A game gets the playerbase it serves. By making everything Easy Mode and nothing else, STO has attracted people who like Easy Mode. That is a Cryptic decision.
Honestly, I kind of feel for the developers on this issue. Yes, to many of us, the game feels like it's a constant 'easy mode' curb stomp, and I get that. I really do.
But at the same time, the truth is that the vast majority of this player base finds this game hard. Those of us that roll through stuff unscathed are the minority, most people just go by the information given in game (almost none) and they struggle mightily. I have 2 RL friends who are pretty avid gamers that played STO a while back and both quit because the game was too 'overly complicated.' There was a point where I will admit that I felt the same way.
If you haven't visited the build reddit, you should take a look over there at some of the unreal bad builds that people post. I want to help over there, but honestly.. the amount of just pure 'bad' is simply overwhelming.
If they made the game a real challenge for players like you, me or coldnapalm.. the majority of the player base would quit.
And no, no balance passes. Players are meant to get more powerful over time. Going back on progress is never good.
On this we totally agree. 'Balance Passes' are a bad idea and do nothing but cause mass exodus of players. In most games, balancing is necessary, but in this game it's a death sentence. The development team at cryptic has proven time and time again that they can't do it. They have no conception of power, they take anything they feel is 'over powered' and reduce it to 'completely useless.' They have no sense of moderation what so ever.. it's the worst job I have ever seen when it comes to this area.
This team does a lot of things right, and they have created a game that overall.. I enjoy. When it comes to power balance though, they're so far out of touch it's honestly unbelievable.
Every 'balance pass' we have ever had has been a pathetically executed disaster that has caused players to leave in groves. No more!
This team does a lot of things right, and they have created a game that overall.. I enjoy. When it comes to power balance though, they're so far out of touch it's honestly unbelievable.
Every 'balance pass' we have ever had has been a pathetically executed disaster that has caused players to leave in groves. No more!
Yep that has been the case unfortunately. And naturally so. I mean players learn to p(l)ay by the rules and enthusiastic players do so the most. Simply changing the rules due to failure to think ahead makes them feel betrayed.
The request of this thread is hard to take. Every new line of the new perk points hands out power not exactly like a ship trait but at least to 2/3 of equivalent of a ship trait… This means in less than 2 years we have like 10 more ship traits on top of 5 we already have.
I really think it’s enough power creep already.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
The question here is how many players bother with the content that IS genuinely difficult? It does exist - Korfez and Hive Elite. Which don't seem (only my observation - may not be the reality of it) to get played very much. And perhaps we should be asking why. Perhaps they can't tolerate some of the only content left with fail conditions an thus no reward if not completed? Perhaps some can't tolerate not being able to curbstomp everything? Maybe those who HAVE tried them were 'burnt' by the experience? Perhaps some just don't think they're up to the challenge?
I'm guilty of the 'not up to the challenge' aspect myself. Whilst I can handle myself adequately in Advanced content I still tend to stay away from Korfez and Hive Elite as they're pretty much a dead-set waste of time for a PuG and when friends queue for them I tend to shy away from joining them as don't feel I'd pull my weight.
My daily mood can vary a great deal and as a result so does my desire to dedicate my free time to either something relaxing or rather something challenging in this game. In my case it’s roughly 10:1 for relaxing : challenging and I "adjust" that via my teams.
While most elite ground maps are easy most elite space maps are hard. To run them in a relaxed fashion a group of fife ~150k peeps need to assemble. If one has that they are easy peasy but less than that automatically leads to a “challenge” for which I feel up to like once a week at most.
I don’t think either of us is guilty here because, hey, Advanced are the same maps and only need a fraction of game dedication to complete and there is always ISA there too.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
The question here is how many players bother with the content that IS genuinely difficult? It does exist - Korfez and Hive Elite. Which don't seem (only my observation - may not be the reality of it) to get played very much. And perhaps we should be asking why. Perhaps they can't tolerate some of the only content left with fail conditions an thus no reward if not completed? Perhaps some can't tolerate not being able to curbstomp everything? Maybe those who HAVE tried them were 'burnt' by the experience? Perhaps some just don't think they're up to the challenge?
I'm guilty of the 'not up to the challenge' aspect myself. Whilst I can handle myself adequately in Advanced content I still tend to stay away from Korfez and Hive Elite as they're pretty much a dead-set waste of time for a PuG and when friends queue for them I tend to shy away from joining them as don't feel I'd pull my weight.
My daily mood can vary a great deal and as a result so does my desire to dedicate my free time to either something relaxing or rather something challenging in this game. In my case it’s roughly 10:1 for relaxing : challenging and I "adjust" that via my teams.
While most elite ground maps are easy most elite space maps are hard. To run them in a relaxed fashion a group of fife ~150k peeps need to assemble. If one has that they are easy peasy but less than that automatically leads to a “challenge” for which I feel up to like once a week at most.
I don’t think either of us is guilty here because, hey, Advanced are the same maps and only need a fraction of game dedication to complete and there is always ISA there too.
Well, you just identified another reason they probably don't get played often. Even if one does complete them the reward doesn't really reflect the effort put into completion.
Yep right. I think we nailed it in the past rather well with the term “effort/reward ratio” where effort does not only mean your actual performance on and the duration of the respective map but also all the grind/money, the learning and the implementation it took us (weeks, months) to put a build together in the first place. Rewards are the few coins you get in form of marks and Dil on one hand and the level of “entertainment” you experience while tending to the content on the other.
The conclusion is obvious. Elite Space does have major problems and I’m afraid you, me and every newbie in game see that.
I think that is exactly why cryptic is so determined to hand out more and more power. They want to fix this “effort/reward ratio” without handing out more coins or better entertainment and if I put all my experience and observation in a bag my gut feeling guesstimates that at ~150k DPS per team member they succeeded and elite space gets played. Less than that and it all is not worth it and one needs to have a DPS fetish too as game sided elite maps simply remain the same as advanced or normal with only more hit points to melt.
Post edited by peterconnorfirst on
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I think that is exactly why cryptic is so determined to hand out more and more power. They want to fix this “effort/reward ratio” without handing out more coins or better entertainment and if I put all my experience and observation in a bag my gut feeling guesstimates that at ~150k DPS per team member they succeeded and elite space gets played. Less than that and it all is not worth it and one needs to have a DPS fetish too as game sided elite maps simply remain the same as advanced or normal with only more hit points to melt.
I never really thought of it that way, but you just might be right. The frustrating part is the way they keep introducing things to push DPS higher and higher, then on a whim they just go through and slash it all into useless garbage.
You do have a good point though, I have done HSE with a low DPS team and it was near impossible to actually complete. I have also done it in our fleet team with a group of people that all easily push 100k+ and the map is actually pretty easy. Maybe the intent is just to introduce so much power that Elites become trivial instead of 'Elite' as they are named.
If that's the goal, then adding more Starship trait slots is certainly a huge step in that direction. Personally, I don't think they will.. but at this point, I honestly can't say that it would surprise me if they did.
Maybe the intent is just to introduce so much power that Elites become trivial instead of 'Elite' as they are named.
Yea exactly I think that’s the core of it. You know when better rewards or better content are out of the question they need to make it “endurable” of a sort and they know they built a game where a couple of 100 Ks will get it fixed.
Think our fleet is the best test crowds you can get here. It wont be Feli, Flocki and Spawny consuming elite maps all day long and it surely wont be Colonelmarik. If anybody will do it it will be peeps like we have in our fleet together with us.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
The OP must be new to this game and not notice the obscene levels of power creep. The endeavor system, ships with 12 console slots....what's next, a 5/4 or 6/3 weapon loadout?
The 5 trait slots force you to git gud, to learn about how the game works and challenge yourself to improve your build by making you think about how each trait will change your ship, powers, complement other traits, etc.
A game gets the playerbase it serves. By making everything Easy Mode and nothing else, STO has attracted people who like Easy Mode. That is a Cryptic decision.
Honestly, I kind of feel for the developers on this issue. Yes, to many of us, the game feels like it's a constant 'easy mode' curb stomp, and I get that. I really do.
But at the same time, the truth is that the vast majority of this player base finds this game hard. Those of us that roll through stuff unscathed are the minority, most people just go by the information given in game (almost none) and they struggle mightily. I have 2 RL friends who are pretty avid gamers that played STO a while back and both quit because the game was too 'overly complicated.' There was a point where I will admit that I felt the same way.
That's exactly my point. People talk about "this player base" as if it were something Cryptic were inflicted with. It's not. It's something they've very intentionally chosen to gather, to the exclusion of everyone else.
Of course we are the minority, Cryptic has driven away most of us. Even I play mostly just to collect event stuff these days. To the extent that these autowin events count as "playing."
If they made the game a real challenge for players like you, me or coldnapalm.. the majority of the player base would quit.
It is entirely possible for a game to contain BOTH easy and challenging content at the same time, to serve a wider audience. Cryptic has chosen to make only easy content.
The question here is how many players bother with the content that IS genuinely difficult? It does exist - Korfez and Hive Elite. Which don't seem (only my observation - may not be the reality of it) to get played very much. And perhaps we should be asking why. Perhaps they can't tolerate some of the only content left with fail conditions an thus no reward if not completed? Perhaps some can't tolerate not being able to curbstomp everything? Maybe those who HAVE tried them were 'burnt' by the experience? Perhaps some just don't think they're up to the challenge?
I'm guilty of the 'not up to the challenge' aspect myself. Whilst I can handle myself adequately in Advanced content I still tend to stay away from Korfez and Hive Elite as they're pretty much a dead-set waste of time for a PuG and when friends queue for them I tend to shy away from joining them as don't feel I'd pull my weight.
The thing here is, I haven't bothered with elite, since they took out the stage unlock. When I started playing, which we only had the Borg and Fleet queues at the time, along with Breaking the Planet, Big Dig, and Gorn Minefield. You had to progress to Advanced and Elite. There wasn't a "just jump in to it". You had to do Normal to unlock Advanced, and Advanced to unlock Elite. That and Advanced had fail conditions. Not sure how many actually remember the unlock step here, but I had to go through it.
Literally, I can't count the times I walked away from Advanced back then with nothing but wasted time as a reward. Elite was even worse for it. It was challenging and fun, and you had to learn how to do them to progress.
But, if you didn't want to do Advanced or Elite, well, there was Defera. Between it and Normal, you could get all the gear. It just took longer.
Fast forward to current times. Now it's power creep flows like water, and all you have to do is show up, park, wait, collect, and rep it up for gear. Combine this with the fact, that with the right setup up, Normal becomes a joke, and Advanced becomes an ignore 90% of what the enemy is doing. Add in the ever flowing power creep, and the fact they just made the game easier, by making NPCs level 55+ do less damage, and it all becomes joke.
And people want more power creep? What's next? Insta-wins from NPCs fleeing when you show up, just to get away from your power creep?
And I can't stand being able to curbstomp everything. If I wanted that, I'd play the insult to games in that manner, I'd play Warframe.
And the main reason to not bother with Elite here, is that doing them isn't worth it. You get a minuscule amount of extra reward over Advanced, for a lot more time invested. Now if they rewarded Double, or Triple, the Advanced reward, they'd be worth doing.
I've also said this before, Advanced and Elite are not End Game(or the intermission point before the next expansion, as I call it.). They're there to give us something extra to do. End Game for any MMO is Normal, the setting anyone can do. This is the truth of every MMO.
As @warpangel pointed out, Cryptic has only chosen to do easy content. One of the reasons I see for this, is the current state of things, with No Child Left Behind and Common Core. We have whole generations now that don't know how to fail, much less how to handle it. If you apply those two to the game, you can see why I call it the, No Captain Left Behind program.
As other have said, they have done some things right. The two things I've seen in the past few years, that they got right, Gravity Kills and Arena of Sompek.
Gravity Kills, because it can go wrong, real fast. Especially with the environmental hazard of getting sucked in to the black hole.
Arena of Somek, because it present a challenge. Granted, not a very big one. The crew I run with here tends to consist of a 3 man core, so we can carry 2 others to 100+ rounds. Now imagine if they did this as a progress TFO, starting with like Beach Assault, each map representing a skull. This would give that power creep a place to shine.
Think on it.
You have a 5-man crew, or they could make it a 10-man raid.
You start at you Infiltration/Assault point.
Then you have to fight your way through progressively harder enemies and maps, to get to final objective.
Imagine it kind of like a Kobali Prime, with Arena of Sompek scaling enemies and more environmental hazards as you progress through it.
With additions like this, I wouldn't be against the addition of more power creep. Because then it would have a place to actually be useful.
I doubt things will ever really change though. Let's face it - the likes of us forumites are the exception, not the rule.
I suspect The Powers That Be will always first and foremost cater for the players who, despite having little understanding of the game, throw money at C-store ships and keys/promo packs thinking their shiny new ship = WIN.
Ironically saw an example of this last night. Queued for Random in my new Tholian Iktomi and after a short wait was popped in ISA. And I REALLY don't want to sound arrogant here - that really isn't my intention - but I ended up carrying the team. They were all over the place - no reason or rhyme behind what they were doing - and I was SO pleased I took my Iktomi into that instance - GWIII + Web Cannon + Web Generator + TSIII either destroyed or severely hindered the spheres and when those were on cooldown used the Graviton Displacer to push the spheres well away from the problem zone. And yes, I'm aware there is no fail condition - but we kept the optionals and I suspect the instance would've taken rather a lot longer without my intervention.
Therein lies the point though - I don't recall the entire team, but there was the mandatory Vengence class (I can't enter an instance of anything without seeing at least one) - the epitome of 'it was uber in the movie so must be an "I win" ship in-game' to many players. Said ship seemed to be doing very little damage and was always either on exploding or on the brink of it.
And THOSE are the sort of players Cryptic probably wants to cater for. The sort of player who'll throw money at lock boxes and/or C-store ships, despite not necessarily having a great understanding of ship building etc, thinking it will = 'I win'. And sadly, in some cases it probably does - the instance I just described? It completed, everyone got their reward + optional. And that person in the Vengence probably didn't learn a thing.
That is how one would expect a F2P game to work. That buying a shiny new expensive ship/gear/traits/whatever actually would make you win more. Selling things to make the game go faster and easier is what F2P is all about.
But the thing is, Cryptic doesn't cater to those people.Those uber badass ships people pay through the nose or get lucky with the RNG to get, are in the end mostly just for show and don't actually make that much of a difference. On the contrary, whenever they accidentally put in something you could buy that actually does make you significantly more powerful, they nerf it into the ground.
Cryptic caters to people who don't want to buy the expensive new ship, get lucky with rare drops or put any effort to earning rewards. People who just want to clock in once a day to pick up their free event token. So in new content, it doesn't matter what ship they have, how badly it's geared or how much they suck at flying it. Winning is guaranteed, every time.
I doubt things will ever really change though. Let's face it - the likes of us forumites are the exception, not the rule.
I suspect The Powers That Be will always first and foremost cater for the players who, despite having little understanding of the game, throw money at C-store ships and keys/promo packs thinking their shiny new ship = WIN.
Ironically saw an example of this last night. Queued for Random in my new Tholian Iktomi and after a short wait was popped in ISA. And I REALLY don't want to sound arrogant here - that really isn't my intention - but I ended up carrying the team. They were all over the place - no reason or rhyme behind what they were doing - and I was SO pleased I took my Iktomi into that instance - GWIII + Web Cannon + Web Generator + TSIII either destroyed or severely hindered the spheres and when those were on cooldown used the Graviton Displacer to push the spheres well away from the problem zone. And yes, I'm aware there is no fail condition - but we kept the optionals and I suspect the instance would've taken rather a lot longer without my intervention.
Therein lies the point though - I don't recall the entire team, but there was the mandatory Vengence class (I can't enter an instance of anything without seeing at least one) - the epitome of 'it was uber in the movie so must be an "I win" ship in-game' to many players. Said ship seemed to be doing very little damage and was always either on exploding or on the brink of it.
And THOSE are the sort of players Cryptic probably wants to cater for. The sort of player who'll throw money at lock boxes and/or C-store ships, despite not necessarily having a great understanding of ship building etc, thinking it will = 'I win'. And sadly, in some cases it probably does - the instance I just described? It completed, everyone got their reward + optional. And that person in the Vengence probably didn't learn a thing.
That is how one would expect a F2P game to work. That buying a shiny new expensive ship/gear/traits/whatever actually would make you win more. Selling things to make the game go faster and easier is what F2P is all about.
But the thing is, Cryptic doesn't cater to those people.Those uber badass ships people pay through the nose or get lucky with the RNG to get, are in the end mostly just for show and don't actually make that much of a difference. On the contrary, whenever they accidentally put in something you could buy that actually does make you significantly more powerful, they nerf it into the ground.
Cryptic caters to people who don't want to buy the expensive new ship, get lucky with rare drops or put any effort to earning rewards. People who just want to clock in once a day to pick up their free event token. So in new content, it doesn't matter what ship they have, how badly it's geared or how much they suck at flying it. Winning is guaranteed, every time.
Well, judging by the fact that it's been VERY rare that I've played any TFO without at least one Vengence class on the team since the Vengence class found it's way into the game I tend to think otherwise.
I mean, why else were the Vengence/Scimitar etc so popular? They were uber on screen and some players thought that the in-game ship would be OP too.
Think otherwise what? What did you think I just said in the post you quoted? It had nothing to do with the popularity of the Vengeance.
I doubt things will ever really change though. Let's face it - the likes of us forumites are the exception, not the rule.
I suspect The Powers That Be will always first and foremost cater for the players who, despite having little understanding of the game, throw money at C-store ships and keys/promo packs thinking their shiny new ship = WIN.
Ironically saw an example of this last night. Queued for Random in my new Tholian Iktomi and after a short wait was popped in ISA. And I REALLY don't want to sound arrogant here - that really isn't my intention - but I ended up carrying the team. They were all over the place - no reason or rhyme behind what they were doing - and I was SO pleased I took my Iktomi into that instance - GWIII + Web Cannon + Web Generator + TSIII either destroyed or severely hindered the spheres and when those were on cooldown used the Graviton Displacer to push the spheres well away from the problem zone. And yes, I'm aware there is no fail condition - but we kept the optionals and I suspect the instance would've taken rather a lot longer without my intervention.
Therein lies the point though - I don't recall the entire team, but there was the mandatory Vengence class (I can't enter an instance of anything without seeing at least one) - the epitome of 'it was uber in the movie so must be an "I win" ship in-game' to many players. Said ship seemed to be doing very little damage and was always either on exploding or on the brink of it.
And THOSE are the sort of players Cryptic probably wants to cater for. The sort of player who'll throw money at lock boxes and/or C-store ships, despite not necessarily having a great understanding of ship building etc, thinking it will = 'I win'. And sadly, in some cases it probably does - the instance I just described? It completed, everyone got their reward + optional. And that person in the Vengence probably didn't learn a thing.
That is how one would expect a F2P game to work. That buying a shiny new expensive ship/gear/traits/whatever actually would make you win more. Selling things to make the game go faster and easier is what F2P is all about.
But the thing is, Cryptic doesn't cater to those people.Those uber badass ships people pay through the nose or get lucky with the RNG to get, are in the end mostly just for show and don't actually make that much of a difference. On the contrary, whenever they accidentally put in something you could buy that actually does make you significantly more powerful, they nerf it into the ground.
Cryptic caters to people who don't want to buy the expensive new ship, get lucky with rare drops or put any effort to earning rewards. People who just want to clock in once a day to pick up their free event token. So in new content, it doesn't matter what ship they have, how badly it's geared or how much they suck at flying it. Winning is guaranteed, every time.
Well, judging by the fact that it's been VERY rare that I've played any TFO without at least one Vengence class on the team since the Vengence class found it's way into the game I tend to think otherwise.
I mean, why else were the Vengence/Scimitar etc so popular? They were uber on screen and some players thought that the in-game ship would be OP too.
Think otherwise what? What did you think I just said in the post you quoted? It had nothing to do with the popularity of the Vengeance.
That players DO want to "buy the expensive new ship".
Yes, but my post wasn't about about that. I was about Cryptic's target audience.
Not all traits are of equal power level, lets face it, so giving us more traits could let us combine the crappier ones to do more FUN (its a game after all) things. An some are pretty much useless and could use more traits being added into the game to make the other traits useful...
Like all the pet oriented traits together can't even stand up to Supremacy+Target Rich+AHoD
What they COULD do to balance the ability to slot more traits is to give each trait a point cost.
Difficulty can be addressed by using player builds on NPCs lol
I doubt things will ever really change though. Let's face it - the likes of us forumites are the exception, not the rule.
I suspect The Powers That Be will always first and foremost cater for the players who, despite having little understanding of the game, throw money at C-store ships and keys/promo packs thinking their shiny new ship = WIN.
Ironically saw an example of this last night. Queued for Random in my new Tholian Iktomi and after a short wait was popped in ISA. And I REALLY don't want to sound arrogant here - that really isn't my intention - but I ended up carrying the team. They were all over the place - no reason or rhyme behind what they were doing - and I was SO pleased I took my Iktomi into that instance - GWIII + Web Cannon + Web Generator + TSIII either destroyed or severely hindered the spheres and when those were on cooldown used the Graviton Displacer to push the spheres well away from the problem zone. And yes, I'm aware there is no fail condition - but we kept the optionals and I suspect the instance would've taken rather a lot longer without my intervention.
Therein lies the point though - I don't recall the entire team, but there was the mandatory Vengence class (I can't enter an instance of anything without seeing at least one) - the epitome of 'it was uber in the movie so must be an "I win" ship in-game' to many players. Said ship seemed to be doing very little damage and was always either on exploding or on the brink of it.
And THOSE are the sort of players Cryptic probably wants to cater for. The sort of player who'll throw money at lock boxes and/or C-store ships, despite not necessarily having a great understanding of ship building etc, thinking it will = 'I win'. And sadly, in some cases it probably does - the instance I just described? It completed, everyone got their reward + optional. And that person in the Vengence probably didn't learn a thing.
That is how one would expect a F2P game to work. That buying a shiny new expensive ship/gear/traits/whatever actually would make you win more. Selling things to make the game go faster and easier is what F2P is all about.
But the thing is, Cryptic doesn't cater to those people.Those uber badass ships people pay through the nose or get lucky with the RNG to get, are in the end mostly just for show and don't actually make that much of a difference. On the contrary, whenever they accidentally put in something you could buy that actually does make you significantly more powerful, they nerf it into the ground.
Cryptic caters to people who don't want to buy the expensive new ship, get lucky with rare drops or put any effort to earning rewards. People who just want to clock in once a day to pick up their free event token. So in new content, it doesn't matter what ship they have, how badly it's geared or how much they suck at flying it. Winning is guaranteed, every time.
Well, judging by the fact that it's been VERY rare that I've played any TFO without at least one Vengence class on the team since the Vengence class found it's way into the game I tend to think otherwise.
I mean, why else were the Vengence/Scimitar etc so popular? They were uber on screen and some players thought that the in-game ship would be OP too.
Think otherwise what? What did you think I just said in the post you quoted? It had nothing to do with the popularity of the Vengeance.
That players DO want to "buy the expensive new ship".
Yes, but my post wasn't about about that. I was about Cryptic's target audience.
Yes. And I am saying that I feel it's often the sort of player who'd buy something like the Vengence class.
Yes. And I'm saying it's not, because if it was the Vengeance class would actually do something worth buying.
It doesn't NEED to. It was Uber on-screen. THAT is a huge selling point.
Which doesn't change the fact that buyers of it are not the target audience when designing the gameplay, as evidenced by it not making much of a difference in anything.
Yes, there are those that think it's an instant win like what Warpangel described from most other F2P games. He is right too.. STO is one of the few (if not only) f2p game that doesn't just outright sell power.
There are also those that just really liked the design of the Vengeance.
Ultimately, the reason you see so many of them is because it's an excellent ship and contrary to what you said.. it's dirt cheap. It's a 5/3 ship, full intel, hangar bay.. great with cannons or beams.. has a built in cloak, console set that gives nice phaser bonus, and the last one I bought was under 200M EC. It's a Lobi Ship, and during lockbox sales people flood the market with them and you can pick them up for next to nothing.
They're popular because it's an incredibly versatile ship that's also cool looking (subjective) and easily affordable. I am not saying that there aren't those that just saw Vengeance and thought "this will make me powerful," but I honestly don't think that's why you see so many Vengeance ships. If people just want to buy power, it's a lot cheaper to just make a Romulan and buy a Scimitar as an account wide unlock. If you actually research it (I know, most don't) the Gagarin/Qugh is more powerful then either one of them.
meh I have a majority of the starship traits available in game, like north of 20-30 will prolly do an exact count one of these days.
So if they increase the amount we can use meh, if they don't meh, not like it matters. Players are killing npcs so who cares how fast the npcs blow up.
Players yelling p2w are off in their own little world. How exactly does it effect you if a player or a game where there are nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo leader boards and nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo titles and nooooooooooooooooooooooooo pvp even harm you in the slightest? Shouldn't you be happy to have a op dpser fighting alongside you so you can finish tfo's in a timely manner? It's not as if this game can run on dreams and unicorn farts. Games require money to exist so it would prolly be in your best intrest to stop looking down on the people paying the bills for you to enjoy this game you all seem to hate so much.
It's not like it's the dpser's or the paying players that forced cryptic to change the tfo's to kick out lesser dps. it was literally the community that did that. Players going afk and leeching. No high end dps'er I know has ever leeched. We tend to like watching the numbers roll.
But that's not the point.
My problem isn't if they allow. Won't change my gameplay. My problem is with the players who are coming out saying the games too easy.
None of you are there arguing this point when the devs release a challenging and interesting TFO and everyone and their mother is crying how hard it is. IE the Tzenkathi TFO. Which I was arguing ALONE months ago that it shouldn't be nerfed I didn't see all these people yelling how easy the game is. In fact i remember a few of you by your handles saying that they SHOULD NERF it because its TOOOOOO HARD. Yet when some one says hey, LETS ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL get more powerful in which EVERYONE in the community will benefit from all of a sudden you people can swarm like bees.
It's so hypocritical.
If you want the game to be harder or interesting or whatever you want to call it, then come out in as many numbers as well to argue against nerfing the games content. Until you people can do that then be quiet about the nonsense. Let him ask for what he wants. If he wants to use all his traits let him use all his traits. If the game is TOO EASY for YOU then you don't have to use them. Play YOUR game how YOU want to play it. You can make a actual choice to use or not use it. HE or She cannot. They need the devs to make that choice. So stop being selfish. This dude is saying I want US as players to be able to use more of OUR stuff yet you people are saying NO the game is too easy for ME so it must also be too easy for you and it's not fair that you want me to use more STUFF that I earned or paid for.
It's possible, quite possible what you are saying is true in a small number of cases. In a majority of the Cases it's probably more word of mouth.
When I purchased the ship recently I personally knew nothing about it. I thought automatically, cruiser? Trash. This is escorts online, why would they do that to themselves? All I read was the starship trait after that.
Target Rich Environment. Hmm; oh well hello there. I see... I see. If I mix this with Redirecting Arrays.... Supremacy…. History will Remember and Vaulting Ambition.... my god! I will take all the agro and I finally might die! Oh lets add duelist fervor, last ditch effort, a good day to die, superior beam, and pattern recognition, oh snap I'm going to either die or lay waste to the universe!
Sad to say it was the latter... adding in my build and epic weapons and alternate timeline and synergistic retrofitting I was critting well into the 20-25k crit per hit.
But the vengeance. My word that thing was nimble like Warren Sapp. I was blown away by how powerful the ship really was. Khan knows how to make a ship, it's literally the top or top three atleast federation cruiser in the game. Number on in my book but I don't have any respect or regard for cruisers. So my opinion is lop sided. From all the traits I listed I have a ton of the high end ruisers and none of them are worth flying, but I would trade in my Mirror escort carrier to use it from time to time, I just like the mirror ships. except for the mirror ship with the small sun... terrible ship... just terrible.
But yes the vengeance is a phenomenal ship. but that depends on the captain as in all things
Comments
Honestly, I kind of feel for the developers on this issue. Yes, to many of us, the game feels like it's a constant 'easy mode' curb stomp, and I get that. I really do.
But at the same time, the truth is that the vast majority of this player base finds this game hard. Those of us that roll through stuff unscathed are the minority, most people just go by the information given in game (almost none) and they struggle mightily. I have 2 RL friends who are pretty avid gamers that played STO a while back and both quit because the game was too 'overly complicated.' There was a point where I will admit that I felt the same way.
If you haven't visited the build reddit, you should take a look over there at some of the unreal bad builds that people post. I want to help over there, but honestly.. the amount of just pure 'bad' is simply overwhelming.
If they made the game a real challenge for players like you, me or coldnapalm.. the majority of the player base would quit.
On this we totally agree. 'Balance Passes' are a bad idea and do nothing but cause mass exodus of players. In most games, balancing is necessary, but in this game it's a death sentence. The development team at cryptic has proven time and time again that they can't do it. They have no conception of power, they take anything they feel is 'over powered' and reduce it to 'completely useless.' They have no sense of moderation what so ever.. it's the worst job I have ever seen when it comes to this area.
This team does a lot of things right, and they have created a game that overall.. I enjoy. When it comes to power balance though, they're so far out of touch it's honestly unbelievable.
Every 'balance pass' we have ever had has been a pathetically executed disaster that has caused players to leave in groves. No more!
Yep that has been the case unfortunately. And naturally so. I mean players learn to p(l)ay by the rules and enthusiastic players do so the most. Simply changing the rules due to failure to think ahead makes them feel betrayed.
The request of this thread is hard to take. Every new line of the new perk points hands out power not exactly like a ship trait but at least to 2/3 of equivalent of a ship trait… This means in less than 2 years we have like 10 more ship traits on top of 5 we already have.
I really think it’s enough power creep already.
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My daily mood can vary a great deal and as a result so does my desire to dedicate my free time to either something relaxing or rather something challenging in this game. In my case it’s roughly 10:1 for relaxing : challenging and I "adjust" that via my teams.
While most elite ground maps are easy most elite space maps are hard. To run them in a relaxed fashion a group of fife ~150k peeps need to assemble. If one has that they are easy peasy but less than that automatically leads to a “challenge” for which I feel up to like once a week at most.
I don’t think either of us is guilty here because, hey, Advanced are the same maps and only need a fraction of game dedication to complete and there is always ISA there too.
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Yep right. I think we nailed it in the past rather well with the term “effort/reward ratio” where effort does not only mean your actual performance on and the duration of the respective map but also all the grind/money, the learning and the implementation it took us (weeks, months) to put a build together in the first place. Rewards are the few coins you get in form of marks and Dil on one hand and the level of “entertainment” you experience while tending to the content on the other.
The conclusion is obvious. Elite Space does have major problems and I’m afraid you, me and every newbie in game see that.
I think that is exactly why cryptic is so determined to hand out more and more power. They want to fix this “effort/reward ratio” without handing out more coins or better entertainment and if I put all my experience and observation in a bag my gut feeling guesstimates that at ~150k DPS per team member they succeeded and elite space gets played. Less than that and it all is not worth it and one needs to have a DPS fetish too as game sided elite maps simply remain the same as advanced or normal with only more hit points to melt.
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I never really thought of it that way, but you just might be right. The frustrating part is the way they keep introducing things to push DPS higher and higher, then on a whim they just go through and slash it all into useless garbage.
You do have a good point though, I have done HSE with a low DPS team and it was near impossible to actually complete. I have also done it in our fleet team with a group of people that all easily push 100k+ and the map is actually pretty easy. Maybe the intent is just to introduce so much power that Elites become trivial instead of 'Elite' as they are named.
If that's the goal, then adding more Starship trait slots is certainly a huge step in that direction. Personally, I don't think they will.. but at this point, I honestly can't say that it would surprise me if they did.
Yea exactly I think that’s the core of it. You know when better rewards or better content are out of the question they need to make it “endurable” of a sort and they know they built a game where a couple of 100 Ks will get it fixed.
Think our fleet is the best test crowds you can get here. It wont be Feli, Flocki and Spawny consuming elite maps all day long and it surely wont be Colonelmarik. If anybody will do it it will be peeps like we have in our fleet together with us.
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The 5 trait slots force you to git gud, to learn about how the game works and challenge yourself to improve your build by making you think about how each trait will change your ship, powers, complement other traits, etc.
Of course we are the minority, Cryptic has driven away most of us. Even I play mostly just to collect event stuff these days. To the extent that these autowin events count as "playing."
It is entirely possible for a game to contain BOTH easy and challenging content at the same time, to serve a wider audience. Cryptic has chosen to make only easy content.
The thing here is, I haven't bothered with elite, since they took out the stage unlock. When I started playing, which we only had the Borg and Fleet queues at the time, along with Breaking the Planet, Big Dig, and Gorn Minefield. You had to progress to Advanced and Elite. There wasn't a "just jump in to it". You had to do Normal to unlock Advanced, and Advanced to unlock Elite. That and Advanced had fail conditions. Not sure how many actually remember the unlock step here, but I had to go through it.
Literally, I can't count the times I walked away from Advanced back then with nothing but wasted time as a reward. Elite was even worse for it. It was challenging and fun, and you had to learn how to do them to progress.
But, if you didn't want to do Advanced or Elite, well, there was Defera. Between it and Normal, you could get all the gear. It just took longer.
Fast forward to current times. Now it's power creep flows like water, and all you have to do is show up, park, wait, collect, and rep it up for gear. Combine this with the fact, that with the right setup up, Normal becomes a joke, and Advanced becomes an ignore 90% of what the enemy is doing. Add in the ever flowing power creep, and the fact they just made the game easier, by making NPCs level 55+ do less damage, and it all becomes joke.
And people want more power creep? What's next? Insta-wins from NPCs fleeing when you show up, just to get away from your power creep?
And I can't stand being able to curbstomp everything. If I wanted that, I'd play the insult to games in that manner, I'd play Warframe.
And the main reason to not bother with Elite here, is that doing them isn't worth it. You get a minuscule amount of extra reward over Advanced, for a lot more time invested. Now if they rewarded Double, or Triple, the Advanced reward, they'd be worth doing.
I've also said this before, Advanced and Elite are not End Game(or the intermission point before the next expansion, as I call it.). They're there to give us something extra to do. End Game for any MMO is Normal, the setting anyone can do. This is the truth of every MMO.
As @warpangel pointed out, Cryptic has only chosen to do easy content. One of the reasons I see for this, is the current state of things, with No Child Left Behind and Common Core. We have whole generations now that don't know how to fail, much less how to handle it. If you apply those two to the game, you can see why I call it the, No Captain Left Behind program.
As other have said, they have done some things right. The two things I've seen in the past few years, that they got right, Gravity Kills and Arena of Sompek.
Gravity Kills, because it can go wrong, real fast. Especially with the environmental hazard of getting sucked in to the black hole.
Arena of Somek, because it present a challenge. Granted, not a very big one. The crew I run with here tends to consist of a 3 man core, so we can carry 2 others to 100+ rounds. Now imagine if they did this as a progress TFO, starting with like Beach Assault, each map representing a skull. This would give that power creep a place to shine.
Think on it.
You have a 5-man crew, or they could make it a 10-man raid.
You start at you Infiltration/Assault point.
Then you have to fight your way through progressively harder enemies and maps, to get to final objective.
Imagine it kind of like a Kobali Prime, with Arena of Sompek scaling enemies and more environmental hazards as you progress through it.
With additions like this, I wouldn't be against the addition of more power creep. Because then it would have a place to actually be useful.
But the thing is, Cryptic doesn't cater to those people.Those uber badass ships people pay through the nose or get lucky with the RNG to get, are in the end mostly just for show and don't actually make that much of a difference. On the contrary, whenever they accidentally put in something you could buy that actually does make you significantly more powerful, they nerf it into the ground.
Cryptic caters to people who don't want to buy the expensive new ship, get lucky with rare drops or put any effort to earning rewards. People who just want to clock in once a day to pick up their free event token. So in new content, it doesn't matter what ship they have, how badly it's geared or how much they suck at flying it. Winning is guaranteed, every time.
Not all traits are of equal power level, lets face it, so giving us more traits could let us combine the crappier ones to do more FUN (its a game after all) things. An some are pretty much useless and could use more traits being added into the game to make the other traits useful...
Like all the pet oriented traits together can't even stand up to Supremacy+Target Rich+AHoD
What they COULD do to balance the ability to slot more traits is to give each trait a point cost.
Difficulty can be addressed by using player builds on NPCs lol
Yes, there are those that think it's an instant win like what Warpangel described from most other F2P games. He is right too.. STO is one of the few (if not only) f2p game that doesn't just outright sell power.
There are also those that just really liked the design of the Vengeance.
Ultimately, the reason you see so many of them is because it's an excellent ship and contrary to what you said.. it's dirt cheap. It's a 5/3 ship, full intel, hangar bay.. great with cannons or beams.. has a built in cloak, console set that gives nice phaser bonus, and the last one I bought was under 200M EC. It's a Lobi Ship, and during lockbox sales people flood the market with them and you can pick them up for next to nothing.
They're popular because it's an incredibly versatile ship that's also cool looking (subjective) and easily affordable. I am not saying that there aren't those that just saw Vengeance and thought "this will make me powerful," but I honestly don't think that's why you see so many Vengeance ships. If people just want to buy power, it's a lot cheaper to just make a Romulan and buy a Scimitar as an account wide unlock. If you actually research it (I know, most don't) the Gagarin/Qugh is more powerful then either one of them.
So if they increase the amount we can use meh, if they don't meh, not like it matters. Players are killing npcs so who cares how fast the npcs blow up.
Players yelling p2w are off in their own little world. How exactly does it effect you if a player or a game where there are nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo leader boards and nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo titles and nooooooooooooooooooooooooo pvp even harm you in the slightest? Shouldn't you be happy to have a op dpser fighting alongside you so you can finish tfo's in a timely manner? It's not as if this game can run on dreams and unicorn farts. Games require money to exist so it would prolly be in your best intrest to stop looking down on the people paying the bills for you to enjoy this game you all seem to hate so much.
It's not like it's the dpser's or the paying players that forced cryptic to change the tfo's to kick out lesser dps. it was literally the community that did that. Players going afk and leeching. No high end dps'er I know has ever leeched. We tend to like watching the numbers roll.
But that's not the point.
My problem isn't if they allow. Won't change my gameplay. My problem is with the players who are coming out saying the games too easy.
None of you are there arguing this point when the devs release a challenging and interesting TFO and everyone and their mother is crying how hard it is. IE the Tzenkathi TFO. Which I was arguing ALONE months ago that it shouldn't be nerfed I didn't see all these people yelling how easy the game is. In fact i remember a few of you by your handles saying that they SHOULD NERF it because its TOOOOOO HARD. Yet when some one says hey, LETS ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL get more powerful in which EVERYONE in the community will benefit from all of a sudden you people can swarm like bees.
It's so hypocritical.
If you want the game to be harder or interesting or whatever you want to call it, then come out in as many numbers as well to argue against nerfing the games content. Until you people can do that then be quiet about the nonsense. Let him ask for what he wants. If he wants to use all his traits let him use all his traits. If the game is TOO EASY for YOU then you don't have to use them. Play YOUR game how YOU want to play it. You can make a actual choice to use or not use it. HE or She cannot. They need the devs to make that choice. So stop being selfish. This dude is saying I want US as players to be able to use more of OUR stuff yet you people are saying NO the game is too easy for ME so it must also be too easy for you and it's not fair that you want me to use more STUFF that I earned or paid for.
Just baffling.
It's possible, quite possible what you are saying is true in a small number of cases. In a majority of the Cases it's probably more word of mouth.
When I purchased the ship recently I personally knew nothing about it. I thought automatically, cruiser? Trash. This is escorts online, why would they do that to themselves? All I read was the starship trait after that.
Target Rich Environment. Hmm; oh well hello there. I see... I see. If I mix this with Redirecting Arrays.... Supremacy…. History will Remember and Vaulting Ambition.... my god! I will take all the agro and I finally might die! Oh lets add duelist fervor, last ditch effort, a good day to die, superior beam, and pattern recognition, oh snap I'm going to either die or lay waste to the universe!
Sad to say it was the latter... adding in my build and epic weapons and alternate timeline and synergistic retrofitting I was critting well into the 20-25k crit per hit.
But the vengeance. My word that thing was nimble like Warren Sapp. I was blown away by how powerful the ship really was. Khan knows how to make a ship, it's literally the top or top three atleast federation cruiser in the game. Number on in my book but I don't have any respect or regard for cruisers. So my opinion is lop sided. From all the traits I listed I have a ton of the high end ruisers and none of them are worth flying, but I would trade in my Mirror escort carrier to use it from time to time, I just like the mirror ships. except for the mirror ship with the small sun... terrible ship... just terrible.
But yes the vengeance is a phenomenal ship. but that depends on the captain as in all things