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foreseeable significant problems with random elite
vanhyo
Member Posts: 253 Arc User
Title says it
1. There is always some lazy clueless dude or more that wants to be carried by the others. People will get pissed off, time wasted insults thrown.
2. You get ready for space but you get ground TFO's only, or reverse. The point above applies.
Solutions: split the random TFO into Space/Ground/All! Ground is actually much easier to get prepared for, its cheap and accessible, this will reduce the degree of the problems mentioned above.
1. There is always some lazy clueless dude or more that wants to be carried by the others. People will get pissed off, time wasted insults thrown.
2. You get ready for space but you get ground TFO's only, or reverse. The point above applies.
Solutions: split the random TFO into Space/Ground/All! Ground is actually much easier to get prepared for, its cheap and accessible, this will reduce the degree of the problems mentioned above.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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Comments
While the newest TFO's can be a bit of a hassle when you face off against mirror Borg in a team with several new players (giving them benefit of the doubt) most of the Advanced TFO's can almost be completed by a single person.
Taking this next step is a necessity.
That being said i am both eager and scared of what is to come, but challenging content is not a bad thing.
In time things will stabilize and even the Random Elite TFO's will feel tame.
The solution is to sign up as a group, looking in chat channels for players.
For your first point, I agree to a VERY limited degree. There are absolutely people in game who vastly over-estimate their ability in game, under-estimate the content itself, or both. They join content they're absolutely not ready for and then wonder why they're getting steam rolled. With that in mind there are two types of players that fall under this category. Your bullet point describes the second type of person I'm going to talk about below.
1: People who legitimately don't know any better but can improve: These types of people are the ones who simply do not know any better and came in unprepared mostly through no fault of their own, but are capable of learning and improvement. With these types of people they are generally open to improvements and learning, however the game does an absolutely terrible job at times of teaching things. If they had the proper instruction of very basic game mechanics, interactions and so on, they would be doing far far better than they are now.
2: People who refuse to learn or improve: These are the types of people your first bullet point describes. These types of people are the one's that will never change and can't be helped for one reason or another. It's never their fault that they can't complete the content. It's never that they're using a subpar build and/or subpar tactics for the content they're trying to do, or that they're playing out of their league. Nah it's always the game that's at fault, either because it's too hard and needs to be nerfed, people won't help them (almost always false but sometimes true), or whatever excuse they come up with that day. They're unwilling to change things up because "well I like it this way and shouldn't have to change" or my personal favorite "I've been here since (era of game here) and I know what I'm doing." Doesn't matter who offers to help them, doesn't matter what you try to do for them, they can't be helped or made to see that sometimes, they are their own problem. Unfortunately these people are in every game and not just STO. You'll never completely be rid of them, but there are ways to keep them from ruining it for everyone else.
Briefly I will touch on your second bullet point before moving forward. When you press the random TFO button you are doing so under the assumption that you're good to play any TFO in the list. It's the same thing as going down the list on your selected difficulty and ticking every individual box then playing what pops up first. By nature of the beast sometimes that will be ground, sometimes that will be space. I get that not everyone likes ground combat in STO, but ground missions are just as much an important part of Trek as the space missions are. If you want to guarantee even less TFOs pop than we see already, this is a great way to make that happen. While I enjoy space, it would get very boring very fast if all I ever did was pure space combat all the time. The solution to this isn't to split space and ground TFOs away from each other in the random system. The solution is to split ground and space specializations finally. Thus on ground maps as a hypothetical you could have Commando and Intel active, but in space you may have Miracle Worker and Strategist. This completely solves the "being ready for space but getting ground" bit.
Now back to the other issues. I've long said for awhile with fleetmates and stuff that STO is going to have to make a choice about what kind of game it wants to be and who it wants to cater to audience wise more. Are they going to cater more towards the casual side of things while still giving stuff to the hardcore types on occasion, or are they going to go the opposite way and do more hardcore stuff while still feeding into the casual side some. As is right now they're trying to please everyone and it's not working. As one example, I like the idea of random elite TFOs but I also dread them at the same time. Reason being is I'm afraid that the feature will release, we'll see a ton of folks who are not yet ready for elite join TFOs, get stomped, whine about it being too hard and then get it nerfed for everyone else. I want folks to be able to experience content, but not before they're ready for it. I know that folks don't like to be told they're not ready for something yet, but there are some folks out there who frankly are not ready for elite content yet and have no business going anywhere near it until they improve. I'm all for folks getting to see stuff, but that also has to be balanced against how it could effect other people. It's beyond unfair and unreasonable for a fresh max level toon with a mismatch of everything under the sun to expect to step into elites the moment they hit max level, because they will not be able to contribute to the team and are guaranteeing the run will fail. Unlike advanced and normal mode content, there are no optionals in elite, you either do it or fail. "just queue again" is not a valid argument because that person is just going to guarantee another team fails by their presence.
There are plenty of people who may not be ready for elite just yet that could be if they're given more easily accessible info and a progression path. WoW did this with the dungeon journal, proving grounds, and gear check. SWTOR has somewhat similar systems in place but not exact. Yes I know some people are probably going to be like "not this again" but it needs to be said. To make sure people were capable of a basic minimum contribution WoW did 3 things named above. The dungeon journal told people where they could get certain bits of gear, and told them about each enemy type they will come up against. Such as saying "this is a cube, it does A B C which deal type D damage." It never outright said you have to do X Y Z to win, meaning you could have 5 different groups with 5 different valid strategies to win. This removed the argument of "I didn't know it would do (thing)" and "I don't know where to get (thing) for my build" arguments. The proving grounds tested people on basic mechanic knowledge that's universal to content. If you wanted to join random stuff you had to get silver level out of the 4 difficulties, which wasn't hard. If you're a tank, don't point the boss with a cleave at the group, taunt foes that go after people, and similar for the other roles. Then lastly the gear check made sure you had enough basic stats on paper to contribute and survive. If folks were able to pass these checks and get into content, they had no excuse for not producing a comparable level of performance in actual content and made it much easier to tell who wanted a carry or just wasn't ready. Thus they could be removed from group by the team and a replacement found.
SWTOR gets around alot of this by having modable gear you can use, or gear with predefined stats and paths of progression. When you hit max level, you can do some basic missions called heroics with a companion character backing you up. They're usually only around 5-10 minutes per. You can earn currency to buy basic gear pieces to get started, and upgrade them if you wish with further currency. Veteran Flashpoints/TFOs can be ran by anyone and will give you gear appropriate for your level and currency you can use to upgrade items. Veteran Flashpoints also bolster you to the appropriate rank/level for said FP. It may not be super fast but everyone can contribute. You can also do a bit of cheese to unlock mods, then pick your favorite gear shells and slap stats on them. Then there are Master Mode/Elites which are much harder. These you MUST bring your A game or you will never get through them. Now SWTOR also has the vote kick option that groups can call upon if someone is just a complete tool, or undergeared to the point they simply can't compete. Folks are also generally willing to tell you where to go to do certain things as well and can sometimes be bribed to provide backup. Personally I see the SWTOR type route being easier for STO than the WoW one, but regardless something needs to change.
I could go on this for awhile but I think you get the idea. Some stuff you're way off on, and some stuff you've only scratched the surface on.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
I wouldn't mind splitting the ground and space queues even though that would kill the ground queues, but that's just because I'm better at space than ground. I have no problems with advanced queues for space, but I actually die now and then on the ground in advanced TFOs, especially playing one of my tactical captains. I'm pretty casual about the game bur If I put a little more effort in I think I'd be fine in Elite space, but I'm less likely to pull my weight in a ground TFO.
That could be solved like they did it back in the day in Marvel Heroes. You simply have to pass a trial before they let you play elite content. Creating a test like that would of course take time as well but a general gear check in this game I think it matter none. I have seen Kael in all Epic Maxed out gear getting his butt whopped by some Kazon on Elite when he introduced a new ship, shortly after they stopped doing it on Elite...
I can go with MK XII and clear Elite content just fine. So I don't think a Gear Check is the solution. I have had so many people recently on Advanced who didn't contribute and it ticked me off quit a bit. Sure I can fly most things on Advanced Solo without any issues however if I sign up for a TFO I contribute to that TFO so I expect my fellow players to do the same. But there will always be people who leech and want to carried through. Part of the problem is the difference in Marks and Elite Tokens. You don't get Elite Tokens on Normal and the Marks are less as well. If you could actually convert Marks to Elite Tokens at will and not only 1 a day I think the issue would greatly resolve itself to a certain degree.
I also do not understand the why Cryptic makes it so hard for casual players to get the Elite Tokens to buy from the Reputation System. You want them to buy from there so they are more competitive and be better geared for higher difficulties. That is a point they could change and I think we wouldn't have so many "not ready" players in the advanced or elite difficulty TFO's. There will always be Leechers however a great deal of players do it because they want to get stuff from the Reputation System and its easier to get the Elite Tokens for that then playing on normal.
Simple as that.
If you can't deal with some unpredictability, don't queue for random missions. Or don't queue for elite, you might not be ready for it.
It doesn't have to be strictly the WoW approach, though the WoW approach is proven to work. They could adopt the SWTOR approach if they wished and IMO the SWTOR approach is closer to what we already have. Either way we go a clear path of progression of some kind is the only way to prevent large scale issues of people joining elite content if not ready.
This also goes back to what I was mentioning before about STO having to make the choice of what kind of game they want to be and the audience they want to tilt the scales towards. Tilting the scales towards a more traditional MMO type crowd and hardcore type does NOT mean the casual crowd has to be forgotten about or could never play. In this instance it would simply mean if they want the hardest tier content with the highest rewards, they must meet minimum standards set forth to do so. Every game out there does this, it's only a matter of what.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
Every game involving a gear system has this to some kind of degree whether they have a gear score system or not. Even STO has it to a degree with certain fleets or groups not taking people on certain content until they've shown they have above a certain threshold. You'll never be completely rid of it. In the case of WoW, the issues arose because the gear scoring was the result of a 3rd party addon and not handled by the game itself.
To give the background, around Wrath of the Lich King someone introduced the addon called Gear Score. The theory behind it was that it would total up the value of items on players and give you a score readout so you weren't always having to inspect people manually if you were forming groups for raids or other content. Each level of gear was worth so many points. I don't remember the exact values off the top of my head, but for conceptualization purposes an ilvl 226 would be worth 200 points, a 232 would be worth 250 points, a 245 worth 300 points and so on. So if you had a full set of 232 items you would have a gearscore of 2750. If you had half 232 and half 245 you would have around a 3350 since there were 11 slots you could gear up. In theory it was supposed to give you an idea of if someone was ready for certain content or not, however there were fatal flaws with the addon.
First being that the addon could be fooled and people could inflate their numbers by equipping items their class is capable of wearing, but isn't meant for them overall. Such as on my death knight I could've equipped a full set of chainmail gear to cheese it then gone back to my lesser plate gear once I was in. Which alot of people did in order to fool others. Thus you're right back to square one with people getting into things they weren't ready for in droves. Next issue is that it treated all weapons the same which was a huge issue for classes that used exclusively 2 handed weapons leading to people trying to exclude those classes more and more as a result. For example logic should dictate that as a death knight if I'm using a 2 handed axe at ilvl 245 it would be worth 600 points on the addon vs 300, but it didn't do that. So it treated it as if I was perpetually missing an item even though I wasn't. In other words it only cared about the rank of the gear and not what the gear actually was or who could use it.
The issues with gear scoring were resolved when Blizzard took the system and made it what it should have been, and implemented it game side eliminating the 3rd party issues. When blizzard implemented the gear checks they did it based on average item level, and it had to be with class appropriate items. Meaning no more cheesing off-class items to get in. They also posted clear requirements for different content so people knew what they needed. If for example they wanted something tuned for average ilvl 232 they might set the requirements at ilvl 229 to account for some folks who don't yet have everything at 232. Thus it was no longer players telling you that you needed whatever number they wanted, it was the game itself saying what was needed. It didn't completely eliminate the tools who thought you needed 50x the minimum in order to get in, but it reduced it to near non-existent. As long as folks met the minimums that blizzard themselves set, as long as people weren't absolute tools in the group, most folks didn't care if you were to the lower end of the spectrum.
Normal difficulty content was left unlocked for everyone so that they could go in and get a set of starter gear. Heroic 5 mans, the equivalent of elite at the time were locked until you got your starter set from normal modes, which took around 6 hours of play time if you were super unlucky with drops and around 2.5-3 if you were. Starting raids had a higher standard than the heroic 5 mans did because raids required 10-25 people coordinating to get it done. All you needed to get into the basics was a set of heroic 5 man gear to get in. You would be doing the absolute minimum on everything, but you would have something. Thus folks had a clear path of progression and goals to meet before stepping into the next highest tier, or could stay where they were at if they wished.
Overall I want people to eventually see content, but not before they're ready and not at the detriment of the rest of their team. There are some people who try to go into content they're absolutely not ready for that don't need to be in there which guarantees a fail by them being there. I am not saying they should never be allowed to see elite content. I'm saying they're not ready YET. Kind of like a beginner wanting to join a more advanced class of martial arts they're not yet ready for. Practice up, get a little more work done, then come back and we can go when they're ready. Otherwise it's just going to be a miserable experience for them and their team.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
Random Elite TFOs will be the hardest content in the game and if you don't know how to complete them, you shouldn't be allow access them. You're going to keep failing because you're not going to be willing to listen and you're going to make the rest of us unhappy. This is what happened to the original Borg STO. The Casual player base complain because they were too hard to complete and Cryptic Studios ended strip them down to where the are today, not fun. The High End Player base can handle and seek those challenges. Remember its the Higher End player base that buys the new ships. Increasing the game's difficulty gives us a desire to meet those challenges.
Survivability and DPS is important. Buit what is most important is knowing how to complete them. Elite TFO all objectives must be completed in the correct order. If you don't do this correctly it's an automatic fail. This week Public Endeavor was Dranuur Beach Assault. I form a PUG run with players from the Higher end DPS channels and we fail because we had players who didn't know what to do. This same TFO on Advance all I need to do is keep one inhibitor alive and we win. But I know what to do.
DPS scores are base on Hive Onslaught Elite and Infected: The Conduit Advance or Elite. There is no real strategy towards these two TFO. (The Queen is not that hard if you know what you are doing.) That's all they know to how to do on elite, they don't understand the other queues.
Being in a fleet we have many times brought weaker players into these Elite TFOs and with our guidance, knowledge and abilities we are able to get them through it. They learn what is needed to complete them. That's what fleets do, they teach their fleetmates how to play this game at the more difficult levels. We have players that DPS barely reach 5k and within a month they are pushing 85k. Because we have been playing this game for years and bought ships and our endeavors are Max out it'll be a very long time until these players get to our level but at least now the game is more enjoyable for them. They now know what they're doing now and they have a plan of attack.
My Fleet (https://ufplanets.com ) Will be adding these Elite random queues to our events. We've already been teaching our players how the do this queue, but now on a random system it's a little bit more challenging because you can't change your Specialization. You must decide which ones you are going to run and then play it out. We'll start off with some parse runs then we'll move on to the random queues.
My Characters (Intel/Temporal) are designed to play elite PVE and I do a lot of Advance random queues, so these random queue won't be as challenging for me, but still let's go on to be fun.
In a way its not too different to the AFK jellyfish players in normal TFO's who sit stationary. Yes they are not helping and yes its frustrating but it doesn't stop you completing it.
Its always been the case if you want to be 100% sure of a proper prepared group go private.
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Yes, that was mine. It looks like the Moderator combined them which was a good decision. Much better title.
Knowledge is key first and foremost.
There will be hurdles to overcome once the Random Elite TFO arrive, but it is primarily one of gaining knowledge.
I think on average you want at least 10k DPS for Advanced. More than that makes it comfortable. I don't know what you need for Elite.
The people who insist on doing hardest possible content they get into while not even trying to pull their weight is what I like to call "wannabe elitists" these people who want to be known having done the hardest content there is but don't want put in the effort and are often even more lazy then any "filthy casual" and in fact are often the people bullying those in the most toxic way possible.
EDIT:This might come as a shock but most casual players want to have fun and aren't there for express reason to ruin the game for you as that's not fun nor is doing content I cannot do and have no time or energy to learn how to do.
Just to clarify, should the word 'don't', be in this sentence?
I agree by the way. I never queue for elite stuff when I get to choose the TFO - so I certainly won't be queuing for random ones.
Yeah, dyslexia and ADD (a form of ADHD) is a nasty combo.
Although I would argue with the new harder Elite ISE the new guideline should be more like 700k team based DPS or 140k DPS per player minimal. Its more about the team DPS then the player DPS. Anyone doing under 100k DPS shouldn't really be in Elite Content even 140k is to low really although you might get away with some of the easier Elite TFO's.
So as long as the team is doing 700k+ DPS everything should be fine. At under 600k DPS you will fail ISE at Elite.
Not sure but I assume 10k DPS is now to low for the new version of ISA. For advanced I would assume you want at least 30 to 50k DPS. ISA and ISE are a lot harder now then they used to be and take more DPS.
Overall i think that while there is a learning curve it will be a short one.
One thing i have not seen mentioned is if the introduction of Random Elite TFO with mission targets and teamwork will spur a resurgence of the Competative TFO.
The Competitive TFO's at least the space ones where flawed in design. I will be very surprised if there is a resurgence in them as the problem was the bad design from the devs not that it was PvP or Competitive. The ground ones where a little better so I can sort of see a small resurgence in those.
On the other hand, have you ever PUG'ged Rhiho station elite and been in a team where no one was caught by a spider?
Most elite players aren't quite as elite as they think they are.
And this is when I get called an elitist most likely. The whole "form your own groups" thing and "you're pressing random" only goes so far and when used in this context are nothing but arguments for mediocrity and stagnation. While yes people can form their own groups, that doesn't eliminate the issue entirely. Even then people shouldn't have to rely exclusively on premade groups either as that defeats the purpose of randoms. It also doesn't address the issue of what happens when a person can't find a group on their own.
Second "you're pressing random" comes with some coveats. When you are pressing the button for something such as random elites in this instance, you are by necessity telling the game and your prospective teammates you are capable of pulling at least the basic minimum level of performance as required by the TFO itself in order to succeed. I don't expect people to pull infinite DPS or what have you. However if the TFO requires 50k as a hypothetical from each person to succeed, then I expect everyone in there to be able to do 50k regardless of how they get there. They can do it through torps, science, rainbow build or whatever build they want. If they can't then I'm sorry but they have no business in elite TFOs, not yet. If someone joins an elite TFO and they're clearly underpowered and not ready, they've guaranteed the run to fail and wasted the time of 4 other people who put in the work to be able to get into those elite TFOs. I'm sorry but in my book no one person is so important that they should be allowed to inflict a guaranteed fail on other people because they can't stand the idea of being told they're not ready for something yet.
One thing I will partially agree with you on, the game isn't hard to figure out. However it being easy to figure out is predicated on IF someone is willing to actually do the research and the work to figure out. If someone is unwilling to learn, change their tactics or so on, there is no amount of help that will work for them because they've closed their minds and ceased to learn. In fact I've seen several times where people have come on here complaining about a mission being too hard, then get asked by myself or others what they're doing and what their ship and such looks like. In one instance I offered to give someone a cstore ship coupon and a full set of mk xv gold gear to get them through content and was turned down. So point being you can't help those who don't want to be helped, and if someone isn't willing to do the research and ask questions and try to improve, I see it as beyond unfair to expect 4 other people to carry them. I dare say most are willing to learn to a degree, but there are alot who simply aren't.
Next if as you say a gear check or other safeguard are pointless, then why are you worried about something being implemented that almost all of the popular MMOs and games out there today have? Why worry since by that logic it won't matter and they'll be able to get in still? Being locked out of certain content because you're not ready gear wise is no different than being locked out because you're not ready level wise. Games have locked content behind certain gates since their inception. Is a game suddenly elitist now because it won't let you do certain content below a specific level? Of course not. If folks just don't like the idea of such things, fine they're entitled to that opinion. Otherwise I see no valid arguments as to why there shouldn't be safeguards around elite content.
Should an actual progression system be put in, you are not forced to interact with it and are free to stop at whatever level you please. If you only want to do advanced content, nothing is forcing you to do so. However if you're wanting to step into elites, you need to do the minimum level required by the TFO itself or sorry but in my book you have no business in there. That's something I will never budge on. It boggles my mind that people talk about the game having very little in the way of tutorial type info and directing people where to go for (choice of build here), yet complain when something is suggested to get people ready for content. In my case I am capable of creating builds that do 300k+ however I have no desire to do so as it's not needed. You choose how far you go up the ladder of progression.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
A competency system can be translated into completing a certain benchmark patrol or calculating if the gear on you ship equals X value, but neither one takes into account that knowledge is the main contributor.
Someone can clear a benchmark patrol or gear check with ease but still Leroy Jenkins a TFO.
DCUO has one of those "competency tests" (or had back when I was playing it regularly, no idea if it still exists) but they did not implement it in a way that was actually helpful, all it did was brutally drive home the fact that endgame content was strictly designed for cash-shop gear and nothing except that would work. It was passive checklisting, simply an endgame difficulty combat scenario with endgame's very steep difficulty increase as the last mission on the levelup path to unlock the endgame content. I hear that it is not quite as bad for that as it used to be, but I have not played it enough in recent years to tell if it really is better.
BDO had the Black Spirit give some (usually) helpful advice and critique at times which might qualify as an informal version of one of those tests, but it was rather sloppy and sporadic at best, and their AI just was not up to the job if that is what their devs were trying to do.
There is a lot of potential for better AI (such as that expert-system ability-test) in STO if the game system can take that kind of modification and they hire someone who could design the kind of active teaching/testing scenarios along with the AI for it. When I say they would need to hire someone I am not casting aspersions or saying the devs are stupid or whatever, just that MMO dev teams usually don't have people with experience in that field since it is far from the usual MMO wheelhouse.
Without a robust analytic AI those tests are not particularly useful (they are usually simple checklists of events completed, similar to gear checks, just the other side of the same coin), since quirks of builds, player habits, knacks, and other factors interacting with the scenario can have more influence on the result than the player's actual level of skill. Often, someone passing a particular scenario due to non-skill factors quickly gets crushed in content of that level where those factors are not applicable. You really need an expert system to cut through spurious results and see if the player is ready skill-wise to make setting up a bottleneck/gate like that worthwhile.