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PvP has changed, but for the better or for worse?
navar
Member Posts: 198 Arc User
So before I comment here, keep in mind i have not PvPed in this game since before PW bought out Cryptic Studios/Atari. Back in those days I must brag a bit and say, I was good...damn good. There were several posts on these boards in those days (Actually, the boards were different back then if memory serves, so it may not be "these boards" but rather the boards we used to use) from players coming here and complaining against me personally saying I was hacking. I used to get a lot of hate, my Tank ship was simply unkillable unless you stacked science debuffs on me and my tactical officer could often get kills in less than 3 seconds flat, and with lucky crits, he would destroy ships in a single hit depending on the shield/Hull hit points of the ships in my target. Too add to this, I knew how to get in and out before most players could even target me. I ran with some of the best PvPers in this game at the time...all of which I am fairly certain no longer play. It seems a lot of us left the game around the same time.
So yesterday I decided after being back for a week to test the waters. I did not expect to come back and just start ripping through players like I used to, as I know that my heyday in making players rage is has long gone and the game has changed far beyond my knowledge as play styles and mechanics have been flipped since my time. This isn't even the same game anymore in comparison to be honest. This game's mechanics has changed drastically since those days.
So first thing I noticed when testing the waters is that these days PvP seems to be more about Science abilities and consoles that grant special abilities rather than the DPS of your weapons. There are a LOT of big flashy bangs and explosions in PvP that simply did not exist when last I played. I didn't spend much time in there because I just wanted to see how much things had changed and from what my first experience being back has shown me, it doesn't really feel like "Star Trek" to me anymore. Hel, it bordered feeling like Star Trek before, but now...I can't really say I was impressed.
I am sure that experiences and opinions may vary on the subject, especially from the perspective of somebody who may have adjusted to the ever changing mechanics and PvP playstyles. To somebody who kept up with the mechanics and builds over the years, to that person PvP may be more fun now than it ever was. This is fine and I would never argue against this since I currently do not have the experience required to make a real judgement on the PvP and how fun it is currently...my argument is more of the nature that it doesn't really feel like "Star Trek" to me. The game having the feel of "Star Trek" is just as much a part of the equation to a fun game as the actual mechanics.
In saying that, I am curious to hear from those who have kept up with the game over the years...has PvP in this game gotten too far away from a "Star Trek" experience to be as fun as it once was, or do you feel it has gotten better over time and you love it more now than you did in the early days of STO?
Give me an idea as to how things really are from the perspective of somebody who can survive longer than a few seconds even with all the Science abilities and Console abilities floating around in comparison to back in the day when it was all phasers and torpedoes.
So yesterday I decided after being back for a week to test the waters. I did not expect to come back and just start ripping through players like I used to, as I know that my heyday in making players rage is has long gone and the game has changed far beyond my knowledge as play styles and mechanics have been flipped since my time. This isn't even the same game anymore in comparison to be honest. This game's mechanics has changed drastically since those days.
So first thing I noticed when testing the waters is that these days PvP seems to be more about Science abilities and consoles that grant special abilities rather than the DPS of your weapons. There are a LOT of big flashy bangs and explosions in PvP that simply did not exist when last I played. I didn't spend much time in there because I just wanted to see how much things had changed and from what my first experience being back has shown me, it doesn't really feel like "Star Trek" to me anymore. Hel, it bordered feeling like Star Trek before, but now...I can't really say I was impressed.
I am sure that experiences and opinions may vary on the subject, especially from the perspective of somebody who may have adjusted to the ever changing mechanics and PvP playstyles. To somebody who kept up with the mechanics and builds over the years, to that person PvP may be more fun now than it ever was. This is fine and I would never argue against this since I currently do not have the experience required to make a real judgement on the PvP and how fun it is currently...my argument is more of the nature that it doesn't really feel like "Star Trek" to me. The game having the feel of "Star Trek" is just as much a part of the equation to a fun game as the actual mechanics.
In saying that, I am curious to hear from those who have kept up with the game over the years...has PvP in this game gotten too far away from a "Star Trek" experience to be as fun as it once was, or do you feel it has gotten better over time and you love it more now than you did in the early days of STO?
Give me an idea as to how things really are from the perspective of somebody who can survive longer than a few seconds even with all the Science abilities and Console abilities floating around in comparison to back in the day when it was all phasers and torpedoes.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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One of the selling points of STO has become new fancy consoles and traits that people buy to make their builds more powerful. A result of that is the game has zero balance and there has to be some kind of balance for PvP to work. Since the game apparently makes so much money off of people buying new ships to get the fancy new abilities, it's unlikely balance will ever be important. It's all about new lockboxes and expensive promo ships over quality gameplay. I'd avoid PvP like the plague at this point.
Unfortunately that pretty much sums it up.
The only fair PvP left in the game is premade matches between friends or community organized events, either with evenly matched builds or with just stock weapons for balance purposes. Outside of that... its a gankfest.
The game is balanced around PvE, which has us dealing with enemies with a lot more HP than we do. And thus people try to build with maximum damage output in mind. Turn that against another player... it gets ugly.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
I know I've asked for some kind of tier 3 PVP system for as long as I can remember, because back when you could actually level up by queuing for PVP, tier 3 (commander) always felt the most balanced and fun. You had enough abilities to make a difference, but not enough to cycle them back to back for invincibility, nor powerful enough to just overpower everyone, and the pacing was slow enough to react to. I wonder how well that idea would work today with scaling ships and all these consoles you can get early on.
These days, obviously, its usually a sudden death fest. Strike first and biggest. I find that you can get some enjoyment out of the rare times a PVP endeavor is the universal endeavor, as there are a lot of people there that aren't PVPers so you don't really know what kind of match you'll get. Of course its often still full of sudden death because PVE builds tend to focus on damage output.
In the end, though, its a lost cause. Cryptic doesn't have people that even know how the existing PVP games are programmed, as I understand. They can't make more, they can't do much to tweak it, and they definitely haven't considered it in balance equations in years. I think you can still set up private matches if you can find people that want to do that, and while I'd stay far away from Ker'rat, N'vak I think is usually empty, if you wanted to try and organize something with KDF people.
Also, Devs, if you are reading this, pretty please bring back the Verity ship from the Legendary pack? I missed my chance and would love to add it to my collection.
The more Hull Repair Rate you have the more often the passive hull healing ticks happen. The higher your base hull the larger your passive hull heals are. So get a nice large base hull 200k or higher and get a nice high 400% or 1000% Hull Repair Rate. As long as you have decent resistance you can take the Alpha strike and get chance to respond and you heal a lot more then Bridge Officer healing. Combine this with dodge and defense to cause more enemy hits to miss and you should be good. ACC seems to be rare in PvP these days so dodge and defense really helps to cut down incoming DPS.
Yup. I ran into that once myself. I had two of my fleetmates with me, and the other team practically spawn camped us. They didn't bother with the core for quite a while. They just wanted to kill us. I was getting oneshot in an Assault Cruiser. CONSTANTLY. Literally poke head out and die. The ONLY enjoyment I got out of it was when my fleetmates actually managed to drop a couple megawells on them and they couldn't escape from it. Even then... I was raging at the fact I couldn't do ANYTHING but die.
I really hate people like that. All they care about is their epeen and blame everyone else for their lack of skill. In sort... "I'm perfect. Its you noobs who are the problem". I REALLY hate people like that
Reminds me of the time I was playing Halo 1 CTF, and the other team decided to bombard my team's base with tanks, spawn camping us, and one of them decided to insult OUR skill. Yea... well... seems to me like the only way he could win is to deny us the ability to even fight back.
I had a rule in PvP, I only said two things, GF (good fight) and HF (have fun) with an occasional private tell congratulating an opponent for a well played maneuver. Saying anything else outside of this leaves too much room for people to either troll you or take what you are saying out of context and use it against you. I found that general rule to work great for me back in my PvP days.
There was one guy/girl I knew personally (in sto terms) who 'bought' every invincibility trait (lets just say they did non sto, more Risa-ry things in sto to get them...aka a bicycle in space), slapped them on a ship then due the combo literally could not be killed as once
they reached x hp they'd literally return to 100% in seconds whole also erasing all dots and so on (this is after I built a stupidly effective drain/epg focussed sci bop (I wanted to prove a bop is a pretty nifty quasi-science ship) that zero'd out ALL their ships power according to them)
Considering the ship itself had a huge hp value (so things like rapid repairs healed large chunks of hp) you'd need to burn everything just to get through its hp (in my drain bops case every drain to knock the shields down), dot generator and then torpedo barrage (kor warhead console, hyt3 and the terran weapon set 3pc is a glorious sight)...and then it'd just go invincible, restore to full and then you'd need to wait for the recharge - so you attack again...and hit another invincibility type trait - layer enough and the first one would become usable again!
Now...that was in a one on one with an extreme case
But what about team pvp? With one invincibility trait instead of tge extreme example above it made the battlefield boring and in my opinion made it clear pvp was for the 'haves' and not the 'have nots' as the haves armed with this could whale (sic) on the have nots with the backup of invincibility if they got attacked
After that I dropped out of Kerrat and almost never go back except for amusing myself with builds like the medibop (hides, waits for an ally to get attacked then pops out to drop as many heals on them as possible before recloaking..works hilariously well as long as its not an instavape build) or a Chaosbop (waits for an ally to about to be attacked then drops as many annoyance powers (confuses, movement impedance, ect)) from time to time
Regular pvp though? Not worth the effort unless you have your mothers credit card handy.
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That time has long since passed with power creep and the associated toxicity.
If PVP is to have any sort of future in this game it will have to be PVP with pre-made builds with lower tier ships e.g. the Kobayasi maru freighter.
Disable traits/captain powers for PVP and only use pre-made ships. THEN if you win, you have bragging rights.
That's not that impressive to be honest, nor is that unheard of even before Delta Rising. It's really easy to tank one person in a 1v1, especially if your opponent isn't coming in with a build that's full of science spam or massive spike damage. You can have very little experience with tanking and still pull it off. It's much more impressive to go into ker'rat and tank the people in there. That's what isn't possible anymore due to massive spike damage and science spam that is basically impossible for even the toughest players to counter. In PvP you have to stack tons of placates, super speed, and a million spike damage or you're not going to be able to do anything. That's why at most 10 people are in ker'rat nowadays. Not many people find that enjoyable.
Source: I was a healer from 2013 to 2018 and still try to go into ker'rat occasionally.
To me, with knowledge of the person in tow; it was the straw that broke the tribbles back (well, if they have a spine..)
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I kind of got that impression myself. There simply isn't enough interest. It may be one of those things where things are too far broken to fix? Seems common in many MMO's these days. PvP used to be a very fun experience..l.just hate seeing it die out the way it has. That is one aspect of the game that I loved that I won't be experiencing again.
It's not too broken to fix, I'm sure it's plenty possible to create stock captain templates that you select from with preset ships, abilities, and gear, but the will isn't there. As gets said quite a lot... it doesn't make money. Sadly, I feel that there are plenty of people out there who would participate in a new Vanilla PvP, but getting the word out and organizing something would be very difficult.
Mirror Universe Battle T5.
Rules:
- T5 Mirror Ships
- Green quality weapons/gear Mk XII
- stock BOff abilities and traits
Only real variable then would be Spec Trees.By limiting to T5 ships we remove Specialist seating and also make it more accessable. By making it MIRROR ships, it not only makes those mirror ships a bit more valuable, but puts pretty much everyone on an even playing field of accessability. Limiting the quality of the gear means you don't have someone coming in with a fully gold plated ship with a min/maxed build and rep gear.
If it works, a second event could expand to include other T5 "booby Prize" ships.
The goal is to level the playing field as much as possible, while still giving players some flexability to set up builds.
I may not be a PvPer, but it would make an interesting concept and also bring some new life into those old booby prize ships. Especially KDF side as KDF doesn't have as many customization options, and they do have at least 3 ships that CAN use Mirror skins at T6.
The only issue I would have with that is that I don't own any Mirror Ships, but I do like the idea of T5 ships though.
Most Fed Mirror ships are only going for about 5 mil last I checked. Romulan and Klingon Mirror ships maybe a bit more due to lower supply.
The only thing they can do (which I know they wont) is make those things non-effective in PvP...like traits are probably the biggest offender...just make it so only equipment and boff abilities affect a ship, it wont be perfect but would lean more towards balance.