What the others are saying. I can get behind the system DBJK mentioned, and there are places in STO that do that. Nimbus scales you down to like lvl 50 and I think so does the Borg BZ. If we have this for lower-higher tier content then it might level the playing field a little more then simply nerfing big players.
Now a LTS and loving it.
Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,442Community Moderator
What the others are saying. I can get behind the system DBJK mentioned, and there are places in STO that do that. Nimbus scales you down to like lvl 50 and I think so does the Borg BZ. If we have this for lower-higher tier content then it might level the playing field a little more then simply nerfing big players.
The game also scales you down if your team leader is a lower level and you match their level. The problem is you still have full access to all your abilities so you're still OP even when scaled down. I could team up with a friend whose level 37 as a lv 65, match their level... and my ship still has all consoles and weapons and everything. While the stats are adjusted, I still have EVERYTHING.
I think that's kind of dismissive, considering how much discussion has been had on this topic.
It's absolutely dismissive, yes.
This topic has been broached many times, most of them by you. None of the points you have made or the "solutions" you have suggested are anything that hasn't been proposed and shot down many times before.
The topic is dismissed because again, the problem is one with you personally and it's not the rest of our jobs to alter our play style to accommodate you. I know this sounds like I am being snarky, I am not. I am not saying it in a mean way, but I really think you need to consider the view point of everyone else playing the game. You have brought this up before, and every time you do, it's about you and what YOU think is fun.
I am saying you're not the only one, you're one of many. And most of us don't share your opinion that it's a problem so therefore no solution is required.
"The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few.. Or the one."
I think that's kind of dismissive, considering how much discussion has been had on this topic.
The issue is that people have achieved so much dps that it trivializes content and allows them to essentially take content away from others. Whether you choose to accept it or not, it is an issue for many.
Again dude this is where I call shenanigans. How are people having content taken away from them? What content are people unable to join and get rewards from? Who is preventing them from being able to participate? Because those words don't mean what you think they do in the context you've used them. By people's own admission they are seeing rewards from the content which means that they are getting to experience the content and nothing has been taken from them. The issue is people not liking how much they got to participate and wishing they could have done more. Wishing they could have done more does not equate to them never getting to play. The run is still succeeding and those people are getting rewards for their time and contributions to the team, meaning they are getting to partake in the content so again I fail to see an issue here.
If people don't like how much they were able to participate and wish they could have had greater participation, fair enough, they're entitled to that viewpoint and opinion. If they want to participate more, then what are they doing on their end first and foremost to ensure they have the greatest chance to participate in the run? Are they making sure their ship has enough speed to keep up with the group? Are they making sure they have enough damage to avoid the AFK penalty? Are they speaking up if they don't know what to do in a particular TFO? By the admission of some people in here they have no desire to change their builds or anything they're doing because they're comfortable where they are. Which if they're comfortable where they are and don't want to change, fair enough, nothing is going to force them to change. However if someone isn't satisfied with the level of participation they have now, yet refuse to change anything to help themselves, why should I have to change anything on my end to accommodate them?
As I asked before dude, what level of participation do you want? What do you consider having participated enough and what do you consider carrying your own weight? Because so far, I've yet to really see you quantify this. You say you don't want content being taken away from people, yet by the standard of logic you're using here, you're robbing people like me of content by arguing for DPS limits and nerfing builds and so on even though by your own admission you are getting rewards and are able to participate.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
Honestly, I think the gimmick in the new TFO works for leveling the field. There are three widely-separated avenues of attack, each of which has multiple targets along it, so nobody can kill everything themselves and leave anyone else looking down the barrel of an AFK - it is literally not possible for one ship to take out, say, all six fields of engine nodules and their defending squadrons before even the slowest of other players can get some shots in. (I used one of my new Deltas to verify - he's level 11, and as I've indicated previously I'm not exactly top-tier in performance, but even he managed to blow up a couple of enemy ships and contribute to the other goals.)
Sadly, it's not easily adaptable to older TFOs, but something like this going forward might help.
The issue is that people have achieved so much dps that it trivializes content and allows them to essentially take content away from others. Whether you choose to accept it or not, it is an issue for many.
My thinking with my last suggestion was that it would allow people who want greater difficulty to have it, without having to make content that is inaccessible to others.
The issue is a lack of higher difficulty, challenging content designed for higher performing builds and players. Again, everyone regardless of level is forced into Normal difficulty for event content. Of course the content is going to be trivial for players with top tier ships equipped with top tier gear. Normal difficulty content is not designed for or balanced for it.
There was an opinion offered back on page 6 that suggested the two main contributors to player performance were piloting and ability actuation. I certainly agree with this theory. Gear plays a smaller part.
Hopefully not too many people read this so word of the recipe's secret ingredients don't get out
I think that's kind of dismissive, considering how much discussion has been had on this topic.
The issue is that people have achieved so much dps that it trivializes content and allows them to essentially take content away from others. Whether you choose to accept it or not, it is an issue for many.
Again dude this is where I call shenanigans. How are people having content taken away from them?
in my opinion, and i will use TFOs for the example. SuperDPSguy queues for normal mode TFO. someone like me is on that team, and it's over before I can even engage an enemy. I get the 30 minute afk penalty. You don't think I'm being denied content to play? To extend the denial, maybe I'm a single parent who only gets to play a half hour to an hour.
so I
1. can't play the TFO in the time I have to play
2. cannot get the advancement if it's a grind or endeavor
3. can't learn the dang TFO if it's over in 30 seconds.
There was an opinion offered back on page 6 that suggested the two main contributors to player performance were piloting and ability actuation. I certainly agree with this theory. Gear plays a smaller part.
I offered the exact same theory, but then on page 5. Knowing what to press when is key. And it's a lot more difficult than it sounds, trying to squeeze those in, inbeteen timecycles (especially when torps, with other timecycles than beams, are in the mix too). I, for one, am having dismal results with it. And somewhere along the line I need to keep out an eye on the actual field too. I make up for my shortcomings in that area a bit with stellar gear, but that only takes you so far (which is really not all that far).
There is no secret ingredient.. it's just plain old noodle soup.
I think that's kind of dismissive, considering how much discussion has been had on this topic.
The issue is that people have achieved so much dps that it trivializes content and allows them to essentially take content away from others. Whether you choose to accept it or not, it is an issue for many.
Again dude this is where I call shenanigans. How are people having content taken away from them?
in my opinion, and i will use TFOs for the example. SuperDPSguy queues for normal mode TFO. someone like me is on that team, and it's over before I can even engage an enemy. I get the 30 minute afk penalty. You don't think I'm being denied content to play? To extend the denial, maybe I'm a single parent who only gets to play a half hour to an hour.
so I
1. can't play the TFO in the time I have to play
2. cannot get the advancement if it's a grind or endeavor
3. can't learn the dang TFO if it's over in 30 seconds.
Seems like content denial to me
Odd, I recall you playing way above Normal. But even in a hypothetical situation, I heard you need to do below 2% of the total dmg output to incur an AFK Penalty. So, if all other 4 players do 400K each, one would have to do below 8K, which is a feat, all by itself (a single pet will likely do more).
The situation gets different, though, when you literally get no shot in edge-wise. I suppose on Normal this can happen, where players two levels above you have joined your team.
in my opinion, and i will use TFOs for the example. SuperDPSguy queues for normal mode TFO. someone like me is on that team, and it's over before I can even engage an enemy. I get the 30 minute afk penalty. You don't think I'm being denied content to play? To extend the denial, maybe I'm a single parent who only gets to play a half hour to an hour.
so I
1. can't play the TFO in the time I have to play
2. cannot get the advancement if it's a grind or endeavor
3. can't learn the dang TFO if it's over in 30 seconds.
Seems like content denial to me
As I said prior the last time someone brought this example up, this tells me a few things are occurring here. If everyone is getting there before you and everything is dead before you can even arrive, that tells me you're using a ship that's too slow to keep up with the group. If you're getting hit with an AFK penalty on top of that, this tells me you did less than 1% of the damage for the entirety of the run. So first thing that's in order, increase the speed of your ship so you can keep up with the group. Second thing, make sure you have a basic cohesive build that's capable of doing a decent amount of damage once you arrive. This is easily accomplished using the basic items they hand out like candy in the story missions. If someone is not willing to change their setup to help themselves, why should anyone else on the team have to change to accommodate them?
In regards to the single parent only playing an hour or half hour a day, that excuse is only valid for so much and after awhile becomes purely that, an excuse. Alot of people in my fleet are either former/active military and/or police of some type, several with young kids. The ones who aren't military or police are going to school or working jobs of their own, as I'm assuming said hypothetical person would also have a job of some type to provide for their family. Sometimes the guys in my fleet are only able to be around for an hour before they dip, sometimes they're able to get on for a few hours a day, and sometimes we won't see them for several days. The oldest guy in our fleet is in his mid to late 50s and has a mild touch of schizophrenia. So you're not the only one who has things going on in their lives. Just as it's not your job to accommodate them, it's not their job to accommodate you.
If you're playing 30 minutes or 1 hour a day that gives you either 3.5 hours or 7 hours of playtime per week to get things for your character. That's plenty of time to run some story missions to get some gear. If you can run story missions to level your toon in the first place, you can rerun those story missions to get gear at max level. You can also go through the battlezones to earn marks and dilithium. If you do the daily quests in the Dyson BZ and tag even just one of the Rex spawns, you will get enough to cap out that toon on dilithium for the day, or be just shy of capping out, not to mention the marks and elite marks that go with it. All of that should take about 20 minutes. If you cap out for 7 days, that's 56k dilithium you can throw at things on just one single toon. If you're having trouble with certain story missions, you can find people who would be willing to help you if you just ask. You're only as helpless in this game as you choose to be. Most TFOs come with briefings these days that tell you what to do and have enforced waiting windows for you to read them. If you choose not to read the briefings, that's on you and not the team.
Earlier in this thread I had posted numbers from an ISA I had been grouped into with a couple of friends. The entirety of the run lasted 72 seconds. Top guy was doing 262k, then 170k, 80k, 35k, and 27k. I was the one doing 35k on an alt. In total the team dished out around 40.6m damage over the course of the run. To avoid an AFK penalty someone would've needed to do 406,000 damage. Not 406k DPS, but 406k total damage at a 1% AFK penalty. This means a minimum of 5.6k DPS was required to avoid an AFK penalty. This is easily achievable using all mk xii very rare gear you get from the story missions without ever having to touch fleet equipment, lobi gear or the like. If you double the duration of the run from 72 seconds to 144 seconds, then the required DPS is cut in half to 2.3k DPS. For the record, the lowest guy in there was at 4.6% of the total damage and was never in any danger of an AFK penalty. Looking at the damage curve all of us were able to spike our damage initially to around 3 times what we can normally sustain.
Now take an average team of players doing between 15k-30k each. Let's assume you have a team of 5 people doing 20k each normally. That is a combined DPS of 100k right out of the gate. Now if you assume each person is able to spike their damage to 3x what they would normally do, that jumps the combined DPS of the team from 100k to 300k. I don't need to tell you that things in normal will melt under that kind of pressure very fast. Now if we assume our 5th guy has an internet problem and lags behind, that's a combined DPS of 80k normally and spike DPS of 240k from the rest of his team. What you're seeing isn't some super DPS guy but the illusion of it. And unless you're actually parsing the run, you have no way of knowing if you're seeing the combined might of your team, or an uber DPS guy.
If you're getting rewards as most people have said, then you're not getting an AFK penalty and you are in fact getting to participate, you just don't like how much you got to participate. If you're actually getting an AFK penalty, then you have more to worry about than you think. Either way you're not being denied content as you are able to experience it. You just don't like the level you got to participate. So aside from a rare handful of exceptions to the rule, what evidence do you have to show there is this mass AFKing of people and denial of content?
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
As I said prior the last time someone brought this example up, this tells me a few things are occurring here. If everyone is getting there before you and everything is dead before you can even arrive, that tells me you're using a ship that's too slow to keep up with the group. If you're getting hit with an AFK penalty on top of that, this tells me you did less than 1% of the damage for the entirety of the run. So first thing that's in order, increase the speed of your ship so you can keep up with the group.
Not necessarily. In Cure Space Advanced (CSA), for instance, I usually fly to the right-most Cube... cloaked. I come out with a decent, fully buffed Alpha-strike; but it still takes me ca. 30 secs to kill the entire group (the price of not being an Elite player). When I then turn around, the other Cubes are sometimes already gone. Just occured to me, though, that this is not a matter of me flying too slowly per se, but is likely precisely how it should be: it simply means the ppl working on the other Cubes finished them off in about the same time I did. In fact, had there been Cubes left for me to go work on, it means others needed more time than me. (All round and about, of course, as often multiple ppl are working a single Cube).
Tl;dr: at times finding others have already done stuff is not necessarily a measure of failure on my part, but often just means ppl have (unwittingly, perhaps) divided the tasks more-or-less equally, which is a good thing.
So you're not the only one who has things going on in their lives. Just as it's not your job to accommodate them, it's not their job to accommodate you.
I honestly got the impression Annemarie was merely giving an example with the 'single mother.' But even if she wasn't, it was still a valid point: sometimes ppl only have like half an hour before dinner or something.
Not necessarily. In Cure Space Advanced (CSA), for instance, I usually fly to the right-most Cube... cloaked. I come out with a decent, fully buffed Alpha-strike; but it still takes me ca. 30 secs to kill the entire group (the price of not being an Elite player). When I then turn around, the other Cubes are sometimes already gone. Just occured to me, though, that this is not a matter of me flying too slowly per se, but is likely precisely how it should be: it simply means the ppl working on the other Cubes finished them off in about the same time I did. In fact, had there been Cubes left for me to go work on, it means others needed more time than me. (All round and about, of course, as often multiple ppl are working a single Cube).
Tl;dr: at times finding others have already done stuff is not necessarily a measure of failure on my part, but often just means ppl have (unwittingly, perhaps) divided the tasks more-or-less equally, which is a good thing.
In the example annemarie gave, unfortunately it is absolutely a failure on the part of the person receiving the AFK penalty and I will tell you why. You can tell alot about the hypothetical by the inferences made in constructing it. While I get what you're going for with your example, your example and annemarie's aren't compatible. In your example, you're doing exactly what you're supposed to do and have contributed to the team and participated. Even if people want to debate the best strategy for that particular TFO, you still rolled with the most commonly accepted tactic. You would never have to worry about an AFK penalty per your example. By virtue of your description of said example, this tells me that you did everything you could on your end to ensure you had the best chance to participate. You brought a ship that was fast enough to keep up with the group since you all arrived at your respective cubes at the same time, and you brought a ship that had a basic cohesive build that can avoid the AFK penalty. Thus you are contributing and getting rewards.
Annemarie's example by virtue of how it's described tells me two things are happening. If the other 4 people are arriving ahead of the 5th person, that tells me automatically that the 5th person who arrived late is using a build/ship that is slower than the other 4 people in the run and not capable of keeping up. If said person is getting an AFK penalty on top of everything else, then it also tells me that person did less than 1% of the damage in the run and is using a build that is most likely not cohesive and is probably all over the place. At the very least we know that it needs work. I reiterated the above ISA example because it illustrates the point perfectly. Even with several people in there who would've qualified as high DPS people, none were given an AFK penalty. To avoid said AFK penalty a person would've only needed to do 5.6k DPS in the course of that 72 second run. If you doubled that run to 144 seconds, which is just shy of 2.5 minutes, it would've only taken 2.3k DPS to avoid a penalty. If someone gets an AFK penalty, that's something put in place by Cryptic itself telling that person they were not up to snuff and need to up their game. Again true AFK penalties should be extremely rare and if someone is hitting them all the time, then something is bad wrong.
I honestly got the impression Annemarie was merely giving an example with the 'single mother.' But even if she wasn't, it was still a valid point: sometimes ppl only have like half an hour before dinner or something.
Point still stands whether it was literal or an example. The other 4 people in that run have lives as well and it's not their job to construct the entirety of their gameplay around accommodating that 5th person and vice versa. Some days I could play 12+ hours if I chose to (seriously don't actually do that folks it's not healthy). Other days I may only have 30 minutes to play, and some days I may not get to play at all.
If someone is that hard pressed for time that they're having to rush and guarantee everything goes perfect to keep things from going squirrely, then imo they shouldn't be in the game to start with. They should wait until they have more time so they can slow down and enjoy the game, or utilize one of the other methods for getting things in game. TFO mark farming isn't the only way to get stuff. If they're that pressed for time as the example indicates, so long as they're getting marks and aren't actually getting an AFK penalty, then I would think they would appreciate the run being ended quickly so they can move on to the next one in the time they have left. Yet that's what is being protested, which is an oxymoronic approach. If that person is having issues with TFOs, then they should step back and get some more upgrades and/or experience before returning. Otherwise they're just slamming their heads against a wall. The "I've only got x amount of time and can't play that much" is only valid for so much before it becomes an excuse for mediocrity and a crutch for people. If you're that pressed for time, handle your real life business first before you think about playing STO.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
@darkbladejk I have no intention of quoting your wall of text answers again, but your reply has distilled down to your opinion, as I see it. "git Gud" and if you can't play at MY level, don't play. that's a VERY sad attitude from someone who is supposedly a neutral representative of the game. I am exceptrionally appalled at your inference that if you cannot devote multiple hours to the game that you are not worthy, and should not play AT ALL.
peopler like ytou are the EXACT reason I do not play TFOs, and i hate it when i look at the game and think, wow, do i blow a couple days worth of dilithium on rerolling the endeavor(s) or just not do them (again) just like the current grind. I have the options of the patrols or the episode to advance, because i KNOW the TFOs will be a bad experience. Yes I get it's an MMO, but I have experienced enough to play it like a single player and avoid the other players as much as possible.
@darkbladejk I have no intention of quoting your wall of text answers again, but your reply has distilled down to your opinion, as I see it. "git Gud" and if you can't play at MY level, don't play. that's a VERY sad attitude from someone who is supposedly a neutral representative of the game. I am exceptrionally appalled at your inference that if you cannot devote multiple hours to the game that you are not worthy, and should not play AT ALL.
peopler like ytou are the EXACT reason I do not play TFOs, and i hate it when i look at the game and think, wow, do i blow a couple days worth of dilithium on rerolling the endeavor(s) or just not do them (again) just like the current grind. I have the options of the patrols or the episode to advance, because i KNOW the TFOs will be a bad experience. Yes I get it's an MMO, but I have experienced enough to play it like a single player and avoid the other players as much as possible.
That’s not fair on Darkbladejk as they are right. When we dived into the data it turned out the vast majority if not 99% of people that got hit with AFK got AFK because of a core problem with there build or piloting not because of other players. Darkbladejk is not saying get gud up to their level.
Darkbladejk is saying if you have the bare minimum build competence with the bare minimum of piloting skill you won’t get hit by AFK accept from some extremely rare outliner cases which do not happen often. At which point its reasonable to point out someone who is often getting hit with AFK needs to improve their build and/or piloting instead of falsely blaming other players as they don't want to look at what they are doing wrong.
As per the data shown early in the thread the UberDPSers are being blamed but are nearly always not the ones causing problems and in fact are often helping. If you are being hit with AFK then you are doing ground level DPS in space or another way to put it you are doing less DPS then 1 fighter out of 12 from 1 hangar bay. Which is not the fault of the UberDPSers or other players.
If you are doing that low DPS for example less then 400k total damage we shouldn’t be blaming everyone else and instead looking at what is going wrong with that players core build and piloting. I don't like the words "git Gud" but essentially that is what is needed. Not even get good. Just get to a bare minimum level of competency for ship build and piloting and you wont get AFK.
and again, a Play my way or don't play comment. and again, why I will NEVER play TFOs. until your ilk realise you are the oxic elements in the game, nothing will improve
@darkbladejk I have no intention of quoting your wall of text answers again, but your reply has distilled down to your opinion, as I see it. "git Gud" and if you can't play at MY level, don't play. that's a VERY sad attitude from someone who is supposedly a neutral representative of the game. I am exceptrionally appalled at your inference that if you cannot devote multiple hours to the game that you are not worthy, and should not play AT ALL.
peopler like ytou are the EXACT reason I do not play TFOs, and i hate it when i look at the game and think, wow, do i blow a couple days worth of dilithium on rerolling the endeavor(s) or just not do them (again) just like the current grind. I have the options of the patrols or the episode to advance, because i KNOW the TFOs will be a bad experience. Yes I get it's an MMO, but I have experienced enough to play it like a single player and avoid the other players as much as possible.
That’s not fair on Darkbladejk as they are right. When we dived into the data it turned out the vast majority if not 99% of people that got hit with AFK got AFK because of a core problem with there build or piloting not because of other players. Darkbladejk is not saying get gud up to their level.
Darkbladejk is saying if you have the bare minimum build competence with the bare minimum of piloting skill you won’t get hit by AFK accept from some extremely rare outliner cases which do not happen often. At which point its reasonable to point out someone who is often getting hit with AFK needs to improve their build and/or piloting instead of falsely blaming other players as they don't want to look at what they are doing wrong.
As per the data shown early in the thread the UberDPSers are being blamed but are nearly always not the ones causing problems and in fact are often helping. If you are being hit with AFK then you are doing ground level DPS in space or another way to put it you are doing less DPS then 1 fighter out of 12 from 1 hangar bay. Which is not the fault of the UberDPSers or other players.
If you are doing that low DPS for example less then 400k total damage we shouldn’t be blaming everyone else and instead looking at what is going wrong with that players core build and piloting. I don't like the words "git Gud" but essentially that is what is needed. Not even get good. Just get to a bare minimum level of competency for ship build and piloting and you wont get AFK.
Can't believe I'm saying this, but here I don't think Darkbladejk is entirely wrong. Often incurring an AFK-Penalty is an endemic issue, and no longer caused by the occasional Elite player stomping on your TFO. Simply put, if you're getting too many AFK-Penalties on Advanced, then you're simply not ready for that level. And then there are only 2 options: either you start playing at a lower level again, or you start improving on your ship/skills, until you can say you successfully mastered the Advanced level (same goes for migrating from Advanced -> Elite, of course).
N.B. Not saying Annemarie is receiving all these AFK-Penalties per se (as I still believe she was just talking hypothetical), but in general, yes, getting 'gud' enough to play at your desired level not only makes sense, but makes your game experience a lot more enjoyable too.
Okay, the problem here is that we've got two extreme positions talking past one another.
The original issue, and one that I have encountered on rare but annoying occasion, is when you're running a Normal TFO and one or two Elite players will queue for it. They come in with overpowered ships and reflexes honed on running that TFO at Elite level a large number of times, wipe everything on the map before those of us with less-powerful ships and who don't know what to do before it even happens can so much as get off a shot, and Normal players wind up eating an AFK because they didn't get to do enough damage to count.
Now, Darkblade and other, who are understandably proud of the time and effort they've put into their builds, hold that the problem here is with the "noobs" who in their view are obstinately refusing to spend the time and money to become Elite. This could be solved with having an Elite option for those TFOs that are part of Events, although as I've pointed out the Leviathan event solves this issue by having things happening simultaneously at such a distance apart that one ship literally cannot dominate the entire battlefield (I was sure happy enough to see one of those Elite players come in and help me wipe a Terran dreadnought that was preventing me from reaching the second set of plasma accelerators in the left lane!).
Meanwhile, Meimetoo would appear to have staked out the position that they don't have to improve at all, and that everyone deserves credit simply for participating (which, sadly, encourages players to actually AFK, a problem I remember encountering years back). This position appears to assume that anyone who isn't running Mark XII whites is "elite", something I can disprove by running anything higher than Normal in my own ships. This causes a knee-jerk emotional reaction in the actually Elite players, who seem to think the entire argument opposing them is this - a single player who manages to go an entire TFO without shooting anything, while everyone else gets on just fine. (This is also a rarity, in my observation; so long as one or two Elites aren't roflstomping the entire field, generally speaking everyone can damage something.)
Meimetoo isn't entirely in the wrong here, either; even Darkblade has admitted to occasionally going into Normal TFOs in order to feel more powerful, not just because an Event requires it. Some Elite players are like that - they've developed those skills and want to show them off, like the shadetree mechanic who knows how to soup up street cars into racers, and insists on demonstrating that skill on the nearest four-lane surface street (had one of those wipe out in the rain about four blocks from my house a couple months ago, almost destroying the memorial set up by the family of the one before him). And like those shadetree mechanics, they don't seem to care that they're ruining things for other people. (On the plus side, at least Elite braggarts aren't putting anyone in any actual physical danger.)
Colonel Marik, on the third hand, isn't making things any clearer with the insistence that there should be some sort of Harrison-Bergeron-esque limitation on the upper end of DPS, something which is impractical at best and potentially damaging to the overall game at worst. (There's a reason the folks putting all the limiters on Bergeron in the novel were the bad guys, after all.)
My personal suggestion at this point is that everyone step back, take a nice cleansing breath, and read the arguments on all sides again, remembering in the process that we're all individuals with our own (sometimes flawed) perceptions. And that "git gud" is not a valid point, as one must have a chance to "git mediocre" first.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't think anyone should be telling anyone else for any reason, NOT to play until they have "more time" to devote to gaming. One cannot sit in judgment of someone else's life like that. Perhaps that 30 minutes IS all the time they had allocated for gaming. Maybe that is due to a hectic schedule that doesn't have a lot of wiggle room. Or perhaps real life is just more interesting to them, and gaming not as important and therefore getting less time allocated to it. Whatever the circumstances or reasons, their gaming time is their gaming time, and no one should dictate to them when and how they spend it. So, let's try to be more understanding, ok? /soapbox
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Meanwhile, Meimetoo would appear to have staked out the position that they don't have to improve at all, and that everyone deserves credit simply for participating (which, sadly, encourages players to actually AFK, a problem I remember encountering years back). This position appears to assume that anyone who isn't running Mark XII whites is "elite", something I can disprove by running anything higher than Normal in my own ships. This causes a knee-jerk emotional reaction in the actually Elite players, who seem to think the entire argument opposing them is this - a single player who manages to go an entire TFO without shooting anything, while everyone else gets on just fine. (This is also a rarity, in my observation; so long as one or two Elites aren't roflstomping the entire field, generally speaking everyone can damage something.)
Meanwhile, Meimetoo has never held such position. I have mainly argued 2 things. The first being, that this game has 3 distinct levels, and that people shouldn't be forced to improve beyond the level they're comfortable playing at. And secondly -- and in my last post even -- I have stated that one should improve at least far enough to not incur an AFK-Penalty too often at one's own chosen level.
Everything else you impute, like me allegedly saying "that anyone who isn't running Mark XII whites is Elite," is, of course, nowhere near a position I've ever taken, thank you.
I think that's kind of dismissive, considering how much discussion has been had on this topic.
The issue is that people have achieved so much dps that it trivializes content and allows them to essentially take content away from others. Whether you choose to accept it or not, it is an issue for many.
Again dude this is where I call shenanigans. How are people having content taken away from them? What content are people unable to join and get rewards from? Who is preventing them from being able to participate? Because those words don't mean what you think they do in the context you've used them. By people's own admission they are seeing rewards from the content which means that they are getting to experience the content and nothing has been taken from them. The issue is people not liking how much they got to participate and wishing they could have done more. Wishing they could have done more does not equate to them never getting to play. The run is still succeeding and those people are getting rewards for their time and contributions to the team, meaning they are getting to partake in the content so again I fail to see an issue here.
If people don't like how much they were able to participate and wish they could have had greater participation, fair enough, they're entitled to that viewpoint and opinion. If they want to participate more, then what are they doing on their end first and foremost to ensure they have the greatest chance to participate in the run? Are they making sure their ship has enough speed to keep up with the group? Are they making sure they have enough damage to avoid the AFK penalty? Are they speaking up if they don't know what to do in a particular TFO? By the admission of some people in here they have no desire to change their builds or anything they're doing because they're comfortable where they are. Which if they're comfortable where they are and don't want to change, fair enough, nothing is going to force them to change. However if someone isn't satisfied with the level of participation they have now, yet refuse to change anything to help themselves, why should I have to change anything on my end to accommodate them?
As I asked before dude, what level of participation do you want? What do you consider having participated enough and what do you consider carrying your own weight? Because so far, I've yet to really see you quantify this. You say you don't want content being taken away from people, yet by the standard of logic you're using here, you're robbing people like me of content by arguing for DPS limits and nerfing builds and so on even though by your own admission you are getting rewards and are able to participate.
Alot of people, a lot of my friends no longer play due to what I call the warframe effect.
its not really the players fault, but being new to the game and doing tfos for the first time, with insanely geared players where you don't get to do much because the better players blow everything up is not a fun experience.
And why its called warframe experience, is because new warframe players simply cannot keep up with veteran players who can clear the entire mission before the player even gets there.
its mitigated some in sto with time and gearing. But also there is a legit skill ceiling for some people, or age/reflexes. And expecting them to "git gud" really doesn't fix anything.
Is there a fix cryptic could reasonably implement? Unless they wanna create a higher tier difficulty to challenge veterans? likely not. This is primarily a power creep issue from years of hawking lootcrate gear onto us.
but this also begs the question, why are such advanced players queueing for normal instances and not advanced? Leave the normal queues for regular/new players. (exceptions to events that lack any difficulty)
but this also begs the question, why are such advanced players queueing for normal instances and not advanced? Leave the normal queues for regular/new players. (exceptions to events that lack any difficulty)
Preventing Elite players from entering lower Tier TFO's would solve that, but has the major drawback of literally locking ppl out of content: the very thing some ppl are decrying. So, I would not propose that, but still think it's overall unsportsmanlike for an Elite player to enter a Normal TFO, whether it's strictly verboten or not.
but this also begs the question, why are such advanced players queueing for normal instances and not advanced? Leave the normal queues for regular/new players. (exceptions to events that lack any difficulty)
Event content generally only comes in Normal difficulty unfortunately, so higher performing players have no other option.
I see a disconnect in the thread. part of the arguments are Elite players "invading" normal level content and wiping the floor with casual/lower end players, which I believe @annemarie30 is saying. Others are saying if you are a casual/low level player complaining about getting afk/wiped in Advanced/elite content, you need to improve. Both are valid comments.
what would fix the first argument is to make ALL content available at at least normal and Advanced. i do not know which is played more, advanced or elite. Whichever level has the biggest population should be given priority.
The second argument is simple enough. the game needs to parse your ability to perform at that level. If you can't you don't get to play. simple. You cannot reasonably expect to play in the majors when you are at best high school JV.
so instead of screaming and posting walls of text, how about suggestions to fix it?
So a few things I'm going to point out here because I'm being accused now of saying something I didn't say. When I first came into this thread and went as hard as I did against certain people I was not in the right frame of mind mentally as I was dealing with some personal stuff outside of the game and forums including the death of a guildmate that alot of us had played with for years. So for those of you that I hammered into the core of the earth I apologize for that. I was not thinking with a clear head at the time. Does that excuse it, no it doesn't, but I owe that much of an explanation at least. This is why I didn't respond in here and very many threads for a brief while is I needed to clear my headspace. Since I've been able to get my headspace organized again, I've taken a stab at joining certain convos again.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't think anyone should be telling anyone else for any reason, NOT to play until they have "more time" to devote to gaming. One cannot sit in judgment of someone else's life like that.
I'm not judging people and trying to beat people over the head and say they're not allowed to play until they can devote more time to gaming. What I said was "If someone is that hard pressed for time that they're having to rush and guarantee everything goes perfect to keep things from going squirrely, then imo they shouldn't be in the game to start with. They should wait until they have more time so they can slow down and enjoy the game, or utilize one of the other methods for getting things in game."
That is purely me giving an opinion. If they're pressed for time and they're having to rush through everything under the sun to the point if they so much as blink at the wrong time they're going to fail, then in my personal opinion they should wait and try again later when they're not so pressed for time. Wait until they are able to sit down and enjoy it better without having to rush through everything and can take their time, whether that time amounts to 30 minutes, an hour, or 12+ hours. The point of the game is to have fun, and if people are rushing and stressing themselves out, why are they playing?
@darkbladejk I have no intention of quoting your wall of text answers again, but your reply has distilled down to your opinion, as I see it. "git Gud" and if you can't play at MY level, don't play.
I am exceptrionally appalled at your inference that if you cannot devote multiple hours to the game that you are not worthy, and should not play AT ALL.
Neither of these things is what I said. See again the above. What I said was my personal opinion that if someone is pressed for time to the point they're having to rush through everything and can't enjoy it, they should wait until they are able to sit down and enjoy it better without having to rush themselves. The second thing I said is that all 5 members of that team have lives outside of the game and it's not fair for one person to expect the other 4 people to restructure the entirety of their playtime to accommodate them and vice versa. You alone are responsible for what you do while you play and how you choose to spend your playtime in game, be that 30 minutes, or multiple hours at the time. If you are going into a run, you need to first make sure you've done everything to ensure you have the best chance to participate on your end.
If the group is always running ahead of you, this tells me you're in a ship that's not fast enough to keep up with the group. If you're constantly getting hit with an AFK penalty on whatever difficulty level you've chosen, that is not normal and the game itself as programmed by Cryptic is telling you that what you're doing isn't working and you need to change it. Like meimeitoo said, if you're constantly getting an AFK penalty at the chosen level, then you're not ready for that content in the state you're in now. That isn't me telling you that to be some kind of an elitist, that is something Cryptic themselves programmed into the game telling you that. I am not now nor have I ever been asserting people should have to do 50 zillion dps or whatever the record is now. What I am however saying is if you're constantly getting hit with an AFK penalty and you're not able to keep up with the group on your chosen level, it's incumbent on you to either make changes and come back, or play on a lower level because the game itself is telling you that what you're doing is not working.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
Now, Darkblade and other, who are understandably proud of the time and effort they've put into their builds, hold that the problem here is with the "noobs" who in their view are obstinately refusing to spend the time and money to become Elite.
This is not what I'm advocating and I have never claimed the problem is "noobs refusing to spend the time and money to become elite". see more below.
Meimetoo isn't entirely in the wrong here, either; even Darkblade has admitted to occasionally going into Normal TFOs in order to feel more powerful, not just because an Event requires it. Some Elite players are like that - they've developed those skills and want to show them off, like the shadetree mechanic who knows how to soup up street cars into racers, and insists on demonstrating that skill on the nearest four-lane surface street (had one of those wipe out in the rain about four blocks from my house a couple months ago, almost destroying the memorial set up by the family of the one before him). And like those shadetree mechanics, they don't seem to care that they're ruining things for other people. (On the plus side, at least Elite braggarts aren't putting anyone in any actual physical danger.)
What I have said is that people are responsible for their own ability/inability to play the game, others are not. If someone is having trouble competing at their chosen level, be it Normal, Advanced, or Elite, they alone are responsible for identifying problems and fixing them. If they should seek help in identifying and fixing issues with their performance/build, I don't care to help them, but all I can do is make recommendations, I can't do the fixing for them. As meimeitoo if you're constantly hitting AFK penalties on advanced level, then one of two things needs to happen, either you play on normal again, or you up your build and skills until you can play on advanced without issues. If people are getting rewards, then they're getting to participate. Neither myself or anyone on the team is responsible for them feeling like it went too fast as that is their subjective opinion. If a person is constantly getting hit with an AFK penalty and constantly arriving too late to shoot things, but continues to use that build/ship giving them the AFK penalty and that's too slow to keep up, the problem is them, not the rest of the team.
What I have also said is that sometimes I don't always go into elite TFOs even though I'm capable of playing them because I don't always want to worry about having the fail condition hanging over my head if I don't do everything perfectly. Sometimes I just want to blast things for the sake of blasting without having to worry about doing everything perfectly or failing. Other times I play on that lower difficulty because there isn't a higher version that exists for that particular content. An uber DPSer isn't doing anything wrong by playing on a lower difficulty, nor is the lower DPSer doing anything wrong by joining an elite. Like everyone else, I have my opinions as to when I believe people should/shouldn't be in certain types of content. So long as you're getting rewards and not getting hit with an AFK penalty, you're getting to play and you're getting to participate so what's the issue?
We've also seen multiple different parses by multiple different people across multiple different runs showing that in almost all cases what people are seeing is not the presence of an uber DPSer, but the combined might of their entire team. So they're blaming one particular group of people that aren't even present.
Alot of people, a lot of my friends no longer play due to what I call the warframe effect.
its not really the players fault, but being new to the game and doing tfos for the first time, with insanely geared players where you don't get to do much because the better players blow everything up is not a fun experience.
And why its called warframe experience, is because new warframe players simply cannot keep up with veteran players who can clear the entire mission before the player even gets there.
its mitigated some in sto with time and gearing. But also there is a legit skill ceiling for some people, or age/reflexes. And expecting them to "git gud" really doesn't fix anything.
Is there a fix cryptic could reasonably implement? Unless they wanna create a higher tier difficulty to challenge veterans? likely not. This is primarily a power creep issue from years of hawking lootcrate gear onto us.
but this also begs the question, why are such advanced players queueing for normal instances and not advanced? Leave the normal queues for regular/new players. (exceptions to events that lack any difficulty)
Except this game is nothing like Warframe at all and the two games aren't even comparable. I've played Warframe since 2016 and it is absolutely NOTHING like STO. In Warframe you're limited by the frames and equipment you have unlocked, as well as the quality of your mods you have available. In Warframe me and little Timmy can have the same build on the same frame using the same equipment and mods, yet I'm going to do more damage because my mods have been upgraded where as Timmy's hasn't. I'm also older that Timmy, faster, and more experienced. Even if you gave me and Timmy the same quality of mods, as in upgrades, I'm still going to run circles around Timmy purely based on experience, that same would be true with STO. Warframe is also a MUCH faster paced game than STO has ever been and ever will be. Also in Warframe you have the option of doing missions solo should you choose. so you can still progress, just not as fast as running with the veteran players.
STO may have some missions that are a little more fast paced than others, but is nothing like Warframe at all. One thing they do have in common is you can run with people, or you can run solo. That's the only thing they have in common but they have that at least. In STO you have multiple ways to get marks and items from reputation. You can also obtain gear from story missions that they simply hand you. Oh you need a phaser, go do (mission), you need a polaron weapon then go over there, you want disruptor then go to that one, and so on. In STO there is an absurd amount of gear that you can get for free and it's far far easier to gear in STO than virtually any other MMO out there. If you're having trouble with TFOs, you can step back and grab some items from the story to boost you up without ever touching fleet gear.
As for people not considering something fun, again as I said, are you getting rewards and avoiding an AFK penalty? If the answer is yes then you're getting to play and you're getting to participate and things aren't getting insta vaped without you ever getting to fire a shot like some people have claimed. If you're getting rewards you're getting to shoot. So again I would have to ask, what's the problem other than people's subjective opinion of not liking it? Folks are entitled to their opinion that it wasn't fun and to feel like they didn't get to do enough. But simply having that opinion on its own doesn't mean there is an issue. If folks don't think they get to participate enough, then as I asked previously, what do you consider getting to participate enough? Specifically I'm asking you to quantify it. Is it a percentage of the teams damage you want to be able to reach? Is it a certain length of mission as in mission objectives you got to do? What do you consider as having been able to participate enough? Because I've seen a ton of people talk about not being able to participate even though they're getting rewards that say otherwise. And none of them have quantified this yet so an actual debate can be had, or advice given on how to get to that point. Lastly, we have multiple bits of parse data showing that the problem isn't uber DPS stepping into normal, but people thinking there is an uber DPS present because of the combined might of their team.
As for saying "leave the normal queues for regular/new players" that logic goes both ways. If you're going to say only X people are allowed to play normal modes, then by that same logic other people can say that only Y people are allowed to play advanced and elite. Then you're right back to the whole locking people out of content thing that people have said they hate.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,442Community Moderator
At this point it feels like its getting to be a bit circular. We just keep going around the same issue from different directions, occasionally pointing fingers, and... generally getting nowhere.
And... mimetoo AND Darkblade are both right, as jonsills pointed out. I think we can all agree that forcing a nerf on players like marik suggests is not going to solve the issue. The fact of the matter is that if you do get scaled down in STO, you STILL have full access to ALL of your capabilities. Its just the top end stats brought down, which frankly means nothing.
Lets use the first leveling ship as an example. The Georgiou class can be claimed right off the bat for a brand new character, but hey look! You have FULL access to ALL weapon slots. (Only ship that does this due to being the prototype for the system). So despite the fact you only have the Stats of a lv 5 Lieutenant character, you have the capability to mount the same amount of weapons and consoles as a Captain. So therefore your stats, while only that of a lv 5, are being augmented by sheer numbers of phaser arrays for all intents and purposes. You're overpowered even with a full set of Mk 2 Phaser arrays because you have MORE phaser arrays than normal. Its fun, but also overpowered for the level. This was later fixed with all the other T6 ships with slots that unlock over time to be equalvalent to level appropriate ships. Ultimately you're still a lv 5, with appropriate level gear, BUT... you have MORE of it. In a way this is the same issue with scaling down higher level players. Yea the stats are adjusted, just like when you match levels with a lower level team leader, BUT... you have MORE stuff, which by default makes you more powerful than said lower level team leader.
At this time there is no way to rectify THAT particular detail. Locking people out of BOff slots, weapon slots, and console slots will just result in more chaos for the servers to deal with (and we all know how well the servers are with the current loadout system, do we REALLY want to start messing with locking slots for scale down instances) and the forums lighting on fire so fast it will make the Fires of Delta Rising look like a campfire.
But you see... my suggestion where the chosen difficulty effectively nerfs high dps players is specifically intended to allow them to participate in normal content without it being trivial. They would get more difficult enemies to destroy, and it wouldn't prevent the normal players from participating. It would level the playing field, if you will. They could still play on normal if they want to obliterate everything in a blink, but they could HAVE that challenge in ANY mission or TFO.
So, I'm not sure what the objection is, really. Forgive my density, I'm just not seeing the downside.
Here's the question I'm going to pose to you. What if I want to be able to obliterate everything by just glaring in that direction like Superman with the Cosmic Armor and I don't want a challenge? So long as I've acquired what I need to do so legitimately, what's the problem?
You keep saying that things "wouldn't prevent normal players from participating" yet that doesn't mean what you think it does. When you say someone isn't getting to participate, this tells me that something is either outright locking them out of getting to join the TFO and/or they're constantly getting hit with an AFK penalty. If a person goes into ISA as an example and that person gets rewards from that TFO, they were able to participate or they wouldn't have seen rewards.
The objection in this instance is that you're telling so called elite players they're doing something wrong by simply existing on the same map as you and having more DPS than you. Because I'm able to put out more DPS than you are, I must be punished by having my DPS capped and not allowed to do the maximum damage I'm capable of generating because someone else doesn't like it, even though by your own admission you are getting rewards, and thus by extension are getting to participate.
My suggestion would change this. Elite players would simply set their difficulty to Elite and be able to participate in Normal difficulty content on a level field.
Clearly, I'm missing something, if this isn't desirable.
If your goal is simply all people can participate and get rewards, then congratulations we're already there. All levels of player can participate and receive rewards as is right now without having to change a thing. The only problem is some people don't think the current system as it sits right now is fun. which again begs the question, what standard of participation are we going by? What do you consider to have participated enough? If you're getting rewards and aren't getting an AFK penalty, what's the problem?
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
In a way this is the same issue with scaling down higher level players. Yea the stats are adjusted, just like when you match levels with a lower level team leader, BUT... you have MORE stuff, which by default makes you more powerful than said lower level team leader.
But it's not really about "stuff". It's about how you use what you have. Cooldown reduction, ability actuation, piloting, mobility.. these are all far larger multipliers than "stuff" and are all areas that could merit a second look by a lot of players.
I remember when players used to celebrate self improvement, overcoming obstacles, and reaching new milestones.
I hesitate to post this, as I anticipate the usual circling of the wagons, but for three days now, it's been nearly impossible to participate in any queue missions at all. It's been going one of two ways.
Most common are the missions that are over before you can do anything. My Romulan was in one of the Borg missions (I don't recall what it's called) where the Tactical Cube appears near the end. He fired his Hyper Plasma torpedo, but both the Tac Cube AND the big portal thing were obliterated before it had fired all three torpedoes. Before that, whole spawns of enemies were being obliterated in less than a second.
Today, it was the Romulan minefield. I went around to the asteroids to free the freighters, but before I could free even one, that phase was over. By the time I warped to the three mines with the huge fleets of Romulans, they were wiped out before the animation of me warping in was over. I repaired one of the facilities, but before I could warp to the Falchion, it was already dead... took around 2 seconds. Just no way to enjoy missions like this. THREE DAYS this has been going on, but it's been an ongoing problem for years.
Of course, the opposite is also happening. Many of the more modern queue missions have been SO overtuned, in order to challenge people with ridiculous DPS, that more average players flat out CANNOT contribute. The Tzenkethi and Iconians are bad for this, but it still happens elsewhere too.
I actually placed support tickets on this issue years ago because the whales power players queuing normal mode public TFO killed spawns so quickly my casual player builds weren't able to do enough damage to the rapidly obliterated spawns to qualify for participation rewards. I believe they actually eliminated the minimum dps to solve that issue, because it hasn't been an issue for me in some time.
However, I can empathize with the frustration of simply not being able to "play" the TFO when a kitted power player is running through spawns and objectives at warp speed. Unfortunately, it's part of the STO landscape now because they certainly can't reduce, or remove benefits from players that have acquired the top kit and optimized their builds for advanced modes.
My best advice is to kit your ships and avatar with, at least, Blue Mark XV gear. This will allow you to survive the dps in a TFO with a power player, or do sufficient DPS that when a whale power player isn't in your TFO, you can still survive and, perhaps, carry other casual players.
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The game also scales you down if your team leader is a lower level and you match their level. The problem is you still have full access to all your abilities so you're still OP even when scaled down. I could team up with a friend whose level 37 as a lv 65, match their level... and my ship still has all consoles and weapons and everything. While the stats are adjusted, I still have EVERYTHING.
It's absolutely dismissive, yes.
This topic has been broached many times, most of them by you. None of the points you have made or the "solutions" you have suggested are anything that hasn't been proposed and shot down many times before.
The topic is dismissed because again, the problem is one with you personally and it's not the rest of our jobs to alter our play style to accommodate you. I know this sounds like I am being snarky, I am not. I am not saying it in a mean way, but I really think you need to consider the view point of everyone else playing the game. You have brought this up before, and every time you do, it's about you and what YOU think is fun.
I am saying you're not the only one, you're one of many. And most of us don't share your opinion that it's a problem so therefore no solution is required.
"The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few.. Or the one."
Again dude this is where I call shenanigans. How are people having content taken away from them? What content are people unable to join and get rewards from? Who is preventing them from being able to participate? Because those words don't mean what you think they do in the context you've used them. By people's own admission they are seeing rewards from the content which means that they are getting to experience the content and nothing has been taken from them. The issue is people not liking how much they got to participate and wishing they could have done more. Wishing they could have done more does not equate to them never getting to play. The run is still succeeding and those people are getting rewards for their time and contributions to the team, meaning they are getting to partake in the content so again I fail to see an issue here.
If people don't like how much they were able to participate and wish they could have had greater participation, fair enough, they're entitled to that viewpoint and opinion. If they want to participate more, then what are they doing on their end first and foremost to ensure they have the greatest chance to participate in the run? Are they making sure their ship has enough speed to keep up with the group? Are they making sure they have enough damage to avoid the AFK penalty? Are they speaking up if they don't know what to do in a particular TFO? By the admission of some people in here they have no desire to change their builds or anything they're doing because they're comfortable where they are. Which if they're comfortable where they are and don't want to change, fair enough, nothing is going to force them to change. However if someone isn't satisfied with the level of participation they have now, yet refuse to change anything to help themselves, why should I have to change anything on my end to accommodate them?
As I asked before dude, what level of participation do you want? What do you consider having participated enough and what do you consider carrying your own weight? Because so far, I've yet to really see you quantify this. You say you don't want content being taken away from people, yet by the standard of logic you're using here, you're robbing people like me of content by arguing for DPS limits and nerfing builds and so on even though by your own admission you are getting rewards and are able to participate.
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Sadly, it's not easily adaptable to older TFOs, but something like this going forward might help.
There was an opinion offered back on page 6 that suggested the two main contributors to player performance were piloting and ability actuation. I certainly agree with this theory. Gear plays a smaller part.
Hopefully not too many people read this so word of the recipe's secret ingredients don't get out
in my opinion, and i will use TFOs for the example. SuperDPSguy queues for normal mode TFO. someone like me is on that team, and it's over before I can even engage an enemy. I get the 30 minute afk penalty. You don't think I'm being denied content to play? To extend the denial, maybe I'm a single parent who only gets to play a half hour to an hour.
so I
1. can't play the TFO in the time I have to play
2. cannot get the advancement if it's a grind or endeavor
3. can't learn the dang TFO if it's over in 30 seconds.
Seems like content denial to me
I offered the exact same theory, but then on page 5.
Odd, I recall you playing way above Normal.
The situation gets different, though, when you literally get no shot in edge-wise. I suppose on Normal this can happen, where players two levels above you have joined your team.
In regards to the single parent only playing an hour or half hour a day, that excuse is only valid for so much and after awhile becomes purely that, an excuse. Alot of people in my fleet are either former/active military and/or police of some type, several with young kids. The ones who aren't military or police are going to school or working jobs of their own, as I'm assuming said hypothetical person would also have a job of some type to provide for their family. Sometimes the guys in my fleet are only able to be around for an hour before they dip, sometimes they're able to get on for a few hours a day, and sometimes we won't see them for several days. The oldest guy in our fleet is in his mid to late 50s and has a mild touch of schizophrenia. So you're not the only one who has things going on in their lives. Just as it's not your job to accommodate them, it's not their job to accommodate you.
If you're playing 30 minutes or 1 hour a day that gives you either 3.5 hours or 7 hours of playtime per week to get things for your character. That's plenty of time to run some story missions to get some gear. If you can run story missions to level your toon in the first place, you can rerun those story missions to get gear at max level. You can also go through the battlezones to earn marks and dilithium. If you do the daily quests in the Dyson BZ and tag even just one of the Rex spawns, you will get enough to cap out that toon on dilithium for the day, or be just shy of capping out, not to mention the marks and elite marks that go with it. All of that should take about 20 minutes. If you cap out for 7 days, that's 56k dilithium you can throw at things on just one single toon. If you're having trouble with certain story missions, you can find people who would be willing to help you if you just ask. You're only as helpless in this game as you choose to be. Most TFOs come with briefings these days that tell you what to do and have enforced waiting windows for you to read them. If you choose not to read the briefings, that's on you and not the team.
Earlier in this thread I had posted numbers from an ISA I had been grouped into with a couple of friends. The entirety of the run lasted 72 seconds. Top guy was doing 262k, then 170k, 80k, 35k, and 27k. I was the one doing 35k on an alt. In total the team dished out around 40.6m damage over the course of the run. To avoid an AFK penalty someone would've needed to do 406,000 damage. Not 406k DPS, but 406k total damage at a 1% AFK penalty. This means a minimum of 5.6k DPS was required to avoid an AFK penalty. This is easily achievable using all mk xii very rare gear you get from the story missions without ever having to touch fleet equipment, lobi gear or the like. If you double the duration of the run from 72 seconds to 144 seconds, then the required DPS is cut in half to 2.3k DPS. For the record, the lowest guy in there was at 4.6% of the total damage and was never in any danger of an AFK penalty. Looking at the damage curve all of us were able to spike our damage initially to around 3 times what we can normally sustain.
Now take an average team of players doing between 15k-30k each. Let's assume you have a team of 5 people doing 20k each normally. That is a combined DPS of 100k right out of the gate. Now if you assume each person is able to spike their damage to 3x what they would normally do, that jumps the combined DPS of the team from 100k to 300k. I don't need to tell you that things in normal will melt under that kind of pressure very fast. Now if we assume our 5th guy has an internet problem and lags behind, that's a combined DPS of 80k normally and spike DPS of 240k from the rest of his team. What you're seeing isn't some super DPS guy but the illusion of it. And unless you're actually parsing the run, you have no way of knowing if you're seeing the combined might of your team, or an uber DPS guy.
If you're getting rewards as most people have said, then you're not getting an AFK penalty and you are in fact getting to participate, you just don't like how much you got to participate. If you're actually getting an AFK penalty, then you have more to worry about than you think. Either way you're not being denied content as you are able to experience it. You just don't like the level you got to participate. So aside from a rare handful of exceptions to the rule, what evidence do you have to show there is this mass AFKing of people and denial of content?
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Not necessarily. In Cure Space Advanced (CSA), for instance, I usually fly to the right-most Cube... cloaked. I come out with a decent, fully buffed Alpha-strike; but it still takes me ca. 30 secs to kill the entire group (the price of not being an Elite player). When I then turn around, the other Cubes are sometimes already gone. Just occured to me, though, that this is not a matter of me flying too slowly per se, but is likely precisely how it should be: it simply means the ppl working on the other Cubes finished them off in about the same time I did. In fact, had there been Cubes left for me to go work on, it means others needed more time than me. (All round and about, of course, as often multiple ppl are working a single Cube).
Tl;dr: at times finding others have already done stuff is not necessarily a measure of failure on my part, but often just means ppl have (unwittingly, perhaps) divided the tasks more-or-less equally, which is a good thing.
I honestly got the impression Annemarie was merely giving an example with the 'single mother.' But even if she wasn't, it was still a valid point: sometimes ppl only have like half an hour before dinner or something.
Annemarie's example by virtue of how it's described tells me two things are happening. If the other 4 people are arriving ahead of the 5th person, that tells me automatically that the 5th person who arrived late is using a build/ship that is slower than the other 4 people in the run and not capable of keeping up. If said person is getting an AFK penalty on top of everything else, then it also tells me that person did less than 1% of the damage in the run and is using a build that is most likely not cohesive and is probably all over the place. At the very least we know that it needs work. I reiterated the above ISA example because it illustrates the point perfectly. Even with several people in there who would've qualified as high DPS people, none were given an AFK penalty. To avoid said AFK penalty a person would've only needed to do 5.6k DPS in the course of that 72 second run. If you doubled that run to 144 seconds, which is just shy of 2.5 minutes, it would've only taken 2.3k DPS to avoid a penalty. If someone gets an AFK penalty, that's something put in place by Cryptic itself telling that person they were not up to snuff and need to up their game. Again true AFK penalties should be extremely rare and if someone is hitting them all the time, then something is bad wrong.
Point still stands whether it was literal or an example. The other 4 people in that run have lives as well and it's not their job to construct the entirety of their gameplay around accommodating that 5th person and vice versa. Some days I could play 12+ hours if I chose to (seriously don't actually do that folks it's not healthy). Other days I may only have 30 minutes to play, and some days I may not get to play at all.
If someone is that hard pressed for time that they're having to rush and guarantee everything goes perfect to keep things from going squirrely, then imo they shouldn't be in the game to start with. They should wait until they have more time so they can slow down and enjoy the game, or utilize one of the other methods for getting things in game. TFO mark farming isn't the only way to get stuff. If they're that pressed for time as the example indicates, so long as they're getting marks and aren't actually getting an AFK penalty, then I would think they would appreciate the run being ended quickly so they can move on to the next one in the time they have left. Yet that's what is being protested, which is an oxymoronic approach. If that person is having issues with TFOs, then they should step back and get some more upgrades and/or experience before returning. Otherwise they're just slamming their heads against a wall. The "I've only got x amount of time and can't play that much" is only valid for so much before it becomes an excuse for mediocrity and a crutch for people. If you're that pressed for time, handle your real life business first before you think about playing STO.
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peopler like ytou are the EXACT reason I do not play TFOs, and i hate it when i look at the game and think, wow, do i blow a couple days worth of dilithium on rerolling the endeavor(s) or just not do them (again) just like the current grind. I have the options of the patrols or the episode to advance, because i KNOW the TFOs will be a bad experience. Yes I get it's an MMO, but I have experienced enough to play it like a single player and avoid the other players as much as possible.
Darkbladejk is saying if you have the bare minimum build competence with the bare minimum of piloting skill you won’t get hit by AFK accept from some extremely rare outliner cases which do not happen often. At which point its reasonable to point out someone who is often getting hit with AFK needs to improve their build and/or piloting instead of falsely blaming other players as they don't want to look at what they are doing wrong.
As per the data shown early in the thread the UberDPSers are being blamed but are nearly always not the ones causing problems and in fact are often helping. If you are being hit with AFK then you are doing ground level DPS in space or another way to put it you are doing less DPS then 1 fighter out of 12 from 1 hangar bay. Which is not the fault of the UberDPSers or other players.
If you are doing that low DPS for example less then 400k total damage we shouldn’t be blaming everyone else and instead looking at what is going wrong with that players core build and piloting. I don't like the words "git Gud" but essentially that is what is needed. Not even get good. Just get to a bare minimum level of competency for ship build and piloting and you wont get AFK.
Can't believe I'm saying this, but here I don't think Darkbladejk is entirely wrong.
N.B. Not saying Annemarie is receiving all these AFK-Penalties per se (as I still believe she was just talking hypothetical), but in general, yes, getting 'gud' enough to play at your desired level not only makes sense, but makes your game experience a lot more enjoyable too.
The original issue, and one that I have encountered on rare but annoying occasion, is when you're running a Normal TFO and one or two Elite players will queue for it. They come in with overpowered ships and reflexes honed on running that TFO at Elite level a large number of times, wipe everything on the map before those of us with less-powerful ships and who don't know what to do before it even happens can so much as get off a shot, and Normal players wind up eating an AFK because they didn't get to do enough damage to count.
Now, Darkblade and other, who are understandably proud of the time and effort they've put into their builds, hold that the problem here is with the "noobs" who in their view are obstinately refusing to spend the time and money to become Elite. This could be solved with having an Elite option for those TFOs that are part of Events, although as I've pointed out the Leviathan event solves this issue by having things happening simultaneously at such a distance apart that one ship literally cannot dominate the entire battlefield (I was sure happy enough to see one of those Elite players come in and help me wipe a Terran dreadnought that was preventing me from reaching the second set of plasma accelerators in the left lane!).
Meanwhile, Meimetoo would appear to have staked out the position that they don't have to improve at all, and that everyone deserves credit simply for participating (which, sadly, encourages players to actually AFK, a problem I remember encountering years back). This position appears to assume that anyone who isn't running Mark XII whites is "elite", something I can disprove by running anything higher than Normal in my own ships. This causes a knee-jerk emotional reaction in the actually Elite players, who seem to think the entire argument opposing them is this - a single player who manages to go an entire TFO without shooting anything, while everyone else gets on just fine. (This is also a rarity, in my observation; so long as one or two Elites aren't roflstomping the entire field, generally speaking everyone can damage something.)
Meimetoo isn't entirely in the wrong here, either; even Darkblade has admitted to occasionally going into Normal TFOs in order to feel more powerful, not just because an Event requires it. Some Elite players are like that - they've developed those skills and want to show them off, like the shadetree mechanic who knows how to soup up street cars into racers, and insists on demonstrating that skill on the nearest four-lane surface street (had one of those wipe out in the rain about four blocks from my house a couple months ago, almost destroying the memorial set up by the family of the one before him). And like those shadetree mechanics, they don't seem to care that they're ruining things for other people. (On the plus side, at least Elite braggarts aren't putting anyone in any actual physical danger.)
Colonel Marik, on the third hand, isn't making things any clearer with the insistence that there should be some sort of Harrison-Bergeron-esque limitation on the upper end of DPS, something which is impractical at best and potentially damaging to the overall game at worst. (There's a reason the folks putting all the limiters on Bergeron in the novel were the bad guys, after all.)
My personal suggestion at this point is that everyone step back, take a nice cleansing breath, and read the arguments on all sides again, remembering in the process that we're all individuals with our own (sometimes flawed) perceptions. And that "git gud" is not a valid point, as one must have a chance to "git mediocre" first.
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And I really wish cryptic would do something about that
Meanwhile, Meimetoo has never held such position.
Everything else you impute, like me allegedly saying "that anyone who isn't running Mark XII whites is Elite," is, of course, nowhere near a position I've ever taken, thank you.
Alot of people, a lot of my friends no longer play due to what I call the warframe effect.
its not really the players fault, but being new to the game and doing tfos for the first time, with insanely geared players where you don't get to do much because the better players blow everything up is not a fun experience.
And why its called warframe experience, is because new warframe players simply cannot keep up with veteran players who can clear the entire mission before the player even gets there.
its mitigated some in sto with time and gearing. But also there is a legit skill ceiling for some people, or age/reflexes. And expecting them to "git gud" really doesn't fix anything.
Is there a fix cryptic could reasonably implement? Unless they wanna create a higher tier difficulty to challenge veterans? likely not. This is primarily a power creep issue from years of hawking lootcrate gear onto us.
but this also begs the question, why are such advanced players queueing for normal instances and not advanced? Leave the normal queues for regular/new players. (exceptions to events that lack any difficulty)
Preventing Elite players from entering lower Tier TFO's would solve that, but has the major drawback of literally locking ppl out of content: the very thing some ppl are decrying. So, I would not propose that, but still think it's overall unsportsmanlike for an Elite player to enter a Normal TFO, whether it's strictly verboten or not.
I know, I said that.
what would fix the first argument is to make ALL content available at at least normal and Advanced. i do not know which is played more, advanced or elite. Whichever level has the biggest population should be given priority.
The second argument is simple enough. the game needs to parse your ability to perform at that level. If you can't you don't get to play. simple. You cannot reasonably expect to play in the majors when you are at best high school JV.
so instead of screaming and posting walls of text, how about suggestions to fix it?
Now getting into a few choice bits.
I'm not judging people and trying to beat people over the head and say they're not allowed to play until they can devote more time to gaming. What I said was "If someone is that hard pressed for time that they're having to rush and guarantee everything goes perfect to keep things from going squirrely, then imo they shouldn't be in the game to start with. They should wait until they have more time so they can slow down and enjoy the game, or utilize one of the other methods for getting things in game."
That is purely me giving an opinion. If they're pressed for time and they're having to rush through everything under the sun to the point if they so much as blink at the wrong time they're going to fail, then in my personal opinion they should wait and try again later when they're not so pressed for time. Wait until they are able to sit down and enjoy it better without having to rush through everything and can take their time, whether that time amounts to 30 minutes, an hour, or 12+ hours. The point of the game is to have fun, and if people are rushing and stressing themselves out, why are they playing?
Neither of these things is what I said. See again the above. What I said was my personal opinion that if someone is pressed for time to the point they're having to rush through everything and can't enjoy it, they should wait until they are able to sit down and enjoy it better without having to rush themselves. The second thing I said is that all 5 members of that team have lives outside of the game and it's not fair for one person to expect the other 4 people to restructure the entirety of their playtime to accommodate them and vice versa. You alone are responsible for what you do while you play and how you choose to spend your playtime in game, be that 30 minutes, or multiple hours at the time. If you are going into a run, you need to first make sure you've done everything to ensure you have the best chance to participate on your end.
If the group is always running ahead of you, this tells me you're in a ship that's not fast enough to keep up with the group. If you're constantly getting hit with an AFK penalty on whatever difficulty level you've chosen, that is not normal and the game itself as programmed by Cryptic is telling you that what you're doing isn't working and you need to change it. Like meimeitoo said, if you're constantly getting an AFK penalty at the chosen level, then you're not ready for that content in the state you're in now. That isn't me telling you that to be some kind of an elitist, that is something Cryptic themselves programmed into the game telling you that. I am not now nor have I ever been asserting people should have to do 50 zillion dps or whatever the record is now. What I am however saying is if you're constantly getting hit with an AFK penalty and you're not able to keep up with the group on your chosen level, it's incumbent on you to either make changes and come back, or play on a lower level because the game itself is telling you that what you're doing is not working.
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This is not what I'm advocating and I have never claimed the problem is "noobs refusing to spend the time and money to become elite". see more below.
What I have said is that people are responsible for their own ability/inability to play the game, others are not. If someone is having trouble competing at their chosen level, be it Normal, Advanced, or Elite, they alone are responsible for identifying problems and fixing them. If they should seek help in identifying and fixing issues with their performance/build, I don't care to help them, but all I can do is make recommendations, I can't do the fixing for them. As meimeitoo if you're constantly hitting AFK penalties on advanced level, then one of two things needs to happen, either you play on normal again, or you up your build and skills until you can play on advanced without issues. If people are getting rewards, then they're getting to participate. Neither myself or anyone on the team is responsible for them feeling like it went too fast as that is their subjective opinion. If a person is constantly getting hit with an AFK penalty and constantly arriving too late to shoot things, but continues to use that build/ship giving them the AFK penalty and that's too slow to keep up, the problem is them, not the rest of the team.
What I have also said is that sometimes I don't always go into elite TFOs even though I'm capable of playing them because I don't always want to worry about having the fail condition hanging over my head if I don't do everything perfectly. Sometimes I just want to blast things for the sake of blasting without having to worry about doing everything perfectly or failing. Other times I play on that lower difficulty because there isn't a higher version that exists for that particular content. An uber DPSer isn't doing anything wrong by playing on a lower difficulty, nor is the lower DPSer doing anything wrong by joining an elite. Like everyone else, I have my opinions as to when I believe people should/shouldn't be in certain types of content. So long as you're getting rewards and not getting hit with an AFK penalty, you're getting to play and you're getting to participate so what's the issue?
We've also seen multiple different parses by multiple different people across multiple different runs showing that in almost all cases what people are seeing is not the presence of an uber DPSer, but the combined might of their entire team. So they're blaming one particular group of people that aren't even present.
Except this game is nothing like Warframe at all and the two games aren't even comparable. I've played Warframe since 2016 and it is absolutely NOTHING like STO. In Warframe you're limited by the frames and equipment you have unlocked, as well as the quality of your mods you have available. In Warframe me and little Timmy can have the same build on the same frame using the same equipment and mods, yet I'm going to do more damage because my mods have been upgraded where as Timmy's hasn't. I'm also older that Timmy, faster, and more experienced. Even if you gave me and Timmy the same quality of mods, as in upgrades, I'm still going to run circles around Timmy purely based on experience, that same would be true with STO. Warframe is also a MUCH faster paced game than STO has ever been and ever will be. Also in Warframe you have the option of doing missions solo should you choose. so you can still progress, just not as fast as running with the veteran players.
STO may have some missions that are a little more fast paced than others, but is nothing like Warframe at all. One thing they do have in common is you can run with people, or you can run solo. That's the only thing they have in common but they have that at least. In STO you have multiple ways to get marks and items from reputation. You can also obtain gear from story missions that they simply hand you. Oh you need a phaser, go do (mission), you need a polaron weapon then go over there, you want disruptor then go to that one, and so on. In STO there is an absurd amount of gear that you can get for free and it's far far easier to gear in STO than virtually any other MMO out there. If you're having trouble with TFOs, you can step back and grab some items from the story to boost you up without ever touching fleet gear.
As for people not considering something fun, again as I said, are you getting rewards and avoiding an AFK penalty? If the answer is yes then you're getting to play and you're getting to participate and things aren't getting insta vaped without you ever getting to fire a shot like some people have claimed. If you're getting rewards you're getting to shoot. So again I would have to ask, what's the problem other than people's subjective opinion of not liking it? Folks are entitled to their opinion that it wasn't fun and to feel like they didn't get to do enough. But simply having that opinion on its own doesn't mean there is an issue. If folks don't think they get to participate enough, then as I asked previously, what do you consider getting to participate enough? Specifically I'm asking you to quantify it. Is it a percentage of the teams damage you want to be able to reach? Is it a certain length of mission as in mission objectives you got to do? What do you consider as having been able to participate enough? Because I've seen a ton of people talk about not being able to participate even though they're getting rewards that say otherwise. And none of them have quantified this yet so an actual debate can be had, or advice given on how to get to that point. Lastly, we have multiple bits of parse data showing that the problem isn't uber DPS stepping into normal, but people thinking there is an uber DPS present because of the combined might of their team.
As for saying "leave the normal queues for regular/new players" that logic goes both ways. If you're going to say only X people are allowed to play normal modes, then by that same logic other people can say that only Y people are allowed to play advanced and elite. Then you're right back to the whole locking people out of content thing that people have said they hate.
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And... mimetoo AND Darkblade are both right, as jonsills pointed out. I think we can all agree that forcing a nerf on players like marik suggests is not going to solve the issue. The fact of the matter is that if you do get scaled down in STO, you STILL have full access to ALL of your capabilities. Its just the top end stats brought down, which frankly means nothing.
Lets use the first leveling ship as an example. The Georgiou class can be claimed right off the bat for a brand new character, but hey look! You have FULL access to ALL weapon slots. (Only ship that does this due to being the prototype for the system). So despite the fact you only have the Stats of a lv 5 Lieutenant character, you have the capability to mount the same amount of weapons and consoles as a Captain. So therefore your stats, while only that of a lv 5, are being augmented by sheer numbers of phaser arrays for all intents and purposes. You're overpowered even with a full set of Mk 2 Phaser arrays because you have MORE phaser arrays than normal. Its fun, but also overpowered for the level. This was later fixed with all the other T6 ships with slots that unlock over time to be equalvalent to level appropriate ships. Ultimately you're still a lv 5, with appropriate level gear, BUT... you have MORE of it. In a way this is the same issue with scaling down higher level players. Yea the stats are adjusted, just like when you match levels with a lower level team leader, BUT... you have MORE stuff, which by default makes you more powerful than said lower level team leader.
At this time there is no way to rectify THAT particular detail. Locking people out of BOff slots, weapon slots, and console slots will just result in more chaos for the servers to deal with (and we all know how well the servers are with the current loadout system, do we REALLY want to start messing with locking slots for scale down instances) and the forums lighting on fire so fast it will make the Fires of Delta Rising look like a campfire.
You keep saying that things "wouldn't prevent normal players from participating" yet that doesn't mean what you think it does. When you say someone isn't getting to participate, this tells me that something is either outright locking them out of getting to join the TFO and/or they're constantly getting hit with an AFK penalty. If a person goes into ISA as an example and that person gets rewards from that TFO, they were able to participate or they wouldn't have seen rewards.
The objection in this instance is that you're telling so called elite players they're doing something wrong by simply existing on the same map as you and having more DPS than you. Because I'm able to put out more DPS than you are, I must be punished by having my DPS capped and not allowed to do the maximum damage I'm capable of generating because someone else doesn't like it, even though by your own admission you are getting rewards, and thus by extension are getting to participate.
If your goal is simply all people can participate and get rewards, then congratulations we're already there. All levels of player can participate and receive rewards as is right now without having to change a thing. The only problem is some people don't think the current system as it sits right now is fun. which again begs the question, what standard of participation are we going by? What do you consider to have participated enough? If you're getting rewards and aren't getting an AFK penalty, what's the problem?
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But it's not really about "stuff". It's about how you use what you have. Cooldown reduction, ability actuation, piloting, mobility.. these are all far larger multipliers than "stuff" and are all areas that could merit a second look by a lot of players.
I remember when players used to celebrate self improvement, overcoming obstacles, and reaching new milestones.
I actually placed support tickets on this issue years ago because the whales power players queuing normal mode public TFO killed spawns so quickly my casual player builds weren't able to do enough damage to the rapidly obliterated spawns to qualify for participation rewards. I believe they actually eliminated the minimum dps to solve that issue, because it hasn't been an issue for me in some time.
However, I can empathize with the frustration of simply not being able to "play" the TFO when a kitted power player is running through spawns and objectives at warp speed. Unfortunately, it's part of the STO landscape now because they certainly can't reduce, or remove benefits from players that have acquired the top kit and optimized their builds for advanced modes.
My best advice is to kit your ships and avatar with, at least, Blue Mark XV gear. This will allow you to survive the dps in a TFO with a power player, or do sufficient DPS that when a whale power player isn't in your TFO, you can still survive and, perhaps, carry other casual players.
Good luck and I hope you find your peace.