Danube Class Runabout As compared to base shuttle adds +1 tac console +1 science console + 0.1 shield modifier + 0.1 hull modifier + 1 universal boff slot. Cost: 34,250 EC.
"You should immediately throw out the thing you just got and haven't even had a chance to use yet and spend money you probably haven't even figured out how to get more of yet."
"Folks complain about blowing up during a shuttle mission. Get one that's multiple times better for 34K EC, don't blow up, and keep the admiralty card."
New players don't really grok ****, or else they wouldn't ever choose a non-Science-Ship, and the shipyard UI has so much stuff a newbie can't afford that it's unlikely they're going to keep digging for the one needle in the haystack.
No idea what point you're trying to make in the first part of your post.
My intent was honest when providing a direct link to a 34K EC shuttle (the needle in the haystack) that would make a significant difference in the OP's mission and could be saved for the next shuttle weekend, used as an admiralty card, and would take about 20 minutes worth of drops to aquire so is easily obtainable in-game.
Some people have an unfortunate misconception that new players are stupid. They aren't (or not any more than anyone else, anyway).
I certainly didn't have any trouble finding the EC shuttle when I did my first shuttle mission as a newbie. And why should I? It's right there next to the free one in the shipyard. No "needle in a haystack." There aren't that many shuttles in the entire game to call a "haystack." Nor did I have any trouble reading the stats, seeing that it had bigger numbers and concluding it was therefore the obvious choice to get.
Seems good intentions don't really matter in some threads though as this one doesn't hasn't exactly headed in any meaningful direction.
That's because there is no direction for it to head. The mission has been tested and found to be working just fine. Advice has been given to anyone who may be struggling with it. And some people have rejected all of the above in favor of continuing to complain just for the sake of complaining. What else is there to say?
I have a problem with doing shuttle missions. I have POOR reflexes so I expect to die at times on normal ship missions or ground battles. Death is part of life, but when I cant do a shuttle mission because of my poor reflexes and average gear handed to me for the mission (Yes, I am a F2P player), that is a problem for me. I am wondering if it is possible to being able to skip a mission after a certain number of deaths? There is precedent for that, where you have to travel through several rings that speed you up to travel back in time. After 2 failed tries, you now get your autopilot to do it for you! (Discovered that reading up on the mission online to get some tips to help me complete it. I made the mistake of leaving the zone to reset it... silly me!). Since I have poor reflexes and gear I have gotten by doing missions or matches, I really don't want to burden a fleet with me, especially since im more looking for an RP fleet. But I still want to be a help also, as much as I can. Why I equip my ship to help compensate for my poor hand/eye coordination.
I have a problem with doing shuttle missions. I have POOR reflexes so I expect to die at times on normal ship missions or ground battles. Death is part of life, but when I cant do a shuttle mission because of my poor reflexes and average gear handed to me for the mission (Yes, I am a F2P player), that is a problem for me. I am wondering if it is possible to being able to skip a mission after a certain number of deaths?
Yes. Use the Hail faction button, go to the episode list and find the mission you want to skip and press the skip button next to it. You don't have to die first, you can just skip without even trying a mission if you want.
Skipping does not forfeit the mission, you can still go back to play it later if you change your mind.
New players just use what's presented to them, as they have no resources to expend on experimentation nor prior knowledge to draw upon. They don't know that the other shuttle option exists, they don't know how to afford that, and they don't know all the various tricks and shenanigans one can pull if you have a few million EC to throw at an otherwise useless mission.
They can SEE the other shuttle in the list. It's right there next to the one that's "presented" to them (not that the free shuttle is really presented to them in any way, they just get told to go get a shuttle at the shipyard). They can (most likely) read it's stats. And they will surely have 40k EC by level 25/30, even if just from discarding the useless junk that threatens to fill your inventory.
And defending newbies rights to enjoy a game isn't a sin. If your telling me that only the richest should enjoy the game, your sounding like an elitist!
Newbies have a right to GIT GUD. My research suggests that newbies enjoy games more after learning to play them. Oh wait, this is that caterpillar>butterfly thing. If they git gud you won't call them newbies any more.
No idea what point you're trying to make in the first part of your post.
My intent was honest when providing a direct link to a 34K EC shuttle (the needle in the haystack) that would make a significant difference in the OP's mission and could be saved for the next shuttle weekend, used as an admiralty card, and would take about 20 minutes worth of drops to aquire so is easily obtainable in-game.
My point is... <snip>
Yes got it. Couldn't figure out the "New players don't really grok ****" part of your post. Still can't but assume there's a cuss word in there somewhere.
All the various advice and tips offered to one specific instance of a new player does not magically transmit itself to EVERY new player, and this issue where the level-scaling makes the mission a lot less playable than originally designed will remain regardless of how much advice is offered to one specific player.
You don't say. Kinda renders a good portion of this forum and the STO reddit not too useful then. Good thing the player is in a fleet. "Offering help is of little help due to no magical transmissions". Ok. As far as level scaling is concerned, would think that'd be partially offset by that fancy purple gear and even space and ground sets missions give out far before L65.
But this never really was a help thread anyway... it was a complaint thread possibly based upon using L45ish un/common gear at end game even though missions offer Mk 12 VR, combined with a bit of impatience and not wanting to take the time to learn along with generalized bleating about the space rich and elitism, with a touch of change it now or doom thrown in.
Hope you have better luck with the player over in that other forum.
Still leveling, will keep you posted. So far though it looks like Cryptic's done a bang up job.
No bugs, everything I need via missions and drops, scaling fine so far. There's even a queue called Romulan Imperial Minefield available to me as early as level 10 that doesn't appear to have a cool down. It's giving me usable blue drops, xp, dil, and fleet marks and pops every few minutes. Nice!
@ruinthefun that is such a well thought out response that about all I can do at this point is continue to sequence break and over level while I ponder what you've said. You've gotten me questioning my own line of thinking tbh.
It's actually kind of funny as one of the reasons I'm purposely waaay overlevelling (xp weekend + boost + RIM, etc) was so I could possibly experience some of the scaling difficulties that were brought up in this thread. But apparently since I'm a "veteran" it invalidates this? But wait...
You may have a point there as the only "bug" I've really encountered so far is the game lagging slightly in acknowledging that I've wiped the map of npc's so quickly when really it's supposed to take a while that it has to think for a moment.
So all I'm doing perhaps is showing that some of the concerns brought up in this thread are valid?
It's interesting just how much certain people think that "newbies" have no interest in learning to play the game...
Also warp core breach damage is a function of the max HP of the ship exploding. So yeah an enemy ship with a max HP of 100K does twice as much as one with 50k. Also, warp core breach damage decreases dramatically over range. The range seems to be a function of the size of the ship model.
@ruinthefun that is such a well thought out response that about all I can do at this point is continue to sequence break and over level while I ponder what you've said. You've gotten me questioning my own line of thinking tbh.
It's actually kind of funny as one of the reasons I'm purposely waaay overlevelling (xp weekend + boost + RIM, etc) was so I could possibly experience some of the scaling difficulties that were brought up in this thread. But apparently since I'm a "veteran" it invalidates this? But wait...
You may have a point there as the only "bug" I've really encountered so far is the game lagging slightly in acknowledging that I've wiped the map of npc's so quickly when really it's supposed to take a while that it has to think for a moment.
So all I'm doing perhaps is showing that some of the concerns brought up in this thread are valid?
Sigh.
I dare you to play against romulans at level 60-65. No less. Nothing extra boosting shield hardness beyond the skill or emergency power to shields(no duty officers allowed) and only 1-2 mid level(mk5-6) neutronium alloy consoles.
Also try taking breen bosses on that way.
Actually any enemy-group using normal kinetic damage torpedoes.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
heh, tried it with a To'duj once. I'd use turrets on it since turrets can benefit from the built in CRF. BUT, that's not a great option for dealing with worker bees. Again, I personally tend to swap weapons and boffs a lot in that mission.
If there are still scaling issues then that would be a bug or something in need of a balance pass which is a completely different ball game. With that said I regularly maintain 60% across the board resists without ever touching an armor console. Once you know which abilities play well with each other you'll cut through most stuff in game like a hot knife through butter. If survival is an issue I can definitely help with that as tanking is my specialty in game.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
Ah, the conference room scene in the first episode of the mission series. Hehe, I figured it out the first go because the mission objective is "sit in a chair" Then you have an objective marker showing you where the chair is. I figured it out when I noticed the mouse pointer changes shapes when you mouse over sittable furniture.
It's not how STO normally does it. Usually you walk to the location and a cutscene happens.
but when that set of episodes came out they pumped them out really quickly, 4-5 episodes in as many weeksand it i remember right, that was after something else big had just occured
If there are still scaling issues then that would be a bug or something in need of a balance pass which is a completely different ball game. With that said I regularly maintain 60% across the board resists without ever touching an armor console. Once you know which abilities play well with each other you'll cut through most stuff in game like a hot knife through butter. If survival is an issue I can definitely help with that as tanking is my specialty in game.
Thats what I'm mostly talking about is a scaling issue that seems to be driving newbies away or giving them this much trouble. I kind of feel that many people are trying to say there isn't but, there really is. Everyone I talk to in game tells me there is a scaling problem.
I'd love to see a video of you keeping your resists above 60% without an armor console though.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
If survival is an issue I can definitely help with that as tanking is my specialty in game.
I'd love to see a video of you keeping your resists above 60% without an armor console though.
Yeah, I doubt he is just going "off the shelf" to get that. One often pays high prices for "Synergy" with pieces that come from C-store ships or Lockbox or Lobi or DOFFs you can never afford. He could, even, be using a specific ship. Most of the time those "builds" folks have more stuff than casual folks would ever have access to, or know about.
Which is why I keep my eyes peeled for "budget builds"....and such. Unfortunately, those budget builds are where advisers expect players to START, not stay there and use forever and ever. But as a casual player I say...getting to that point is enough, I am done, I don't wanna do this any more. I rather play to play.
"Spend your life doing strange things with weird people." -- UNK
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
@ruinthefun that is such a well thought out response that about all I can do at this point is continue to sequence break and over level while I ponder what you've said. You've gotten me questioning my own line of thinking tbh.
It's actually kind of funny as one of the reasons I'm purposely waaay overlevelling (xp weekend + boost + RIM, etc) was so I could possibly experience some of the scaling difficulties that were brought up in this thread. But apparently since I'm a "veteran" it invalidates this? But wait...
You may have a point there as the only "bug" I've really encountered so far is the game lagging slightly in acknowledging that I've wiped the map of npc's so quickly when really it's supposed to take a while that it has to think for a moment.
So all I'm doing perhaps is showing that some of the concerns brought up in this thread are valid?
Sigh.
I dare you to play against romulans at level 60-65. No less. Nothing extra boosting shield hardness beyond the skill or emergency power to shields(no duty officers allowed) and only 1-2 mid level(mk5-6) neutronium alloy consoles.
Also try taking breen bosses on that way.
Actually any enemy-group using normal kinetic damage torpedoes.
I care about the experience of new players. Really.
I'll take the time to grab a non zen Tier 5 ship while playing at level 60+ and load it up it up with level appropriate rare gear, no starship traits, no spec points, no active duty doffs, no reputation gear, traits, or abilities, etc. Will it make much of a difference to me? Not according to @ruinthefun . I don't think it will either. Might just have to work things a bit harder.
There's not much the game can throw at me on normal and that's only because I've been doing this for a while. I'm not rich nor am I an exceptional player. If there is something very wrong I'll provide some proper feedback because again, I want the game to be working right for newer players. I hope that over time as you gain experience the game will become more enjoyable. Don't think there's much more I can say
I'll take the time to grab a non zen Tier 5 ship while playing at level 60+ and load it up it up with level appropriate rare gear, no starship traits, no spec points, no active duty doffs, no reputation gear, traits, or abilities, etc. Will it make much of a difference to me? Not according to @ruinthefun . I don't think it will either. Might just have to work things a bit harder.
See, here you go again. "Load up". Newbies don't "load up"<snip>
I used the term load up because I thought no matter what level of gear I picked said level would be used as a tool to further whatever drum you're beating. Bingo.
You're beginning to remind me of another poster where I always had to duck after posting.
Yep, I'm sure of it now. This is really starting to sound like a variant of one of those stick up for the space poor themed threads I used to post in and then duck.
Usually those threads were looking for a reaction, not meaningful input. I did the meaningful thing last post and a couple posts before that. It's a no win scenario.
I'll take the time to grab a non zen Tier 5 ship while playing at level 60+ and load it up it up with level appropriate rare gear, no starship traits, no spec points, no active duty doffs, no reputation gear, traits, or abilities, etc. Will it make much of a difference to me? Not according to @ruinthefun . I don't think it will either. Might just have to work things a bit harder.
See, here you go again. "Load up". Newbies don't "load up", and the game does not throw a set of level-appropriate gear at you the moment you level up. You're going out of your way to find this gear.
Notice how he has a mash of random gear he picked up off the floor, practically none of which is of appropriate level. He's level 60 and every last piece of gear he has was obsolete before he was even level 50. All of it is just a random mash without any synergy, because this is what they tell you to have on your ship when you pull it out of the shipyard. He DOES have a fancy C-Store ship, but because he is a clueless newbie, he just bought whichever one seemed nice, and it isn't even a real endgame ship and certainly isn't one chosen for its synergy to his (not a) build.
And this is an upper-class newbie: He's actually managed to find his way on an external venue to ask for help. The bulk of newbies don't have the slightest idea where to even ask for this kind of help.
Put together a ship, like this newbie: just grab whatever boffs you are given and use them, as-is, without trying to train them in actual coherent skills, because to a newbie, all of these things are just meaningless technobabble and nothing in the game teaches you how to choose these things. Do we even still HAVE a boff trainer tutorial? Staple the random junk you find on the floor anytime you find something that has a prettier color than what you already have to your ship.
Now fly THAT to level 65 and tell me that the result isn't a pain facial.
First of all.. ouch. That build is seriously bad.
This is caused by a couple of things though, firstly.. the fact that the game teaches you little to nothing, and in the case of ship load outs actually teaches you exactly the wrong way to build a ship. I think another part of the problem is the in game community as a whole. I see people asking questions in Zone all the time, and frankly.. the answers they get are shocking. I can only assume they're either being instructed by other bad players or by veterans that for some reason find it pleasurable to give people bad advice.
On the topic of difficulty though, I honestly don't know if that player is a good example or not. I like to think that the 'average' player is better then that, but if they aren't then that's something that needs to be addressed. The fix though, isn't making these missions easier, it's instructing the players better. This is exactly why I advocated for better build teaching in the 'What can we Teach Better' thread and was met with resistance from a few posters that have no clue how bad the issue really is.
As a 'veteran player,' I will admit 100% that I couldn't finish a lot of missions in that players ship. I honestly don't think many people could, it's a complete disaster. Again though, this leads to a whole other issue outside of mission design. The mission isn't badly designed or too difficult, the player is simply not equipped to make even a partially reasonable attempt at the content due to their poor ship build.
These missions don't take top tier builds by any means.. but they do take sensible builds. These things must be better taught or you're going to have more and more like this horrid example.
The only shuttle mission I can ever recall having big issues with was the romulan ground attack mission against the walkers (not the TFO) I have no idea how many times I died doing that. I think each walker was pretty much a suicide run.
I haven't played operation gamma since doing it on my TOSling in the TS shuttle but I don't recall too much trouble. I tend to find the key thing with shuttles is to keep the speed to so you have that evasion as a lot of stuff will hurt if it hits. You do have to keep strong shields facing the enemy more than a bigger ship BUT this is not taught by the game I have often thought a tutorial mission by tom paris would have been awesome here.
From my experience romulan warbirds (mostly d'deriddex and sometimes mowgai) have always been evil at plasma death hits. They were the reason I kept the really old tactical console from pre orders that auto fires at torps/fighters.
Usually those threads were looking for a reaction, not meaningful input. I did the meaningful thing last post and a couple posts before that. It's a no win scenario.
I'm not trying to look for a reaction, but my point remains: That the approach you're taking to the problem simply demonstrates you're not a newbie, and are so far outside the thought process of a newbie that you can't really do a credible imitation of one. I then offered an actual example of what a real newbie looks like.
It's hard to take your example seriously when a player with a near end game C-Store ship complains about being squishy when using a Mk II eng console and a Mk I tac console that are some 60 levels below him and expects things to work. It's laughable. You're doing a fine job of creating a situation out of thin air.
Mission Replay of even some of the early missions supplemented by even a couple hundred K EC gives you everything you need to gradually get some better gear that would average out to about Mk XI green or blue. A common component of a lot of MMO's is learning through experimentation.
As for the learning component why don't you take an alternative approach and ask the "veteran" players where they originally got the game knowledge that started them off in the right direction from? Be willing to bet it most likely wasn't from a forum, wiki or google search.
Experimentation used to be ok back in the day when it was before we started facing ships who had powers we didn't get.
Then they started with enemies with powers other than weapons that we cannot get which tend to cause a lot of visual spam and require tactics to beat. You don't get taught tactics you have to either trial and error or check the forums.
For example the Voth decoy must still slay newer players because they wont know how to beat it.
I'll take the time to grab a non zen Tier 5 ship while playing at level 60+ and load it up it up with level appropriate rare gear, no starship traits, no spec points, no active duty doffs, no reputation gear, traits, or abilities, etc. Will it make much of a difference to me? Not according to @ruinthefun . I don't think it will either. Might just have to work things a bit harder.
See, here you go again. "Load up". Newbies don't "load up", and the game does not throw a set of level-appropriate gear at you the moment you level up. You're going out of your way to find this gear.
Notice how he has a mash of random gear he picked up off the floor, practically none of which is of appropriate level. He's level 60 and every last piece of gear he has was obsolete before he was even level 50. All of it is just a random mash without any synergy, because this is what they tell you to have on your ship when you pull it out of the shipyard. He DOES have a fancy C-Store ship, but because he is a clueless newbie, he just bought whichever one seemed nice, and it isn't even a real endgame ship and certainly isn't one chosen for its synergy to his (not a) build.
And this is an upper-class newbie: He's actually managed to find his way on an external venue to ask for help. The bulk of newbies don't have the slightest idea where to even ask for this kind of help.
Do you have some empirical evidence to support this character assassination of all new players in general? Besides one dude on Reddit who obviously hasn't been paying attention to the game.
That's not an "upper-class newbie." An upper-class newbie wouldn't be a newbie after playing for a month. Sure, the game doesn't do a good job giving details on the interactions between things, but anyone paying proper attention would sooner or later notice basics like higher-mark items are better and phaser consoles only boost phasers.
A common component of a lot of MMO's is learning through experimentation.
It's also a thing that THIS particular game harshly punishes. Experimentation is absolutely not one of the things I really do on Holodeck, precisely because this game harshly punishes you with steep financial penalties for doing it. For this, I go to Tribble. New players don't go to Tribble.
The only thing that costs money to experiment with is the skilltree (which they really should change).
I have to admit.. as a long time player, I admit to losing perspective on the new players.
This thread has an example of a build, one long time player says this is a typical or even slightly above average new player, others say it's not a valid example.. and I admit, I have no idea who's right.
I will say this though, I have listened to the 'advice' that people give in Zone chat and I hate to say that I am inclined to agree with Ruin that the build presented is pretty close to standard. Most players, when they have questions, they say 'hey.. this is an MMO right? there are other players in this game right? Cool.. I'll ask them!" Seems a reasonable enough train of thought, but the problem is they get such terrible advice that in many cases they're better off just guessing. I have heard things from 'white and purple duty officers are exactly the same.' to 'consoles don't matter, you can put them anywhere.. just take what sounds good and it will be good,' I even heard a player swear up and down that he has Fire At Will working on his Cannons.
I don't know if Ruin's example is 'typical' or not.. I admit it, I am out of touch with new players and I just don't know. I will say however, that everything he said about the game not only not teaching you, but actually teaching you wrong is absolutely 100% correct. And if you dare suggest that the game teach these things, people accuse you of trying to get people to copy your personal build or all make the same thing.
Every game has core mechanics that are part of the combat system, rather it's a space game, an arena style survival game, and RTS, whatever. These are core mechanics that are the fundamental building blocks of any build. Teaching people these fundamentals does not remove their ability to be individual. It does not force everyone into the same build, it gives them a strong foundation to understand how things work and then decide how they wish to apply those techniques. Star Trek Online does a lot of things right, this is the only game that I just keep coming back to time and time again. For everything that STO does well though, this is one area where they do things worse then just about any game out there.
A new player has only the patterns that are presented to him. Except the game only presents him with antipatterns. Basic things like "Have two copies of a power so you can keep it going" are simply not presented as even being on the menu. This early practice is not taught anywhere in the game. Every single ship you're given teaches exactly the opposite, that of having a grab bag of random useless buttons that quickly die off while having no lasting impact on the ship. Why were these powers chosen? I have no idea. Players thus emulate this antipattern in their own "builds". Then they parrot them to others in Zone, the blind leading the blind, because everyone else has long since fled the cesspool that is Zone.
This pretty much sums it up. I can't argue with any of it.
The only thing that costs money to experiment with is the skilltree (which they really should change).
Actually...it costs you in game resources...which is more difficult to get when you first start the game.
It is, also, not really clear what is available to experiment with. You just find oddball things in loot drops...with very vague descriptions using words that is not readily apparent.
Resistance? Regeneration? Restoration? Power Rate Transfer? What is Sector space speed? Turn rate? How long did you play before you understood what Exotic Damage boosted? I, still, do not fully know. I am not sure the game even explain "Engineering Console" "Science Console" "Tactical Consoles" and what does what.
What they do is point out: They. Go. Here.
You don't know where to find things, you don't know all the systems, yet. (Boff training? What??) And even if you did know...can you use them if there is no resources? Dilithium, XP, EC, Components (as they are different from R&D Materials), Salvage. Most will pass on what the rest of us deem "easy TRIBBLE" because they can't "pay" for it.
Do people have the mindset of: "Lets try everything until I figure out what works"? Do people have patience? These days? Very few people have the time. Or even want to do it. It is not part of the game they play.
They play the missions like "my character is my actor".
(I admit it, I started playing so that I could be a Klingon.)
They don't play the missions as steps in "build my character up".
But that is the actual object of the game...to build a stronger character. That is what finishing those missions really reward. That is what loot drops are for. The TUTORIAL doesn't explain that well, either.
I got lucky when I first started, because my Fleet Leader would pass along skill tree set up, gear and EC for me to use. And explained a lot of rudimentary stuff. Including BOFF trainer...
He had the patience (probably closer to perseverance) to run me though every single Empire Defense, every single day and watched to make sure I understood what I was doing (for a long time I would aggro every god dang thing on the map for 50 miles). Made me Foundry missions to work with, both ground and space, for practice. (I been really lax on my practicing lately...though.)
Not everyone is willing to BE like my Fleet Leader. And maybe it would make it easier by the time people get to Operation Gamma, if more people were open to being mentors instead of "you must be a copy of me".
And that starts with realizing where people really are. Not where you were when you were doing it.
"Spend your life doing strange things with weird people." -- UNK
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
Here's the thing.... half of this conversation is proceeding under the assumption that your standard newbie doesn't do basic simple things like reading the tooltips of bits of equipment. Is it possible? sure. Normal? I'd argue no. I read the tooltips of pretty much everything when I started playing. But I used to play Diablo 2 a lot. So part of it is just the general desire to learn about the game by actually paying attention to the game.
Some things require in depth experimentation to learn, basic ship building isn't one of them.
Comments
I certainly didn't have any trouble finding the EC shuttle when I did my first shuttle mission as a newbie. And why should I? It's right there next to the free one in the shipyard. No "needle in a haystack." There aren't that many shuttles in the entire game to call a "haystack." Nor did I have any trouble reading the stats, seeing that it had bigger numbers and concluding it was therefore the obvious choice to get.
That's because there is no direction for it to head. The mission has been tested and found to be working just fine. Advice has been given to anyone who may be struggling with it. And some people have rejected all of the above in favor of continuing to complain just for the sake of complaining. What else is there to say?
Skipping does not forfeit the mission, you can still go back to play it later if you change your mind.
My character Tsin'xing
You don't say. Kinda renders a good portion of this forum and the STO reddit not too useful then. Good thing the player is in a fleet. "Offering help is of little help due to no magical transmissions". Ok. As far as level scaling is concerned, would think that'd be partially offset by that fancy purple gear and even space and ground sets missions give out far before L65.
But this never really was a help thread anyway... it was a complaint thread possibly based upon using L45ish un/common gear at end game even though missions offer Mk 12 VR, combined with a bit of impatience and not wanting to take the time to learn along with generalized bleating about the space rich and elitism, with a touch of change it now or doom thrown in.
Hope you have better luck with the player over in that other forum.
Still leveling, will keep you posted. So far though it looks like Cryptic's done a bang up job.
No bugs, everything I need via missions and drops, scaling fine so far. There's even a queue called Romulan Imperial Minefield available to me as early as level 10 that doesn't appear to have a cool down. It's giving me usable blue drops, xp, dil, and fleet marks and pops every few minutes. Nice!
Thank you! I do appreciate that, sir! I will keep this page marked to help remind me when I forget in the future! May your torpedoes never miss!
It's actually kind of funny as one of the reasons I'm purposely waaay overlevelling (xp weekend + boost + RIM, etc) was so I could possibly experience some of the scaling difficulties that were brought up in this thread. But apparently since I'm a "veteran" it invalidates this? But wait...
You may have a point there as the only "bug" I've really encountered so far is the game lagging slightly in acknowledging that I've wiped the map of npc's so quickly when really it's supposed to take a while that it has to think for a moment.
So all I'm doing perhaps is showing that some of the concerns brought up in this thread are valid?
Sigh.
Also warp core breach damage is a function of the max HP of the ship exploding. So yeah an enemy ship with a max HP of 100K does twice as much as one with 50k. Also, warp core breach damage decreases dramatically over range. The range seems to be a function of the size of the ship model.
My character Tsin'xing
I dare you to play against romulans at level 60-65. No less. Nothing extra boosting shield hardness beyond the skill or emergency power to shields(no duty officers allowed) and only 1-2 mid level(mk5-6) neutronium alloy consoles.
Also try taking breen bosses on that way.
Actually any enemy-group using normal kinetic damage torpedoes.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
My character Tsin'xing
Was there anything about To'Duj fighters somewhere in this mess? Thats the one I use...it's cute.
What page??
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
My character Tsin'xing
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
but when that set of episodes came out they pumped them out really quickly, 4-5 episodes in as many weeksand it i remember right, that was after something else big had just occured
Thats what I'm mostly talking about is a scaling issue that seems to be driving newbies away or giving them this much trouble. I kind of feel that many people are trying to say there isn't but, there really is. Everyone I talk to in game tells me there is a scaling problem.
I'd love to see a video of you keeping your resists above 60% without an armor console though.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
Yeah, I doubt he is just going "off the shelf" to get that. One often pays high prices for "Synergy" with pieces that come from C-store ships or Lockbox or Lobi or DOFFs you can never afford. He could, even, be using a specific ship. Most of the time those "builds" folks have more stuff than casual folks would ever have access to, or know about.
Which is why I keep my eyes peeled for "budget builds"....and such. Unfortunately, those budget builds are where advisers expect players to START, not stay there and use forever and ever. But as a casual player I say...getting to that point is enough, I am done, I don't wanna do this any more. I rather play to play.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
I'll take the time to grab a non zen Tier 5 ship while playing at level 60+ and load it up it up with level appropriate rare gear, no starship traits, no spec points, no active duty doffs, no reputation gear, traits, or abilities, etc. Will it make much of a difference to me? Not according to @ruinthefun . I don't think it will either. Might just have to work things a bit harder.
There's not much the game can throw at me on normal and that's only because I've been doing this for a while. I'm not rich nor am I an exceptional player. If there is something very wrong I'll provide some proper feedback because again, I want the game to be working right for newer players. I hope that over time as you gain experience the game will become more enjoyable. Don't think there's much more I can say
You're beginning to remind me of another poster where I always had to duck after posting.
Yep, I'm sure of it now. This is really starting to sound like a variant of one of those stick up for the space poor themed threads I used to post in and then duck.
Usually those threads were looking for a reaction, not meaningful input. I did the meaningful thing last post and a couple posts before that. It's a no win scenario.
Back to sequence breaking and over-leveling.
First of all.. ouch. That build is seriously bad.
This is caused by a couple of things though, firstly.. the fact that the game teaches you little to nothing, and in the case of ship load outs actually teaches you exactly the wrong way to build a ship. I think another part of the problem is the in game community as a whole. I see people asking questions in Zone all the time, and frankly.. the answers they get are shocking. I can only assume they're either being instructed by other bad players or by veterans that for some reason find it pleasurable to give people bad advice.
On the topic of difficulty though, I honestly don't know if that player is a good example or not. I like to think that the 'average' player is better then that, but if they aren't then that's something that needs to be addressed. The fix though, isn't making these missions easier, it's instructing the players better. This is exactly why I advocated for better build teaching in the 'What can we Teach Better' thread and was met with resistance from a few posters that have no clue how bad the issue really is.
As a 'veteran player,' I will admit 100% that I couldn't finish a lot of missions in that players ship. I honestly don't think many people could, it's a complete disaster. Again though, this leads to a whole other issue outside of mission design. The mission isn't badly designed or too difficult, the player is simply not equipped to make even a partially reasonable attempt at the content due to their poor ship build.
These missions don't take top tier builds by any means.. but they do take sensible builds. These things must be better taught or you're going to have more and more like this horrid example.
I haven't played operation gamma since doing it on my TOSling in the TS shuttle but I don't recall too much trouble. I tend to find the key thing with shuttles is to keep the speed to so you have that evasion as a lot of stuff will hurt if it hits. You do have to keep strong shields facing the enemy more than a bigger ship BUT this is not taught by the game I have often thought a tutorial mission by tom paris would have been awesome here.
From my experience romulan warbirds (mostly d'deriddex and sometimes mowgai) have always been evil at plasma death hits. They were the reason I kept the really old tactical console from pre orders that auto fires at torps/fighters.
Mission Replay of even some of the early missions supplemented by even a couple hundred K EC gives you everything you need to gradually get some better gear that would average out to about Mk XI green or blue. A common component of a lot of MMO's is learning through experimentation.
As for the learning component why don't you take an alternative approach and ask the "veteran" players where they originally got the game knowledge that started them off in the right direction from? Be willing to bet it most likely wasn't from a forum, wiki or google search.
Then they started with enemies with powers other than weapons that we cannot get which tend to cause a lot of visual spam and require tactics to beat. You don't get taught tactics you have to either trial and error or check the forums.
For example the Voth decoy must still slay newer players because they wont know how to beat it.
That's not an "upper-class newbie." An upper-class newbie wouldn't be a newbie after playing for a month. Sure, the game doesn't do a good job giving details on the interactions between things, but anyone paying proper attention would sooner or later notice basics like higher-mark items are better and phaser consoles only boost phasers.
The only thing that costs money to experiment with is the skilltree (which they really should change).
This thread has an example of a build, one long time player says this is a typical or even slightly above average new player, others say it's not a valid example.. and I admit, I have no idea who's right.
I will say this though, I have listened to the 'advice' that people give in Zone chat and I hate to say that I am inclined to agree with Ruin that the build presented is pretty close to standard. Most players, when they have questions, they say 'hey.. this is an MMO right? there are other players in this game right? Cool.. I'll ask them!" Seems a reasonable enough train of thought, but the problem is they get such terrible advice that in many cases they're better off just guessing. I have heard things from 'white and purple duty officers are exactly the same.' to 'consoles don't matter, you can put them anywhere.. just take what sounds good and it will be good,' I even heard a player swear up and down that he has Fire At Will working on his Cannons.
I don't know if Ruin's example is 'typical' or not.. I admit it, I am out of touch with new players and I just don't know. I will say however, that everything he said about the game not only not teaching you, but actually teaching you wrong is absolutely 100% correct. And if you dare suggest that the game teach these things, people accuse you of trying to get people to copy your personal build or all make the same thing.
Every game has core mechanics that are part of the combat system, rather it's a space game, an arena style survival game, and RTS, whatever. These are core mechanics that are the fundamental building blocks of any build. Teaching people these fundamentals does not remove their ability to be individual. It does not force everyone into the same build, it gives them a strong foundation to understand how things work and then decide how they wish to apply those techniques. Star Trek Online does a lot of things right, this is the only game that I just keep coming back to time and time again. For everything that STO does well though, this is one area where they do things worse then just about any game out there.
This pretty much sums it up. I can't argue with any of it.
Actually...it costs you in game resources...which is more difficult to get when you first start the game.
It is, also, not really clear what is available to experiment with. You just find oddball things in loot drops...with very vague descriptions using words that is not readily apparent.
Resistance? Regeneration? Restoration? Power Rate Transfer? What is Sector space speed? Turn rate? How long did you play before you understood what Exotic Damage boosted? I, still, do not fully know. I am not sure the game even explain "Engineering Console" "Science Console" "Tactical Consoles" and what does what.
What they do is point out: They. Go. Here.
You don't know where to find things, you don't know all the systems, yet. (Boff training? What??) And even if you did know...can you use them if there is no resources? Dilithium, XP, EC, Components (as they are different from R&D Materials), Salvage. Most will pass on what the rest of us deem "easy TRIBBLE" because they can't "pay" for it.
Do people have the mindset of: "Lets try everything until I figure out what works"? Do people have patience? These days? Very few people have the time. Or even want to do it. It is not part of the game they play.
They play the missions like "my character is my actor".
(I admit it, I started playing so that I could be a Klingon.)
They don't play the missions as steps in "build my character up".
But that is the actual object of the game...to build a stronger character. That is what finishing those missions really reward. That is what loot drops are for. The TUTORIAL doesn't explain that well, either.
I got lucky when I first started, because my Fleet Leader would pass along skill tree set up, gear and EC for me to use. And explained a lot of rudimentary stuff. Including BOFF trainer...
He had the patience (probably closer to perseverance) to run me though every single Empire Defense, every single day and watched to make sure I understood what I was doing (for a long time I would aggro every god dang thing on the map for 50 miles). Made me Foundry missions to work with, both ground and space, for practice. (I been really lax on my practicing lately...though.)
Not everyone is willing to BE like my Fleet Leader. And maybe it would make it easier by the time people get to Operation Gamma, if more people were open to being mentors instead of "you must be a copy of me".
And that starts with realizing where people really are. Not where you were when you were doing it.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
Some things require in depth experimentation to learn, basic ship building isn't one of them.
My character Tsin'xing