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Endeavor Perks are too Powerful
vendood
Member Posts: 77 Arc User
Not that I want to stand in the way of anyone's path to ultimate power... but STO is a game where power creep is already a common issue, and people fly around in ships that decimate Borg cubes in seconds and wipe out entire TFOs in a couple minutes.
Looking at the perks available, it seems we will take those OP ships and add 7.5% more crit chance, 30% more crit severity, 30% more base damage to every damage type, and quite a bit of extra hull, shields, maneuverability and resists.
I'm particularly thinking of what happens when you take these all together: +30% more base damage, critting +7.5% more often, for an extra +30% crit severity, etc, etc.
Yes, it will take ages to amass all those perks, but even just getting 1/3 to 1/2 of them will represent a significant power increase. I'm concerned about the effect this will have on overall balance between NPCs, maxed out players, and newer players. It is already difficult in many cases for a newer player who doesn't gear up massively to have much of an impact in a TFO or Red Alert.
Players with maxed out gear/traits/perks will either expect to see something new with more challenge, or will trivialize older content. Newer players will struggle with endeavours, random TFOs etc. that toss them into competition with power players for kills, damage etc.
Obviously this isn't something 'broken' as yet... but Cryptic does have this tendency to introduce broken mechanics into the game, then have to make sweeping changes/nerfs later to bring things back in line again. It would be nice if maybe some forethought was put into it this time around to keep that from happening.
Looking at the perks available, it seems we will take those OP ships and add 7.5% more crit chance, 30% more crit severity, 30% more base damage to every damage type, and quite a bit of extra hull, shields, maneuverability and resists.
I'm particularly thinking of what happens when you take these all together: +30% more base damage, critting +7.5% more often, for an extra +30% crit severity, etc, etc.
Yes, it will take ages to amass all those perks, but even just getting 1/3 to 1/2 of them will represent a significant power increase. I'm concerned about the effect this will have on overall balance between NPCs, maxed out players, and newer players. It is already difficult in many cases for a newer player who doesn't gear up massively to have much of an impact in a TFO or Red Alert.
Players with maxed out gear/traits/perks will either expect to see something new with more challenge, or will trivialize older content. Newer players will struggle with endeavours, random TFOs etc. that toss them into competition with power players for kills, damage etc.
Obviously this isn't something 'broken' as yet... but Cryptic does have this tendency to introduce broken mechanics into the game, then have to make sweeping changes/nerfs later to bring things back in line again. It would be nice if maybe some forethought was put into it this time around to keep that from happening.
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High DPS is an issue when it's the easiest solution to TFOs most of the time. I'm neutral towards the system as I don't have as much time to play these days.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
However, here in few months you'll start to see identical builds perform way differently between accounts, even if the players are equal in skill, played the same amount and even bought and ground for the same traits/gear, just by random chance in what nodes are pick-able. It's possible that some people will have the very nice CrtH, CrtD, and damage nodes maxed out or close to it in a few months if they keep with it, while the average person that also kept with it will more likely have a random smattering of things that don't do much a handful of points in.
You would actually be better off helping them understand how to complete the TFOs, how the Rep and Specialization and Admiralty and Upgrade systems work together to make their characters better....than wait for bonuses from this Endeavor system to kick in.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
> lexusk19 wrote: »
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> I for one am happy for the system, gives me a reason and something to do each day that benefits my entire account. And im all for the average DPS to rise. New players are just bad, they arnt useful in ques, at least if they did more damage, they could at least help the teams.
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> You would actually be better off helping them understand how to complete the TFOs, how the Rep and Specialization and Admiralty and Upgrade systems work together to make their characters better....than wait for bonuses from this Endeavor system to kick in.
Agreed. We were all new at one time. Helping new players is the best way to ensure they perform adequately in TFOs
Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there... you can make a difference.
-Captain James T. Kirk
I didn't do ADV or Elite queues until I could keep up - I stuck to Normal queues.
Also, there are lots of player who do high dps who have no idea what they are doing in queues, no matter the level.
Most likely some percieved value in doing X DPS and if you don't... GTFO MAH STF.
Not saying everyone's like that, but there are many who have that attitude.
Absolutely.
Adding critical chance or damage to a low crit build does very little to actually help. Same with adding a flat damage bonus to someone doing next to nothing. The best thing you can do for new players is teach them to be self sufficient. That being said, there are some that just don't listen.. but some do.
As a 'DPS guy' myself.. I will admit, I think that some of the perk increases might be a bit over the top, but I understand that it will take me a very long time to get anywhere near those numbers. I have no idea what this game will be like in 1-2 years so for now I am cool with all of it. I agree with the sentiment that at least it gives me something to do on a daily basis.
I am sure those people exist, but to be honest.. they're such a small share of the player base that they're not even worth considering. They rate little more then an anomaly.
At the risk of sounding elitist, why would someone expect a newer player to be able to compete at the same level as a veteran player? There seems to be this unrealistic expectation in MMOs these days that newer players should be able to come in with less gear, and less experience, and have an equal outcome of results in terms of damage, healing etc, to a long time veteran player. In my WoW days I mained a death knight tank. When I first started tanking there was no way I was going to be able to pull entire rooms and live with minimal effort like the more geared and experienced tanks could do. Instead I took my time to learn my class and get my gear built up. Before long I was able to nuke through things and pull entire rooms like nothing. It takes time to build up, just like this new endeavor system will take time to fill out.
As a slight side tangent I do think it needs to be said that having a healthy set of standards and expectations for advanced and elite content is a good thing. I don't think anyone expects their teammates to be able to bust a gazillion DPS. With that in mind I don't see anything wrong with expecting people have a basic working knowledge of the queue, and be able to pull the bare minimum amount of damage required. Let's suppose as a hypothetical we have a queue that requires all 5 people be able to deal 30k dps minimum. If 5 people join an instance of that queue and 4 of them are dealing the 30k minimum requirement, and the 5th guy is only dealing 10k dps, then that 5th guy is not ready for that queue and needs to up his game before attempting it again.
Getting back to the main point finally, I think in the long run this will be a major improvement as it will allow folks who fill up this endeavor point alot more flexibility in their builds. For me I won't have to run as many survival traits or as many locators/exploiters potentially unless I just want to. As it sits right now this is just the first iteration of this system. I'm sure it will be improved on and such as time goes on.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
- You aren't in direct competition with other players, as such. What you are competing for, at times, is "Kill X targets", "Deal Y-thousand damage", and unless they've changed it, even the minimal damage needed to not get an AFK penalty. I'm not a DPSer, but I generally put together decent builds with OK weapons, and fly reasonably well; until I learned a few tricks how to not get out-DPSed by the meta-builds, I picked up the occasional AFK penalty even while flying my fastest and shooting my hardest. Didn't matter, things would die just as I got in range and poof, "You've received an AFK penalty".
- Many endeavours focus on team activitities, so it won't be possible to do them all solo (where competition isn't an issue).
- It is less caring about "You didn't do enough DPS, GTFO" e-peeners, and more about not putting newer/less developed players into somewhat frequent situations where they feel completely outclassed and useless.
- Yes, power creep is going to happen. It's the nature of the game. That said, not all power creep is equal. Cryptic was happy to put in plasma-exploder consoles and original plasmonic leeches, and then later decide to nerf those things into near-uselessness because they decided that what they put in was too much (with a backlash that cost STO a lot of players). We've already had one round of "increased NPC hit points and difficulty" changes, partly to deal with the power creep that had occurred by that time.
- I don't expect newer players to be able to perform on par with older veterans. That said, I wouldn't design a game that regularly throws newer players into the exact same queues and events as those older veterans and have them receive rewards or AFK penalties based on something as simplistic as 'total damage dealt'. Many players already have a hard enough time getting anything from, say, a Red Alert weekend. Perks just widen the gap between the uberpowered and the less developed players.
To be clear, I personally like the new system. As darkbladejk said, it will allow me a lot of flexibility and options in various builds. As others have said, it gives me an interesting reason to play a variety of game content that I would not normally play. It is an engaging and clever development on Cryptic's part.
That doesn't mean I can't look ahead and see possible issues with things that STO already has trouble dealing with, becoming bigger issues as the power gap widens.
Possibly more so because being new they can't afford the gear or won't have had the time to grind the reps & traits making the endeavour perks slower to gain. And with the system pushing folk into TFO's a new player who meets the unhelpful selfstyled "good" player will potentially work to push them out of the system entirely.
The powercreep is also pointless because the game still hasn't been given content (outside elite difficulty which a new player would likely avoid) that requires upgraded gear so why has it been deemed necessary to boost player power even more. Upgrading is a dil sink disguised just enough to lure people into the mindset that you absolutely need top end epic gear and has let peer pressure do the rest to maintain the system.
But yeah, the game does also need content where that power is necessary.
Agreed, I don't get this either. I never understood how someone starts this game yesterday and expects to have everything I have.. now. The one issue where STO has problems is the 'exclusive' items that can no longer be obtained. I don't have an issue with new players having to 'climb the ladder' the only issue is that STO has a tendency to have rungs of the ladder removed. A new player should eventually be able to get what I have, but like me.. they should have to put in the time. Unfortunately, STO has so many 'exclusives' that are no longer available that some of it is just not possible to get anymore. That is an issue.
I have to agree with all of this. Power Creep exists in every online game.. all of them. I opposed the daily endeavors at first, but after implementation I have changed my mind. I agree that it gives you something extra to do on a daily basis, and I do believe that is a good thing.
Wow, just wow. I really hope that the way that reads is not the way you truly feel.
New players are not bad, they are new. While we all know that some people can come in to new game (for them) and instantly be just as good as the players that have been playing for years because they are just that good, the rest of us actually require things like time, practice, and even help from the veterans to get good at a game.
New players are not bad, bad players are bad, new players will get better with time, bad players will never get better and usually just get worse as they figure out more and more ways to ruin the game for everyone else.
I'm not a new player, I just don't do TFOs much so, other than the fact that I do a quite healthy amount of DPS on Ground, and at least a decent amount in space, when it comes to TFOs I might as well be a new player. However, after pew pewing for a bit to avoid an AFK penalty, I captured and moved a decent number of particles in whatever TFO it was, closed a number of gateways in another and, once I finally figured out where they were, did pretty good at activating Iconian devices at the right time in whatever ground map it was. All things that new players who don't (yet) do a high amount of DPS are very good for, if a Veteran player takes the time to explain to them that that's the best way they can help that is. The key there is "takes the time to explain to them", compared to posting "Go close the TRIBBLE portals you TRIBBLE idiot ! ! !" in team chat or PM.
It does help if, like me, new players would post in team chat that they don't know the TFO and ask what they should do to be the most helpful, but just as helpful, if not more so, is a veteran player taking the time to explain to them how they could be the most helpful instead of yelling/griping at them for being worthless.
What would help just as much in those cases is for people to actually look at and use the team chat. Unfortunately both new and veteran players tend to not use it.
Anyway, the endeavor perks. IMO they are a fantastic idea. Does it really matter if it now means that a player that used to wipe a Borg cube in 0.5 seconds now wipes it in 0.48 seconds ? What it does do is lets new players who didn't spec themselves just right, and haven't yet acquired just the right combination of the exact right gear with the exact right mods to still manage to bump up an area or two they are "struggling" in. My Captain who currently has lot of CritD stuff that does him not much good cause of his poor crit chance can now increase his crit chance without having to respec and/or acquire a whole different set of gear.
Face it, the power creep ship done sailed away long, long ago. The new perks are the equivalent of giving Bill Gates a way of making a few extra million dollars. yawn. At the same time, it gives us regular working class people the chance to make a few extra 100 thousand WOOHOO ! ! ! !
I've also skipped more of the account wide ones. Case in point being the days of doom TFO for this weekend makes me ill because of that god awful grain effect they insist on having for the TOS content (not to mention the abysmal scots accent)
One thing these points do not consider is that the Endeavors (and the queues associated with them) usually have Normal/ADV/Elite levels. Newer players who cannot keep up in ADV or Elite should be able to complete the Endeavor in a Normal queue.
I'd argue that newer players aren't "being put" in situations where they feel outclassed and useless. Rather, they are putting themselves into those situations.
Whether episode missions, RTOs, or queues, there are options where both the NPCs and/or other players will be operating at levels more consistent with less experienced players.
i agree with seaofsorrows - there is a strange expectation that a player should have access to everything on Day One of playing. Of course, there is a tradeoff between creating an environment where new players aren't discouraged and we continue to get a healthy influx of people. But, the idea that someone should be able to compete at the top tier of players (of which I am not one and don't expect to be for a very long time, if ever), is strange.
The addition of Phoenix Boxes and reruns of the recruitment events (with the delay between runs) has gone a long way toward allowing new players to obtain some of the more exclusive equipment. I think those were definitely a big plus to the game.
But, just as a broken record, it is possible to do ADV queues and do very solid dps performance using only mission reward Mark XII purple gear and free ships. The idea that the game is impossible to be competitive without fully upgraded, expensive gear is simply not true.
I agree with this statement. The new endeavor system is something I have been waiting for a long time. To those who don't like it, then go play another game. There is a old Navy saying "No one tied a anchor to your TRIBBLE."
450 points , you increase 1 point each 2 days, we just need 2 years and 6 months playing to get all these bonus. if you see how many bonus (or "power creep") we already got since 3 years ago, this is nothing.
sto not nerf only the player, but increase the difficulty as well. Maybe is time to stop shooting agaisnt the same npcs of season 1... imao
I like the system, like others have said, it gives me something else to do on occasion. Do I do them all the time? No. That just means I'll be a lot longer getting the perks than others. *Shrug* No biggie. I play the missions just fine when I play them. I don't do TFOs all that much, but I do normal difficulty except for Crystalline. And I only do that when I need more of the purple crafting mat.
Seems like some people just like to have things to complain about.
Well I think you're looking in wrong place for power creep.
Still regardless: There are only a few of those DPSLEAGUE elites you speak of. And nerfing the Endeavor's is barely going to be noticeable to them, and yet very noticeable to almost everyone else as my colleague identified here:
I'd have to agree. NERFING endeavor's would barely hurt those in DPSLEAGUE, yet drastically impact virtually every other player. That is just my 2 'cents' worth so I agree 'mostly' in part with what @arionisa has stated. Still DPSLEAGUE is the TOP 1-5% of the player base, and to achieve that have spend a lot of time &/or ZEN to get there.
Often when you see the DPS #'s reported by DPSLEAGUE, often those are coordinated runs to do 15-25x the 'standard' DPS. But even without that, it very easy for a single player to do 5-10x the normal damage. We've all been in a Crystalline or other Queue, where a single player goes in and wipes it clean in Seconds; it's rare but it does in fact happen...
Of course there are existing limitations, they still have cooldowns like everyone, it's just they have the best trait's, and have fully unlocked everything they can, and with a few macro KEYBINDS fire off 10-25 abilities very quickly, as they maximize abilities that don't trigger a cooldown of another.
Still the biggest 'cause' Lockbox/Lobi Ship/Space/Ground Traits from time-to-time they do adjust; well other times it's often cause their are BUGS and sometimes those take awhile to FIX.
Yet I've often wondered why they don't limit macro KEYBINDS for Space & Ground a bit more:
To perhaps 3-4 'multi-ability' keybinds for Space & 3-4 keybinds for Ground . Then limit it so the first (2) that can bind no more than 3 abilities into one 'key' perhaps; and perhaps the later (1-2) can only bind 2 abiltiies/powers.
Some may argue the point as long as it's not on Cooldown what's the issue? And that's also an equally fair statement. Still the problem isn't Endeavor's, as the 1-5% club has long surpassed the average player for years. Often cause they have all the best Lockbox / Lobi Trait's. Still be careful asking to NERF everyone, cause that is problem is Lockbox/Lobi Trait's that far surpass many of the others.
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Guide:_Keybinds
the rng on which you can spend slows it way down.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Yes I agree with that statement completely.
Despite the name of the system, the Endeavors each day are account-wide. You won't get different ones on different characters.
It's 2 years and about a month if you do them all every day, plus all 3 Universals per week, as those award an additional pittance of 400 Endeavor xp each. All of this assuming that there won't be additional sources of Endeavor xp in the future.
but he is "L33T" and cannot be bothered. I'm sure he tells the low DPS players that they suck and should quit playing the game. something far too many of his ilk scream. which is why I won't play TFOs at all
I'm going to go through your points because I think you've missed the mark on a few of them.
In these examples you are still not in competition with the other players. When you get an endeavor tells you something such as "deal 200k phaser damage in space", it doesn't care where in space you deal that damage as long as you do it. If it says "kill x amount of enemy Y" then unless it specifies a place, it doesn't care where you do it. A fleetmate of mine had an endeavor like that the other day where he needed to kill a specific amount of certain enemies. Even if I was the one that started attacking the ship first, he still got credit if he put in a couple of shots first because he helped to kill it. Typically most of these endeavors will not care if you get the killing blow, so long as you contribute to the kill.
As for your examples of the AFK penalty I think a couple of things need to be clarified. To avoid the AFK penalty you only need to deal 1-2% of the total damage in the run. Some TFOs require 2%, some only 1%. Discounting issues beyond the control of the player, if you have a basic cohesive build, a basic understanding of how to use your ship, and rough understanding of the queue, this should be easy enough to do even if you have high DPSers in the run. Assuming a person has learned or been taught some basics about constructing a cohesive build, even a t5u ship should be able to bust 15k no problem using mk xii gear they pick up from missions. If someone has an understanding of their ship, understanding of the queue, and a cohesive build, and they are still getting an AFK penalty, then there is something else at play that is seriously wrong there as that should not be happening. Either the build isn't to the level they thought, they're not doing as much damage with it as they think due to pilot error, or they're just flat out not ready for the content level they're trying to play at. That doesn't mean the person sucks, it just means they need to practice and get better.
These 2 kind of go together so I'm going to address them at once. As I pointed out above, if an endeavor says "kill x amount of foes" then it typically won't care who gets the killing blow as long as your teammates get in a few shots at the enemy. You don't have to go in guns blazing all the time and can just let your weapons auto fire to give your teammates time to get in a few shots. On the ground you don't have to charge up your full kit and drop the STO equivalent of a tactical nuke on the foes every single time. Otherwise refer to my comments above about being in competition with others.
Without some type of gear check system to group similarly geared players together, there will always be queues where people have vastly different levels of gear. If I go in on my main ship that's kitted with all mk xv golds, there is always the possibility that I will get grouped with someone who has little more than mk x blues. Without some way to check the gear level like WoW does this will always be a possibility. Again generally by and large a more experienced and more geared player will almost always outperform a newer player who has less gear. Doesn't mean the newer player is useless, it simply means that they have not been around long enough to acquire that same level of experience and skill as the more veteran player has. If a person is feeling outclassed and useless in a queue, then they have the means to get better gear and to better themselves in game, but it's up to them to actually go for it and do it. If a player puts forth minimum effort in this game they will get minimum reward.
As far as the not doing enough DPS thing, there are definitely certain queues and difficulty levels of certain queues that absolutely require a certain amount of DPS in order to get through them. A prime example of this is the elite only Battle of Korfez. I don't know what the actual numbers are off the top of my head, but let's say it requires a minimum of 30k DPS per the example I gave before. If 4 of the people in there are doing the 30k minimum, and the 5th guy is only dealing 10k DPS, then he is not ready for that queue as he can't pull the basic minimum and is a drain on the team. To put it bluntly if something like that is going on then he has no business being in that queue until he ups his game. That's not saying he can never return to that queue, but it's saying he needs to improve before he considers going back. I would dare say most folks don't care what level of damage you're at as long as you're able to pull the basic minimum. I don't see it as being unreasonable to expect people to be able to pull a basic minimum amount of damage if they're queuing up for higher level or higher end content.
I don't mean this the way it may read over the internet but, have you ever developed anything for a video game, be it a full on studio production like what Cryptic does, or small time modding like what I do for older games? I don't mean that to sound insulting as that's a legitimate question. Anytime people bring up nerfs they almost always point to plasmonic leech and plasma exploders, thinking it helps their case. In actuality it illustrates exactly why occasional nerfs and such are necessary. In any major game, especially MMOs like STO, SWTOR, WoW, and even the physical card game Magic the Gathering, if something becomes way too powerful it will be nerfed (or banned in MTG) as a result.
In their initial form the embassy consoles used to buff plasma damage. This meant exotic damage and standard plasma while adding the plasma burn to standard weapon procs. They weren't bad at first. However it wasn't long before it was discovered that they buffed standard plasma weapons as well as exotic plasma type powers. Because of how they worked initially this meant that if you had a standard science ship, you could essentially have 8 tactical consoles on your ship, the 3 actual tac consoles, then the effects of the plasma exploders essentially being worth an additional 5. Not to mention the burn they applied bypassed shields. So not only could these science ships hit just as hard with their weapons as dedicated beam boats, but they could also throw around exotic damage powers that were just as strong as dedicated science ships that deal most of their damage through exotic abilities. In other words, they were able to double dip and do both things at the same time. I don't need to tell you that something like that was never intended and there was no way they were going to let that keep going on. The plasma consoles in that instance were THE answer in all situations. Pretty much if you weren't using them you were doing it wrong. After their first nerfing it helped but it still wasn't enough.
They were reduced to buffing only exotic plasma damage, but now they did a plasma explosion that could bypass shields. While you couldn't buff the explosions to the levels you could before, they were still insane. During this time it was possibly get several procs per cycle, since procs used to be per shot and not per cycle at that time. While this slowed down the embassy consoles it still didn't take their status away as THE answer in all cases. While sci ships couldn't buff their dedicated plasma weapons using them any longer, they could still use those things to buff their exotic plasma. As for everyone else they now had massive exotic plasma explosions that could bypass shields. Around this time folks figured out that they could cheese the threat generating ones and use feedback pulse against the borg to hyper-inflate their ISA numbers. Thus they were still THE answer in all cases. You either used the threat amplifiers to cheese FBP or the nullifiers for their explosions. If you didn't then you were doing it wrong, seemed to be the general consensus. They were nerfed in season 13 because that's generally all you saw people using prior to that point.
Plasmonic leech was nerfed for similar reasons, it became THE answer in all cases. The original leech was fine at first, until folks figured out it had no hard upper limit and could be cheesed to let your ship have maxed out power in all 4 subsystems at all times. In those times it was a guarantee that 99% of ships you came across had a leech and they had plasma exploders. Again being able to have max power levels guaranteed at all times was NEVER intended.
Point being when something becomes THE answer in all situations and all scenarios, it will get nerfed and rightfully so. Now it's possible to deal great damage with any energy type and there are tons of combinations that can be used now. As for the increase in NPC hitpoints, this was early at the start of Delta Rising and was quickly reversed in less than a few months.
As I said above, without some kind of gear check it's impossible to keep newer players and veterans alike from being thrown into the same queues. At some point it's going to happen. Even in SWTOR and WoW, you still get grouped with people who just barely passed the gear check from time to time. No matter what you do there will always be some type of gap between the gear level and power level of new players and veteran players. Short of just mailing everyone a set of gear or using premade locked in builds, that gear gap will always exist. The experience level is also a very huge factor. Let's suppose you take me or another veteran player that's been around for years and put us in the same queue with the exact same setup as a someone who is new to the game, in almost all cases, the veteran player will outperform the new player simply because of the experience factor. Gear alone does not make one a powerful player if you don't know how to use that gear.
In terms of the AFK system I've already addressed it for the most part above. Most queues only require a 1-2% damage threshold to avoid an AFK penalty. If one has a basic understanding of their ship and the queue, in addition to a basic cohesive build, then 1-2% of the damage is absolutely reasonable. This isn't 1-2% maintained constantly, but over the ENTIRE RUN. In Azura Nebula Rescue, there are many people who prefer to just turn off the tractor beams to free the ships while someone else gets the attention of the Tholians or outright destroys them. While this is a valid tactic, the Tholians still have to be engaged to some extent to make the rescue possible. All the guy turning the beams off has to do is trade off for one ship rescue and be the guy to engage the tholians, or fire off one or two good barrages at them every so often. I really don't understand what's so unreasonable about expecting that guy turning off the tractor beams to pop a few shots in once in awhile. Unless something beyond the control of the player occurs, getting an AFK penalty should be an EXTREMELY rare event. If someone is having a hard time with a mission's difficulty then they may not be ready for that mission at that level and need to go down a few difficulties or ask for help from friends/fleetmates.
You've said you don't expect newer players to be able to perform on par with the veteran players, yet with respect to you, I have to seriously question that statement based on a few of the comments you have made.
"Perks just widen the gap between the uberpowered and the less developed players."
"That doesn't mean I can't look ahead and see possible issues with things that STO already has trouble dealing with, becoming bigger issues as the power gap widens."
You say you don't expect newer players to be able to perform at the same level as veterans, yet with those 2 statements, I must respectfully question if you really believe what you just said. You claim you don't expect newer players and veterans to perform on the same level, yet you lament the natural power and experience difference that's going to exist in any game out there.
In my Death Knight WoW tanking example I gave above, I already told you about how I worked my way up the gear ladder. At first there was a large gap in terms of power and experience between me and the veteran tanks out there. Yet I took my time to learn my class, learn what abilities I needed to use and when, and also to farm up some decent gear so I could get into more advanced content. With proper time and effort I became one of those same veteran tanks that used to run circles around me. It didn't happen in a day, but it did eventually happen. Likewise in STO a good friend of mine started off about a year ago doing about 25k DPS. Today with proper time and effort he now routinely breaks 100k DPS and I sometimes find myself fighting him for threat on my main tank ship. I used to run circles around him, but now he routinely keeps up with me and even exceeds my ability in certain areas.
With proper time and effort every new player has the capacity to become that veteran player with all the fun toys and all that power, but it's not going to just be given to you. This isn't directed at you but is just a generalized statement.
As I said in a previous post, I really don't understand how some people can come into a game and expect that they should have equal outcome of results to someone who has played longer, is more geared, and more experienced than they are. If someone has better gear, is more experienced, and been playing longer, why should they not be allowed to outperform someone who hasn't been around as long? He had to start at the bottom of the gear ladder and work his way up just like you did, and leveling today is far far easier and faster than it was just a few years ago. I just can't wrap my mind around why some people in MMOs today seem to have this idea that they should be able to come in straight out of the gate and perform at veteran level.
I've ranted enough so I will wrap it up with this. The very same perks that yes will give vets more tools to play with, will also give newer players those same tools when they unlock everything themselves.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator