty. But isn't it?
What else are the enemies going to do? "Killing" a player means basically nothing with infinite respawns. All the enemies can do is slow the players down long enough to hit a fail condition. If there is one.
If killing enemies in some timeframe is required (such as before a time limit is reached or before they can perform some action of their own), then more HP is diffculty. Not being able to kill the enemies fast enough will make you lose. Delta Rising's HP sponges were definitely difficulty before they axed the fail conditions. Now, not so much.
Similarly, enemies interrupting your interacts makes the interacts take longer to finish. Players have to either take the time to clear the area of enemies first, or retry the interact until they avoid being interrupted. If this slows them down too much, they lose.
The real difficulty IS the stuff you have difficulty with. Powerful attacks that one-shot newbies, hitpoint sponges that take "too long" to kill for some, enemies interrupting your actions, enemies having invulnerable or damage-reflecting states you can't DPS your way through, its all real difficulty.
On the other hand, consider that if it's impossible to lose a mission, then victory is a foregone conclusion and everything is just making it take longer. So just making things take longer can't be all bad either, or everything in those missions would be bad.
Yeah but the thing with HP sponges is that they are little more than massive targets to shoot for x time until dead. Often their return fire is inconsequential and tbh in these cases it would be easier for Cryptic just to replace the enemy with million HP generic space rocks, or even just a colored target in space saying "shoot here for x time to progress" rather than ships with abilities.
If all this "extra difficulty" requires is that you have to batter down an even more massive number of HPs then why even give them abilities, or make them anything other than dumb sedentary targets used to waste player time.
Genuine difficulty, the kind i'm sure most players are talking about would be things like giving the enemies the same abilities as players, random actions, faster movements, better pathing, improved AI.
There's nothing remotely interesting about having to fight down an enemy who is only a challenge because he has a ridiculously high amount of health and nothing else. It's practically a timegate in itself.
Genuine difficulty, the kind i'm sure most players are talking about would be things like giving the enemies the same abilities as players, random actions, faster movements, better pathing, improved AI.
There's nothing remotely interesting about having to fight down an enemy who is only a challenge because he has a ridiculously high amount of health and nothing else. It's practically a timegate in itself.
Problem with this is, ppl often *say* they want better NPC A.I., but do they?! Remember when the spheres in Infected suddenly got EPtE?! So many loud protests, they reversed it! (Claiming it was done 'by accident', btw) Or when the spheres in CSA actually really did drain your shields!? So much rage!
I actually love HP sponges! It adds an hypnotic effect to the game (like an Arcade game), and -- less fun, for the players -- becomes addictive over time. Mindless pew-pewing really has a charm of its own.
Genuine difficulty, the kind i'm sure most players are talking about would be things like giving the enemies the same abilities as players, random actions, faster movements, better pathing, improved AI.
There's nothing remotely interesting about having to fight down an enemy who is only a challenge because he has a ridiculously high amount of health and nothing else. It's practically a timegate in itself.
Problem with this is, ppl often *say* they want better NPC A.I., but do they?! Remember when the spheres in Infected suddenly got EPtE?! So many loud protests, they reversed it! (Claiming it was done 'by accident', btw) Or when the spheres in CSA actually really did drain your shields!? So much rage!
I actually love HP sponges! It adds an hypnotic effect to the game (like an Arcade game), and -- less fun, for the players -- becomes addictive over time. Mindless pew-pewing really has a charm of its own.
Wasn't one of the problems with Spheres having EP2E that they would go flying off in a straight line because they have such slow turn rates? That's probably one of the reasons they reduced the duration to 5 seconds, along with the reason you mentioned.
Additionally, I'm not against the Borg being able to effectively drain shields. However, it's kind of annoying when your shields are just always down bar when you're using RSP. Shields in general feel so weak to me now, when they're supposed to really be the primary defense on a starship.
I also agree with you that mindless pew-pewing does have charm of it's own.
Genuine difficulty, the kind i'm sure most players are talking about would be things like giving the enemies the same abilities as players, random actions, faster movements, better pathing, improved AI.
There's nothing remotely interesting about having to fight down an enemy who is only a challenge because he has a ridiculously high amount of health and nothing else. It's practically a timegate in itself.
Problem with this is, ppl often *say* they want better NPC A.I., but do they?! Remember when the spheres in Infected suddenly got EPtE?! So many loud protests, they reversed it! (Claiming it was done 'by accident', btw) Or when the spheres in CSA actually really did drain your shields!? So much rage!
I actually love HP sponges! It adds an hypnotic effect to the game (like an Arcade game), and -- less fun, for the players -- becomes addictive over time. Mindless pew-pewing really has a charm of its own.
Wasn't one of the problems with Spheres having EP2E that they would go flying off in a straight line because they have such slow turn rates? That's probably one of the reasons they reduced the duration to 5 seconds, along with the reason you mentioned.
Additionally, I'm not against the Borg being able to effectively drain shields. However, it's kind of annoying when your shields are just always down bar when you're using RSP. Shields in general feel so weak to me now, when they're supposed to really be the primary defense on a starship.
I also agree with you that mindless pew-pewing does have charm of it's own.
Now that you mention it, yes, I think you are right: their EPtE really *was* a bit too much.
Additionally, I'm not against the Borg being able to effectively drain shields. However, it's kind of annoying when your shields are just always down bar when you're using RSP. Shields in general feel so weak to me now, when they're supposed to really be the primary defense on a starship.
I hear ya. But when it comes to the Borg, it feels to me like their super-effective shield-stripping ability is possibly their last vestige of power, a lasting (and only?) reminder that the Borg were supposed to be very dangerous. (In your HSE's they likely still are, *g*, but in my regular Advanced or RA, they're a total joke). You know, something to link you to that 'Definitely not Swedish!' feeling.
the 30s EPtE was never the problem - the problem was and always has been with every other aspect that no one at cryptic can program even BASIC AI (aside from one glorious moment during DR when they somehow actually managed to make vaadwaur ships actually MOVE instead of sit around like useless lumps, and again during ViL with vanguard wingmen who actually reasonably stick to your TRIBBLE like white on rice - but i consider those both accidents because no one at cryptic can code AI for TRIBBLE)
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Additionally, I'm not against the Borg being able to effectively drain shields. However, it's kind of annoying when your shields are just always down bar when you're using RSP. Shields in general feel so weak to me now, when they're supposed to really be the primary defense on a starship.
I hear ya. But when it comes to the Borg, it feels to me like their super-effective shield-stripping ability is possibly their last vestige of power, a lasting (and only?) reminder that the Borg were supposed to be very dangerous. (In your HSE's they likely still are, *g*, but in my regular Advanced or RA, they're a total joke). You know, something to link you to that 'Definitely not Swedish!' feeling.
I actually just changed my mind, and agree with you now. I mean, they pretty much instantly stripped the shields of the Enterprise-D, a Galaxy-class starship, in The Best of Both Worlds (I believe that was the episode).
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
the borg have NEVER instantly stripped shields, no matter what method they were using - it was always over the course of half a minute or so
that STO borg can do it in 0.68 seconds is pure BS
0.68 seconds was the time, I believe, Data seriously considered the Queen's offer ('nearly an eternity for an android').
But in TNG ('Q Who?', iirc), the Borg stripped the Enterprise's shields if not literally instantly, then extremely fast. Certainly didn't take 'em half-a-minute.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
the borg have NEVER instantly stripped shields, no matter what method they were using - it was always over the course of half a minute or so
that STO borg can do it in 0.68 seconds is pure BS
0.68 seconds was the time, I believe, Data seriously considered the Queen's offer ('nearly an eternity for an android').
But in TNG ('Q Who?', iirc), the Borg stripped the Enterprise's shields if not literally instantly, then extremely fast. Certainly didn't take 'em half-a-minute.
I believe what we see the Borg using to strip shields in the show is what the Borg in game use that causes that green ring to appear around your ship. That doesn't seem to insta-drain your shields, it's the OP tachyon beam the Borg have equipped that seems to be doing it. I could be wrong.
the borg have NEVER instantly stripped shields, no matter what method they were using - it was always over the course of half a minute or so
that STO borg can do it in 0.68 seconds is pure BS
0.68 seconds was the time, I believe, Data seriously considered the Queen's offer ('nearly an eternity for an android').
But in TNG ('Q Who?', iirc), the Borg stripped the Enterprise's shields if not literally instantly, then extremely fast. Certainly didn't take 'em half-a-minute.
I believe what we see the Borg using to strip shields in the show is what the Borg in game use that causes that green ring to appear around your ship. That doesn't seem to insta-drain your shields, it's the OP tachyon beam the Borg have equipped that seems to be doing it. I could be wrong.
Yeah, the 'green ring of death' is their shield-neutralizer (which I believe can be cleared with Science Team). The Tachyon Beam is a mite strong, yes. Even my Fed Engineer, running Nadion Inversion, can hardly stop the drain -- if at all. When I go fight the Borg, I just work from the notion that my shields are forfeit, and just hull-tank; or, you know, kill 'em instantly... err, quickly.
Genuine difficulty, the kind i'm sure most players are talking about would be things like giving the enemies the same abilities as players, random actions, faster movements, better pathing, improved AI.
Have you forgotten the tears of rage that flooded the forums with the Voth and Kazon?
Voth were a simple to explain one since it's a matter of them being able to kill players with reflected damage. Mostly an issue with spike DPS builds though.
Kazon are a hilarious one because they actually DO have less predictable behaviors than most NPCs. Most hilarious is how they'll activate evasive maneuvers seemingly at random during fights.
Yeah, the 'green ring of death' is their shield-neutralizer (which I believe can be cleared with Science Team). The Tachyon Beam is a mite strong, yes. Even my Fed Engineer, running Nadion Inversion, can hardly stop the drain -- if at all. When I go fight the Borg, I just work from the notion that my shields are forfeit, and just hull-tank; or, you know, kill 'em instantly... err, quickly.
Hazard Emitters clear it, in fact, not ST.
And yes, just like you said, give enemies better AI and you'd have players lining up with pitchforks. It wouldn't be a popular change.
As for the topic of HP sponges, what would be good alternative for enemies to even have a chance at damaging players? If enemies don't have enough HP and you'll clear them off in a matter of seconds, it doesn't matter how much damage they could do if they don't get a shot off. So the more HP enemies have, the longer they have the opportunity to shoot at you. And in prolonged engagements, most people are not eventually be able to take the heat when all of their heals and "oh s--t" buttons go on CD, even in advanced. So while in some cases, enemies seem to have ridiculously high HP, I'm not opposed to the idea in general.
I don’t think there’s an issue with if HP’s in all instances. Obviously a boss ship needs higher health and at elite things should be tougher. But a lot of times in STO things just have higher health for the sake of it. It’s not inventive and not a terribly exciting way to add a challenge to the game. Nothing is more dull than knowing you can defeat an enemy and that they are little threat to you, but that it’ll take several minutes of mindless pounding at them to kill them. Those gates in KSA are a prime example. They aren’t a threat to most people but take a considerable time to grind down, which quite frankly is just boring. It feels like the only reason some enemies have such high HP’s is to slow us down so the majority of people aren’t raving through content.
cryptic should take a hard look at how blizzard sets up difficulty in starcraft 2 - at higher difficulties, important enemy units mave more HP and sometimes damage, but not ridiculously so, and their objectives are set up so lose conditions don't change in major ways between difficulties
like if a mission has it where you need to kill X enemy unit/structure in Y time...that exists at ALL difficulties, from casual to brutal - it isn't just 'not there' for lower difficulties, but it may be more lenient about the amount of time you have to kill X on casual compared to brutal, or maybe X will have additional guards or something on hard or brutal that you wouldn't see at lower difficulties or something...point is, it doesn't change, and that's how it should be here
if a queue in STO has a total fail condition at advanced/elite, it should have it at normal as well to get players used to the concept that if they mess up, the mission is going to fail
like, let's take khitomer space's 'don't let X probes through the temporal portal' as an example - it's a hard fail on ALL difficulties, but on normal it'll allow the full 10 probes before failure occurs, on advanced that number drops to 7-5, and elite it drops to 3-0 (personally, i'd stick with 2 if i were redesigning the mission because even elites can have off-days, so there's room for SOME error without totally TRIBBLE you and everyone else over)
oh, and remove that damn timer lockout on a failure so you can jump right back in - you already got penalized by failing...you shouldn't get further penalized by not being able to try again for 30 minutes
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Think in threads like this one we often face the danger of circling around the same subjects (for years) by feeding of extreme arguments while not getting anywhere because the queues simply remain empty. In my opinion neither DPS junkies like me or forum-warriors asking for mega creative alternatives for PvE engagements offer the solution here. It is the possible wide mass of consumers in game, the average player if you will, who will either like the content and therefor consume it or will not like it and give it a wide berth.
Two circles I feel we really need to learn how to break in this (and other) discussion is:
1) THE BORG!!! “They are too easy or too hard or too exciting or too boring to fight! They should be more like this or that.”
Well sorry guys no, we have this and that available as in numerous other maps with numerous other critters which use numerous other abilities but sadly they all get widely rejected. So instead of focusing on the Borg and any possible changes to content which WORKS (for years) how about widening it to the content or the critters who DONT seem to WORK as in lack of popularity?! Yea sure we could use an elite mode for the classic six Borg STF. It would ultimately see to an exodus of DPSer there leaving advanced for a bunch of 5Kers to ensure an exciting fight atmosphere again but that’s about it.
Given the general impression of distribution of PvE consumer only leave one conclusion whether peeps around here like it or not: The Borg are fine!
2) SHOOTING STUFF: "Does it always have to be about shooting stuff or wouldn’t it be better if…? Just more HP to melt is boring, why not instead…?"
Congratulations, STO will soon be 9 years old! We have seen in all those years what we can expect or what is too much to ask for in PvE. While I like idea for future content to be exciting and different and all we sit in front of an empty queue list now. It will not change over night for what it is with our most creativitive ideas but only (if at all) through reasonable changes that could be implemented by cryptic with low effort. They only do it if peeps are likely to go for it. One thing that always works, and that for everybody no matter how good or bad he is, is in fact shooting stuff. For that we have 3 difficulty settings seeing to it that a top ten DPSer like me either shoots a tac cube away like it is just a cylon raider (normal) or actually has to realize it as present opponent which needs attention (elite).
If shooting stuff feels too easy for anybody, play elite; if it is too hard, play advanced or normal! But all in all, believe it or not, shooting stuff is alright!
Shields in general feel so weak to me now, when they're supposed to really be the primary defense on a starship.
Much like how torpedoes were always the real 'heavy hitters' in terms of weapons. So far as the show was concerned, energy weapons were for taking shields down or more 'surgical' attacks (for example taking weapons offline), torpdoes were for making stuff explode.
Sadly in STO they're VERY much secondary to energy weapons to the point where we now have energy weapon-based torpedoes.
Think in threads like this one we often face the danger of circling around the same subjects (for years) by feeding of extreme arguments while not getting anywhere because the queues simply remain empty. In my opinion neither DPS junkies like me or forum-warriors asking for mega creative alternatives for PvE engagements offer the solution here. It is the possible wide mass of consumers in game, the average player if you will, who will either like the content and therefor consume it or will not like it and give it a wide berth.
Two circles I feel we really need to learn how to break in this (and other) discussion is:
1) THE BORG!!! “They are too easy or too hard or too exciting or too boring to fight! They should be more like this or that.”
Well sorry guys no, we have this and that available as in numerous other maps with numerous other critters which use numerous other abilities but sadly they all get widely rejected. So instead of focusing on the Borg and any possible changes to content which WORKS (for years) how about widening it to the content or the critters who DONT seem to WORK as in lack of popularity?! Yea sure we could use an elite mode for the classic six Borg STF. It would ultimately see to an exodus of DPSer there leaving advanced for a bunch of 5Kers to ensure an exciting fight atmosphere again but that’s about it.
Given the general impression of distribution of PvE consumer only leave one conclusion whether peeps around here like it or not: The Borg are fine!
2) SHOOTING STUFF: "Does it always have to be about shooting stuff or wouldn’t it be better if…? Just more HP to melt is boring, why not instead…?"
Congratulations, STO will soon be 9 years old! We have seen in all those years what we can expect or what is too much to ask for in PvE. While I like idea for future content to be exciting and different and all we sit in front of an empty queue list now. It will not change over night for what it is with our most creativitive ideas but only (if at all) through reasonable changes that could be implemented by cryptic with low effort. They only do it if peeps are likely to go for it. One thing that always works, and that for everybody no matter how good or bad he is, is in fact shooting stuff. For that we have 3 difficulty settings seeing to it that a top ten DPSer like me either shoots a tac cube away like it is just a cylon raider (normal) or actually has to realize it as present opponent which needs attention (elite).
If shooting stuff feels too easy for anybody, play elite; if it is too hard, play advanced or normal! But all in all, believe it or not, shooting stuff is alright!
Genuine difficulty, the kind i'm sure most players are talking about would be things like giving the enemies the same abilities as players, random actions, faster movements, better pathing, improved AI.
There's nothing remotely interesting about having to fight down an enemy who is only a challenge because he has a ridiculously high amount of health and nothing else. It's practically a timegate in itself.
Problem with this is, ppl often *say* they want better NPC A.I., but do they?! Remember when the spheres in Infected suddenly got EPtE?! So many loud protests, they reversed it! (Claiming it was done 'by accident', btw) Or when the spheres in CSA actually really did drain your shields!? So much rage!
Right. The reason there is nothing intersting in the NPCs is that people complain about everything they can actually do to defend themselves. EPtE makes spheres too fast (=player speed), voth reflector/feedback pulse forces you to stop shooting, na'kuhl fakes require you to switch targets. It's "annoying" if they don't just sit there and wait to be shot like ducks in a row. Anything that can kill a player reasonably fast is always "broken" and we can forget even talking about NPCs healing themselves.
At the same time some people dream about a Trinity in STO. Where do they think the Trinity comes from? It comes from enemies so strong anything but a dedicated tank supported by dedicated healer would be annihilated, and anything but a dedicated DPS might as well be poking it with a stick.
the 30s EPtE was never the problem - the problem was and always has been with every other aspect that no one at cryptic can program even BASIC AI (aside from one glorious moment during DR when they somehow actually managed to make vaadwaur ships actually MOVE instead of sit around like useless lumps, and again during ViL with vanguard wingmen who actually reasonably stick to your **** like white on rice - but i consider those both accidents because no one at cryptic can code AI for ****)
"They can't do anything right, except all these instances in which they have, which don't count because it doesn't support my assumptions."
The spheres had poor mobility at Player Speed, because they were programmed to move like snails glued to the ground, same as 99% of the NPCs in the game. Because as soon as something moves fast enough to matter, it's "annoying" and "broken" and "unplayable." And unfortunately, those are the people Cryptic regularly listens to.
Shields in general feel so weak to me now, when they're supposed to really be the primary defense on a starship.
Much like how torpedoes were always the real 'heavy hitters' in terms of weapons. So far as the show was concerned, energy weapons were for taking shields down or more 'surgical' attacks (for example taking weapons offline), torpdoes were for making stuff explode.
Sadly in STO they're VERY much secondary to energy weapons to the point where we now have energy weapon-based torpedoes.
In canon, torpedoes had very limited ammo (Voyager was quoted at around 30 at some point IIRC). If they put a limit of 30 shots and then it's back to the starbase to reload, they can make them awesome one-shot superweapons. As long as you can chuck them out by the dozens every salvo, they really can't.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Comments
That’s the sort of changes the game needs and someone needs to start thinking outside the box and looking at what players really seek.
Currently I’m not elite ready, I used to be but things have become too hard for my skill at the game. Give me an incentive to aim higher, something I can actually achieve in the game and wear as a badge of honour and I think I’d be persuaded to push myself a bit harder.
What this game lacks is a sense of progression for my character. Grinding marks or buying more and more ships etc doesn’t really make me feel like I’ve achieved something.
What else are the enemies going to do? "Killing" a player means basically nothing with infinite respawns. All the enemies can do is slow the players down long enough to hit a fail condition. If there is one.
If killing enemies in some timeframe is required (such as before a time limit is reached or before they can perform some action of their own), then more HP is diffculty. Not being able to kill the enemies fast enough will make you lose. Delta Rising's HP sponges were definitely difficulty before they axed the fail conditions. Now, not so much.
Similarly, enemies interrupting your interacts makes the interacts take longer to finish. Players have to either take the time to clear the area of enemies first, or retry the interact until they avoid being interrupted. If this slows them down too much, they lose.
The real difficulty IS the stuff you have difficulty with. Powerful attacks that one-shot newbies, hitpoint sponges that take "too long" to kill for some, enemies interrupting your actions, enemies having invulnerable or damage-reflecting states you can't DPS your way through, its all real difficulty.
On the other hand, consider that if it's impossible to lose a mission, then victory is a foregone conclusion and everything is just making it take longer. So just making things take longer can't be all bad either, or everything in those missions would be bad.
Yeah but the thing with HP sponges is that they are little more than massive targets to shoot for x time until dead. Often their return fire is inconsequential and tbh in these cases it would be easier for Cryptic just to replace the enemy with million HP generic space rocks, or even just a colored target in space saying "shoot here for x time to progress" rather than ships with abilities.
If all this "extra difficulty" requires is that you have to batter down an even more massive number of HPs then why even give them abilities, or make them anything other than dumb sedentary targets used to waste player time.
Genuine difficulty, the kind i'm sure most players are talking about would be things like giving the enemies the same abilities as players, random actions, faster movements, better pathing, improved AI.
There's nothing remotely interesting about having to fight down an enemy who is only a challenge because he has a ridiculously high amount of health and nothing else. It's practically a timegate in itself.
Problem with this is, ppl often *say* they want better NPC A.I., but do they?! Remember when the spheres in Infected suddenly got EPtE?! So many loud protests, they reversed it! (Claiming it was done 'by accident', btw) Or when the spheres in CSA actually really did drain your shields!? So much rage!
I actually love HP sponges!
Wasn't one of the problems with Spheres having EP2E that they would go flying off in a straight line because they have such slow turn rates? That's probably one of the reasons they reduced the duration to 5 seconds, along with the reason you mentioned.
Additionally, I'm not against the Borg being able to effectively drain shields. However, it's kind of annoying when your shields are just always down bar when you're using RSP. Shields in general feel so weak to me now, when they're supposed to really be the primary defense on a starship.
I also agree with you that mindless pew-pewing does have charm of it's own.
The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
Now that you mention it, yes, I think you are right: their EPtE really *was* a bit too much.
I hear ya. But when it comes to the Borg, it feels to me like their super-effective shield-stripping ability is possibly their last vestige of power, a lasting (and only?) reminder that the Borg were supposed to be very dangerous. (In your HSE's they likely still are, *g*, but in my regular Advanced or RA, they're a total joke). You know, something to link you to that 'Definitely not Swedish!' feeling.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
I actually just changed my mind, and agree with you now. I mean, they pretty much instantly stripped the shields of the Enterprise-D, a Galaxy-class starship, in The Best of Both Worlds (I believe that was the episode).
that STO borg can do it in 0.68 seconds is pure BS
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Yes, I should have said quickly not instantly.
0.68 seconds was the time, I believe, Data seriously considered the Queen's offer ('nearly an eternity for an android').
But in TNG ('Q Who?', iirc), the Borg stripped the Enterprise's shields if not literally instantly, then extremely fast. Certainly didn't take 'em half-a-minute.
and they were actual pulses draining X% of shields fper hit, none of this one-pulse-DoTs-your-shields-instantly BS STO uses
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
I believe what we see the Borg using to strip shields in the show is what the Borg in game use that causes that green ring to appear around your ship. That doesn't seem to insta-drain your shields, it's the OP tachyon beam the Borg have equipped that seems to be doing it. I could be wrong.
Yeah, the 'green ring of death' is their shield-neutralizer (which I believe can be cleared with Science Team). The Tachyon Beam is a mite strong, yes. Even my Fed Engineer, running Nadion Inversion, can hardly stop the drain -- if at all. When I go fight the Borg, I just work from the notion that my shields are forfeit, and just hull-tank; or, you know, kill 'em instantly... err, quickly.
Voth were a simple to explain one since it's a matter of them being able to kill players with reflected damage. Mostly an issue with spike DPS builds though.
Kazon are a hilarious one because they actually DO have less predictable behaviors than most NPCs. Most hilarious is how they'll activate evasive maneuvers seemingly at random during fights.
My character Tsin'xing
Hazard Emitters clear it, in fact, not ST.
And yes, just like you said, give enemies better AI and you'd have players lining up with pitchforks. It wouldn't be a popular change.
As for the topic of HP sponges, what would be good alternative for enemies to even have a chance at damaging players? If enemies don't have enough HP and you'll clear them off in a matter of seconds, it doesn't matter how much damage they could do if they don't get a shot off. So the more HP enemies have, the longer they have the opportunity to shoot at you. And in prolonged engagements, most people are not eventually be able to take the heat when all of their heals and "oh s--t" buttons go on CD, even in advanced. So while in some cases, enemies seem to have ridiculously high HP, I'm not opposed to the idea in general.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
But a lot of times in STO things just have higher health for the sake of it. It’s not inventive and not a terribly exciting way to add a challenge to the game.
Nothing is more dull than knowing you can defeat an enemy and that they are little threat to you, but that it’ll take several minutes of mindless pounding at them to kill them. Those gates in KSA are a prime example. They aren’t a threat to most people but take a considerable time to grind down, which quite frankly is just boring.
It feels like the only reason some enemies have such high HP’s is to slow us down so the majority of people aren’t raving through content.
like if a mission has it where you need to kill X enemy unit/structure in Y time...that exists at ALL difficulties, from casual to brutal - it isn't just 'not there' for lower difficulties, but it may be more lenient about the amount of time you have to kill X on casual compared to brutal, or maybe X will have additional guards or something on hard or brutal that you wouldn't see at lower difficulties or something...point is, it doesn't change, and that's how it should be here
if a queue in STO has a total fail condition at advanced/elite, it should have it at normal as well to get players used to the concept that if they mess up, the mission is going to fail
like, let's take khitomer space's 'don't let X probes through the temporal portal' as an example - it's a hard fail on ALL difficulties, but on normal it'll allow the full 10 probes before failure occurs, on advanced that number drops to 7-5, and elite it drops to 3-0 (personally, i'd stick with 2 if i were redesigning the mission because even elites can have off-days, so there's room for SOME error without totally TRIBBLE you and everyone else over)
oh, and remove that damn timer lockout on a failure so you can jump right back in - you already got penalized by failing...you shouldn't get further penalized by not being able to try again for 30 minutes
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Two circles I feel we really need to learn how to break in this (and other) discussion is:
1) THE BORG!!!
“They are too easy or too hard or too exciting or too boring to fight! They should be more like this or that.”
Well sorry guys no, we have this and that available as in numerous other maps with numerous other critters which use numerous other abilities but sadly they all get widely rejected. So instead of focusing on the Borg and any possible changes to content which WORKS (for years) how about widening it to the content or the critters who DONT seem to WORK as in lack of popularity?! Yea sure we could use an elite mode for the classic six Borg STF. It would ultimately see to an exodus of DPSer there leaving advanced for a bunch of 5Kers to ensure an exciting fight atmosphere again but that’s about it.
Given the general impression of distribution of PvE consumer only leave one conclusion whether peeps around here like it or not: The Borg are fine!
2) SHOOTING STUFF:
"Does it always have to be about shooting stuff or wouldn’t it be better if…? Just more HP to melt is boring, why not instead…?"
Congratulations, STO will soon be 9 years old! We have seen in all those years what we can expect or what is too much to ask for in PvE. While I like idea for future content to be exciting and different and all we sit in front of an empty queue list now. It will not change over night for what it is with our most creativitive ideas but only (if at all) through reasonable changes that could be implemented by cryptic with low effort. They only do it if peeps are likely to go for it. One thing that always works, and that for everybody no matter how good or bad he is, is in fact shooting stuff. For that we have 3 difficulty settings seeing to it that a top ten DPSer like me either shoots a tac cube away like it is just a cylon raider (normal) or actually has to realize it as present opponent which needs attention (elite).
If shooting stuff feels too easy for anybody, play elite; if it is too hard, play advanced or normal! But all in all, believe it or not, shooting stuff is alright!
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Much like how torpedoes were always the real 'heavy hitters' in terms of weapons. So far as the show was concerned, energy weapons were for taking shields down or more 'surgical' attacks (for example taking weapons offline), torpdoes were for making stuff explode.
Sadly in STO they're VERY much secondary to energy weapons to the point where we now have energy weapon-based torpedoes.
Well said.
At the same time some people dream about a Trinity in STO. Where do they think the Trinity comes from? It comes from enemies so strong anything but a dedicated tank supported by dedicated healer would be annihilated, and anything but a dedicated DPS might as well be poking it with a stick.
"They can't do anything right, except all these instances in which they have, which don't count because it doesn't support my assumptions."
The spheres had poor mobility at Player Speed, because they were programmed to move like snails glued to the ground, same as 99% of the NPCs in the game. Because as soon as something moves fast enough to matter, it's "annoying" and "broken" and "unplayable." And unfortunately, those are the people Cryptic regularly listens to.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"