You're correct. This is essentially the argument. I find it unfathomable that an Elite level player, who would chose to run anything beneath Elite level for whatever reason, would then demand that the other players, who are appropriately running their level of gameplay, "get good" because they do not meet the same Elite standard.
Now, as I've said that I do not agree with the game restricting any player from playing as they please, that doesn't mean that some measure of self control cannot be used. But if an Elite player is going to step down into Advanced or even Normal, since they are outside of their sandbox, they have no right to demand those players, who are in their own sandbox, and with whom Elites will get teamed, to "get good".
Elite can always go back to Elite. But Advanced and Normal players, who are comfortable where they are and have no desire to "get good", have nowhere else to go. And, since pottsey has already shown and demonstrated that one can control oneself if one choses to, if you know for a fact when you step down into Advanced and Normal level content that you will most likely AFK someone and then you do, then yes, IMHO, you are trolling your fellow players.
I guess I had another 2 quatloos to share. 😏
To cover this really quickly since it wasn't there when I drafted my above reply.
Elite requires higher levels of coordination and there is no room for error. All the optionals from advanced and normal are now requirements with hard coded failure conditions if you don't meet them. If you fail one thing you fail the entire TFO. Sometimes those of us who can play elite like a little mindless destruction without thinking about that.
If someone fails a TFO because they didn't meet a specific condition, that's not people like me saying "get good", that's the game itself saying you missed it. I'm saying if people want to play on advanced and elite they should have to pull advanced/elite levels of weight to do it.
If that advanced TFO requires them to do 15k DPS to clear it, then they need to do 15k. If that elite requires 70k DPS to clear it, then they need to be doing 70k. These would be standards cryptic themselves put in place and hard coded into the TFOs. When I say that guy doing less than our hypothetical 70k has no business in elite, that's not just me telling him that, that's the hardcoded fail condition Cryptic put in place telling him that he's not ready for that content.
Also included some AFK penalty examples above to show they're not as common as people want to believe. They're in fact very rare.
My issue is that people are coming in and saying they're not getting to play because of so called high DPSers even though by their own admission they're avoiding the AFK penalty and getting rewards, which means they are getting to play. They're then advocating changes to effect people like myself and others who would qualify as high DPS by their standards, all while they remain untouched, then getting mad when they are held to that same standard. If they're going to advocate that folks be asked to bring a lesser ship or systems that would forcibly nerf people like myself, I see no reason I shouldn't be allowed to ask they bring a stronger ship.
My guy, I think you're missing the point. You're kinda caught up in your own argument. Try and take a step back and see this from a different perspective. I don't believe anyone here is advocating for Elite gameplay to be nerfed, so that players, who truly are not ready for it, can play it anyway without having to change or improve.
The issue is Elite players stepping down into Advanced and Normal gameplay and vaporizing everything before the players, who are skilled and appropriately geared for that level of gameplay, get to do much of anything.
Ok, so you say that you occassionally like to step down from Elite for "mindless destruction", so that you don't have to worry about the fail conditions associated with Elite. I get that. Fair enough.
The problem I am having, and the problem that most everyone else is having here, is that you cannot dictate to those players IN ADVANCED AND NORMAL GAMEPLAY that they must change/improve/"get good" just because you, as an ELITE, decided to play in their sandbox. That's unfair. They ARE geared appropriately. They ARE skilled enough for their level of content. The Elite is the odd one out.
Players' skills are going to naturally improve the more they play the game. Players are naturally going to use better gear as they advance as well, because better gear becomes available through loot drops, and then there's Reputation gear if they choose to go that route. They may not decide to craft and/or upgrade gear, but that's completely unnecessary to be successful.
No one here, except Elites, is talking about unskilled, under-geared players playing Elite level content, though. Everyone else is talking about Elites stepping down onto everyone else's playground. Hell, the OP even mentions getting zerged out of Romulan Imperial Minefield by uber-DPSers. A mission that becomes available at level 10! How is a level 10 supposed to "get good" and compete with that?
So, if you want to step down from the NBA and play a college-level or even high school-level basketball game, fine. You'll obviously dominate the court. But is everyone else gonna have as good of a time playing, if they never even get a chance to touch the ball? Is it fair for you to yell at them to "get good" when it's you out of your league and on their court? No, it's not.
Damnit, y'all made me use a sports reference. 🙄
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator and Resident She-Wolf
Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
You're correct. This is essentially the argument. I find it unfathomable that an Elite level player, who would chose to run anything beneath Elite level for whatever reason, would then demand that the other players, who are appropriately running their level of gameplay, "get good" because they do not meet the same Elite standard.
Now, as I've said that I do not agree with the game restricting any player from playing as they please, that doesn't mean that some measure of self control cannot be used. But if an Elite player is going to step down into Advanced or even Normal, since they are outside of their sandbox, they have no right to demand those players, who are in their own sandbox, and with whom Elites will get teamed, to "get good".
Elite can always go back to Elite. But Advanced and Normal players, who are comfortable where they are and have no desire to "get good", have nowhere else to go. And, since pottsey has already shown and demonstrated that one can control oneself if one choses to, if you know for a fact when you step down into Advanced and Normal level content that you will most likely AFK someone and then you do, then yes, IMHO, you are trolling your fellow players.
I guess I had another 2 quatloos to share. 😏
To cover this really quickly since it wasn't there when I drafted my above reply.
Elite requires higher levels of coordination and there is no room for error. All the optionals from advanced and normal are now requirements with hard coded failure conditions if you don't meet them. If you fail one thing you fail the entire TFO. Sometimes those of us who can play elite like a little mindless destruction without thinking about that.
If someone fails a TFO because they didn't meet a specific condition, that's not people like me saying "get good", that's the game itself saying you missed it. I'm saying if people want to play on advanced and elite they should have to pull advanced/elite levels of weight to do it.
If that advanced TFO requires them to do 15k DPS to clear it, then they need to do 15k. If that elite requires 70k DPS to clear it, then they need to be doing 70k. These would be standards cryptic themselves put in place and hard coded into the TFOs. When I say that guy doing less than our hypothetical 70k has no business in elite, that's not just me telling him that, that's the hardcoded fail condition Cryptic put in place telling him that he's not ready for that content.
Also included some AFK penalty examples above to show they're not as common as people want to believe. They're in fact very rare.
My issue is that people are coming in and saying they're not getting to play because of so called high DPSers even though by their own admission they're avoiding the AFK penalty and getting rewards, which means they are getting to play. They're then advocating changes to effect people like myself and others who would qualify as high DPS by their standards, all while they remain untouched, then getting mad when they are held to that same standard. If they're going to advocate that folks be asked to bring a lesser ship or systems that would forcibly nerf people like myself, I see no reason I shouldn't be allowed to ask they bring a stronger ship.
My guy, I think you're missing the point. You're kinda caught up in your own argument. Try and take a step back and see this from a different perspective. I don't believe anyone here is advocating for Elite gameplay to be nerfed, so that players, who truly are not ready for it, can play it anyway without having to change or improve.
The issue is Elite players stepping down into Advanced and Normal gameplay and vaporizing everything before the players, who are skilled and appropriately geared for that level of gameplay, get to do much of anything.
Ok, so you say that you occassionally like to step down from Elite for "mindless destruction", so that you don't have to worry about the fail conditions associated with Elite. I get that. Fair enough.
The problem I am having, and the problem that most everyone else is having here, is that you cannot dictate to those players IN ADVANCED AND NORMAL GAMEPLAY that they must change/improve/"get good" just because you, as an ELITE, decided to play in their sandbox. That's unfair. They ARE geared appropriately. They ARE skilled enough for their level of content. The Elite is the odd one out.
Players' skills are going to naturally improve the more they play the game. Players are naturally going to use better gear as they advance as well, because better gear becomes available through loot drops, and then there's Reputation gear if they choose to go that route. They may not decide to craft and/or upgrade gear, but that's completely unnecessary to be successful.
No one here, except Elites, is talking about unskilled, under-geared players playing Elite level content, though. Everyone else is talking about Elites stepping down onto everyone else's playground. Hell, the OP even mentions getting zerged out of Romulan Imperial Minefield by uber-DPSers. A mission that becomes available at level 10! How is a level 10 supposed to "get good" and compete with that?
So, if you want to step down from the NBA and play a college-level or even high school-level basketball game, fine. You'll obviously dominate the court. But is everyone else gonna have as good of a time playing, if they never even get a chance to touch the ball? Is it fair for you to yell at them to "get good" when it's you out of your league and on their court? No, it's not.
^^ Probably the most lucid post in the thread. I could have saved myself a whole lot of typing.
Yes, if a Normal or Advanced player wants to try Elite, they should bring a better build cause Advanced build just won't cut Elite content.
Normal/Advanced players ARE geared for Normal/Advanced TFOs and should not have to 'git gud' just because an overpowered, Elite player comes down to their levels to play.
Maybe the devs could add Advanced/Elite levels to Event TFOs. Would that solve the problem? Mostly. There will still be Elite-level players dropping down to do runs as fast as possible to get a daily over with.
Pretty sure they're not trying to troll 'lesser' builds with their uber builds. To me, if I've built something uber I'd use it in uber content. If I wanted to use it in Normal or Advanced I'd pick something for single player play-such as Patrols and story missions. I'll probably never have the uber build, but I can get through Advanced and participate enough to not get AFK'd. In fact, I think I only got AFK'd once, a very long time ago.
So, not complaining about Elites coming down, so long as I can still participate. Just don't expect me to change my build unless I just want to experiment with something.
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.
My guy, I think you're missing the point. You're kinda caught up in your own argument. Try and take a step back and see this from a different perspective. I don't believe anyone here is advocating for Elite gameplay to be nerfed, so that players, who truly are not ready for it, can play it anyway without having to change or improve.
Actually that very thing has been argued in the original post and in a subsequent post from the very beginning of the thread.
It shouldn't be possible for anyone to do SO much damage that it completely trivializes the game for them, and allows them to take the game away from other players... either by just blowing everything up instantly, or by the devs having to make things more difficult than most players can handle.
So, no... I wouldn't consider increasing my damage. Mobility isn't really an issue either, I'm often where I need to be. Consider the Tac Cube I mentioned. It warped in right next to me. I fired at it immediately, but it was destroyed before the hyperplasma fired its three torpedoes. My setup wouldn't help prevent that.
In these posts, the OP indicates they believe it shouldn't be possible for people to do so much damage and that the devs need to do something about. Simultaneously also saying they wouldn't consider increasing their damage or mobility as they like things where it is. I'm sorry but in my book, that's striking at people like me first. They're advocating that my output be reduced because they don't like my ability to generate said levels of output, while simultaneously not wanting to change anything of their own build to improve their ability to participate. To Marik's credit, he has been the most civil person arguing said point.
The issue is Elite players stepping down into Advanced and Normal gameplay and vaporizing everything before the players, who are skilled and appropriately geared for that level of gameplay, get to do much of anything.
Ok, so you say that you occassionally like to step down from Elite for "mindless destruction", so that you don't have to worry about the fail conditions associated with Elite. I get that. Fair enough.
The problem I am having, and the problem that most everyone else is having here, is that you cannot dictate to those players IN ADVANCED AND NORMAL GAMEPLAY that they must change/improve/"get good" just because you, as an ELITE, decided to play in their sandbox. That's unfair. They ARE geared appropriately. They ARE skilled enough for their level of content. The Elite is the odd one out.
Players' skills are going to naturally improve the more they play the game. Players are naturally going to use better gear as they advance as well, because better gear becomes available through loot drops, and then there's Reputation gear if they choose to go that route. They may not decide to craft and/or upgrade gear, but that's completely unnecessary to be successful.
I accept those people are saying they're not having fun. I also accept they think there is too much damage in the game, which they are entitled to as an opinion. I've even agreed with them that advanced and elite versions of event maps need to return as I despise being relegated to normal modes.
In this thread and in the last one before this, neither myself or anyone else said anything that amounted to "get good" until others first advocated that people like myself and others they would label as high DPS essentially have our builds nerfed or nerf ourselves because they have refused to change. I was content not to say anything unless someone else started the conversation, which is what happened with the first thread, and now here in this one. Had they not said something on these forums first, I wouldn't have said anything either. Yet certain people chose to come onto these forums and advocate that the devs make changes to negatively impact my build and others they would view as high DPS because they can't participate as much as they feel they should be able too. While simultaneously refusing to alter their own builds to allow them greater chance to participate. In other words, by default advocating everyone else is responsible for their ability to participate or lack of. And I wholly reject that notion. Essentially they're poking what they've admitted to be a beehive or may cause a "circling of the wagons" and then getting mad when the bees actually sting or there is a circling of the wagons.
Is it conceivable by sheer statistics and probability that someone could enter a lower level TFO and vaporize everything before anyone else has had a chance to fire, sure it could happen, and I've acknowledged this. Do a doubt that it's happened at some point, again no I don't. The game has been around long enough that I'm sure many statistically improbable events have happened. At the same time I refuse to believe that this is happening as often as some people in here want me to believe without some sort of evidence to back it up. If people are getting rewards for the TFO then this eviscerates the argument that they're not getting to participate, because if they couldn't participate at all then they would get hit with an AFK penalty, yet people in here are saying they're not seeing AFK penalties. So they are in fact getting to participate, just not as much as they would like to. They say they would like to participate more, okay fair enough. First, what are they doing on their part to give themselves the greatest chance to participate? If they know people are getting to targets before them, and destroying things before they can ever fire, have they tried to use a build with more mobility to it so they can keep up? If the answer is no, then they have no grounds to say it's not a mobility issue because they've never tried.
I'm of the mindset that so long as people meet the standards the game itself imposes, they have a right to be in any content they choose, be they exactly at the minimum standards or exceeding those standard 100 times over. If a TFO like Dranuur Gauntlet required 40k from each person (idk what the actual number for elite is but you get the idea), and they are not pulling that 40k and cause the TFO to fail, that's not me telling them they need to improve, that is the game itself as established by Cryptic telling them they need to improve. In that hypothetical scenario I am not the one that set that 40k, but Cryptic themselves when they hardcoded it into the TFO, yet people want to get mad at me for saying what the game is already telling them. I am not holding them to any kind of standard in that instance other than the one the game itself established, yet somehow I'm the bad guy. If people want to come onto these forums saying they think DPS should be toned down by the devs, thus effecting me and others, they can't get mad when on the opposite side of the coin I say they need to bring better builds if they're having trouble participating. It goes both ways on that and is a double standard to advocate I need to bring a lesser build and/or DPS needs to be toned down, while simultaneously refusing to change anything on their end to help themselves. THAT is what I have an issue with. They expect me to be the one to change while doing nothing on their side, yet get mad when I hold them to that same standard.
As for people improving by playing the game, generally I would agree, but there are plenty who refuse to learn and get better. I'm sure you saw my example of my former fleetmate that I named Bob. In fact I've shown you the build that Bob was using in that instance in mod chat before. Bob claimed he had been playing since beta, but died 18 times in normal mode. Yet got angry when my officer dared try to help him. Bob would not accept that he was in part to blame for his woes and insisted it was the game and refused to change anything, thus refusing to learn. This is why I have advocated the checks I do. It filters out people like Bob who would ruin it for others, while giving everyone else a path of progression to learn and improve. How far they choose to go down that path is up to them so long as they're meeting the minimums for the content as required by the game itself.
No one here, except Elites, is talking about unskilled, under-geared players playing Elite level content, though. Everyone else is talking about Elites stepping down onto everyone else's playground. Hell, the OP even mentions getting zerged out of Romulan Imperial Minefield by uber-DPSers. A mission that becomes available at level 10! How is a level 10 supposed to "get good" and compete with that?
So, if you want to step down from the NBA and play a college-level or even high school-level basketball game, fine. You'll obviously dominate the court. But is everyone else gonna have as good of a time playing, if they never even get a chance to touch the ball? Is it fair for you to yell at them to "get good" when it's you out of your league and on their court? No, it's not.
Damnit, y'all made me use a sports reference. 🙄
I can think of two ways to solve that issue, but there is a glaring elephant in the room that needs to be mentioned with that example. While I get what you're going for with the example, we're not talking about low level characters and people below max level here. We're talking about people who have had plenty of time to hit max level. I do not hold low level characters to the same standard I would a max level character. I'm much more inclined to have sympathy for a struggling level 10 character than I am someone who is max level, especially if that max level toon has been playing as long as some of the people in here hint that they've been playing. Now with that out of the way I will address the Minefield example.
-The first way that this can be solved is level brackets in the TFO system. Only those people within 10 levels of each other can join public TFOs together. This limits the the difference between stats to something far more manageable.
-The second solution is to apply a scaling mechanic similar to the one SWTOR uses. In SWTOR let's suppose you were on a planet for levels 26-32 and you're level 30. Let's suppose I wanted to bring my level 80 toon that's at max gear and damage level. Once I arrived on that planet, the game would scale me and my equipment down to level 32 and assume I am using the highest grade of equipment available for that level. In STO terms, if you were level 30 and could conceivably only access mk vii golds, then the game would assume I am 32 with mk vii golds. While I may have a slight stat advantage, you are still able to compete.
Lastly for the NBA example, again I get what you're going for but the analogy doesn't work in this instance. The NBA example implies by necessity that certain people can't obtain NBA status and can never make it to the NBA. It also implies by necessity that those people who can't get to the NBA can't have the skills said NBA player does, and in STO that's simply not the case. When we've talked before about ships in game and the like, I've mentioned that there are maybe 9 ships that I don't own because I have no interest in them and have a ton of toons that I've geared out. That's not an exaggeration. Everything I have now as a lifetime player, someone starting the game tomorrow could eventually have themselves, it will just take them longer to get there. The only exceptions possibly being the lifetime ships. Every skill, every ship, every power I am capable of obtaining and learning to use, they are capable of obtaining and learning to use as well. In terms of accessibility the entire playerbase is on equal footing. If they know they are having trouble with survival as one example, and they know there is a set in game that will give them greater survival, or a console off a certain ship in the cstore that could help them, yet they refuse to go after either of them, who is at fault?
I am saying, if people are going to advocate DPS be limited or nerfed so they can participate more, I'm going to also advocate they bring better builds at the same time so they have the greatest chance to compete from the start. Had the OP not said anything, I wouldn't have said anything on this subject either.
"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
Dude, I'm not even gonna point by point that, because it's becoming tedious and quite frankly, there's been enough rambling going on in this thread.
Ok, I concede that marik initially called for nerfing top-end DPS. I don't agree with that. Seeking DPS is a valid gameplay path for those who enjoy chasing that dragon. But of those in this thread, I believe, he is in the minority asking for that. Val, who you have most consistently butted heads with here, certainly wasn't asking for anything to be nerfed. In fact, Val's main point before getting sidetracked with your proposal, was that more Elite level content needs to be added and better rewards to incentivize playing it, to give DPSers a place to play without affecting Advanced and Normal level players.
But that proposal certainly wouldn't solve the problem either, because, by your own admission, Elites will drop down and play Advanced and Normal just to get through their dailies faster or to do "mindless destruction" without having to worry about Elite requirements, thereby, still causing "issues" for Advanced and Normal level players.
The NBA analogy is quite apropos, because it has little to do with whether one CAN make it to the NBA, but the fact that one isn't CURRENTLY in the NBA. So, dropping an NBA player on a high school basketball court and suddenly expecting the high schoolers to play at NBA level is absurd. One day, they may make it to the NBA, but today is not that day. And the NBA should stay in the NBA.
In all honesty, it doesn't matter what measures are put in place or content is provided by Cryptic. Players will always find a way to follow the path of least resistance and do things that are unintended. The crux of the matter, therefore, boils down to this: human behavior and human decency. Can you be a decent person to your fellow teammates, regardless of what level you or they are at?
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator and Resident She-Wolf
Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
Darkblade, please read what I wrote. I play on Normal. I don't want to play Elite or Advanced.
My build is fine for Normal. I can contribute, even when some Elite player has decided to come dump all over my playground. But ideally, I'd like to do more than that - and when that option is taken from me, I may decide to stop playing TFOs in the first place. Which of course leads to a lower population in TFOs, and longer waits for any of them to pop...
Dude, I'm not even gonna point by point that, because it's becoming tedious and quite frankly, there's been enough rambling going on in this thread.
Ok, I concede that marik initially called for nerfing top-end DPS. I don't agree with that. Seeking DPS is a valid gameplay path for those who enjoy chasing that dragon. But of those in this thread, I believe, he is in the minority asking for that. Val, who you have most consistently butted heads with here, certainly wasn't asking for anything to be nerfed. In fact, Val's main point before getting sidetracked with your proposal, was that more Elite level content needs to be added and better rewards to incentivize playing it, to give DPSers a place to play without affecting Advanced and Normal level players.
But that proposal certainly wouldn't solve the problem either, because, by your own admission, Elites will drop down and play Advanced and Normal just to get through their dailies faster or to do "mindless destruction" without having to worry about Elite requirements, thereby, still causing "issues" for Advanced and Normal level players.
The NBA analogy is quite apropos, because it has little to do with whether one CAN make it to the NBA, but the fact that one isn't CURRENTLY in the NBA. So, dropping an NBA player on a high school basketball court and suddenly expecting the high schoolers to play at NBA level is absurd. One day, they may make it to the NBA, but today is not that day. And the NBA should stay in the NBA.
In all honesty, it doesn't matter what measures are put in place or content is provided by Cryptic. Players will always find a way to follow the path of least resistance and do things that are unintended. The crux of the matter, therefore, boils down to this: human behavior and human decency. Can you be a decent person to your fellow teammates, regardless of what level you or they are at?
I'm all for adding in additional content and have even said to Val that I agree with that proposal. I also feel for those who say they're having a hard time, but I reject the notion that their woes are exclusively caused by players like myself choosing to play on lower difficulties. I also reject the notion that if I use my strongest builds in advanced content I'm somehow trolling those players just like I also reject the notion people using their weakest builds on elite is trolling with one sole exception, so long as them using that weak build isn't causing the TFO to fail.
It really comes down to whether people believe Cryptic and developers are allowed to set standards for their games and people should be beholden to those standards. Such as our hypothetical 200k TFO that Val brought up before. If Cryptic themselves set the standard of 200k for the TFO and by extension 40k per person, is Cryptic wrong for setting that standard, and am I wrong for insisting people should have to meet that standard before being allowed in that TFO? It's akin to getting a driver's license. No parent is going to just hand the keys over to their 16yr old without making sure they've taught them to drive first, and that they have a license. I see it as no different for TFOs. I want people to be able to play and get into as high of content as they want to get into, but not at the cost of sabotaging that TFO into failure for others. I am not demanding they be the best driver in existence, I'm simply asking them to have a license and not wreck my car.
With regards to decency, I'm all for not being a tool to teammates in runs. At the same time I completely reject the notion that someone like myself taking my strongest build into advanced content amounts to me trolling. Because if that now counts as trolling, them bringing super weak builds into a TFO also counts as trolling. I reject the idea that I should have to bring a lesser build into advanced runs as that line of thinking seeks to make me entirely responsible for the ability or lack of, for other people to play the game. As I said, if I bring a slow ship into a TFO and everyone gets there before me and nukes things, but I'm not willing to change anything at all to even try to remedy the situation, who is at fault, me or the team? And if we're to the team is at fault for not waiting on me, how long are they supposed to wait on me past the briefing before doing their thing? People can call me old school, elitist, or what have you. but I'm of the mindset people have no right to things they have not earned, in game. Or in today's world earned and/or paid for. I'm also of the mindset people are responsible for their own ability or lack of in game. If people need help but don't ask, that's on them not me.
I disagree with the NBA analogy being valid because we're not talking about a pvp scenario but a pve co-op in a video game. There is no competition against other players and all have agreed to the same objectives. So long as people are getting rewards I see nothing wrong with anything. I've had plenty of runs that annoyed living daylights out of me in SWTOR over the years because of bad teammates, same with STO. So long as they're not actively trolling or failing the content for everyone else, I let it roll off, because I don't have to see those people again if I don't want to. The thing I want to know that I've yet to really get an answer from anyone over, at what point does personal responsibility come into play? If we're going to insist that it's decency to bring a lower power build into advanced, and I've waited a certain amount of time for them to get in a few shots, at what point are they then responsible for themselves? Where does my responsibility end and theirs begin? Because from where I'm sitting it seems like alot of people want to blame the so called evil DPS for all their woes, but don't want to acknowledge that they might just have a hand in their own issue.
"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
Darkblade, please read what I wrote. I play on Normal. I don't want to play Elite or Advanced.
My build is fine for Normal. I can contribute, even when some Elite player has decided to come dump all over my playground. But ideally, I'd like to do more than that - and when that option is taken from me, I may decide to stop playing TFOs in the first place. Which of course leads to a lower population in TFOs, and longer waits for any of them to pop...
This. unless it's an event grind I will not play TFOs I myself; and a few of my friends experience the "learn the game, noob" and "Get Good" comments. I tried advanced ONCE. the vitriol I received for dying a few times. I walked away from the game for several months. I had actually started to uninstall it, But Anne wanted to continue to play it. She got the same TRIBBLE playing normal TFOs, so most of the time neither of us get the universal endeavors. I even see it in battlezones. I had an endeavor to destroy ships in Goncra today. I headed to the B zone, some high DPS came in and started killing the ships so fast even though I was firing, I did not get credit for the kill, so I flew across the map to another zone. The same player followed me. There was zero reason for that person to follow me other than to troll me.. Thats when I left the battlezone and wasted a re roll token to change what I needed to do.
(More stuff that I'm not gonna quote, because I'm typing enough to not add a whole other post in here.)
Dude, no one said anything about "exclusively caused by". Of course, if you go into Advanced or Normal content, and there's a player there who is subpar even for Advanced or Normal and they get AFK'd, then yes, they have to take some responsibility for themselves to improve, because they're not making it even when you aren't there. Same if a subpar attempts Elite and they aren't ready for it. They need to improve before they go back.
But that's not really what we're talking about. We're talking about those players who are appropriately skilled and geared for Advanced and Normal content. They have no desire to do Elite level content and are therefore comfortable with their build, because it suits their level of desired play. But they might be denied their fun and/or their reward, because an Elite level player came in and wiped the map. They met the requirements for the content. They were just unlucky enough to be teamed with someone who exceeded and then some the requirements of the content.
Cryptic has set the standard, though. Do 1-2% of the damage. It is almost improbable to not be able to do at least that much. But not impossible. And if that improbability occurs due to being outclassed by another player, who actually qualifies for higher level content, then you cannot really blame the guy who came prepared for their appropriate level. If you bring a gun to a knife fight, is that my fault for getting shot? I came prepared for a knife fight, because that was the standard. If they came, and were able to met out that 1-2%, then yes, you are wrong if you're going to insist that they do better.
What constitutes trolling is intent. Someone with a weak build or poor piloting skills may be new. They don't know what's going on. All they know is they want to play and are learning as they go along. They are not intentionally trying to ruin the fun. They just lack the knowledge and skill. And you know what? That's ok. Because we learn by doing. Every single one of us didn't know what the hell we were doing when we went into our first TFO. We learned by experience. And everyone who plays deserves that chance to earn their own experiences. But if you are an Elite, and you know that you can go into Advanced or Normal and wipe the floor with your build, and you go in and intentionally do that... then yeah, you've trolled your teammates.
Of course, you disagree with my NBA analogy, because you're not getting it. I'm not talking about the NBA player vs the high schoolers. I'm talking about the NBA player on the same team as the high schoolers. But he's hogging the ball, so one else is having any fun, and they don't get a chance to play. And that high schooler, who might have been scouted for a college team, and maybe gone on to the NBA themselves? They missed out, because their showboating NBA teammate wouldn't pass the ball, and just had to make all of the plays themselves.
Personal responsibility goes both ways, though, my friend. One can only take responsibility for one's own actions. Sure, the folks who truly are subpar and do not meet the bare minimum for their desired level of play, do need to improve their skill and their gear to at least meet that minimum. But if one's actions take one and one's uber-Elite-build into lower level content alongside lower level players, then who is responsible for that?
I cannot talk to y'all about teamwork. I'm a 20 year, retired, military veteran. My concept of teamwork is going to be completely different from any civilian in this game. The way y'all talk about being teamed together; working against one another, though the goals are the same; begrudging carrying a teammate - these attitudes are all anathema to me. So, when I see someone who says, "Oh, well. Too bad. Guess you need to get good," when someone complains that they were robbed of their fun, it saddens me for the state of humanity. If you cannot be kind, sympathetic, or accommodating in a video game, then what are you like in the real world and what kind of person are you?
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Darkblade, please read what I wrote. I play on Normal. I don't want to play Elite or Advanced.
My build is fine for Normal. I can contribute, even when some Elite player has decided to come dump all over my playground. But ideally, I'd like to do more than that - and when that option is taken from me, I may decide to stop playing TFOs in the first place. Which of course leads to a lower population in TFOs, and longer waits for any of them to pop...
I'm going to ask you this. If you knew hypothetically speaking that you could slap something like a Deuterium Surplus device on your ship and change that one thing, would you do it?
If you want to play on normal then play on normal, nothing is stopping you from doing that, not me, nor would the system I proposed. If you want to play normal then play normal. The only thing I've said is if people want to join advanced and/or elite PUBLIC tfos, they should have to meet the standards set forth by the game itself. Things like ISE, Korfez and the like don't fail because people are being elitists, but by not meeting the hard coded standards Cryptic themselves put in. I don't care what people do in private groups. I do however care what people do in public groups as that is a completely different ballgame to privates.
This. unless it's an event grind I will not play TFOs I myself; and a few of my friends experience the "learn the game, noob" and "Get Good" comments. I tried advanced ONCE. the vitriol I received for dying a few times. I walked away from the game for several months. I had actually started to uninstall it, But Anne wanted to continue to play it. She got the same TRIBBLE playing normal TFOs, so most of the time neither of us get the universal endeavors. I even see it in battlezones. I had an endeavor to destroy ships in Goncra today. I headed to the B zone, some high DPS came in and started killing the ships so fast even though I was firing, I did not get credit for the kill, so I flew across the map to another zone. The same player followed me. There was zero reason for that person to follow me other than to troll me.. Thats when I left the battlezone and wasted a re roll token to change what I needed to do.
First thing I'm going to ask with regards to that BZ you mentioned. How far into the BZ cycle were you guys, were all the zones open or only a few? Had you considered sending dude an invite to a group since you were both doing the same zones? If so what happened? Also on this point did you try switching instances to avoid the dude? I've had people follow me in battlezones before and it can be irritating when you're trying to clear an endeavor. At the same time in battlezones there are only so many zones to cap and so many places to go. Going off what you've said here, you haven't clarified how many zones were open. Maybe dude simply headed to the next zone and thought you were doing the same, or maybe he has a specific type of zone he likes to hit first that are his favorites. Someone going to the same zone as you doesn't equate to trolling on its own. Can we say that's a little sus, sure we can. But to outright say it was trolling you would need more evidence than that. Because right now the only thing I can definitively figure out from your info is that you and another guy were in a battlezone and ended up the same places.
As for the folks ripping on your friends and yourself for dying a few times on advanced, yeah those guys were jerks and other things I'm not going to repeat on this forum. You'll get no arguments from me they were in the wrong. If they were concerned about you dying they could have said "yo dude, noticed you died a few times, you good?" or something along those lines. Feel free to correct me otherwise, but had they simply asked if you were good or needed help, would you have been offended?
If you've got people that are deliberately trying to troll, by all means get your evidence and report the person. Otherwise I stand by my previous statements that I don't find it trolling purely by taking a higher damage build into a lower difficulty.
EDIT: also some weirdness going on with it pulling up saved drafts of ancient posts. not sure what's up with that.
"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 this thread and in the last one before this, neither myself or anyone else said anything that amounted to "get good" until others first advocated that people like myself and others they would label as high DPS essentially have our builds nerfed or nerf ourselves because they have refused to change.
And then there are ppl like me, who (a few pages back) advocated not a nerf, but for Cryptic to address the broken key-press mechanic, so that 'spacebarring' can no longer sabotage your own output the way it currently does. Because, IMHO, the gravest source that ruins one's DPS is the interfering of key-presses with interrupted weapon-cycles.
We're talking about people who have had plenty of time to hit max level. I do not hold low level characters to the same standard I would a max level character. I'm much more inclined to have sympathy for a struggling level 10 character than I am someone who is max level, especially if that max level toon has been playing as long as some of the people in here hint that they've been playing.
Translation: "I am going to stomp all over your Advanced queue, because you had time enough to git gud." Essentially, 'because they have refused to change,' as you put it.
But what you don't seem to get, is that people do not HAVE to change. This game offers 3 levels, Normal, Advanced, and Elite. As long as as ppl perform well enough for the level they've chosen to play on, they're under no obligation to improve. Most will try regardless, but an equal amount will likely conclude that Elite is not for them: either because it will cost them too much money, or they feel they can't get their hand-eye coordination where it's needed for Elite content (yours truly), or where they've decided they don't want to chase the monkey any more, and just want to have fun (also yours truly).
Every skill, every ship, every power I am capable of obtaining and learning to use, they are capable of obtaining and learning to use as well. In terms of accessibility the entire playerbase is on equal footing. If they know they are having trouble with survival as one example, and they know there is a set in game that will give them greater survival, or a console off a certain ship in the cstore that could help them, yet they refuse to go after either of them, who is at fault?
You constantly shame these ppl, directly and indirectly, for nor having gotten better; for not playing the game, and progressing, the way you do. Which these ppl have every right to do. And then you use that as a rationale to go into lower queues, and ruin their fun because 'who is at fault?' You.
I am saying, if people are going to advocate DPS be limited or nerfed so they can participate more, I'm going to also advocate they bring better builds at the same time so they have the greatest chance to compete from the start. Had the OP not said anything, I wouldn't have said anything on this subject either.
I hate nerfs. Simply because I spend quite some money on the game, and don't want what little DPS I do, lowered even further. Also, because nerfing always impacts 'little people' (who got the Blade Runner refence?) worse than the Elite player. Who cares whether the 400K player now 'only' does 300K? But, at the lower end, the 90K player will feel a drop to 67K significantly.
Also, colonelmarik suggesting DPS be addressed is *not* the same as saying Elite players should be nerfed per se. There is, however, objectively and undeniably, a huge disparity between players, when it comes to DPS. Me? I suggested Cryptic take a look at the underlying key-press mechanics, that cause most of the egregious differences. There are no doubt other ways, Build-improvents, however, are likely the least viable option. Most players I know are well capable of making excellent builds, but lack piloting skills. And no, fitting a few pieces of Deuterium won't cut it, because that is just building on your Elite mindset that I can destroy an entire Borg cluster, in Advanced, in just 1 or 2 weapon cycles. I can't.
“No one here, except Elites, is talking about unskilled, under-geared players playing Elite level content, though. Everyone else is talking about Elites stepping down onto everyone else's playground. Hell, the OP even mentions getting zerged out of Romulan Imperial Minefield by uber-DPSers. A mission that becomes available at level 10! How is a level 10 supposed to "get good" and compete with that?” ...
“The issue is Elite players stepping down into Advanced and Normal gameplay and vaporizing everything before the players, who are skilled and appropriately geared for that level of gameplay, get to do much of anything.”
That's the bit I question as the data is not showing that. The data is showing its the casual every day players that are getting all zerged out and vaporizing everything. Then the uber-DPSers are being blamed for the causal players actions. If we somehow stopped all uber-DPSers from entering advanced/normal the vaporizing of NPC’s and instant death wouldn’t stop.
As it’s the casual players doing the majority of NPC vaporizing. It feels like people are struggling against the casual players doing 100k to 400k spike damage and instead of looking at the flaws in there build or piloting they are blaming the uber-DPSers.
Excluding my self when I had that slip up do you know how many uber-DPSers I came across in the past days of gather data in random groups? Zero that's how rare they are. Yet every single map run has casuals often the majority of casuals NPC vaporizing via 100k+ spike DPS.
Everyone's talking about Elite uber-DPSers players dropping into normal but I don't think that is the real problem. I know it happens but the Elite uber-DPSers player base is so tiny its extremely rare to run across that type of player.
Not had chance to read past your post or the other posters after this point. Will have to catch up with this interesting thread later today.
While reading the walls of text over the last nine pages has been interesting, I will point out that the majority of events (which are locked to normal mode and remove adv/elite versions) such as the last starbase one, iuppiter iratus etc can be simply launched solo from the private queue and have no fail condition. If you do massive DPS, then no problem, nuke away. Do very little DPS and think your missing out? Same deal and if you die, doesn't matter, no fail condition. Some events like the red alerts are random, sometimes they enable them to be solo'd, sometimes not. I don't do massive DPS, but enough to easily solo everything on normal without annoying others or being annoyed by them.
I like other non-event TFOs like Crystalline Entity but it only ever pops when its an endeavor and its over in a minute because the average player DPS is way out of line with what those TFOs were designed for. I think unlocking those would alleviate some problems as well. None of this stops people queuing for the full team versions, just alternatives for those "forced" down to normal mode or dislike the speed in which others play.
Another thing is that trying to limit high end player DPS does not work. Last year ESO tried to "raise the floor and lower the ceiling" in their words. It was supposed to help the low end who would be AFK'd for example, but its very difficult to effectively boost under performers and nerf the high end without nerfing the average player, which just resulted in a big backlash and a lot of lost players.
Converting to STO terms, they boosted stock weapon output while nerfing damage boosting skills (FAW, BO, CSV etc), but to stop the average player then becoming op, increased firing cycle times. Net result, big nerf to 90% of the player base.
STO is much the same, maybe on normal mode or event maps they can limit the high end by capping CritD and CritH to remove the massive spikes and one shot kills, but that's easily going to affect the mid range too and probably upset more people than you make happy. Well, unless you make all players play the same ship level/load out (be critter), but again, people want to play their own ships, so there is no easy solution without upsetting someone.
But that's not really what we're talking about. We're talking about those players who are appropriately skilled and geared for Advanced and Normal content. They have no desire to do Elite level content and are therefore comfortable with their build, because it suits their level of desired play. But they might be denied their fun and/or their reward, because an Elite level player came in and wiped the map. They met the requirements for the content. They were just unlucky enough to be teamed with someone who exceeded and then some the requirements of the content.
Cryptic has set the standard, though. Do 1-2% of the damage. It is almost improbable to not be able to do at least that much. But not impossible. And if that improbability occurs due to being outclassed by another player, who actually qualifies for higher level content, then you cannot really blame the guy who came prepared for their appropriate level. If you bring a gun to a knife fight, is that my fault for getting shot? I came prepared for a knife fight, because that was the standard. If they came, and were able to met out that 1-2%, then yes, you are wrong if you're going to insist that they do better.
So first I will say I'm glad we agree that if people don't meet the minimum standards they need to improve until they do. I'm also glad to see that you agree some people need to take a little personal responsibility for themselves.
With that said, in the ISE and Korfez examples I used, there isn't just the AFK penalty that needs to be avoided, as the AFK penalty is universal to all advanced and elite TFOs. In Korfez and ISE you're also up against the built in performance test of the first part of those maps. I don't know what the actual numbers are off the top of my head, but for ISE let's say it's 75k a person to have a quantified example to work with. This means for our hypothetical ISE, not only do you need to do at least 1% of the damage to avoid an AFK penalty, but you also need to be doing at least 75k a person to avoid the TFO auto failing. Again in that instance, that 75k is a standard that Cryptic themselves put into place. Let's suppose we have a hypothetical ISE run that fails. As the map is counting down to boot everyone, someone on that team asks "what happened". To answer the question I pull up the parser and find out 4 of us were doing 80k, but our 5th guy was only doing 40k. If I then say to that dude "the run failed because you weren't pulling enough DPS at only 40k", that's not me being a tool to the guy, but stating objective fact. Now if I also added a "git g00d scrub" at the end of it, then I would a jerk. While there aren't many fail conditions in advanced thankfully, if you avoid the AFK penalty but can't get past the auto-heal of certain mobs, which requires damage higher than the AFK penalty, then you're still not ready for the advanced run.
What constitutes trolling is intent. Someone with a weak build or poor piloting skills may be new. They don't know what's going on. All they know is they want to play and are learning as they go along. They are not intentionally trying to ruin the fun. They just lack the knowledge and skill. And you know what? That's ok. Because we learn by doing. Every single one of us didn't know what the hell we were doing when we went into our first TFO. We learned by experience. And everyone who plays deserves that chance to earn their own experiences. But if you are an Elite, and you know that you can go into Advanced or Normal and wipe the floor with your build, and you go in and intentionally do that... then yeah, you've trolled your teammates.
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Fair warning you will probably consider this section text wally if you don't already, but this is due to the technical explanation below. So the first thing I'm going to ask here is, if you're brand new to the game and know you're still learning, why are you going into higher tier difficulty before you've learned what you're doing? That's like wanting to drive in the Indy 500 before you've even learned to properly drive a regular car.
As I've said before, I do not mind new people coming into content and do not hold new people to the same standard I would as someone who says they've been playing the game for 10 years. The new person has a valid excuse for why they haven't learned things yet. The person who has been bragging about playing the game for 10 years that still doesn't know what he's doing but thinks he's hot plasma has no excuse. Again as I said before, if someone is new, they need to speak up so we can explain to them. "Okay when this fight starts, this is what's going to happen." If someone is new, then I am not going to be nearly as annoyed if something goes squirrelly than if I was playing with a group of people bragging about being 10 year veteran players.
With regards to an uber DPS person going into advanced or normal and wiping the map before someone has had a chance to do anything, where is the evidence to support this? I'm glad potsey replied before I typed this as he's been far better than I have at explaining things. Without some kind of parse to know what the damage distribution looked like, and the people complaining about issues sharing their build so we can eliminate that as a possibility, how are we to know if there was really an uber DPSer in there or if it was just them having a bad build and their teammates killing things with spike damage? One of the lowest damage dealers in my fleet is a guy in his 50s who clocks around 90k on average. Yet he can damage spike up to well over 300k when popping all of his powers, which is trippling his damage for a time. Now combine that with the rest of us who do 150k+ and our damage graphs typically shoot to well over 1.5m spike DPS before it tapers off and levels out. I say that not to be arrogant but to make a point.
Now apply that same logic to a team of regular randoms going into a normal TFO. The average range of DPS for the general playerbase is around 15-50k with most being around 30k. For point of reference that's a combined DPS of 150k if all 5 people are participating, which is equal to my strongest tank build last I clocked it. Now if we assume only 4 of the 5 people are able to get to targets and blast them, that's 4 people pulling a combined total of 120k DPS on targets, which is already alot of damage going out. Now if we assume those 4 people hitting their powers are able to spike their damage similar to the above example, those 4 people who were at 30k DPS are now pulling 90k DPS each for a combined total of 360k DPS while their powers are active. Things are going to melt in seconds with that kind of output on normal mode. Even if we assume those guys at 30k can only spike to double their damage, that's still a combined 240k DPS, which again is going to melt things super fast. The 5th guy who didn't get there fast enough isn't seeing an uber DPSer at all, but the combined might of his 4 teammates who are on the same level as him.
Even if I wanted to nerf myself down to around the 30k DPS level to compete on their level again, I can't. I have too many endeavor points and other bonuses I've picked up over the years that the game will not let me turn off. As they start earning endeavors they will be in the same boat. The only way I can ever come close to being on that level again is if I essentially rolled in there with a level 30 ship using mk vi vendor gear, no person space traits, starship traits, or reputation powers, and using very few if any boff powers, and I wouldn't be able to run any consoles that weren't crafted. For that matter even my crafted console selection would be super limited. Yet if I want to play anything less than elite so I'm not always having to worry about the TFO failing because one of us blinked or sneezed at the wrong time, people like myself are essentially being told to play that stripped down build or don't play at all, while they get to do pretty much whatever they want and never have to change a thing. How is that fair to people like myself when we've done nothing wrong?
Folks want to say they're not for locking anyone out, but essentially want folks like me locked out by virtue of what they've advocated and/or punished for having earned additional bonuses, yet want want to get mad when I hold them to a similar standard.
Of course, you disagree with my NBA analogy, because you're not getting it. I'm not talking about the NBA player vs the high schoolers. I'm talking about the NBA player on the same team as the high schoolers. But he's hogging the ball, so one else is having any fun, and they don't get a chance to play. And that high schooler, who might have been scouted for a college team, and maybe gone on to the NBA themselves? They missed out, because their showboating NBA teammate wouldn't pass the ball, and just had to make all of the plays themselves.
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Lastly I disagree with the NBA analogy because it doesn't fit in this instance for many of the technical reasons outlined above. That NBA player can turn alot of that off and let the high schoolers shine while still putting in the occasional basket himself and participate. In STO as much as I might wish I can turn off certain bonuses from time to time, I can't. I either sit there in a practically naked ship barely ever doing anything if I want to play less than elite, or I don't play at all. Essentially it's like people getting mad at that NBA player for even touching the ball or making a single play.
To close this out, I appealed to the MTG tournament example when dealing with STO as it's more appropriate imo. If someone goes to a tournament where they know they are most likely to run into people using ultra powerful decks, yet choose to take a starter deck and getting rolled by someone with an ultra powerful deck and complaining, who is at fault? Instead of saying "hey maybe I shouldn't take a starter deck to something like that" the guy whines that the people with more powerful decks shouldn't be allowed to use them. That person has the potential and ability to use more powerful decks but chooses not to. Yet we've seen by the technical stuff above that they may not even have played someone with a stronger deck, just someone on a similar level that knew how to play the cards better, aka the combined might of the teammates.
"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
Dude, get off of your Elite run examples (ISE, Korfez, etc.), and get off of talk about players attempting content above their ability. No one but you is talking about that. I love ya, man, but you're frustrating as hell. LOL
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Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
You're still not reading what other people are writing, Dark. You're still talking about somebody like me going into an Elite queue and failing to provide the damage output needed. And you know what? We agree with you. I, for example, have absolutely no business being in an Elite TFO, in much the same sense as I have no business being in NASCAR - I can drive well enough, but I'm not a professional racer.
By the same token, though, NASCAR drivers have no business taking their racing vehicles onto I-5. And what you're insisting on is that, metaphorically, all I really need to do is slap a supercharger and a nitrous tank onto my '05 Hyundai so I can keep up with you during commutes. Why should I have to "git gud" when, absent the presence of an Elite player who just wants to smear a Normal TFO so they can feel powerful, I'm already more than "gud" enough?
You're still not reading what other people are writing, Dark. You're still talking about somebody like me going into an Elite queue and failing to provide the damage output needed. And you know what? We agree with you. I, for example, have absolutely no business being in an Elite TFO, in much the same sense as I have no business being in NASCAR - I can drive well enough, but I'm not a professional racer.
By the same token, though, NASCAR drivers have no business taking their racing vehicles onto I-5. And what you're insisting on is that, metaphorically, all I really need to do is slap a supercharger and a nitrous tank onto my '05 Hyundai so I can keep up with you during commutes. Why should I have to "git gud" when, absent the presence of an Elite player who just wants to smear a Normal TFO so they can feel powerful, I'm already more than "gud" enough?
^^ Another excellent post!
I have absolutely no business being in an Elite TFO either. When Korfez came out, I ran a few, on invite, with friendly people who wanted to help me get an Accolade, iirc. It was fun, but I was obviously being carried, and, at the end of the day, that never feels good. I want to make a difference, even in a game, and being a 3rd wheel does not accomplish that.
Also, it's never a good feeling to have it effectively rubbed-in, by one's own shortcomings, that you are not good enough. It's like a physics student having met Einstein: they'd consider it an honor, and be glad they got to spend a day with him, seeing what he does, and maybe even asked their opinion at times. But when the sun goes down, they realize, of course, that while fun, they're not really on his level. And it would be downright weird if Einstein then derived a kick out of being better than them, or told them to 'git gud.'
Tl;dr: while they may exist, I personally don't know of anyone wanting to do Elites who isn't really ready for them -- all feels like one huge strawman to me.
Lastly I disagree with the NBA analogy because it doesn't fit in this instance for many of the technical reasons outlined above. That NBA player can turn alot of that off and let the high schoolers shine while still putting in the occasional basket himself and participate. In STO as much as I might wish I can turn off certain bonuses from time to time, I can't. I either sit there in a practically naked ship barely ever doing anything if I want to play less than elite, or I don't play at all. Essentially it's like people getting mad at that NBA player for even touching the ball or making a single play.
Yes, you can turn a lot of that off in STO. Absolutely you can. You can make some very, very, very simple changes to let others have the ball and enjoy themselves too.
Count to ten before starting your full impulse mad rush zerg to obliterate everything in sight
Forego using keybinds
Do not click on Deuterium Surplus
If you see another teammate engaged a target, move on to another target and let them handle it
These are just a few very, very, very simple things you can do in your uber DPS ship without needing to change your loadout or any gear at all.
^^ So obviously true. This whole "I am so good, I cannot help myself." is utter bull, of course (and only serves to aggrandize oneself even further, really).
I normally skip over walls o' text, but I've been reading these because I find this discussion very interesting. I'm glad that, for the most part, the discussion has actually been intelligent and well-thought-out, although there has been some talking past each other, which happens when people are very passionate about their side of the discussion.
I am not for locking anyone out of content. Be it an underpowered ship going into Korfez or a uber-elite ship going into Normal/Advanced to have mindless fun. I like mindless fun as much as the next person and can have it in normal content, be it TFOs, patrols or story content as long as they're Normal, which is what I play on 99% of the time. Advanced is saved for the couple of endeavors that require Advanced (They're usually the only ones that pop over Normal)
That being said, I did try an Elite map once. It wasn't a TFO, I would never inflict my build on a TFO. This was many years ago before there was patrols in the TFO window. It was Japori, to be specific. Now I know Japori can be stomped on Normal as I do that all the time, but I wanted to see what it was like on Elite. I did not like it. I got through it, but it took far longer to do than I like a run to take. I've never tried anything Elite since, because I just like to go into the game and basically RP my character while we do the event daily or endeavors. I could probably bump my overall difficulty up to Advanced all the time, but I'm not fussed about it. I do fine with my, probably average, build. My spike damage would probably be laughable to you who do over 100k spike (I rarely see spike doing more than 40k)/ Still, I have fun and this is my fun. When I do TFOs I'm able to participate, as I said before. That's what I want to do, participate. I'm not fussed about how many ships I take out, as long as maybe I'm keeping them off someone else's back while they're trying to accomplish another part of the objectives. It's what I do on ISA?ISN runs. While the other four are running to do the generators I stay in the middle and take on the Nanite Spheres and Spheres. Then I help with the gate and Tactical cube at the end.
I know I could probably do better, but since I don't want to poke my nose into any Elite map I don't really have to. I will experiment with different things on whichever alt or main I'm playing. I'm running an alt right now simply so I remember to turn his reps over when I'm playing (And he's a favorite alt). I haven't been ingame cause I'd gotten a bit of burnout with the back to back events and such and I'm waiting for FCD tomorrow.
So, see you guys at the rocket-building map!
And have fun, people!
For me, this is a WoT, so apologies. Love you guys!
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.
accommodate “Let us be clear, the limited data set you have may not be reflecting it. The limited data set I have leans toward the Elite high DPSers coming into Advanced content. I totally admit my data set is limited as well. Were I to make a wild guess, I would say the truth is somewhere in the middle.”
Can you post some data, better yet the combatlogs so I can dive into the data. As I strongly suspect the majority of the NPC vaporising is being done by the everyday causal player. Then the DPS player is being blamed even if they are not in the run. So far there is zero evidence the problem is the DPS players at least in the majority of the TFO's.
What if I am right and it is the everyday players that are vaporising the majority of NPCs and those every day players are being mistaken for high DPS players? That completely changes the dynamic of the argument that DPS players are causing noticeable problems. It also defeats the point that DPS players should downgrade equipment, count to 10 before engaging and all the other stuff. If high DPS players are in say 1% of runs and 95% of runs have the majority of casual every day players vaporising NPC's then why are we blaming the high DPS players as being the problem? So far the only data shown in this thread is pointing to this being the case.
keybind DPS race would exacerbate the problem and not solve it?”
First of all key binds is not all about DPS. Keybinds for me is about convenience, streamlining and improving my enjoyment. There are lots of valid reasons to use Keybinds outside of DPS. I use keybinds and none of the reasons are for DPS.
I have no desire and have never been behind pushing normal level players into advanced or advance into Elite who do not want to advanced upwards. I am all for players being able to play how they want to. At the same time at some point a player needs to take responsibly for their own build and their own piloting rather than blaming everyone else around them. If the problem can be fixed by piloting or small changes to your own equipment then the problem isn’t really the other players but your setup.
“Yes, everyone has the opportunity to and can improve. Yes, everyone can make "simple changes" to "add a bit of mobility". Can you step back for a moment and understand not everyone wants to do it?”
Sure not everyone wants to do that and that’s their choice. At the same time if they don’t want to fix the problem with there build that is making them fall behind that’s on them. They shouldn’t be expecting everyone else to change their setup to accommodate them, all because they don’t want to accommodate anyone else. That is what I believe Darkbladejk is trying to get across.
Why should Player group A be asked to changed their setup and accommodate everyone else. All because Player group B doesn’t want to change their setup and accommodate anyone else. What gives one group more right then the other group to be the one everyone has to accommodate to?
Take the data I gathered. Doing quick napkin math aprox 80% of the NPC vaporising was done by the everyday causal players. Apox 0.5% of runs had high DPS players, not aprox but 100% of people that got hit with AFK got hit with AFK due to major flaws in there piloting or setup. 0% got pushed into AFK by high DPS players.
The players that did have problems was 100% because they needed to "git gud" If the player is failing to keep up with the causal everyday player then we need to stop blaming the high DPS players and take a look at how to tweak that build and piloting to fix the problem.
“With all of that said, can you understand why trying to push everyone into the "git gud"
Sorry I know this is very similar to the quote above. No because the data is not showing that. When I trigged my higher DPS builds I wasn’t pushing down the players near me. I was bringing them up or having little impact. When I hit that 1.5million spike DPS you know what happened to the other players DPS around me? Nothing much, player green DPS increase by approx. 10%, player orange decreased by 1% and he stayed at that level for the rest of the TFO so that decrease wasn’t from me. Player Blue 0% impact, the other 4 players sustained DPS was pretty much the same before, during and after my high 1.5million DPS.
Look at the graph I posted before, the other 4 players has the around about the same sustained DPS before, during and after my high 1.5million DPS. There DPS was the same when I did 1.5 million DPS as when I did 50k DPS later in the TFO.
I don’t believe the problem is caused by high DPSers coming in and vaporising everything. I know that happen at times but it appears to be extremely rare. I think most of the problems are players underperforming below everyday causal players who are vaporising the NPC’s on normal. Along with the everyday casual players vaporising NPC's then being mistaken for high DPSer.
Up to a point there is a responsibility for the player to keep up with the group rather than blame the group. If the group is moving from Point A to Point B and blowing up Point B before you catch up. Then the solution is to tweak you build so you move at the speed the average group moves at. Sure, you have the right to not tweak you setup but then don’t complain about the group outpacing you. My preferred ships are the big slow ships like dreadnought carriers. If I fail to keep pace with the group, I don’t expect the group to downgrade to my level, I look at my build and piloting skills and tweak things so I can keep up or accept the fact I will be lagging behind. It doesn’t feel right to me to ask those other players to slow down so I can keep pace. The exception being if you made a private group and called out some custom rules before starting.
Lastly I have still seen zero evidence high DPSers are causing problems outside of some very rare map runs.
Lastly I disagree with the NBA analogy because it doesn't fit in this instance for many of the technical reasons outlined above. That NBA player can turn alot of that off and let the high schoolers shine while still putting in the occasional basket himself and participate. In STO as much as I might wish I can turn off certain bonuses from time to time, I can't. I either sit there in a practically naked ship barely ever doing anything if I want to play less than elite, or I don't play at all. Essentially it's like people getting mad at that NBA player for even touching the ball or making a single play.
Yes, you can turn a lot of that off in STO. Absolutely you can. You can make some very, very, very simple changes to let others have the ball and enjoy themselves too.
Count to ten before starting your full impulse mad rush zerg to obliterate everything in sight
Forego using keybinds
Do not click on Deuterium Surplus
If you see another teammate engaged a target, move on to another target and let them handle it
These are just a few very, very, very simple things you can do in your uber DPS ship without needing to change your loadout or any gear at all.
Just to play devil advocate a little. I have Psoriatic Arthritis which I wouldn't expect you to know but I have mentioned before in other threads so I cannot play without keybinds, I don't use Deuterium Surplus, I play carriers as carriers are what I find fun but we don't have fine control over what they engage. If I see another player engage a target and I move away my pets tend to stay engaged. I cannot turn off all the major DPS boosts I have unlocked over the years, they are always stuck switched on. All my loadouts are full the only way to add more is to spend real life money.
If I jump into a ship from 10 years ago with all the same equipment from 10 years ago I will do something like triple the DPS now then I did back then without any changes to the old setup. I am not saying it cannot be done but it is way, way harder then you expect. To the point where it zaps all the fun out of the game. Then there is the entire argument about why should player A have to turn things off because Player B doesn't want to turn things on.
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My guy, I think you're missing the point. You're kinda caught up in your own argument. Try and take a step back and see this from a different perspective. I don't believe anyone here is advocating for Elite gameplay to be nerfed, so that players, who truly are not ready for it, can play it anyway without having to change or improve.
The issue is Elite players stepping down into Advanced and Normal gameplay and vaporizing everything before the players, who are skilled and appropriately geared for that level of gameplay, get to do much of anything.
Ok, so you say that you occassionally like to step down from Elite for "mindless destruction", so that you don't have to worry about the fail conditions associated with Elite. I get that. Fair enough.
The problem I am having, and the problem that most everyone else is having here, is that you cannot dictate to those players IN ADVANCED AND NORMAL GAMEPLAY that they must change/improve/"get good" just because you, as an ELITE, decided to play in their sandbox. That's unfair. They ARE geared appropriately. They ARE skilled enough for their level of content. The Elite is the odd one out.
Players' skills are going to naturally improve the more they play the game. Players are naturally going to use better gear as they advance as well, because better gear becomes available through loot drops, and then there's Reputation gear if they choose to go that route. They may not decide to craft and/or upgrade gear, but that's completely unnecessary to be successful.
No one here, except Elites, is talking about unskilled, under-geared players playing Elite level content, though. Everyone else is talking about Elites stepping down onto everyone else's playground. Hell, the OP even mentions getting zerged out of Romulan Imperial Minefield by uber-DPSers. A mission that becomes available at level 10! How is a level 10 supposed to "get good" and compete with that?
So, if you want to step down from the NBA and play a college-level or even high school-level basketball game, fine. You'll obviously dominate the court. But is everyone else gonna have as good of a time playing, if they never even get a chance to touch the ball? Is it fair for you to yell at them to "get good" when it's you out of your league and on their court? No, it's not.
Damnit, y'all made me use a sports reference. 🙄
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^^ Probably the most lucid post in the thread. I could have saved myself a whole lot of typing.
Yes, if a Normal or Advanced player wants to try Elite, they should bring a better build cause Advanced build just won't cut Elite content.
Normal/Advanced players ARE geared for Normal/Advanced TFOs and should not have to 'git gud' just because an overpowered, Elite player comes down to their levels to play.
Maybe the devs could add Advanced/Elite levels to Event TFOs. Would that solve the problem? Mostly. There will still be Elite-level players dropping down to do runs as fast as possible to get a daily over with.
Pretty sure they're not trying to troll 'lesser' builds with their uber builds. To me, if I've built something uber I'd use it in uber content. If I wanted to use it in Normal or Advanced I'd pick something for single player play-such as Patrols and story missions. I'll probably never have the uber build, but I can get through Advanced and participate enough to not get AFK'd. In fact, I think I only got AFK'd once, a very long time ago.
So, not complaining about Elites coming down, so long as I can still participate. Just don't expect me to change my build unless I just want to experiment with something.
Actually that very thing has been argued in the original post and in a subsequent post from the very beginning of the thread.
In these posts, the OP indicates they believe it shouldn't be possible for people to do so much damage and that the devs need to do something about. Simultaneously also saying they wouldn't consider increasing their damage or mobility as they like things where it is. I'm sorry but in my book, that's striking at people like me first. They're advocating that my output be reduced because they don't like my ability to generate said levels of output, while simultaneously not wanting to change anything of their own build to improve their ability to participate. To Marik's credit, he has been the most civil person arguing said point.
I accept those people are saying they're not having fun. I also accept they think there is too much damage in the game, which they are entitled to as an opinion. I've even agreed with them that advanced and elite versions of event maps need to return as I despise being relegated to normal modes.
In this thread and in the last one before this, neither myself or anyone else said anything that amounted to "get good" until others first advocated that people like myself and others they would label as high DPS essentially have our builds nerfed or nerf ourselves because they have refused to change. I was content not to say anything unless someone else started the conversation, which is what happened with the first thread, and now here in this one. Had they not said something on these forums first, I wouldn't have said anything either. Yet certain people chose to come onto these forums and advocate that the devs make changes to negatively impact my build and others they would view as high DPS because they can't participate as much as they feel they should be able too. While simultaneously refusing to alter their own builds to allow them greater chance to participate. In other words, by default advocating everyone else is responsible for their ability to participate or lack of. And I wholly reject that notion. Essentially they're poking what they've admitted to be a beehive or may cause a "circling of the wagons" and then getting mad when the bees actually sting or there is a circling of the wagons.
Is it conceivable by sheer statistics and probability that someone could enter a lower level TFO and vaporize everything before anyone else has had a chance to fire, sure it could happen, and I've acknowledged this. Do a doubt that it's happened at some point, again no I don't. The game has been around long enough that I'm sure many statistically improbable events have happened. At the same time I refuse to believe that this is happening as often as some people in here want me to believe without some sort of evidence to back it up. If people are getting rewards for the TFO then this eviscerates the argument that they're not getting to participate, because if they couldn't participate at all then they would get hit with an AFK penalty, yet people in here are saying they're not seeing AFK penalties. So they are in fact getting to participate, just not as much as they would like to. They say they would like to participate more, okay fair enough. First, what are they doing on their part to give themselves the greatest chance to participate? If they know people are getting to targets before them, and destroying things before they can ever fire, have they tried to use a build with more mobility to it so they can keep up? If the answer is no, then they have no grounds to say it's not a mobility issue because they've never tried.
I'm of the mindset that so long as people meet the standards the game itself imposes, they have a right to be in any content they choose, be they exactly at the minimum standards or exceeding those standard 100 times over. If a TFO like Dranuur Gauntlet required 40k from each person (idk what the actual number for elite is but you get the idea), and they are not pulling that 40k and cause the TFO to fail, that's not me telling them they need to improve, that is the game itself as established by Cryptic telling them they need to improve. In that hypothetical scenario I am not the one that set that 40k, but Cryptic themselves when they hardcoded it into the TFO, yet people want to get mad at me for saying what the game is already telling them. I am not holding them to any kind of standard in that instance other than the one the game itself established, yet somehow I'm the bad guy. If people want to come onto these forums saying they think DPS should be toned down by the devs, thus effecting me and others, they can't get mad when on the opposite side of the coin I say they need to bring better builds if they're having trouble participating. It goes both ways on that and is a double standard to advocate I need to bring a lesser build and/or DPS needs to be toned down, while simultaneously refusing to change anything on their end to help themselves. THAT is what I have an issue with. They expect me to be the one to change while doing nothing on their side, yet get mad when I hold them to that same standard.
As for people improving by playing the game, generally I would agree, but there are plenty who refuse to learn and get better. I'm sure you saw my example of my former fleetmate that I named Bob. In fact I've shown you the build that Bob was using in that instance in mod chat before. Bob claimed he had been playing since beta, but died 18 times in normal mode. Yet got angry when my officer dared try to help him. Bob would not accept that he was in part to blame for his woes and insisted it was the game and refused to change anything, thus refusing to learn. This is why I have advocated the checks I do. It filters out people like Bob who would ruin it for others, while giving everyone else a path of progression to learn and improve. How far they choose to go down that path is up to them so long as they're meeting the minimums for the content as required by the game itself.
I can think of two ways to solve that issue, but there is a glaring elephant in the room that needs to be mentioned with that example. While I get what you're going for with the example, we're not talking about low level characters and people below max level here. We're talking about people who have had plenty of time to hit max level. I do not hold low level characters to the same standard I would a max level character. I'm much more inclined to have sympathy for a struggling level 10 character than I am someone who is max level, especially if that max level toon has been playing as long as some of the people in here hint that they've been playing. Now with that out of the way I will address the Minefield example.
-The first way that this can be solved is level brackets in the TFO system. Only those people within 10 levels of each other can join public TFOs together. This limits the the difference between stats to something far more manageable.
-The second solution is to apply a scaling mechanic similar to the one SWTOR uses. In SWTOR let's suppose you were on a planet for levels 26-32 and you're level 30. Let's suppose I wanted to bring my level 80 toon that's at max gear and damage level. Once I arrived on that planet, the game would scale me and my equipment down to level 32 and assume I am using the highest grade of equipment available for that level. In STO terms, if you were level 30 and could conceivably only access mk vii golds, then the game would assume I am 32 with mk vii golds. While I may have a slight stat advantage, you are still able to compete.
Lastly for the NBA example, again I get what you're going for but the analogy doesn't work in this instance. The NBA example implies by necessity that certain people can't obtain NBA status and can never make it to the NBA. It also implies by necessity that those people who can't get to the NBA can't have the skills said NBA player does, and in STO that's simply not the case. When we've talked before about ships in game and the like, I've mentioned that there are maybe 9 ships that I don't own because I have no interest in them and have a ton of toons that I've geared out. That's not an exaggeration. Everything I have now as a lifetime player, someone starting the game tomorrow could eventually have themselves, it will just take them longer to get there. The only exceptions possibly being the lifetime ships. Every skill, every ship, every power I am capable of obtaining and learning to use, they are capable of obtaining and learning to use as well. In terms of accessibility the entire playerbase is on equal footing. If they know they are having trouble with survival as one example, and they know there is a set in game that will give them greater survival, or a console off a certain ship in the cstore that could help them, yet they refuse to go after either of them, who is at fault?
I am saying, if people are going to advocate DPS be limited or nerfed so they can participate more, I'm going to also advocate they bring better builds at the same time so they have the greatest chance to compete from the start. Had the OP not said anything, I wouldn't have said anything on this subject either.
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Dude, I'm not even gonna point by point that, because it's becoming tedious and quite frankly, there's been enough rambling going on in this thread.
Ok, I concede that marik initially called for nerfing top-end DPS. I don't agree with that. Seeking DPS is a valid gameplay path for those who enjoy chasing that dragon. But of those in this thread, I believe, he is in the minority asking for that. Val, who you have most consistently butted heads with here, certainly wasn't asking for anything to be nerfed. In fact, Val's main point before getting sidetracked with your proposal, was that more Elite level content needs to be added and better rewards to incentivize playing it, to give DPSers a place to play without affecting Advanced and Normal level players.
But that proposal certainly wouldn't solve the problem either, because, by your own admission, Elites will drop down and play Advanced and Normal just to get through their dailies faster or to do "mindless destruction" without having to worry about Elite requirements, thereby, still causing "issues" for Advanced and Normal level players.
The NBA analogy is quite apropos, because it has little to do with whether one CAN make it to the NBA, but the fact that one isn't CURRENTLY in the NBA. So, dropping an NBA player on a high school basketball court and suddenly expecting the high schoolers to play at NBA level is absurd. One day, they may make it to the NBA, but today is not that day. And the NBA should stay in the NBA.
In all honesty, it doesn't matter what measures are put in place or content is provided by Cryptic. Players will always find a way to follow the path of least resistance and do things that are unintended. The crux of the matter, therefore, boils down to this: human behavior and human decency. Can you be a decent person to your fellow teammates, regardless of what level you or they are at?
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Darkblade, please read what I wrote. I play on Normal. I don't want to play Elite or Advanced.
My build is fine for Normal. I can contribute, even when some Elite player has decided to come dump all over my playground. But ideally, I'd like to do more than that - and when that option is taken from me, I may decide to stop playing TFOs in the first place. Which of course leads to a lower population in TFOs, and longer waits for any of them to pop...
I'm all for adding in additional content and have even said to Val that I agree with that proposal. I also feel for those who say they're having a hard time, but I reject the notion that their woes are exclusively caused by players like myself choosing to play on lower difficulties. I also reject the notion that if I use my strongest builds in advanced content I'm somehow trolling those players just like I also reject the notion people using their weakest builds on elite is trolling with one sole exception, so long as them using that weak build isn't causing the TFO to fail.
It really comes down to whether people believe Cryptic and developers are allowed to set standards for their games and people should be beholden to those standards. Such as our hypothetical 200k TFO that Val brought up before. If Cryptic themselves set the standard of 200k for the TFO and by extension 40k per person, is Cryptic wrong for setting that standard, and am I wrong for insisting people should have to meet that standard before being allowed in that TFO? It's akin to getting a driver's license. No parent is going to just hand the keys over to their 16yr old without making sure they've taught them to drive first, and that they have a license. I see it as no different for TFOs. I want people to be able to play and get into as high of content as they want to get into, but not at the cost of sabotaging that TFO into failure for others. I am not demanding they be the best driver in existence, I'm simply asking them to have a license and not wreck my car.
With regards to decency, I'm all for not being a tool to teammates in runs. At the same time I completely reject the notion that someone like myself taking my strongest build into advanced content amounts to me trolling. Because if that now counts as trolling, them bringing super weak builds into a TFO also counts as trolling. I reject the idea that I should have to bring a lesser build into advanced runs as that line of thinking seeks to make me entirely responsible for the ability or lack of, for other people to play the game. As I said, if I bring a slow ship into a TFO and everyone gets there before me and nukes things, but I'm not willing to change anything at all to even try to remedy the situation, who is at fault, me or the team? And if we're to the team is at fault for not waiting on me, how long are they supposed to wait on me past the briefing before doing their thing? People can call me old school, elitist, or what have you. but I'm of the mindset people have no right to things they have not earned, in game. Or in today's world earned and/or paid for. I'm also of the mindset people are responsible for their own ability or lack of in game. If people need help but don't ask, that's on them not me.
I disagree with the NBA analogy being valid because we're not talking about a pvp scenario but a pve co-op in a video game. There is no competition against other players and all have agreed to the same objectives. So long as people are getting rewards I see nothing wrong with anything. I've had plenty of runs that annoyed living daylights out of me in SWTOR over the years because of bad teammates, same with STO. So long as they're not actively trolling or failing the content for everyone else, I let it roll off, because I don't have to see those people again if I don't want to. The thing I want to know that I've yet to really get an answer from anyone over, at what point does personal responsibility come into play? If we're going to insist that it's decency to bring a lower power build into advanced, and I've waited a certain amount of time for them to get in a few shots, at what point are they then responsible for themselves? Where does my responsibility end and theirs begin? Because from where I'm sitting it seems like alot of people want to blame the so called evil DPS for all their woes, but don't want to acknowledge that they might just have a hand in their own issue.
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This. unless it's an event grind I will not play TFOs I myself; and a few of my friends experience the "learn the game, noob" and "Get Good" comments. I tried advanced ONCE. the vitriol I received for dying a few times. I walked away from the game for several months. I had actually started to uninstall it, But Anne wanted to continue to play it. She got the same TRIBBLE playing normal TFOs, so most of the time neither of us get the universal endeavors. I even see it in battlezones. I had an endeavor to destroy ships in Goncra today. I headed to the B zone, some high DPS came in and started killing the ships so fast even though I was firing, I did not get credit for the kill, so I flew across the map to another zone. The same player followed me. There was zero reason for that person to follow me other than to troll me.. Thats when I left the battlezone and wasted a re roll token to change what I needed to do.
Dude, no one said anything about "exclusively caused by". Of course, if you go into Advanced or Normal content, and there's a player there who is subpar even for Advanced or Normal and they get AFK'd, then yes, they have to take some responsibility for themselves to improve, because they're not making it even when you aren't there. Same if a subpar attempts Elite and they aren't ready for it. They need to improve before they go back.
But that's not really what we're talking about. We're talking about those players who are appropriately skilled and geared for Advanced and Normal content. They have no desire to do Elite level content and are therefore comfortable with their build, because it suits their level of desired play. But they might be denied their fun and/or their reward, because an Elite level player came in and wiped the map. They met the requirements for the content. They were just unlucky enough to be teamed with someone who exceeded and then some the requirements of the content.
Cryptic has set the standard, though. Do 1-2% of the damage. It is almost improbable to not be able to do at least that much. But not impossible. And if that improbability occurs due to being outclassed by another player, who actually qualifies for higher level content, then you cannot really blame the guy who came prepared for their appropriate level. If you bring a gun to a knife fight, is that my fault for getting shot? I came prepared for a knife fight, because that was the standard. If they came, and were able to met out that 1-2%, then yes, you are wrong if you're going to insist that they do better.
What constitutes trolling is intent. Someone with a weak build or poor piloting skills may be new. They don't know what's going on. All they know is they want to play and are learning as they go along. They are not intentionally trying to ruin the fun. They just lack the knowledge and skill. And you know what? That's ok. Because we learn by doing. Every single one of us didn't know what the hell we were doing when we went into our first TFO. We learned by experience. And everyone who plays deserves that chance to earn their own experiences. But if you are an Elite, and you know that you can go into Advanced or Normal and wipe the floor with your build, and you go in and intentionally do that... then yeah, you've trolled your teammates.
Of course, you disagree with my NBA analogy, because you're not getting it. I'm not talking about the NBA player vs the high schoolers. I'm talking about the NBA player on the same team as the high schoolers. But he's hogging the ball, so one else is having any fun, and they don't get a chance to play. And that high schooler, who might have been scouted for a college team, and maybe gone on to the NBA themselves? They missed out, because their showboating NBA teammate wouldn't pass the ball, and just had to make all of the plays themselves.
Personal responsibility goes both ways, though, my friend. One can only take responsibility for one's own actions. Sure, the folks who truly are subpar and do not meet the bare minimum for their desired level of play, do need to improve their skill and their gear to at least meet that minimum. But if one's actions take one and one's uber-Elite-build into lower level content alongside lower level players, then who is responsible for that?
I cannot talk to y'all about teamwork. I'm a 20 year, retired, military veteran. My concept of teamwork is going to be completely different from any civilian in this game. The way y'all talk about being teamed together; working against one another, though the goals are the same; begrudging carrying a teammate - these attitudes are all anathema to me. So, when I see someone who says, "Oh, well. Too bad. Guess you need to get good," when someone complains that they were robbed of their fun, it saddens me for the state of humanity. If you cannot be kind, sympathetic, or accommodating in a video game, then what are you like in the real world and what kind of person are you?
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If you want to play on normal then play on normal, nothing is stopping you from doing that, not me, nor would the system I proposed. If you want to play normal then play normal. The only thing I've said is if people want to join advanced and/or elite PUBLIC tfos, they should have to meet the standards set forth by the game itself. Things like ISE, Korfez and the like don't fail because people are being elitists, but by not meeting the hard coded standards Cryptic themselves put in. I don't care what people do in private groups. I do however care what people do in public groups as that is a completely different ballgame to privates.
First thing I'm going to ask with regards to that BZ you mentioned. How far into the BZ cycle were you guys, were all the zones open or only a few? Had you considered sending dude an invite to a group since you were both doing the same zones? If so what happened? Also on this point did you try switching instances to avoid the dude? I've had people follow me in battlezones before and it can be irritating when you're trying to clear an endeavor. At the same time in battlezones there are only so many zones to cap and so many places to go. Going off what you've said here, you haven't clarified how many zones were open. Maybe dude simply headed to the next zone and thought you were doing the same, or maybe he has a specific type of zone he likes to hit first that are his favorites. Someone going to the same zone as you doesn't equate to trolling on its own. Can we say that's a little sus, sure we can. But to outright say it was trolling you would need more evidence than that. Because right now the only thing I can definitively figure out from your info is that you and another guy were in a battlezone and ended up the same places.
As for the folks ripping on your friends and yourself for dying a few times on advanced, yeah those guys were jerks and other things I'm not going to repeat on this forum. You'll get no arguments from me they were in the wrong. If they were concerned about you dying they could have said "yo dude, noticed you died a few times, you good?" or something along those lines. Feel free to correct me otherwise, but had they simply asked if you were good or needed help, would you have been offended?
If you've got people that are deliberately trying to troll, by all means get your evidence and report the person. Otherwise I stand by my previous statements that I don't find it trolling purely by taking a higher damage build into a lower difficulty.
EDIT: also some weirdness going on with it pulling up saved drafts of ancient posts. not sure what's up with that.
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And then there are ppl like me, who (a few pages back) advocated not a nerf, but for Cryptic to address the broken key-press mechanic, so that 'spacebarring' can no longer sabotage your own output the way it currently does. Because, IMHO, the gravest source that ruins one's DPS is the interfering of key-presses with interrupted weapon-cycles.
Translation: "I am going to stomp all over your Advanced queue, because you had time enough to git gud." Essentially, 'because they have refused to change,' as you put it.
But what you don't seem to get, is that people do not HAVE to change. This game offers 3 levels, Normal, Advanced, and Elite. As long as as ppl perform well enough for the level they've chosen to play on, they're under no obligation to improve. Most will try regardless, but an equal amount will likely conclude that Elite is not for them: either because it will cost them too much money, or they feel they can't get their hand-eye coordination where it's needed for Elite content (yours truly), or where they've decided they don't want to chase the monkey any more, and just want to have fun (also yours truly).
You constantly shame these ppl, directly and indirectly, for nor having gotten better; for not playing the game, and progressing, the way you do. Which these ppl have every right to do. And then you use that as a rationale to go into lower queues, and ruin their fun because 'who is at fault?' You.
I hate nerfs. Simply because I spend quite some money on the game, and don't want what little DPS I do, lowered even further. Also, because nerfing always impacts 'little people' (who got the Blade Runner refence?) worse than the Elite player. Who cares whether the 400K player now 'only' does 300K? But, at the lower end, the 90K player will feel a drop to 67K significantly.
Also, colonelmarik suggesting DPS be addressed is *not* the same as saying Elite players should be nerfed per se. There is, however, objectively and undeniably, a huge disparity between players, when it comes to DPS. Me? I suggested Cryptic take a look at the underlying key-press mechanics, that cause most of the egregious differences. There are no doubt other ways, Build-improvents, however, are likely the least viable option. Most players I know are well capable of making excellent builds, but lack piloting skills. And no, fitting a few pieces of Deuterium won't cut it, because that is just building on your Elite mindset that I can destroy an entire Borg cluster, in Advanced, in just 1 or 2 weapon cycles. I can't.
As it’s the casual players doing the majority of NPC vaporizing. It feels like people are struggling against the casual players doing 100k to 400k spike damage and instead of looking at the flaws in there build or piloting they are blaming the uber-DPSers.
Excluding my self when I had that slip up do you know how many uber-DPSers I came across in the past days of gather data in random groups? Zero that's how rare they are. Yet every single map run has casuals often the majority of casuals NPC vaporizing via 100k+ spike DPS.
Everyone's talking about Elite uber-DPSers players dropping into normal but I don't think that is the real problem. I know it happens but the Elite uber-DPSers player base is so tiny its extremely rare to run across that type of player.
Not had chance to read past your post or the other posters after this point. Will have to catch up with this interesting thread later today.
I like other non-event TFOs like Crystalline Entity but it only ever pops when its an endeavor and its over in a minute because the average player DPS is way out of line with what those TFOs were designed for. I think unlocking those would alleviate some problems as well. None of this stops people queuing for the full team versions, just alternatives for those "forced" down to normal mode or dislike the speed in which others play.
Converting to STO terms, they boosted stock weapon output while nerfing damage boosting skills (FAW, BO, CSV etc), but to stop the average player then becoming op, increased firing cycle times. Net result, big nerf to 90% of the player base.
STO is much the same, maybe on normal mode or event maps they can limit the high end by capping CritD and CritH to remove the massive spikes and one shot kills, but that's easily going to affect the mid range too and probably upset more people than you make happy. Well, unless you make all players play the same ship level/load out (be critter), but again, people want to play their own ships, so there is no easy solution without upsetting someone.
So first I will say I'm glad we agree that if people don't meet the minimum standards they need to improve until they do. I'm also glad to see that you agree some people need to take a little personal responsibility for themselves.
With that said, in the ISE and Korfez examples I used, there isn't just the AFK penalty that needs to be avoided, as the AFK penalty is universal to all advanced and elite TFOs. In Korfez and ISE you're also up against the built in performance test of the first part of those maps. I don't know what the actual numbers are off the top of my head, but for ISE let's say it's 75k a person to have a quantified example to work with. This means for our hypothetical ISE, not only do you need to do at least 1% of the damage to avoid an AFK penalty, but you also need to be doing at least 75k a person to avoid the TFO auto failing. Again in that instance, that 75k is a standard that Cryptic themselves put into place. Let's suppose we have a hypothetical ISE run that fails. As the map is counting down to boot everyone, someone on that team asks "what happened". To answer the question I pull up the parser and find out 4 of us were doing 80k, but our 5th guy was only doing 40k. If I then say to that dude "the run failed because you weren't pulling enough DPS at only 40k", that's not me being a tool to the guy, but stating objective fact. Now if I also added a "git g00d scrub" at the end of it, then I would a jerk. While there aren't many fail conditions in advanced thankfully, if you avoid the AFK penalty but can't get past the auto-heal of certain mobs, which requires damage higher than the AFK penalty, then you're still not ready for the advanced run.
Fair warning you will probably consider this section text wally if you don't already, but this is due to the technical explanation below. So the first thing I'm going to ask here is, if you're brand new to the game and know you're still learning, why are you going into higher tier difficulty before you've learned what you're doing? That's like wanting to drive in the Indy 500 before you've even learned to properly drive a regular car.
As I've said before, I do not mind new people coming into content and do not hold new people to the same standard I would as someone who says they've been playing the game for 10 years. The new person has a valid excuse for why they haven't learned things yet. The person who has been bragging about playing the game for 10 years that still doesn't know what he's doing but thinks he's hot plasma has no excuse. Again as I said before, if someone is new, they need to speak up so we can explain to them. "Okay when this fight starts, this is what's going to happen." If someone is new, then I am not going to be nearly as annoyed if something goes squirrelly than if I was playing with a group of people bragging about being 10 year veteran players.
With regards to an uber DPS person going into advanced or normal and wiping the map before someone has had a chance to do anything, where is the evidence to support this? I'm glad potsey replied before I typed this as he's been far better than I have at explaining things. Without some kind of parse to know what the damage distribution looked like, and the people complaining about issues sharing their build so we can eliminate that as a possibility, how are we to know if there was really an uber DPSer in there or if it was just them having a bad build and their teammates killing things with spike damage? One of the lowest damage dealers in my fleet is a guy in his 50s who clocks around 90k on average. Yet he can damage spike up to well over 300k when popping all of his powers, which is trippling his damage for a time. Now combine that with the rest of us who do 150k+ and our damage graphs typically shoot to well over 1.5m spike DPS before it tapers off and levels out. I say that not to be arrogant but to make a point.
Now apply that same logic to a team of regular randoms going into a normal TFO. The average range of DPS for the general playerbase is around 15-50k with most being around 30k. For point of reference that's a combined DPS of 150k if all 5 people are participating, which is equal to my strongest tank build last I clocked it. Now if we assume only 4 of the 5 people are able to get to targets and blast them, that's 4 people pulling a combined total of 120k DPS on targets, which is already alot of damage going out. Now if we assume those 4 people hitting their powers are able to spike their damage similar to the above example, those 4 people who were at 30k DPS are now pulling 90k DPS each for a combined total of 360k DPS while their powers are active. Things are going to melt in seconds with that kind of output on normal mode. Even if we assume those guys at 30k can only spike to double their damage, that's still a combined 240k DPS, which again is going to melt things super fast. The 5th guy who didn't get there fast enough isn't seeing an uber DPSer at all, but the combined might of his 4 teammates who are on the same level as him.
Even if I wanted to nerf myself down to around the 30k DPS level to compete on their level again, I can't. I have too many endeavor points and other bonuses I've picked up over the years that the game will not let me turn off. As they start earning endeavors they will be in the same boat. The only way I can ever come close to being on that level again is if I essentially rolled in there with a level 30 ship using mk vi vendor gear, no person space traits, starship traits, or reputation powers, and using very few if any boff powers, and I wouldn't be able to run any consoles that weren't crafted. For that matter even my crafted console selection would be super limited. Yet if I want to play anything less than elite so I'm not always having to worry about the TFO failing because one of us blinked or sneezed at the wrong time, people like myself are essentially being told to play that stripped down build or don't play at all, while they get to do pretty much whatever they want and never have to change a thing. How is that fair to people like myself when we've done nothing wrong?
Folks want to say they're not for locking anyone out, but essentially want folks like me locked out by virtue of what they've advocated and/or punished for having earned additional bonuses, yet want want to get mad when I hold them to a similar standard.
Lastly I disagree with the NBA analogy because it doesn't fit in this instance for many of the technical reasons outlined above. That NBA player can turn alot of that off and let the high schoolers shine while still putting in the occasional basket himself and participate. In STO as much as I might wish I can turn off certain bonuses from time to time, I can't. I either sit there in a practically naked ship barely ever doing anything if I want to play less than elite, or I don't play at all. Essentially it's like people getting mad at that NBA player for even touching the ball or making a single play.
To close this out, I appealed to the MTG tournament example when dealing with STO as it's more appropriate imo. If someone goes to a tournament where they know they are most likely to run into people using ultra powerful decks, yet choose to take a starter deck and getting rolled by someone with an ultra powerful deck and complaining, who is at fault? Instead of saying "hey maybe I shouldn't take a starter deck to something like that" the guy whines that the people with more powerful decks shouldn't be allowed to use them. That person has the potential and ability to use more powerful decks but chooses not to. Yet we've seen by the technical stuff above that they may not even have played someone with a stronger deck, just someone on a similar level that knew how to play the cards better, aka the combined might of the teammates.
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By the same token, though, NASCAR drivers have no business taking their racing vehicles onto I-5. And what you're insisting on is that, metaphorically, all I really need to do is slap a supercharger and a nitrous tank onto my '05 Hyundai so I can keep up with you during commutes. Why should I have to "git gud" when, absent the presence of an Elite player who just wants to smear a Normal TFO so they can feel powerful, I'm already more than "gud" enough?
^^ Another excellent post!
I have absolutely no business being in an Elite TFO either. When Korfez came out, I ran a few, on invite, with friendly people who wanted to help me get an Accolade, iirc. It was fun, but I was obviously being carried, and, at the end of the day, that never feels good. I want to make a difference, even in a game, and being a 3rd wheel does not accomplish that.
Also, it's never a good feeling to have it effectively rubbed-in, by one's own shortcomings, that you are not good enough. It's like a physics student having met Einstein: they'd consider it an honor, and be glad they got to spend a day with him, seeing what he does, and maybe even asked their opinion at times. But when the sun goes down, they realize, of course, that while fun, they're not really on his level. And it would be downright weird if Einstein then derived a kick out of being better than them, or told them to 'git gud.'
Tl;dr: while they may exist, I personally don't know of anyone wanting to do Elites who isn't really ready for them -- all feels like one huge strawman to me.
^^ So obviously true. This whole "I am so good, I cannot help myself." is utter bull, of course (and only serves to aggrandize oneself even further, really).
There is never enough DPS...
I am not for locking anyone out of content. Be it an underpowered ship going into Korfez or a uber-elite ship going into Normal/Advanced to have mindless fun. I like mindless fun as much as the next person and can have it in normal content, be it TFOs, patrols or story content as long as they're Normal, which is what I play on 99% of the time. Advanced is saved for the couple of endeavors that require Advanced (They're usually the only ones that pop over Normal)
That being said, I did try an Elite map once. It wasn't a TFO, I would never inflict my build on a TFO. This was many years ago before there was patrols in the TFO window. It was Japori, to be specific. Now I know Japori can be stomped on Normal as I do that all the time, but I wanted to see what it was like on Elite. I did not like it. I got through it, but it took far longer to do than I like a run to take. I've never tried anything Elite since, because I just like to go into the game and basically RP my character while we do the event daily or endeavors. I could probably bump my overall difficulty up to Advanced all the time, but I'm not fussed about it. I do fine with my, probably average, build. My spike damage would probably be laughable to you who do over 100k spike (I rarely see spike doing more than 40k)/ Still, I have fun and this is my fun. When I do TFOs I'm able to participate, as I said before. That's what I want to do, participate. I'm not fussed about how many ships I take out, as long as maybe I'm keeping them off someone else's back while they're trying to accomplish another part of the objectives. It's what I do on ISA?ISN runs. While the other four are running to do the generators I stay in the middle and take on the Nanite Spheres and Spheres. Then I help with the gate and Tactical cube at the end.
I know I could probably do better, but since I don't want to poke my nose into any Elite map I don't really have to. I will experiment with different things on whichever alt or main I'm playing. I'm running an alt right now simply so I remember to turn his reps over when I'm playing (And he's a favorite alt). I haven't been ingame cause I'd gotten a bit of burnout with the back to back events and such and I'm waiting for FCD tomorrow.
So, see you guys at the rocket-building map!
And have fun, people!
For me, this is a WoT, so apologies. Love you guys!
What if I am right and it is the everyday players that are vaporising the majority of NPCs and those every day players are being mistaken for high DPS players? That completely changes the dynamic of the argument that DPS players are causing noticeable problems. It also defeats the point that DPS players should downgrade equipment, count to 10 before engaging and all the other stuff. If high DPS players are in say 1% of runs and 95% of runs have the majority of casual every day players vaporising NPC's then why are we blaming the high DPS players as being the problem? So far the only data shown in this thread is pointing to this being the case.
First of all key binds is not all about DPS. Keybinds for me is about convenience, streamlining and improving my enjoyment. There are lots of valid reasons to use Keybinds outside of DPS. I use keybinds and none of the reasons are for DPS.
I have no desire and have never been behind pushing normal level players into advanced or advance into Elite who do not want to advanced upwards. I am all for players being able to play how they want to. At the same time at some point a player needs to take responsibly for their own build and their own piloting rather than blaming everyone else around them. If the problem can be fixed by piloting or small changes to your own equipment then the problem isn’t really the other players but your setup.
Sure not everyone wants to do that and that’s their choice. At the same time if they don’t want to fix the problem with there build that is making them fall behind that’s on them. They shouldn’t be expecting everyone else to change their setup to accommodate them, all because they don’t want to accommodate anyone else. That is what I believe Darkbladejk is trying to get across.
Why should Player group A be asked to changed their setup and accommodate everyone else. All because Player group B doesn’t want to change their setup and accommodate anyone else. What gives one group more right then the other group to be the one everyone has to accommodate to?
Take the data I gathered. Doing quick napkin math aprox 80% of the NPC vaporising was done by the everyday causal players. Apox 0.5% of runs had high DPS players, not aprox but 100% of people that got hit with AFK got hit with AFK due to major flaws in there piloting or setup. 0% got pushed into AFK by high DPS players.
The players that did have problems was 100% because they needed to "git gud" If the player is failing to keep up with the causal everyday player then we need to stop blaming the high DPS players and take a look at how to tweak that build and piloting to fix the problem.
Sorry I know this is very similar to the quote above. No because the data is not showing that. When I trigged my higher DPS builds I wasn’t pushing down the players near me. I was bringing them up or having little impact. When I hit that 1.5million spike DPS you know what happened to the other players DPS around me? Nothing much, player green DPS increase by approx. 10%, player orange decreased by 1% and he stayed at that level for the rest of the TFO so that decrease wasn’t from me. Player Blue 0% impact, the other 4 players sustained DPS was pretty much the same before, during and after my high 1.5million DPS.
Look at the graph I posted before, the other 4 players has the around about the same sustained DPS before, during and after my high 1.5million DPS. There DPS was the same when I did 1.5 million DPS as when I did 50k DPS later in the TFO.
I don’t believe the problem is caused by high DPSers coming in and vaporising everything. I know that happen at times but it appears to be extremely rare. I think most of the problems are players underperforming below everyday causal players who are vaporising the NPC’s on normal. Along with the everyday casual players vaporising NPC's then being mistaken for high DPSer.
Up to a point there is a responsibility for the player to keep up with the group rather than blame the group. If the group is moving from Point A to Point B and blowing up Point B before you catch up. Then the solution is to tweak you build so you move at the speed the average group moves at. Sure, you have the right to not tweak you setup but then don’t complain about the group outpacing you. My preferred ships are the big slow ships like dreadnought carriers. If I fail to keep pace with the group, I don’t expect the group to downgrade to my level, I look at my build and piloting skills and tweak things so I can keep up or accept the fact I will be lagging behind. It doesn’t feel right to me to ask those other players to slow down so I can keep pace. The exception being if you made a private group and called out some custom rules before starting.
Lastly I have still seen zero evidence high DPSers are causing problems outside of some very rare map runs.
If I jump into a ship from 10 years ago with all the same equipment from 10 years ago I will do something like triple the DPS now then I did back then without any changes to the old setup. I am not saying it cannot be done but it is way, way harder then you expect. To the point where it zaps all the fun out of the game. Then there is the entire argument about why should player A have to turn things off because Player B doesn't want to turn things on.