Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
[...]
the problem is that whatever you do will not matter one whit to the DPS league, and make the borg basically unkillable to a casual player like me
No, the problem is that the game is so broken that it makes such differences in raw numbers performance possible.
The fix would be to scale down in some way the impact of bonuses to damage that the game offers. So instead of doing 100 times the damage of a base player, the DPSers would be doing 1.1 times the damage of that base player, and they'd be hunting for .0.0001 percent on top of that. That way, they'd have the same fun (it might take a minority of people among them some time to emotionally adjust, though, because these people are like children), but enemies like the Borg wouldn't be reduced to ridiculousness.
But of course, if they did that, some small minds would raise their voice how "unfair" that would be, yaddyaddayadaa, and the devs would listen to the idiots and roll it back.
So the Borg and everybody else will remain a laugh, revamp or not, and can already hear the small minds raising their voices right now because someone dared to state the obvious: That the game is broken and the devs don't want to fix it.
you don't understand. Anne has it dead cold. anything that you do to mitigate the UberDPS crowd will kill the ability of a casual DPSer.
I believe it is you who does not understand. Let me explain:
Suppose you have a simple game wherein players can acquire various multiplicative bonuses to their overall performance with gear and skills. How high those bonuses should be is to be considered.
First example:
100*1.5*1.4*1.3*1.1*1.2*1.1*1.05=378,378
Second example:
100*1.05*1,04*1.03*1.01*1.02*1.01*1.005=116.4521391
In the first example, a fully geared player is almost four times as effective as a newbie. The fully geared player could thus easily do a mission that is supposed to be done by 4 people. Agreed? As a result, mission design will have to fall back to timers, non-performance-relying tasks and such in order to not make the newbie useless. This gets boring quickly, though.
The Borg (or whatever you uber-enemy is supposed to be called in this hypothetical game) are a laugh when there are at least two such players in the queue. (Note that STO has much worse problem, with multipliers stacking for not 400, but 10,000 in our example scale here!)
In the second example, the same fully geared player is only 16% more effective than a newbie. Still noticeably better, but he could not replace two newbies - he'll just make it a bit easier for his buddies, and that's it. The Borg are still an enemy to be feared and require attention in this case.
Yes, you could argue that "the mediocre player" (who in the first example might do 200 and will be down to maybe 8% more in the second) is "hurt" by the change from the first to the second example. But his relative standing vis-a-vis other players hasn't changed at all, he is still a mediocre(ly equipped) player.
The second example is way, way, way more resistant to power creep than the first, and big scary enemies will still be big scary enemies. Agreed?
I believe it is you who does not understand. Anne has it dead cold: anything that you do to mitigate the UberDPS crowd will kill the ability of a casual DPSer. let me explain:
First of all, you fall into the old 'fully geared player' trap. Gear is irrelevant. Or as good as, at least. I am such a 'fully geared player'. I do better with my fancy gear than without, of course, but havig good gear doesn't automagically make me part of the UberDPS crowd. Not even close. Doing high/extreme DPS is a matter of understanding the game; of understanding the synergies (aka 'combos') of certain powers and their respective timings; of not blindly 'spacebarring' and killing your own DPS; etc. Mastering these skills is difficult, even for an UberDPS player -- but 100x times more so for a mediocre player.
Secondly, once you have mitigated the ability of ppl to do UberDPS, then you have effectively killed the game. If extreme level of expertise and piloting skill will only land you a marginal better output, then you de facto take out all incentive to become good; simply put: the game needs mechanisms to allow you to (significantly) distinguish yourself from other players, DPS-wise.
[...]
the problem is that whatever you do will not matter one whit to the DPS league, and make the borg basically unkillable to a casual player like me
No, the problem is that the game is so broken that it makes such differences in raw numbers performance possible.
The fix would be to scale down in some way the impact of bonuses to damage that the game offers. So instead of doing 100 times the damage of a base player, the DPSers would be doing 1.1 times the damage of that base player, and they'd be hunting for .0.0001 percent on top of that. That way, they'd have the same fun (it might take a minority of people among them some time to emotionally adjust, though, because these people are like children), but enemies like the Borg wouldn't be reduced to ridiculousness.
But of course, if they did that, some small minds would raise their voice how "unfair" that would be, yaddyaddayadaa, and the devs would listen to the idiots and roll it back.
So the Borg and everybody else will remain a laugh, revamp or not, and can already hear the small minds raising their voices right now because someone dared to state the obvious: That the game is broken and the devs don't want to fix it.
you don't understand. Anne has it dead cold. anything that you do to mitigate the UberDPS crowd will kill the ability of a casual DPSer.
IF Bob can do 100K DPS and you nerf it to 10K, whats that nerf going to do to the 15K DPSer? you think anyone can kill a cube doing 1K DPS or lower? and not everyone likes playing on teams. 90% of my gameplay is solo. I only do the disco TFOs because thats the only way to get marks.
I occasionally team up with Anne or Nixie, but that's rare that we are all on at the same time
That seems a bit of an extreme case but what would happen is that 15K DPSer now doing 1k should be playing normal while Bob will be on advanced or Elite.
Just because Bob had a nerf from 100k down to 10k it doesn't mean person B doing 15k will now be at 1k. Its not as simple as giving both the high and low DPS players the same 90% nerf. Its impossible to just apply a 90% nerf to high DPS players as we all use different builds and what ever nerf you use it will effect people differently and possibly some not at all.
I believe it is you who does not understand. Let me explain: ...
It's piloting... understanding the game, things that work well together, timing, positioning, and a lot of practice and precision.
This is why for a number of ships I play if you could "lend" them to a better player they could at least double my own damage, if not exceed it by many times more. They're simply better pilots than I am.
This doesn't exclude me from trying to improve my own game play though.
Yeah, it's right. We are just awesome, it has nothing to do with powercreep and gear. It's all "piloting", that is, pressing buttons. The borg are just not good at pressing buttons, that's why they are so horribly easy to defeat.
That must be it.
Its not all piloting and skill but likewise its not all powercreep and gear which is why your numbers are very wrong. Saying its powercreep and gear alone is as deluded as saying its all piloting. You are saying the fully geared player is only 16% more effective after the change but in reality he can be 100%+ more effective over the newbie. This year I changed my piloting and player skill any my effeteness went up over 100% without any change in gear or setup and the time to run ISA cut down drastically. There was a drastic change in my DPS with zero change in power creep or gear.
"The second example is way, way, way more resistant to power creep than the first, and big scary enemies will still be big scary enemies. Agreed?"
No I don't agree as with zero change in my gear or setup I can run ISA 30% if not 50% faster then a newbie using the exact same setup as me. High DPS people are not doing high DPS just because of gear and powercreep, there is far more to it then that.
Stuff ISA. Hopefully we'll be looking to ISE as the measure of performance soon. Hopefully.
And we won't know anything much about ISE until we've had a chance to actually play it.
That has my vote, stuff ISA. Elite is what I am really interested in and I hope it can be failed at least on Elite as that for some people can make the entire expreince so much better.
Stuff ISA. Hopefully we'll be looking to ISE as the measure of performance soon. Hopefully.
And we won't know anything much about ISE until we've had a chance to actually play it.
That has my vote, stuff ISA. Elite is what I am really interested in and I hope it can be failed at least on Elite as that for some people can make the entire expreince so much better.
Agreed.
Whilst may be in the minority with this opinion, the removal of the fail condition was a mistake. It removed any form of 'learning process' and the motivation to NOT make the same mistake twice for any newer players.
In my opinion, 'Normal' (difficulty level) is the only place where the fail condition shouldn't be applied.
+1
It does leave the door open for trolls, but in RTFO knowing how to deal with that should be part of the challenge.
People should learn that keeping a GW on standby and knowing when/where to use it is at least as important as throwing down plenty of Dhakka.
Edit: or in some TFO, knowing when NOT to use GW.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Yeah, it's right. We are just awesome, it has nothing to do with powercreep and gear. It's all "piloting", that is, pressing buttons. The borg are just not good at pressing buttons, that's why they are so horribly easy to defeat.
That must be it.
That's exactly right: "it has nothing to do with powercreep and gear." Not one iota. Because those things are available to the mediocre player as well. 'Powercreep and gear' have no doubt lifted the overall DPS in game, but we weren't talking about that. We were trying to explain the DPS difference between your 'UberDPS' player, and that of a mediocre one. And I can assure you that no amount of fancy gear or powercreep alone can get you to the top of the DPS charts; if for nothing else -- and this is going to bake your noodle, later on -- because if you have access to the existing powercreep and fancy gear... then so does the UberDPS player. That levels the playing field, so only personal knowledge and pilot skills remain to differentiate the two.
in isa or kva the piloting skills don't matter. in other tfos, yes piloting skills are important, but not in the borg tfos. Maps are small, and the foes remain in group or are static (generators, gates etc).
in isa or kva the piloting skills don't matter. in other tfos, yes piloting skills are important, but not in the borg tfos. Maps are small, and the foes remain in group or are static (generators, gates etc).
Just to be clear, when I'm talking about 'piloting skills', I'm not referring to manoeuvrability and such, but primarily to proper, and timely power activations; those matter in ISA too, of course.
in isa or kva the piloting skills don't matter. in other tfos, yes piloting skills are important, but not in the borg tfos. Maps are small, and the foes remain in group or are static (generators, gates etc).
Just to be clear, when I'm talking about 'piloting skills', I'm not referring to manoeuvrability and such, but primarily to proper, and timely power activations; those matter in ISA too, of course.
i agree about the power activations, but like in these tfos, players rush as fast as they can to destroy everything, it doesn't even matter.
most of the time, it is just a rush, a lot of players want to be the first one to destroy the cubes; so I watch them and it is really funny. it reminds me of the competitions that happen in elementary school, to test his virility.
in isa or kva the piloting skills don't matter. in other tfos, yes piloting skills are important, but not in the borg tfos. Maps are small, and the foes remain in group or are static (generators, gates etc).
Its doesn't matter in terms of completing it but piloting skills do have a large impact on how much DPS you do and how long ISA takes to finish. You can double or more your DPS just from piloting skills alone, along with cutting a large % of the time taken to finish it via piloting skills.
in isa or kva the piloting skills don't matter. in other tfos, yes piloting skills are important, but not in the borg tfos. Maps are small, and the foes remain in group or are static (generators, gates etc).
Just to be clear, when I'm talking about 'piloting skills', I'm not referring to manoeuvrability and such, but primarily to proper, and timely power activations; those matter in ISA too, of course.
i agree about the power activations, but like in these tfos, players rush as fast as they can to destroy everything, it doesn't even matter.
most of the time, it is just a rush, a lot of players want to be the first one to destroy the cubes; so I watch them and it is really funny. it reminds me of the competitions that happen in elementary school, to test his virility.
I agree about ISA et al. being too easy. Sometimes I haven't even reached the right Cube yet, and it's already down. Which is why ISA, in its current form, is no longer a useful/valid DPS meter: it's essentially just an extended Alpha-strike deal.
Stuff ISA. Hopefully we'll be looking to ISE as the measure of performance soon. Hopefully.
And we won't know anything much about ISE until we've had a chance to actually play it.
That has my vote, stuff ISA. Elite is what I am really interested in and I hope it can be failed at least on Elite as that for some people can make the entire expreince so much better.
Agreed.
Whilst may be in the minority with this opinion, the removal of the fail condition was a mistake. It removed any form of 'learning process' and the motivation to NOT make the same mistake twice for any newer players.
In my opinion, 'Normal' (difficulty level) is the only place where the fail condition shouldn't be applied.
-1
I would have no issue with fail conditions if they were done the original way with the original Borg STFs. Failure wasn't instant kick from queue and 30m time out, it was a map reset. Do it again till you get it right. However, the fail conditions they had a few years ago were insanely frustrating and many were stupidly designed (azure nebula impossible optionals?) so I can't support the idea of fail conditions at all seeing how they did them last time.
As for the talk of piloting skills, it matters greatly, don't kid yourselves. If I am swinging around my escort to line up an attack and I need to activate TS3, CSV3, and EPTW3, which order do I do that in? CSV first and it is wasting time counting down while turning, but CSV after I press spacebar to shoot a target and its also wasting time again, counting down while the first volley is firing unmodified. Very little details, but they make a big difference.
What if I don't notice that something didn't activate despite the click? That happens a hell of a lot, and I'm sure other people are better at noticing it or have better control schemes where they don't have that problem. Then do I activate it belatedly or hold it for when other powers are off cd to activate them all simultaneously?
Survivability is also a big factor. Give a high end DPS build with very little survivability to someone who doesn't know how to use it well and they will certainly have trouble with it. Reduce its maximum DPS by adding in some survival factors and the player can now do more DPS with a lesser build because they die less or take fewer defensive maneuvers.
Then there is raw piloting. How good are you at keeping your weapons on target, managing speed and distance and anticipating how those are going to change, as in things flying out of your arc or turning a shield facing and so on? A speedy cruiser can easily run circles around a target, but by not managing your speed and position well, you end up having to burn down all the shields instead of one facing.
Whilst may be in the minority with this opinion, the removal of the fail condition was a mistake. It removed any form of 'learning process' and the motivation to NOT make the same mistake twice for any newer players.
In my opinion, 'Normal' (difficulty level) is the only place where the fail condition shouldn't be applied.
This might have been a valid argument if people actually bothered to learn from their failures back when TFOs had fail conditions. They didn't, instead it just lead to a large stream of constantly failed TFOs.
A big part of the problem was the game lacking any communication as to what the failure was. I remember running Bug Hunt with failure conditions and I had no idea why the thing would fail in the first sections of that STF. The incredible visual spam that occurs with bugs everywhere, made it near impossible to figure out what was going on in the first place, but to then figure out why failure occurred when the game just kicks you out of the queue with no further information is asking a lot.
It was, of course, the alarm bugs not getting killed in time that caused the failure (an utterly idiotic failure condition with the hundreds of bugs we slaughter.) Once you knew you had to kill specific bugs, then you have to figure out which bugs those are.
With people who already know what to kill, you don't learn what bugs are the alarm bugs, because they are already dead before you have a chance to notice them.
When you need to learn, you have no idea what to look for. As far as I remember they didn't always glow purple like they do now, and even if they did, you don't know that marks it as important, you naturally assume someone used some weird power on it to make it glow purple because this game is obscenely flashy to the point of being needlessly distracting.
Again, fail conditions done badly is not what this, or any, game needs. Fail conditions can work, and the ground Borg STFs have them still, where if Becky wipes the team, the room resets. That works way better than the autokick fails where you don't even have time to ask your team what went wrong, nor do you get a chance to try again before your 30m timeout is up.
I believe it is you who does not understand. Anne has it dead cold: anything that you do to mitigate the UberDPS crowd will kill the ability of a casual DPSer. let me explain:
First of all, you fall into the old 'fully geared player' trap. Gear is irrelevant. Or as good as, at least. I am such a 'fully geared player'. I do better with my fancy gear than without, of course, but havig good gear doesn't automagically make me part of the UberDPS crowd. Not even close. Doing high/extreme DPS is a matter of understanding the game; of understanding the synergies (aka 'combos') of certain powers and their respective timings; of not blindly 'spacebarring' and killing your own DPS; etc. Mastering these skills is difficult, even for an UberDPS player -- but 100x times more so for a mediocre player.
Secondly, once you have mitigated the ability of ppl to do UberDPS, then you have effectively killed the game. If extreme level of expertise and piloting skill will only land you a marginal better output, then you de facto take out all incentive to become good; simply put: the game needs mechanisms to allow you to (significantly) distinguish yourself from other players, DPS-wise.
Tl;dr: killing player skill is a very bad idea.
This entire argument is objectively false. Being part of the Uber DPs crowd stems from exploiting a small number of known combinations of gear and traits to get absurdly high numbers. Gear and traits are, 100%, the source of the vast gulf of a difference between the casual players, and the DPSers, fullstop. Knowing when to press what buttons is a simply as reading one of the many guides on how the most broken builds work, which always tell you "press this, then this, then this, every time, and your DPS will be good". You don't have to learn anything, you just have to read the guides.
This entire argument is demonstrably false. For one, like I said, since everyone can use 'a small number of known combinations of gear and traits to get absurdly high numbers.' (Provided their piloting skills are good enough) Thing of course is, not everyone knows these combos. Which is precisely what makes the difference between a top player and a mediocre one: piloting skills and knowledge. And no, having knowledge another person doesn't possess (however esoteric) does not make said knowledge an exploit per se: it really only makes those ppl knowledgeable.
As for fail conditions, those are re-introduced, it would appear, but in a rather benign way:
"To alleviate any fears, these TFOs did not get harder, or have copious extra hoops added to them that we expect players to jump through. Instead we shaved off the rough bits, streamlined messaging, and tweaked fail conditions to be communicated better and have margins of failure rather than binary conditions that suddenly happen and cause you to fail silently."
Again, fail conditions done badly is not what this, or any, game needs. Fail conditions can work, and the ground Borg STFs have them still, where if Becky wipes the team, the room resets. That works way better than the autokick fails where you don't even have time to ask your team what went wrong, nor do you get a chance to try again before your 30m timeout is up.
This sort of thing works well for boss fights(even if it is kind of dumb from a logic standpoint), but you wouldn't want to make the whole TFO like that.
I agree with that. Just to use Bug Hunt again, there could have been a reset from the start if you failed at any of the alarm bugs, and then smooth sailing until the next reset point for the final boss fight if you fail that. You don't need, and shouldn't have fail conditions all through the STF, perhaps with the rare exception when it is pretty trivial, like stopping probes in Khitomer space.
This entire argument is demonstrably false. For one, like I said, since everyone can use 'a small number of known combinations of gear and traits to get absurdly high numbers.' (Provided their piloting skills are good enough) Thing of course is, not everyone knows these combos. Which is precisely what makes the difference between a top player and a mediocre one: piloting skills and knowledge. And no, having knowledge another person doesn't possess (however esoteric) does not make said knowledge an exploit per se: it really only makes those ppl knowledgeable.
This is a misrepresentation, in entirety.
That some people don't know where to find the guides that tell you how to make these builds doesn't make the people who do know where to find them more knowledgeable about the game, it makes them more knowledgeable about where to find guides, which is something else entirely.
Your argumentation is getting rather silly here. That's like saying ppl with a college degree (or higher) aren't really knowledgeable, but only 'more knowledgeable about where to find books.' Knowledge is simply knowledge, regardless of how or where you obtained it.
Likewise, many people DO know where to find said guides, but are unable to follow through on them becuase many of the traits, or ship gear items, needed for them are rare, or expensive, beyond what many people are willing to spend money, or time, on for a video game.
Still missing the point. Many ppl DO know where to find the guides, and DO have the cash to buy the good stuff (like yours truly, LOL), but will still suck. And you know why? Because understanding how it's supposed to be done, and actually being able to do it, are two entirely different things. Precision timing of powers, whilst still keeping your eye on the battle, for instance, is easy in theory, but not so easily done. Or, as Morpheus told Neo, "There's a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path."
“This entire argument is objectively false. Being part of the Uber DPs crowd stems from exploiting a small number of known combinations of gear and traits to get absurdly high numbers. Gear and traits are, 100%, the source of the vast gulf of a difference between the casual players, and the DPSers, fullstop. “
The major flaw in your argument is just because some DPSers are exploiting a small number of known combinations of gear and traits and reading guides it doesn’t mean they all are. Which in turn means gear and traits are not 100%, the source of the vast gulf of a difference between the casual players, and the DPSers. That is objectively false.
Take my build it’s not just the combination of gear and traits that give it the absurdly high numbers and its far more than just reading a guide and knowing when to press the buttons. I couldn’t even read a guide on it as there where none for me to read. Yet I am getting well more than quadruple the DPS over casual players using similar builds. How do you explain that?
With my build you can give it to a newbie with 100% the same skills, traits and equipment and they will barely get 50k DPS if not a lot less. A more expreince person can double that. Someone who has really mastered it can triple or quadruple the DPS. A few who have perfected piloting can more than quadruple the DPS. Proving gear and traits are not 100% of the vast gulf of a difference between the casual players and other players.
Its about player expreince and skill. You don’t always just read a guide and quadruple+ DPS there is more to it than that. It takes practise and skill as knowledge is more then just reading a guide and fitting the same setup. The vast gulf of a difference between the casual players, and the higher DPSers in my build has very little to do with the equipment or traits. We are talking a factor of x2 to x4+ which proves what you are saying is wrong.
“It all comes down to cash(both real and virtual), and ancillary knowledge about out of game materials, and not the game itself.”
What about the builds like mine where cash doesn’t really matter real or virtual and out of game materials and rare traits/items are not really a factor? How do you explain the vast difference in DPS in this case between players using the same build? I can tell you the difference is purely player piloting skill, expreince and knowledge. What else could it be?
Which is why I am looking forward to the Elite version of this revamp. As its about piloting skill, expreince and knowledge not traits, reading guides and equipment.
I believe it is you who does not understand. Let me explain: ...
It's piloting... understanding the game, things that work well together, timing, positioning, and a lot of practice and precision.
This is why for a number of ships I play if you could "lend" them to a better player they could at least double my own damage, if not exceed it by many times more. They're simply better pilots than I am.
This doesn't exclude me from trying to improve my own game play though.
And the deluded crowd jumps in.
Yeah, it's right. We are just awesome, it has nothing to do with powercreep and gear. It's all "piloting", that is, pressing buttons. The borg are just not good at pressing buttons, that's why they are so horribly easy to defeat.
That must be it.
Piloting is more than just pressing buttons. I listed what I think defines piloting in my post which has now been included in your earlier response for your reading enjoyment.
Yes you're absolutely correct, it has nothing to do with power creep and gear.
Put a better pilot than myself into several of my own ships and they do double if not multiple times more damage.
Put me into a ship belonging to an "uber dpsr" (better pilot) and all of a sudden their ship's damage is at least halved but more likely reduced by far larger multiples.
If all else remains the same (the ship and gear), how does one account for this discrepancy? The answer can't be anything else but the person behind the wheel... the pilot.
As already mentioned, this doesn't mean that you or me or anyone else can't improve their own game play.
I effectively doubled my own average damage just last month. All it took was attention to detail and better piloting.
Nothing fancy was involved aside from a desire for self improvement and a seasonal decrease in northern hemisphere daylight hours that allowed for some more in-game time.
Comments
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
I believe it is you who does not understand. Anne has it dead cold: anything that you do to mitigate the UberDPS crowd will kill the ability of a casual DPSer. let me explain:
First of all, you fall into the old 'fully geared player' trap. Gear is irrelevant. Or as good as, at least. I am such a 'fully geared player'. I do better with my fancy gear than without, of course, but havig good gear doesn't automagically make me part of the UberDPS crowd. Not even close. Doing high/extreme DPS is a matter of understanding the game; of understanding the synergies (aka 'combos') of certain powers and their respective timings; of not blindly 'spacebarring' and killing your own DPS; etc. Mastering these skills is difficult, even for an UberDPS player -- but 100x times more so for a mediocre player.
Secondly, once you have mitigated the ability of ppl to do UberDPS, then you have effectively killed the game. If extreme level of expertise and piloting skill will only land you a marginal better output, then you de facto take out all incentive to become good; simply put: the game needs mechanisms to allow you to (significantly) distinguish yourself from other players, DPS-wise.
Tl;dr: killing player skill is a very bad idea.
Just because Bob had a nerf from 100k down to 10k it doesn't mean person B doing 15k will now be at 1k. Its not as simple as giving both the high and low DPS players the same 90% nerf. Its impossible to just apply a 90% nerf to high DPS players as we all use different builds and what ever nerf you use it will effect people differently and possibly some not at all.
This is why for a number of ships I play if you could "lend" them to a better player they could at least double my own damage, if not exceed it by many times more. They're simply better pilots than I am.
This doesn't exclude me from trying to improve my own game play though.
"The second example is way, way, way more resistant to power creep than the first, and big scary enemies will still be big scary enemies. Agreed?"
No I don't agree as with zero change in my gear or setup I can run ISA 30% if not 50% faster then a newbie using the exact same setup as me. High DPS people are not doing high DPS just because of gear and powercreep, there is far more to it then that.
+1
It does leave the door open for trolls, but in RTFO knowing how to deal with that should be part of the challenge.
People should learn that keeping a GW on standby and knowing when/where to use it is at least as important as throwing down plenty of Dhakka.
Edit: or in some TFO, knowing when NOT to use GW.
That's exactly right: "it has nothing to do with powercreep and gear." Not one iota. Because those things are available to the mediocre player as well. 'Powercreep and gear' have no doubt lifted the overall DPS in game, but we weren't talking about that. We were trying to explain the DPS difference between your 'UberDPS' player, and that of a mediocre one. And I can assure you that no amount of fancy gear or powercreep alone can get you to the top of the DPS charts; if for nothing else -- and this is going to bake your noodle, later on -- because if you have access to the existing powercreep and fancy gear... then so does the UberDPS player. That levels the playing field, so only personal knowledge and pilot skills remain to differentiate the two.
'Gravity kills' anyone?
Just to be clear, when I'm talking about 'piloting skills', I'm not referring to manoeuvrability and such, but primarily to proper, and timely power activations; those matter in ISA too, of course.
i agree about the power activations, but like in these tfos, players rush as fast as they can to destroy everything, it doesn't even matter.
most of the time, it is just a rush, a lot of players want to be the first one to destroy the cubes; so I watch them and it is really funny. it reminds me of the competitions that happen in elementary school, to test his virility.
I agree about ISA et al. being too easy. Sometimes I haven't even reached the right Cube yet, and it's already down. Which is why ISA, in its current form, is no longer a useful/valid DPS meter: it's essentially just an extended Alpha-strike deal.
-1
I would have no issue with fail conditions if they were done the original way with the original Borg STFs. Failure wasn't instant kick from queue and 30m time out, it was a map reset. Do it again till you get it right. However, the fail conditions they had a few years ago were insanely frustrating and many were stupidly designed (azure nebula impossible optionals?) so I can't support the idea of fail conditions at all seeing how they did them last time.
As for the talk of piloting skills, it matters greatly, don't kid yourselves. If I am swinging around my escort to line up an attack and I need to activate TS3, CSV3, and EPTW3, which order do I do that in? CSV first and it is wasting time counting down while turning, but CSV after I press spacebar to shoot a target and its also wasting time again, counting down while the first volley is firing unmodified. Very little details, but they make a big difference.
What if I don't notice that something didn't activate despite the click? That happens a hell of a lot, and I'm sure other people are better at noticing it or have better control schemes where they don't have that problem. Then do I activate it belatedly or hold it for when other powers are off cd to activate them all simultaneously?
Survivability is also a big factor. Give a high end DPS build with very little survivability to someone who doesn't know how to use it well and they will certainly have trouble with it. Reduce its maximum DPS by adding in some survival factors and the player can now do more DPS with a lesser build because they die less or take fewer defensive maneuvers.
Then there is raw piloting. How good are you at keeping your weapons on target, managing speed and distance and anticipating how those are going to change, as in things flying out of your arc or turning a shield facing and so on? A speedy cruiser can easily run circles around a target, but by not managing your speed and position well, you end up having to burn down all the shields instead of one facing.
A big part of the problem was the game lacking any communication as to what the failure was. I remember running Bug Hunt with failure conditions and I had no idea why the thing would fail in the first sections of that STF. The incredible visual spam that occurs with bugs everywhere, made it near impossible to figure out what was going on in the first place, but to then figure out why failure occurred when the game just kicks you out of the queue with no further information is asking a lot.
It was, of course, the alarm bugs not getting killed in time that caused the failure (an utterly idiotic failure condition with the hundreds of bugs we slaughter.) Once you knew you had to kill specific bugs, then you have to figure out which bugs those are.
With people who already know what to kill, you don't learn what bugs are the alarm bugs, because they are already dead before you have a chance to notice them.
When you need to learn, you have no idea what to look for. As far as I remember they didn't always glow purple like they do now, and even if they did, you don't know that marks it as important, you naturally assume someone used some weird power on it to make it glow purple because this game is obscenely flashy to the point of being needlessly distracting.
Again, fail conditions done badly is not what this, or any, game needs. Fail conditions can work, and the ground Borg STFs have them still, where if Becky wipes the team, the room resets. That works way better than the autokick fails where you don't even have time to ask your team what went wrong, nor do you get a chance to try again before your 30m timeout is up.
This entire argument is demonstrably false. For one, like I said, since everyone can use 'a small number of known combinations of gear and traits to get absurdly high numbers.' (Provided their piloting skills are good enough) Thing of course is, not everyone knows these combos. Which is precisely what makes the difference between a top player and a mediocre one: piloting skills and knowledge. And no, having knowledge another person doesn't possess (however esoteric) does not make said knowledge an exploit per se: it really only makes those ppl knowledgeable.
"To alleviate any fears, these TFOs did not get harder, or have copious extra hoops added to them that we expect players to jump through. Instead we shaved off the rough bits, streamlined messaging, and tweaked fail conditions to be communicated better and have margins of failure rather than binary conditions that suddenly happen and cause you to fail silently."
I agree with that. Just to use Bug Hunt again, there could have been a reset from the start if you failed at any of the alarm bugs, and then smooth sailing until the next reset point for the final boss fight if you fail that. You don't need, and shouldn't have fail conditions all through the STF, perhaps with the rare exception when it is pretty trivial, like stopping probes in Khitomer space.
Your argumentation is getting rather silly here.
Still missing the point. Many ppl DO know where to find the guides, and DO have the cash to buy the good stuff (like yours truly, LOL), but will still suck. And you know why? Because understanding how it's supposed to be done, and actually being able to do it, are two entirely different things. Precision timing of powers, whilst still keeping your eye on the battle, for instance, is easy in theory, but not so easily done. Or, as Morpheus told Neo, "There's a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path."
Take my build it’s not just the combination of gear and traits that give it the absurdly high numbers and its far more than just reading a guide and knowing when to press the buttons. I couldn’t even read a guide on it as there where none for me to read. Yet I am getting well more than quadruple the DPS over casual players using similar builds. How do you explain that?
With my build you can give it to a newbie with 100% the same skills, traits and equipment and they will barely get 50k DPS if not a lot less. A more expreince person can double that. Someone who has really mastered it can triple or quadruple the DPS. A few who have perfected piloting can more than quadruple the DPS. Proving gear and traits are not 100% of the vast gulf of a difference between the casual players and other players.
Its about player expreince and skill. You don’t always just read a guide and quadruple+ DPS there is more to it than that. It takes practise and skill as knowledge is more then just reading a guide and fitting the same setup. The vast gulf of a difference between the casual players, and the higher DPSers in my build has very little to do with the equipment or traits. We are talking a factor of x2 to x4+ which proves what you are saying is wrong.
What about the builds like mine where cash doesn’t really matter real or virtual and out of game materials and rare traits/items are not really a factor? How do you explain the vast difference in DPS in this case between players using the same build? I can tell you the difference is purely player piloting skill, expreince and knowledge. What else could it be?
Which is why I am looking forward to the Elite version of this revamp. As its about piloting skill, expreince and knowledge not traits, reading guides and equipment.
Yes you're absolutely correct, it has nothing to do with power creep and gear.
Put a better pilot than myself into several of my own ships and they do double if not multiple times more damage.
Put me into a ship belonging to an "uber dpsr" (better pilot) and all of a sudden their ship's damage is at least halved but more likely reduced by far larger multiples.
If all else remains the same (the ship and gear), how does one account for this discrepancy? The answer can't be anything else but the person behind the wheel... the pilot.
As already mentioned, this doesn't mean that you or me or anyone else can't improve their own game play.
I effectively doubled my own average damage just last month. All it took was attention to detail and better piloting.
Nothing fancy was involved aside from a desire for self improvement and a seasonal decrease in northern hemisphere daylight hours that allowed for some more in-game time.