14 days of beta testing, bugging serious issues, and exploring content left me with several pages of notes on issues that were not major. So I spent the day compiling them and organizing them a bit, and removing redundancies.
PvE - Space
1) Negh'var boarding party attacks are overpowered, with massive stacking timer issues. Reported multiple times by many many people.
2) Far too many asteroids/rocks in systems. It seemed like nearly 60% of the systems had massive asteroid rings around planets, or just huge debris fields. Nice to look at, yes to a degree, unfriendly to cameras though.
3) NPC ships tend to spam BOff abilities like crazy then don't use them much for the rest of the fight. This usually ends with either a massive alpha strike which cripples/destroys you, or seriously harms you. Then turns into a 'counter spam' of Player BOff abilities to stay in the fight, and/or repair. NPC's need their BOff ability use tuned a little to allow for more interesting fights, not the alpha strike they tend to do.
4) Doomsday Machine targetting/firing needs some adjustment. It has a tendency to ignore the Federation npc ships, and only charge up and fire on the players ship. The attack also has a 360 degree attack arc, which is counter intuitive based on the TOS episode and how the 'monster' is designed in looks. A 90 degree forward arc makes much better sense, or even a 45 degree arc.
PvE - Ground
1) Ranged weapon damage needs to be increase by 15-20%. Firefights in the TV shows didn't last several minutes to take down one opponent. All ranged weapons seem very weak, easily out performed by melee attacks.
2) FX need tuning, as they seem to be the cause of a vast number of crashes in combat. Massive FX on screen and off screen seem to nuke the atikmdag.dll file causing a restart of the drivers for ATI cards. Also massive effects tend to cause performance stutters and instance lag.
3) More options for diplomatic resolutions in missions would be nice.
PvP Space
1) Klingons ships seem far to fragile, shields being similar to Federation ships, but hull being entirely too weak.
2) Cloaking needs a bit of work, shields should reduce as cloak comes up, not drop entirely. Also, when decloaking shields should increase not snap into place at full strength.
3) Combat cloaking doesn't seem to work well. 20 second timer isn't bad, but in almost every instance I found it could not be activated while in combat. And when activated Federation players could attack with beams even without science ships nearby, IF they auto attacked before the cloak was fully engaged. But the attack would hit after full engagement of cloak.
PvP Ground
1) Melee weapons are overpowered in comparison to ranged weapons. Ranged weapons need a 15-20% increase in damage. Melee is the only viable 'fast kill' option for PvP at this point due to the disparity of damage. Shields being useless in defense from melee attacks.
2) Stealth Module (all versions) is VERY powerful, and allows for a nearly unbeatable ability to retreat from combat. The only way I've seen for it not to work is if a melee or ranged attack hits as it is engaged.
Crafting
1) Resources for the trade in 'crafting' are rather odd in drop rates. By far the hardest to get is Anti-Matter, which is needed in a vast number of the turn-ins. Most seem rather good in drop rate, if sporadic, but Anti-Matter needs to have its drop rate increase a bit.
2) There is currently no way to know how far along in getting from Tier to Tier in crafting you are. There needs to be a way to tell, preferably some kind of option in the discussion menu with the trade in person which tells how many more craftings need to be done before new ones open.
3) Crafting resources need their own inventory tab. As they dominate inventory in a very short amount of time as the inventory system works currently.
Exploration
1) Exploration areas need to have their size increased to at least double current size, preferably to the size of normal sector blocks. As they are now they seem quite confined and not at all expansive.
2) The white fog in exploration zones should be reduced in density by 25-50%, fog of 'war' is nice in an RTS game, but once you've been in an area it shouldn't look like a milk cloud. You have after all been exploring the area, and space is nice to see.
3) It would be nice to have an indication at a distance on if the anomalous readings were of a star system or not. Possibly change the naming on star system spawned readings to 'Uncharted System Reading' or something similar. While keeping the resource spawns as 'Anomalous Sensor Reading'.
Sector Space
1) Possibly increase travel speed by 15-20%. As it stands it seems very slow. This increase should effect NPC random 'enemy signal detection' movements as well.
2) Autopilot needs a little work, as at times it will send you to the correct system space, but not at the correct height level to actually enter the system instance.
3) Wandering merchants should have other items for sale than just commodities. Some might be weapons dealers, others carrying engines, sensors, shields, etc. Having the option to find a wandering merchant selling equipment corresponding to the sector blocks tier would be nice. And reduce the crowding of various bases in regions.
Random
1) The Crystaline Entity could do with having a certain number of times per day in which it can be done with a reward. Say 3-5, with each time after the first reducing the rewards in XP, Skill points, loot. Otherwise this will be heavily farmed.
2) Federation need access to melee weapons of equal ability to the Klingon faction. Not necessarily the exact same weapons, but ones of equal damage, rate of swing/attack, etc. Ground PvP tends to be dominated by Klingon melee attackers who do their disproportionate damage constantly.
3) Danube class Runabout overpriced. While it is a fun ship, it is NOT worth 148k energy credits. It is far to frail, far to limited (in BOff slots, console slots, etc.), and basically useful for tier 1 and 'maybe' tier 2 use. A more reasonable 20-40k pricing would make more sense for it. As it stands even with tier 4 gear it died in 3-5 shots from basically anything, and in many cases one shot. Fun ship, but overpriced and sold in an area it can not compete in.
4) Starship autofire, all weapons should have the ability to be set to autofire. To reduce the issues with RSI/Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, and wear and tear of keyboards. It is very unemersive to have to constantly mash the spacebar in a fight once past tier 1 & 2.
5) A naming filter on characters, BOffs, and ships used during creation of and/or during renaming. This game will have a fair number of teens in it, and seeing ships and characters roaming around with names that are, quite simply, curse words or vulgar sayings is just wrong on many levels.
6) UI option to remove shield indicator rings on player ship as well as npc ships and/or other players ships.
7) Unlink cooldown on torpedo systems, as it makes no sense currently to have multiple torpedo systems if you can only fire one in an arc at a time. It also restricts builds of ships, disallowing torpedo boat builds. Torpedos don't tend to work well against shields, only against hull, so balance isn't really a problem with a torpedo build. As a torpedo build still needs a beam/bolt friend to knock shields down quickly.
8) Addition of off duty clothing options for players use on scenic planets (Vulcan, Risa, Andoria). This would allow for 'shore leave' roleplay, and give players the feeling that they aren't always 'on duty'.
9) Additional emotes would be nice, but not really necessary. Though it would be VERY nice to have the option to sit on chairs, especially the bridge captains chair.
10) Addition of the TOS shuttle craft as a pet or flyable option would be nice, and it fits with the pre-order Constitution quite well.
Great list, I'd love to see ranged weapons become stronger, it's my biggest quirk with away teams, fights last quite awhile. Even if this is an mmo it just seems weird firing on that klingon warrior for so long(and with 5 people firing at the same guy to boot). Flanking is the best bet and that is best used with cloaking..Everyone shouldn't have to rely on cloaks or moving their team past the angry klinks while they focus fire on you so your team can gain flanking damage.. Now I'm just speaking about PVE, I'm not sure about ground pvp since I've only fought in space but I'd imagine it has the same problems (especally since melee weapons are a better option, as you said) it's just odd =x
15-20% boost to damage sounds like a good idea, or whatever it takes to make it so. xD
Edit: the secondary fire of some weapons seem alright, most that I used (split beam, or the rapid fire with dual phasers) took large chucks out of minions and atleast taking most of the shield out of the group leaders, it's just the auto attack that seems to be lacking...
Which reminds me.. Auto fire on ships... If we had it for more then just one forward and aft slot it would be great when managing all the skills.. Especally later on.. keeping a finger on space, alt, ctrl, 1-0, moving, keeping power on your shield facing the enemy (if they're not on your bar... No room anyay..) etc. I mean I've managed it so far, but doesn't it just get tougher to manage later on? ( I don't mind more buttons to push just find it redundant to hit space for every weapon... lol),Won't we have more weapons at different cool downs which means more rapid tapping of the space bar? or else you'll stop firing.. Yea this has all been said before, but hey
Oh yea, and add the option to remove the shield ring
To a degree weapons secondary abilities work well, but the base damage of ranged weapons needs at least a 15-20% increase in damage. As it stands a melee weapon with 18 dps is actually better than a ranged weapon with 26 dps. As melee weapons are not effected by shields, they have 100-200+ less damage to do in order to incapacitate a target.
Having 1/4 to 1/2 less damage to deal to a target makes the lower dps of melee weapons actually much higher than ranged weapons. While you can fire from a distance, and a melee attack must close, once they close they do an incredible amount of health damage quickly. Palm strikes, butt strokes, and unarmed melee for Federation do not even come close to the damage potential of any melee weapon that is standard equipment (and given at start) of any Klingon faction player.
I agree with the OP, with one exception: as far as I know, both completely dropping the shields as well as completely restoring them upon cloaking /decloaking is quite canonical and an adequate representation of one of the cloaking devices major flaws.
As an example and for reference, see "Star Trek: Generations" - the scene in which the Klingon Bird of Prey is destroyed.
Also, it is quite logical, as upon cloaking all power from the weapons and shields is transferred to the cloak.
Upon decloaking, all power is redistributed to weapons and shields.
Plus, in some way decloaking is like switching from Condition Green to Red Alert. And on that, I don't see you complaining about your shields being immediately at full strength either.
Very good post OP and adresses many things I would like to see changed as well.
The part about off duty clothing would be really nice, I remember beaming down to risa, only to arrive in full combat gear with my rifle out ready to fire at a moments notice.
it looked totally out of place with the setting and all the NPCs being dressed in beachwear.
I agree, in 'canon' shields drop immediately. Unfortunately in a game setting of this type due to a number of targetting and attack issues while cloaking it is an even bigger disadvantage than it should be. I could adjust my list to allow for 'instant on' on decloak, but with the issues of attacks hitting after full cloak (beam/bolt attacks) which immediately drop you out of cloak, it is just a balance thing in my opinion to allow the shields to drop incrementally with the cloak going up.
2) Cloaking needs a bit of work, shields should reduce as cloak comes up, not drop entirely. Also, when decloaking shields should increase not snap into place at full strength.
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Not possible. due to the cloakingtechnologie and the use of the deflector the shield must be deactivated to activate the cloakingdevice. I think the implemantation of the cloaking is very good as it is.
Only issue i have to agree is the hit from weapons after the cloak was engaged.
Quote: Mechanics of a cloak
In order to function, a cloaking device needs to be tied into a ship's deflector shield grid. (TOS: "The Enterprise Incident")
Along with high power consumption, this would explain why a cloaking device and a ship's shields cannot be raised at the same time. Chang's Bird of Prey, for example, did not have its shields up while cloaked in The Undiscovered Country. Also, the shields on the Duras Sisters' Bird of Prey failed when the cloaking device was activated in Generations.
I agree with some of the items mentioned by the original poster, while being neutral on others. There are other points I feel I need to disagree with, however.
2) Far too many asteroids/rocks in systems. It seemed like nearly 60% of the systems had massive asteroid rings around planets, or just huge debris fields. Nice to look at, yes to a degree, unfriendly to cameras though.
I was happy with seeing the asteroids floating around in the various systems. They looked great for me too. Your mileage may vary.
1) Ranged weapon damage needs to be increase by 15-20%. Firefights in the TV shows didn't last several minutes to take down one opponent. All ranged weapons seem very weak, easily out performed by melee attacks.
I'm a bit on the fence with this one. True, some of the fights did seem to be a bit long, but that just gave me extra incentive to get better weapons and a better ship.
2) FX need tuning, as they seem to be the cause of a vast number of crashes in combat. Massive FX on screen and off screen seem to nuke the atikmdag.dll file causing a restart of the drivers for ATI cards. Also massive effects tend to cause performance stutters and instance lag.
No crashes here, but then again I have an nVidia card. I was happy with the various FX I had seen in-game.
3) Crafting resources need their own inventory tab. As they dominate inventory in a very short amount of time as the inventory system works currently.
Inventories fill up. It's a fact of life for any game. All you can do is go into town and sell what you don't need and bank the rest. I think it's nice that we can sell some items on the ship though.
1) Exploration areas need to have their size increased to at least double current size, preferably to the size of normal sector blocks. As they are now they seem quite confined and not at all expansive.
I'm on the fence with this one. Exploration areas are better now that the number of other vessels in the region have been reduced, so it's easier to find spawns. On the other hand, to get a better feeling of exploring space per se, traveling from place to place... I could see where it could be a bit bigger.
2) The white fog in exploration zones should be reduced in density by 25-50%, fog of 'war' is nice in an RTS game, but once you've been in an area it shouldn't look like a milk cloud. You have after all been exploring the area, and space is nice to see.
The way things are now the fog helps with the feeling of exploration. It better sets the tone. If the zone were to get larger, then I could see that we'd no longer need it.
3) It would be nice to have an indication at a distance on if the anomalous readings were of a star system or not. Possibly change the naming on star system spawned readings to 'Uncharted System Reading' or something similar. While keeping the resource spawns as 'Anomalous Sensor Reading'.
One of the reasons why you get close to scan these anomalies is because you don't know what you're going to find. If folks knew ahead of time that a given anomaly in an exploration sector was NOT a star system, that would make getting the exploration badges a lot easier... and might affect game balance.
1) Possibly increase travel speed by 15-20%. As it stands it seems very slow. This increase should effect NPC random 'enemy signal detection' movements as well.
Travel time seems OK to me. It helps with the feeling of a ship traveling in interstellar space.
Comments
15-20% boost to damage sounds like a good idea, or whatever it takes to make it so. xD
Edit: the secondary fire of some weapons seem alright, most that I used (split beam, or the rapid fire with dual phasers) took large chucks out of minions and atleast taking most of the shield out of the group leaders, it's just the auto attack that seems to be lacking...
Which reminds me.. Auto fire on ships... If we had it for more then just one forward and aft slot it would be great when managing all the skills.. Especally later on.. keeping a finger on space, alt, ctrl, 1-0, moving, keeping power on your shield facing the enemy (if they're not on your bar... No room anyay..) etc. I mean I've managed it so far, but doesn't it just get tougher to manage later on? ( I don't mind more buttons to push just find it redundant to hit space for every weapon... lol),Won't we have more weapons at different cool downs which means more rapid tapping of the space bar? or else you'll stop firing.. Yea this has all been said before, but hey
Oh yea, and add the option to remove the shield ring
Having 1/4 to 1/2 less damage to deal to a target makes the lower dps of melee weapons actually much higher than ranged weapons. While you can fire from a distance, and a melee attack must close, once they close they do an incredible amount of health damage quickly. Palm strikes, butt strokes, and unarmed melee for Federation do not even come close to the damage potential of any melee weapon that is standard equipment (and given at start) of any Klingon faction player.
As an example and for reference, see "Star Trek: Generations" - the scene in which the Klingon Bird of Prey is destroyed.
Also, it is quite logical, as upon cloaking all power from the weapons and shields is transferred to the cloak.
Upon decloaking, all power is redistributed to weapons and shields.
Plus, in some way decloaking is like switching from Condition Green to Red Alert. And on that, I don't see you complaining about your shields being immediately at full strength either.
The part about off duty clothing would be really nice, I remember beaming down to risa, only to arrive in full combat gear with my rifle out ready to fire at a moments notice.
it looked totally out of place with the setting and all the NPCs being dressed in beachwear.
Hope these issues will be adressed soon.
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Not possible. due to the cloakingtechnologie and the use of the deflector the shield must be deactivated to activate the cloakingdevice. I think the implemantation of the cloaking is very good as it is.
Only issue i have to agree is the hit from weapons after the cloak was engaged.
Quote: Mechanics of a cloak
In order to function, a cloaking device needs to be tied into a ship's deflector shield grid. (TOS: "The Enterprise Incident")
Along with high power consumption, this would explain why a cloaking device and a ship's shields cannot be raised at the same time. Chang's Bird of Prey, for example, did not have its shields up while cloaked in The Undiscovered Country. Also, the shields on the Duras Sisters' Bird of Prey failed when the cloaking device was activated in Generations.
Source: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Cloaking_device
I was happy with seeing the asteroids floating around in the various systems. They looked great for me too. Your mileage may vary.
I'm a bit on the fence with this one. True, some of the fights did seem to be a bit long, but that just gave me extra incentive to get better weapons and a better ship.
No crashes here, but then again I have an nVidia card. I was happy with the various FX I had seen in-game.
Inventories fill up. It's a fact of life for any game. All you can do is go into town and sell what you don't need and bank the rest. I think it's nice that we can sell some items on the ship though.
I'm on the fence with this one. Exploration areas are better now that the number of other vessels in the region have been reduced, so it's easier to find spawns. On the other hand, to get a better feeling of exploring space per se, traveling from place to place... I could see where it could be a bit bigger.
The way things are now the fog helps with the feeling of exploration. It better sets the tone. If the zone were to get larger, then I could see that we'd no longer need it.
One of the reasons why you get close to scan these anomalies is because you don't know what you're going to find. If folks knew ahead of time that a given anomaly in an exploration sector was NOT a star system, that would make getting the exploration badges a lot easier... and might affect game balance.
Travel time seems OK to me. It helps with the feeling of a ship traveling in interstellar space.