I mean, there is MASSIVE disparity between players and that is evidence in some TFO’s. Players who can manage 120k DPS alongside players who can barely manage 10k doesn’t seem right – but I don’t think there is a solution nor that anything will change.
I have played a pretty good number of MMO's and never found a single one where this isn't the case.
There will always be a diverse player base. Those that are hardcore and crunch all the numbers to make the 'perfect' build mixed with those that play casually from time to time and don't study the finer points of game mechanics.
Spending time and resources trying to change this is a waste of time. The only way you can change this is to bar certain players from content which creates a whole new set of issues.
Sometimes, players on the low side feel encouraged to improve their numbers. Sometimes they quit, sometimes they just keep going and do what they like. I have been in all these camps at one point or another.. it's just part of online multiplayer games and it probably always will be.
Indeed. The minimum damage is always zero (except in games with damage-absorbing enemies, where it's actually negative), so the maximum "disparity" is always equal to the maximum potential.
But it isn't necessary to bar players from below-their-level content. It's sufficient to provide a logical progression of higher-level content to play, and rewards that encourage players to move on when they're done with the beginner stuff. Top-level players should generally have better things to do than curbstomping Easy Mode content over and over. Cryptic's mistake is a reward structure that favors the overpowered speedrunning of short and easy content above everything else.
I mean, there is MASSIVE disparity between players and that is evidence in some TFO’s. Players who can manage 120k DPS alongside players who can barely manage 10k doesn’t seem right – but I don’t think there is a solution nor that anything will change.
On the flipside, the instance I described a few pages back isn’t generally the norm, I can at least say with confidence that my GWIII’s have ‘rescued’ one or two ISA runs since that particularly instance, giving teams who couldn’t pop the transformer quickly a little more time to work on doing so without sphere interference.
And in general am a little confused about my performance at this point. If my DPS is so low (it certainly was in that aforementioned instance), how is it that I attract aggro from just about everything on the map?
@reyan01 getting good DPS on any build in ISA is simpler than you may think once you get the basics of it down. Properly geared exotic damage alone can get you over 100k:
While the above videos are old (I haven't played much at all this entire year), I've been told they are still relevant to the current game state. Once you nail down the basics of where and when to activate stuff, getting good DPS in ISA will get pretty routine for you.
With exotic/crowd control one seems to be rather high in the food chain of the critters as you simply tab on the shoulders of so many with a single attack simultaniously and it takes them long to die from it.
I dunno - popped the Temporal shield and core back on my Nova (i.e as per my 'Megawell Nova thread) about an hour ago, and did an ISA run.
With a team that was other preoccupied with the generator, I did the usual trick of popping an Exotic Particle Flood module and popped GWIII on the Nanite spheres. Then followed that up with DRBII, TSIII, Anti-Time Entanglement Singularity, and the Delphic Tear console.
And actually managed to wipe the spheres out entirely.
Sounds good!
Now next time when the team is good and the mission objective is not at critical try to get away from right side generator a tiny bit early (when you see it falls), pull sci fleet and that rom clicky and head to gateway fast. Aim the gravity well at the gate and witness how the emerging nanite spheres get pinned to it. Then lay all your other epg+torps on top of it. Please practice and do that for me.
The others in team will miss out targets and it will all ad to ur deepz.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Exactly. Soph wants to argue that there is no meaningful skill gap. That's his thesis. So then he concocts a scenario to justify that thesis, in which skill is assumed to be equal - i.e. assuming his own conclusion. Just to be clear, no one's disputed that all else being equal, the player with better gear will win. What we've disputed is the idea that skill doesn't matter too.
From what I can tell, @sophlogimo 's statements are to the posters in this thread. There seems to be some unspoken consensus that everyone participating in this particular discussion is familiar with the game's mechanics. This could lead someone to assume (possibly erroneously) that everyone in this thread is operating with a similar level of "skill" when it comes to both gearing up a ship and intelligently using the powers that you installed on the d@mn ship yourself.
You're right that the disconnect in this conversation is the definition of "skill." The difference is that one side's arguing in bad faith.
I do not believe it is bad faith. While somewhat inconsistent in his position, @sophlogimo is not trying to "one up" anyone in the discussion. He just wants acknowledgement for his point. Which, sure. Ok. "Given two players of similar 'piloting aptitude' (or whatever you want to call it), the largest difference between the two ship's performance could be difference in gear".
All the statements in this thread are from personal experience. So, the results are going to be subjective. I think it is silly to adopt a broad "this is always the issue" stance, but that seems to be what both sides are going for here. I honestly think the issue of "why is player 'x's DPS higher than player 'y's" is an issue unique to those players. It could even be a combination of factors (gear, piloting aptitude, understanding of game mechanics, etc).
Just played SB1 on advanced and got smashed through full shields and 58% kinetic res by 5x 22k plus torps from Bops on that map. Ofc my 65k hull Vesta didn't survive that assault.
edit also just have my Galaxy class vaped by 2 x 100k shots by the Gate in KSA.
Post edited by ussvaliant#6064 on
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
Exactly. Soph wants to argue that there is no meaningful skill gap. That's his thesis. So then he concocts a scenario to justify that thesis, in which skill is assumed to be equal - i.e. assuming his own conclusion. Just to be clear, no one's disputed that all else being equal, the player with better gear will win. What we've disputed is the idea that skill doesn't matter too.
From what I can tell, @sophlogimo 's statements are to the posters in this thread. There seems to be some unspoken consensus that everyone participating in this particular discussion is familiar with the game's mechanics. This could lead someone to assume (possibly erroneously) that everyone in this thread is operating with a similar level of "skill" when it comes to both gearing up a ship and intelligently using the powers that you installed on the d@mn ship yourself.
I'll try not to summarize the entire thread again here. One of the things that makes arguing with soph so thankless is that his selective quoting forces you to repeat yourself until you've bored everyone to death. Suffice to say that this debate didn't start with the premise that we were comparing the performance of posters in this thread. The point of contention is the performance gap within the playerbase as a whole.
Several of us, including me, pointed out that the gap in terms of game mechanics (gear/trait strength) is smaller than the practical performance gap, because there's also a skill gap exacerbating the result - particularly at the low end of the scale, where we often see players with all kinds of builds (good and bad) performing several times worse than an experienced player would with starter gear, and sometimes even several times worse than a single hangar of fighter pets. We also observed that people at the extreme low end aren't at fault, that STO resolutely fails to teach players how to deal with the sudden giant leap in complexity that it introduces at end-game.
None of this should be controversial. It's common sense, quite frankly - but soph glossed over it, then went on a minor crusade against the notion that high-end players have any meaningful skill advantage at all. (And along the way, he advocated for a hard DPS cap to be imposed on the game.) This crusade culminated in an offshoot thread, where he tried to craft a wholly new benchmark clearly weighted against skill disparities. When people called him on that, he basically admitted that the point of the entire exercise was to prove to high-end DPSers the "harsh reality" that their skill doesn't matter.
All the statements in this thread are from personal experience. So, the results are going to be subjective. I think it is silly to adopt a broad "this is always the issue" stance, but that seems to be what both sides are going for here. I honestly think the issue of "why is player 'x's DPS higher than player 'y's" is an issue unique to those players. It could even be a combination of factors (gear, piloting aptitude, understanding of game mechanics, etc).
Look, of course there's some amount of subjectivity here, but you're drawing an entirely unwarranted equivalence between the quality of evidence on either side. Yes, I draw on my own personal experience, which includes countless hours helping people learn how to build/fly their ships, both on STOBuilds and on a one-on-one basis. I also draw on the tens of thousands of parses we have on record. I also draw on the testimony of my friends, some of the very best and most knowledgeable players in the game (many of whom have posted in this thread, like Gruber, Rev, Jay, and Peter), and on the vast experience of the people who run the most popular build-help sites on the internet (these groups are intertwined).
Soph? He draws on, uhhh, a bunch of solo missions, and his experience running elite group content at some unspecified date in the distant past, before he quit doing that. Oh, and there was that one HSE he ran, and failed, after this thread started. He still refuses to run even one ISA, though - despite that our reason for asking him to do it is actually complimentary of his skill level. (i.e. We suspect his report of 30k DPS in a patrol mission actually translates to 50+k DPS in ISA-equivalent terms. If that's true, then his impression of what high-end DPS numbers mean in practice may be skewed.)
So sure, I guess technically both sides qualify as basing their arguments on "personal experience," but there's a clear difference in quality and depth. You're also misinterpreting our position if you think that we've argued skill is all that matters. Actually, your last line is probably the best summary of our position: performance is a combination of gear, piloting aptitude, understanding of game mechanics, etc.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
so actually replying to the op, not about hgh dps and stuff like that, the op is right, i have 8 max level toons, just xp boosted my rom cap so she is max, doing the ds9 stuff i am getting destroyed in space combat, never had an issue before, a keldon class is killing me in 20 secs, seriously ships i never even cared about beating before are doing a serious amount of damage, I have done these missions many times, over and under geared, never had an issue, but had to switch from a lght warbird retro, to batlecruiser (T5), just to try and stay alive, and its on missions i just cruised past all the time, something has def changed, dont get me wrong on this toon i am undergeared, but not to the extent where i should get blown up in the first couple of volleys
Its not like they are a rom warbird with multiple plasma torps going off and i messed up, i would get that as that is my fault, not saying i play perfectly, but missions that aint too hard are at a stupid level now, i think the issue is the max level scaling, so the worst thing to do is xp boost a toon and unlock the admiralty system, so you level too quickly, as lower level mission scalng seems broken in undergeared ships (with undergeared i mean at least not mark XI all round), not really complaining just sayong the op is correct as i will just keep running into that wall for a while, use every cooldown, hope i live , then wait around for them all to be back up, not exactly engaging gameplay, am really tempted to skip a lot of the missions till i get to a level where the damage has kinda panned out
Now i dont want to faceroll stuff and kill it in my opening volley, which happens a lot earlier on, thats not engaging gameplay either, but i would actually like it to be fair scaling wise, pretty sure i already know i am gonna be skipping the shuttle mission in the ds9 arc, as it will be stupid to try and complete, the strage thing is ground combat is fine, no issues there with damage scaling, just the step in TRIBBLE and you die, but thats a user issue not a scaling issue
The worst thng about what seems to be the problem is it's not a big attack that does the damage, you know stuff that you can avoid or pop a cd for, it just seems to be the normal stuff that just destroys me, i would have no issue if i 'was stood in the fire' in space and got blown up, i also play a lot of wow at a decent level, so am good at avoiding, cding the obvious stuff, buts it's when the normal suff thats scales stupidly kills you it gets stupid
well holy TRIBBLE think this may be my first post (maybe ever if not for ages), and i have rambled on a lot
Just played SB1 on advanced and got smashed through full shields and 58% kinetic res by 5x 22k plus torps from Bops on that map. Ofc my 65k hull Vesta didn't survive that assault.
There is a claim about a bug that does this, but these numbers don't seem so much out of line... players can do that kind of damage, too, after all.
I have noticed lately though that NPC "Kinetic" damage against the player seems to be randomly OP for some reason. I noticed that the radius/AoE and damage output from WCB's for instance has definetly been ramped up.
The scaling is definetly screwy though, or the calculations/code that the game uses to decide these things. For instance I was tooling around the Voth Space BZ yesterday with a lvl 65 Klink, and happily killing Undine Nicor's and stuff, with a little bit more time/effort needed for the Dreadnoughts. I then went straight from there into a mission replay (the final Solonae mission - whatever it's called) In the first battle around ESD, I was absolutely murdering Undine, essentially one shotting everything, which surprised me a little, it was definetly too easy - Then we went to Qo'nos, and suddenly the Undine had made some technological improvements in the intervening seconds, and even Nicor's were sometimes one shotting me, straight through full shields and full hull, and the "repulse" proc on their beams was smacking my ship 3 to 5 km's with each hit! It was as though I'd gone from being lvl 65 against lvl 50 enemies, down to lvl 25 against lvl 60 enemies.
And it's only happened since they released DSC and made all the changes to the Journal plus adding the SB1 TFO.
Yeah, that seems unnecessarily adversarial. Some might even call it a "dik move". I don't know if it is proof of "bad faith" as much as evidence this thread is circling the drain.
Look, of course there's some amount of subjectivity here, but you're drawing an entirely unwarranted equivalence between the quality of evidence on either side.
What?
How can you judge the quality of a personal experience. Someone else's experience is less valid than yours? Based on what, your personal experience? What weird sort of circular logic are you implementing here?
Yes, I draw on my own personal experience, which includes countless hours helping people learn how to build/fly their ships, both on STOBuilds and on a one-on-one basis. I also draw on the tens of thousands of parses we have on record. I also draw on the testimony of my friends, some of the very best and most knowledgeable players in the game (many of whom have posted in this thread, like Gruber, Rev, Jay, and Peter), and on the vast experience of the people who run the most popular build-help sites on the internet (these groups are intertwined).
Soph? He draws on, uhhh, a bunch of solo missions, and his experience running elite group content at some unspecified date in the distant past, before he quit doing that. Oh, and there was that one HSE he ran, and failed, after this thread started. He still refuses to run even one ISA, though - despite that our reason for asking him to do it is actually complimentary of his skill level. (i.e. We suspect his report of 30k DPS in a patrol mission actually translates to 50+k DPS in ISA-equivalent terms. If that's true, then his impression of what high-end DPS numbers mean in practice may be skewed.)
So sure, I guess technically both sides qualify as basing their arguments on "personal experience," but there's a clear difference in quality and depth.
So because, in your opinion, your experiences are more extensive than @sophlogimo 's, his experience is invalid? Irrelevant? Based on... your opinion?
You're also misinterpreting our position if you think that we've argued skill is all that matters. Actually, your last line is probably the best summary of our position: performance is a combination of gear, piloting aptitude, understanding of game mechanics, etc.
The only one consistently saying gear is a factor AT ALL is @sophlogimo . Everyone else is saying you can beat the game with a sharpened stick and some twine, and anyone who can't needs to "git gud".
Or, more politely, "This game is not hard. If you are failing, it's not your ship. It's you."
[...]
Have to say though, ISA isn't usually my first choice of TFO. I prefer GtGA by far.
If only that one had more of a balance between closing radiation gates and fighting off the raiders. As it stands, whether you fight them or not hardly matters.
Just played SB1 on advanced and got smashed through full shields and 58% kinetic res by 5x 22k plus torps from Bops on that map. Ofc my 65k hull Vesta didn't survive that assault.
edit also just have my Galaxy class vaped by 2 x 100k shots by the Gate in KSA.
If you truly had full shields then this is a bug, as the shields are only going to let 5-10% of that damage through unless they were using transphasics. In addition, your resists are high enough to negate a large amount of that damage even if your shields were down, at most you would take is just under 50K, so with a 65K hull there must have been something else going on. Warp core breaches are a likely candidate. 58%, is that what you were reading at the time of the impact, if so how do you know that, you would need your stats window open to see that, I find that unlikely. Thing is, in combat your resists are much higher, and if you are using honoured dead, like I'm sure you will be, you should be getting over 70% resists in combat, further negating the paltry 110K you were hit with. To give you a comparison, it takes about 8 65K Tzenkethi transphasics to take out my J running at 75% buffed resists and no shields, so something is not quite right with your picture, there's no way you should have popped at that level of damage.
In conclusion, your figures are wrong or there is some unknown bug here, some multiplyer that only affects normal combat. As our fleet only runs elite I can comment no further, however tomorrow I will run normals and see how that goes. I can state categorically that elite combat has not changed.
My resists may be incorrect as i checked them after I respawned so they were reading 58% outside of combat. Before I respawned however I clicked on the damage report icon which I where I got the 5 x 22k hits none of them were exactly the same damage they varied between 22k to just over 23k.
But I'm also finding in Counterpoint Terran Torp spreads can be brutal and blow right through shields and hull or they barely scratch. Raptors in CSA are hitting very hard these days with both energy and torpedo's, where 20k plus shields are knocked out with 2 shots of a plasma cannon. Never a issue pre-vil could tank them with ease.
There is def some sort of intermittent issue with kinetic damage in the game. Possibly a bug not quite quashed when the level increase to 65 occurred.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
You're also misinterpreting our position if you think that we've argued skill is all that matters. Actually, your last line is probably the best summary of our position: performance is a combination of gear, piloting aptitude, understanding of game mechanics, etc.
The only one consistently saying gear is a factor AT ALL is @sophlogimo . Everyone else is saying you can beat the game with a sharpened stick and some twine, and anyone who can't needs to "git gud".
Anyone who can argue with a straight face that my side of the debate holds gear as completely irrelevant is living in an alternate reality. We've said it a dozen times now, that gear is important. Hell, at one point I broke it down in detail, and came to the conclusion that gear accounts for perhaps a five-fold difference in practical performance, across the playerbase.
If you printed this thread out on paper and taped it to the wall, I could throw a dart, blindfolded, and hit proof that your claim is wrong. The closest thing I can recall to what you describe was a throwaway post by Rev, which was obviously a joke.
Look, of course there's some amount of subjectivity here, but you're drawing an entirely unwarranted equivalence between the quality of evidence on either side.
What?
How can you judge the quality of a personal experience. Someone else's experience is less valid than yours? Based on what, your personal experience? What weird sort of circular logic are you implementing here?
This is a cute bit of rhetoric. My point was that there's more to this than personal experience, though of course not all personal experience is equal either. We're not exactly talking just my word against soph's, here.
By his own account, soph has basically zero relevant experience, except his own, mostly solo gameplay. My personal experience deals directly with how to teach dozens of people who want to improve their performance, and through my associates at STOBuilds, indirectly with hundreds if not thousands of such cases. My personal experience is also backed up by the tens of thousands of parses on record. If there's no skill involved in piloting, then how do you explain that only two or three dozen people can crack 200k? Do you really believe that only that number of people have ever obtained top-tier gear? For all of soph's posturing about empiricism, he's never even tried to address that point.
And that leads us to the crucial fact you've been missing, in your attempt to play forum referee: my burden of proof is much lower than soph's, because his position is self-evidently absurd.
@sophologimo - first player to solo Dranuur Gauntlet Elite. Watch my word folks! As DPS is derived from gear alone, by his own admission, he will eventually reach the point where he gets a full set of mk XV epic gear and oh boy how enemies will start to melt then. In the meantime, keep your eyes open, the name at the top of the DPS leaderboards will change.
I would just like to let everybody know that the issue is settled. The DPSers have admitted that it's gear, and gear alone, that makes DPS so high.
So why keep discussing?
Given this thread alone arriving at this conclusion is surely another masterpiece on your part. It will serve you well to further fortify your bubble and in your case I’m even glad by now if I can be of help there.
Now since it is only gear, and gear alone that makes Matt and the other players of SRS do 2M DPS in some foundry maps where power creep surely isn’t an issue and no skill is required, what will your part in it be?
I mean their reputations arrived at T6, their upgrades are made and the next power tsunami is already on the horizon with the personal endeavor system...
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I would just like to let everybody know that the issue is settled. The DPSers have admitted that it's gear, and gear alone, that makes DPS so high.
So why keep discussing?
Given this thread alone arriving at this conclusion is surely another masterpiece on your part.[...]
If only someone could make a thread to determine the true impact of mere piloting skill, eliminating any gear differences. Then you'd of course all take that challenge and prove your point, and no one would go out of their way to explain why such an endeavour was fruitless because it ignores gear, or how gear differences should be added in there somewhere...
The endeavor was fruitless because you decided to pick a millisecond in the early the progression curve of characters in this game and expect anybody to excel on it. Not even a scrub would do that.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Well yea, you are right I suppose. Just a matter of level and as for that he wants to get STO’s 1st place.
I think that @tunebreaker had a good idea with Dranuur Gauntlet Elite PvE here.
SRS has some good players in it. How about @sophlogimo tends to it with his new fleet? They are also famous for making great videos and keeping score. Make one! Combat logs and elaboration here towards everybody’s contribution in team will add to that nicely. Be assured Soph, Matt already said that their DPSer gladly hold back to give new players a chance. This is yours!
Tune already beat Soph on his battlefield of choice without any reason to do so. I think it’s time now to return the curtesy.
Tune has also beaten Gauntlet, can you do better in a team there Soph?
Post edited by darkbladejk on
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Dranuur Gauntlet is a tough old fight but it is nearly constant fighting for most of it (except for a couple of breaks) so it could be useful. At least you can measure performance in the combat sections and look at the chart over the duration I guess.
But it’s good to know that thanks to this thread all I need to do to be elite is dig out my credit card and go make all my gear gold. Glad I learnt something useful. /s
Comments
But it isn't necessary to bar players from below-their-level content. It's sufficient to provide a logical progression of higher-level content to play, and rewards that encourage players to move on when they're done with the beginner stuff. Top-level players should generally have better things to do than curbstomping Easy Mode content over and over. Cryptic's mistake is a reward structure that favors the overpowered speedrunning of short and easy content above everything else.
@reyan01 getting good DPS on any build in ISA is simpler than you may think once you get the basics of it down. Properly geared exotic damage alone can get you over 100k:
I did a pretty lengthy video showing how an ISA run can be done step-by-step:
While the above videos are old (I haven't played much at all this entire year), I've been told they are still relevant to the current game state. Once you nail down the basics of where and when to activate stuff, getting good DPS in ISA will get pretty routine for you.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
Sounds good!
Now next time when the team is good and the mission objective is not at critical try to get away from right side generator a tiny bit early (when you see it falls), pull sci fleet and that rom clicky and head to gateway fast. Aim the gravity well at the gate and witness how the emerging nanite spheres get pinned to it. Then lay all your other epg+torps on top of it. Please practice and do that for me.
The others in team will miss out targets and it will all ad to ur deepz.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I do not believe it is bad faith. While somewhat inconsistent in his position, @sophlogimo is not trying to "one up" anyone in the discussion. He just wants acknowledgement for his point. Which, sure. Ok. "Given two players of similar 'piloting aptitude' (or whatever you want to call it), the largest difference between the two ship's performance could be difference in gear".
All the statements in this thread are from personal experience. So, the results are going to be subjective. I think it is silly to adopt a broad "this is always the issue" stance, but that seems to be what both sides are going for here. I honestly think the issue of "why is player 'x's DPS higher than player 'y's" is an issue unique to those players. It could even be a combination of factors (gear, piloting aptitude, understanding of game mechanics, etc).
edit also just have my Galaxy class vaped by 2 x 100k shots by the Gate in KSA.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
I'll try not to summarize the entire thread again here. One of the things that makes arguing with soph so thankless is that his selective quoting forces you to repeat yourself until you've bored everyone to death. Suffice to say that this debate didn't start with the premise that we were comparing the performance of posters in this thread. The point of contention is the performance gap within the playerbase as a whole.
Several of us, including me, pointed out that the gap in terms of game mechanics (gear/trait strength) is smaller than the practical performance gap, because there's also a skill gap exacerbating the result - particularly at the low end of the scale, where we often see players with all kinds of builds (good and bad) performing several times worse than an experienced player would with starter gear, and sometimes even several times worse than a single hangar of fighter pets. We also observed that people at the extreme low end aren't at fault, that STO resolutely fails to teach players how to deal with the sudden giant leap in complexity that it introduces at end-game.
None of this should be controversial. It's common sense, quite frankly - but soph glossed over it, then went on a minor crusade against the notion that high-end players have any meaningful skill advantage at all. (And along the way, he advocated for a hard DPS cap to be imposed on the game.) This crusade culminated in an offshoot thread, where he tried to craft a wholly new benchmark clearly weighted against skill disparities. When people called him on that, he basically admitted that the point of the entire exercise was to prove to high-end DPSers the "harsh reality" that their skill doesn't matter.
As I said, bad faith. Just look at his new signature: "DPS derives from gear, and gear alone."
Look, of course there's some amount of subjectivity here, but you're drawing an entirely unwarranted equivalence between the quality of evidence on either side. Yes, I draw on my own personal experience, which includes countless hours helping people learn how to build/fly their ships, both on STOBuilds and on a one-on-one basis. I also draw on the tens of thousands of parses we have on record. I also draw on the testimony of my friends, some of the very best and most knowledgeable players in the game (many of whom have posted in this thread, like Gruber, Rev, Jay, and Peter), and on the vast experience of the people who run the most popular build-help sites on the internet (these groups are intertwined).
Soph? He draws on, uhhh, a bunch of solo missions, and his experience running elite group content at some unspecified date in the distant past, before he quit doing that. Oh, and there was that one HSE he ran, and failed, after this thread started. He still refuses to run even one ISA, though - despite that our reason for asking him to do it is actually complimentary of his skill level. (i.e. We suspect his report of 30k DPS in a patrol mission actually translates to 50+k DPS in ISA-equivalent terms. If that's true, then his impression of what high-end DPS numbers mean in practice may be skewed.)
So sure, I guess technically both sides qualify as basing their arguments on "personal experience," but there's a clear difference in quality and depth. You're also misinterpreting our position if you think that we've argued skill is all that matters. Actually, your last line is probably the best summary of our position: performance is a combination of gear, piloting aptitude, understanding of game mechanics, etc.
STO Builds Wiki
U.S.S. Pale Horse, a Jem'Hadar Warship build
Rough comparison of different damage types on high-end cannon builds
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
Its not like they are a rom warbird with multiple plasma torps going off and i messed up, i would get that as that is my fault, not saying i play perfectly, but missions that aint too hard are at a stupid level now, i think the issue is the max level scaling, so the worst thing to do is xp boost a toon and unlock the admiralty system, so you level too quickly, as lower level mission scalng seems broken in undergeared ships (with undergeared i mean at least not mark XI all round), not really complaining just sayong the op is correct as i will just keep running into that wall for a while, use every cooldown, hope i live , then wait around for them all to be back up, not exactly engaging gameplay, am really tempted to skip a lot of the missions till i get to a level where the damage has kinda panned out
Now i dont want to faceroll stuff and kill it in my opening volley, which happens a lot earlier on, thats not engaging gameplay either, but i would actually like it to be fair scaling wise, pretty sure i already know i am gonna be skipping the shuttle mission in the ds9 arc, as it will be stupid to try and complete, the strage thing is ground combat is fine, no issues there with damage scaling, just the step in TRIBBLE and you die, but thats a user issue not a scaling issue
The worst thng about what seems to be the problem is it's not a big attack that does the damage, you know stuff that you can avoid or pop a cd for, it just seems to be the normal stuff that just destroys me, i would have no issue if i 'was stood in the fire' in space and got blown up, i also play a lot of wow at a decent level, so am good at avoiding, cding the obvious stuff, buts it's when the normal suff thats scales stupidly kills you it gets stupid
well holy TRIBBLE think this may be my first post (maybe ever if not for ages), and i have rambled on a lot
I have noticed lately though that NPC "Kinetic" damage against the player seems to be randomly OP for some reason. I noticed that the radius/AoE and damage output from WCB's for instance has definetly been ramped up.
The scaling is definetly screwy though, or the calculations/code that the game uses to decide these things. For instance I was tooling around the Voth Space BZ yesterday with a lvl 65 Klink, and happily killing Undine Nicor's and stuff, with a little bit more time/effort needed for the Dreadnoughts. I then went straight from there into a mission replay (the final Solonae mission - whatever it's called) In the first battle around ESD, I was absolutely murdering Undine, essentially one shotting everything, which surprised me a little, it was definetly too easy - Then we went to Qo'nos, and suddenly the Undine had made some technological improvements in the intervening seconds, and even Nicor's were sometimes one shotting me, straight through full shields and full hull, and the "repulse" proc on their beams was smacking my ship 3 to 5 km's with each hit! It was as though I'd gone from being lvl 65 against lvl 50 enemies, down to lvl 25 against lvl 60 enemies.
And it's only happened since they released DSC and made all the changes to the Journal plus adding the SB1 TFO.
What?
How can you judge the quality of a personal experience. Someone else's experience is less valid than yours? Based on what, your personal experience? What weird sort of circular logic are you implementing here?
So because, in your opinion, your experiences are more extensive than @sophlogimo 's, his experience is invalid? Irrelevant? Based on... your opinion?
Air-tight circular logic there.
The only one consistently saying gear is a factor AT ALL is @sophlogimo . Everyone else is saying you can beat the game with a sharpened stick and some twine, and anyone who can't needs to "git gud".
Or, more politely, "This game is not hard. If you are failing, it's not your ship. It's you."
My resists may be incorrect as i checked them after I respawned so they were reading 58% outside of combat. Before I respawned however I clicked on the damage report icon which I where I got the 5 x 22k hits none of them were exactly the same damage they varied between 22k to just over 23k.
But I'm also finding in Counterpoint Terran Torp spreads can be brutal and blow right through shields and hull or they barely scratch. Raptors in CSA are hitting very hard these days with both energy and torpedo's, where 20k plus shields are knocked out with 2 shots of a plasma cannon. Never a issue pre-vil could tank them with ease.
There is def some sort of intermittent issue with kinetic damage in the game. Possibly a bug not quite quashed when the level increase to 65 occurred.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
Anyone who can argue with a straight face that my side of the debate holds gear as completely irrelevant is living in an alternate reality. We've said it a dozen times now, that gear is important. Hell, at one point I broke it down in detail, and came to the conclusion that gear accounts for perhaps a five-fold difference in practical performance, across the playerbase.
If you printed this thread out on paper and taped it to the wall, I could throw a dart, blindfolded, and hit proof that your claim is wrong. The closest thing I can recall to what you describe was a throwaway post by Rev, which was obviously a joke.
This is a cute bit of rhetoric. My point was that there's more to this than personal experience, though of course not all personal experience is equal either. We're not exactly talking just my word against soph's, here.
By his own account, soph has basically zero relevant experience, except his own, mostly solo gameplay. My personal experience deals directly with how to teach dozens of people who want to improve their performance, and through my associates at STOBuilds, indirectly with hundreds if not thousands of such cases. My personal experience is also backed up by the tens of thousands of parses on record. If there's no skill involved in piloting, then how do you explain that only two or three dozen people can crack 200k? Do you really believe that only that number of people have ever obtained top-tier gear? For all of soph's posturing about empiricism, he's never even tried to address that point.
And that leads us to the crucial fact you've been missing, in your attempt to play forum referee: my burden of proof is much lower than soph's, because his position is self-evidently absurd.
STO Builds Wiki
U.S.S. Pale Horse, a Jem'Hadar Warship build
Rough comparison of different damage types on high-end cannon builds
@sophologimo - first player to solo Dranuur Gauntlet Elite. Watch my word folks! As DPS is derived from gear alone, by his own admission, he will eventually reach the point where he gets a full set of mk XV epic gear and oh boy how enemies will start to melt then. In the meantime, keep your eyes open, the name at the top of the DPS leaderboards will change.
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.
Given this thread alone arriving at this conclusion is surely another masterpiece on your part. It will serve you well to further fortify your bubble and in your case I’m even glad by now if I can be of help there.
Now since it is only gear, and gear alone that makes Matt and the other players of SRS do 2M DPS in some foundry maps where power creep surely isn’t an issue and no skill is required, what will your part in it be?
I mean their reputations arrived at T6, their upgrades are made and the next power tsunami is already on the horizon with the personal endeavor system...
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
The endeavor was fruitless because you decided to pick a millisecond in the early the progression curve of characters in this game and expect anybody to excel on it. Not even a scrub would do that.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Well yea, you are right I suppose. Just a matter of level and as for that he wants to get STO’s 1st place.
I think that @tunebreaker had a good idea with Dranuur Gauntlet Elite PvE here.
SRS has some good players in it. How about @sophlogimo tends to it with his new fleet? They are also famous for making great videos and keeping score. Make one! Combat logs and elaboration here towards everybody’s contribution in team will add to that nicely. Be assured Soph, Matt already said that their DPSer gladly hold back to give new players a chance. This is yours!
Tune already beat Soph on his battlefield of choice without any reason to do so. I think it’s time now to return the curtesy.
Tune has also beaten Gauntlet, can you do better in a team there Soph?
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
But it’s good to know that thanks to this thread all I need to do to be elite is dig out my credit card and go make all my gear gold.
Glad I learnt something useful. /s