First let me say good job on the difficulty slider; it definitely works! That said, I would appreciate a little clarification on the intent of the different settings. I think its pretty safe to say that the "normal" setting is designed so that players can solo if they like. And from my own personal testing, it seems advanced is fairly easily soloed as well. However, is elite designed to be something players can solo? Or is it intended that they group to complete elite missions? It would help to know the intent of the design so that players will be able to provide correct feedback as to whether something seems overpowered or not.
I cannot speak for the dev's, you can always PM them though. Elite can be done solo, believe me its a challenge, but non-the-less can be done. I have been playing all week on Tribble and at first got BURNED, then after getting use to the dificulty, I rarely die.
But I do want to say, depending on gear and ship, this can change a lot.
elite difficulty should be soloable if that is what you are doing, but with more of a challenge added (and better rewards/loot).
Is the better loot confirmed and built-in with the difficulty slider system? PVE might interest me again if I can get good loot out of it, but there's no reason to waste time on elite-level PVE if there aren't elite-level rewards to go along with it.
There has been a lot of internal discussion about this topic and there are differing opinions even amongst ourselves.
For the most part - Elite is intended to be Very Hard, but do-able by yourself. While teaming should help, at least *someone* should be able to do this content solo. That doesn't mean everyone should be able to do Elite solo - but so long as *some* people are completing mission solo on Elite - we think this is a good spot.
Its always going to be a highly subjective thing and heavily dependent on builds, gear, tactics, luck.
If no-one can complete a particular episode on Elite by themselves, we'd consider it too hard.
As an anology - there were very few players on the team outside of the system designers who could solo RA5 missions in our internal tests - I've discovered that I thought I was Elite, but I'm really Advanced.
Don't take that as a definitive answer - if you think somethings borked - let us know.
I can do Undine on Elite in Space. It's *tough* - but I can do it. (Haven't tested Borg yet; we'll see on them)
On the ground, generic guys, like the Dref, Strekklan, etc... are one shotting me. (Actually this happens on Advanced too)
Now normally one would say "well, maybe there's a gear problem there..."
... Except I have purple Energy Resistant armor, and Purple Capx3 shields.
This isn't a question of simply lacking skill, lacking skill would presume if I were doing something differently I wouldn't be dying. I'm dying in one, *maybe* two shots, even with Overwatch III up and skill points spent in my ground combat abilities. I'm not being flanked either; this is straight up "shot in the face" damage.
Now what makes this doubly odd? Ground-Borg I can take on. They're not a cakewalk; but they're definitely doable.
So, just in case there's a bug somewhere in the code, rather than me just having weirdly inverted luck compared to what one would expect:
The Combat Log was indicating that what was killing me was High Density Beam rifles and I believe Pulse Rifles. The former doing some 500+ damage in one shot. (For reference, a PC with a High Density Beam rifle against a non-exposed opponent is going to be lucky to pull 150 damage, even with some buffs, 200+ on a flank.)
Just to be certain, I've never ever seen an exposed symbol on myself, so I'm doubting that was it. Like I said, it could just be bad luck, but given that I seem to be able to handle Borg on the ground and Undine in space, finding out I can't take Generic Action Guys on the ground is... odd. And a little disturbing.
(All of this was Exploration in the B'Tran cluster, RA5 on my main Tac officer, FYI; I've not had time to try much with my lower level characters)
I love the difficulty slider: it has already improved my playing. I need to test more, but I noticed that for my LCmndr character, even advanced ground combat was very tough - some enemies just shred shields and armor.
There has been a lot of internal discussion about this topic and there are differing opinions even amongst ourselves.
For the most part - Elite is intended to be Very Hard, but do-able by yourself. While teaming should help, at least *someone* should be able to do this content solo. That doesn't mean everyone should be able to do Elite solo - but so long as *some* people are completing mission solo on Elite - we think this is a good spot.
Its always going to be a highly subjective thing and heavily dependent on builds, gear, tactics, luck.
If no-one can complete a particular episode on Elite by themselves, we'd consider it too hard.
As an anology - there were very few players on the team outside of the system designers who could solo RA5 missions in our internal tests - I've discovered that I thought I was Elite, but I'm really Advanced.
Don't take that as a definitive answer - if you think somethings borked - let us know.
In this thread is a summary of such races which are appearently heavily overpowered on GROUND !!! We found out different reasons (with Combat Log) why those races could wipe out an entire group in less than 10 seconds...
brief summarize:
- the Standard Attack is highly overpowered, doing an average of 150 Damage per NORMAL shot (we, the players doing roughly 20-30 Damage per Shot) !!!
- some of the special attacks are broken
Normal isnt easy, its normal. I think hardcore players are really in their own world, some people actually think Elite is easy, so there you go, you cant go by what some of you people think otherwise Elite would be "normal" and only 20 people could play the game.
Except in the case of STO, normal IS easy. Seriously, you can solo the entire game with the rare exceptions of instances that were specifically designed for groups.
Soloability does not denote easy, you have other hardcores still soloing on elite, and claiming its easy, but its not otherwise you wouldnt have people complaining about Elite mode. The Fact is that hardcores find everything easy and incorrectly assume it to be that way for everyone. People need to learn that they play the game one way that find enjoyable however that level is not the same for everyone else.
Soloability does not denote easy, you have other hardcores still soloing on elite, and claiming its easy, but its not otherwise you wouldnt have people complaining about Elite mode.
But we're not talking about hardcores or elite mode. We're talking about normal mode that everyone can solo(with some rare exceptions). How do you really get easier than that?
There has been a lot of internal discussion about this topic and there are differing opinions even amongst ourselves.
For the most part - Elite is intended to be Very Hard, but do-able by yourself. While teaming should help, at least *someone* should be able to do this content solo. That doesn't mean everyone should be able to do Elite solo - but so long as *some* people are completing mission solo on Elite - we think this is a good spot.
Its always going to be a highly subjective thing and heavily dependent on builds, gear, tactics, luck.
If no-one can complete a particular episode on Elite by themselves, we'd consider it too hard.
As an anology - there were very few players on the team outside of the system designers who could solo RA5 missions in our internal tests - I've discovered that I thought I was Elite, but I'm really Advanced.
Don't take that as a definitive answer - if you think somethings borked - let us know.
I completely disagree with that philosophy. Elite should require a group to win. No one should be able to solo Elites at level.
I completely disagree with that philosophy. Elite should require a group to win. No one should be able to solo Elites at level.
I completely disagree with this, since... everything already scales to groups. You want to play a level that requires a group to win? Get a group together and play a mission.
I can do Undine on Elite in Space. It's *tough* - but I can do it. (Haven't tested Borg yet; we'll see on them)
On the ground, generic guys, like the Dref, Strekklan, etc... are one shotting me. (Actually this happens on Advanced too)
Now normally one would say "well, maybe there's a gear problem there..."
... Except I have purple Energy Resistant armor, and Purple Capx3 shields.
This isn't a question of simply lacking skill, lacking skill would presume if I were doing something differently I wouldn't be dying. I'm dying in one, *maybe* two shots, even with Overwatch III up and skill points spent in my ground combat abilities. I'm not being flanked either; this is straight up "shot in the face" damage.
Now what makes this doubly odd? Ground-Borg I can take on. They're not a cakewalk; but they're definitely doable.
So, just in case there's a bug somewhere in the code, rather than me just having weirdly inverted luck compared to what one would expect:
The Combat Log was indicating that what was killing me was High Density Beam rifles and I believe Pulse Rifles. The former doing some 500+ damage in one shot. (For reference, a PC with a High Density Beam rifle against a non-exposed opponent is going to be lucky to pull 150 damage, even with some buffs, 200+ on a flank.)
Just to be certain, I've never ever seen an exposed symbol on myself, so I'm doubting that was it. Like I said, it could just be bad luck, but given that I seem to be able to handle Borg on the ground and Undine in space, finding out I can't take Generic Action Guys on the ground is... odd. And a little disturbing.
(All of this was Exploration in the B'Tran cluster, RA5 on my main Tac officer, FYI; I've not had time to try much with my lower level characters)
I had a similar experience in Delta Volanis on Elite...
Space Combat was very tough, but got through. Only died a couple times. On the ground I faced off on some Gorn. My first thought was to try and position my BOs around them for some flanking, except that my positioning was just off a bit and the Gorn literally one-shot my BO.
Tried moving in as a group and one shot took down all of my shield and left me at about 75% health, the other shot wiped me completely.
It's easy enough to dip in and out of their combat range in space, but taking on ground troops it's not always easy to get your BOs to follow you out of combat. Hopefully ground combat on Elite can be tweaked some to compensate for the AI abilities of the BOs. Having them hit a LITTLE less harder wouldn't take away from the fun any either.
I can do Undine on Elite in Space. It's *tough* - but I can do it. (Haven't tested Borg yet; we'll see on them)
On the ground, generic guys, like the Dref, Strekklan, etc... are one shotting me. (Actually this happens on Advanced too)
There is definitely an enormous disparity in difficulty between space and ground when changing your difficulty.
I ran a few missions last night on Advanced and a few on Elite to try out the new system. Space combat on higher difficulty is much more engaging, challenging and in my opinion a lot more fun. However, my experiences doing ground missions against Jem'Hadar and a couple of your "alien of the week" NPCs was very similar to yours... my BOs and I are getting 2 shot killed. That isn't fun. I wasn't just rushing in to combat either. I took great care in setting up BOs in position and trying to use tactics/flanking to the best of my ability. This became a fruitless effort as BOs could not last long enough for a Doctor to keep up with the healing or use Hypos. It's not a gear issue either as I keep my BOs equipment up-to-date.
The problem I see is that minion level NPCs can 2 shot you which is on the overpowering side, to say nothing of a boss level NPC who just looks at you funny and you're dead. Melee damage on Elite is also rather insane as shields are essentially useless.
Personally, I believe that ground combat could use a second pass. The damage being inflicted on Elite (Advanced is manageable, but still a tad OP) is way too high.
Yes, I played last night using my lt. commander and an escort with a blue Electro heavy dual plasma cannon, a green heavy dual phase cannon, and a green Phase beam. All MKIII or above. Normally, I can wipe out a single escort in one pass... frigates, cruisers, battleships (maybe). This time I played the exploration missions in the Hromi clusters, all the generic space bad guys were killing me easily.... on normal. I couldn't even wipe out an escort easily... they were actually the hardest compared to the battlecruisers.
I did the Elite level difficulty on BTran Cluster Explore missions. The space combat missions were very very hard but do-able. Average time to complete them used to be 15 mins. Now, on Elite, it is an hour maybe less. They were easier to do with my ENG (Star Cruiser) vs my TAC (ADvanced Escort). The hull and shield repair abilities were very important and the TAC officer just doesn't have enough depth in those skills.
I did one ground combat with my Tac officer. It was very very hard, and took a lot more planning than the normal frontal assault tactics used on normal difficulty. I have not fought Borg though, just random space bad guy aliens. I will definitely retry this tonight and see if I can get a BTran ground mission vs Borg.
I have to agree with what some are saying about Elite ground missions.
I raised a ticket for this when I noticed it on Tribble. Space Elite - very hard but do-able. Ground Elite very, very, very hard but you can beat it. My main issue is with some NPCs being able to one shot a well equipped and trained away party member, second to that is the issue of those NPCs getting down to almost no shield or health then just refusing (as it where) to die - even if being hit by several player characters.
The NPCs in question seem to be the higher ranked (more powerful) ones such as the 'swordmaster'. Also, though this is an issue that players can affect very much, the 'targ handler' can be extremely tough and, on Elite, seems to spawn targs at an unprecidented rate - maybe this rate could be slightly lowered.
At the end of the day when the sun goes down though, Elite is supposed to by hard - hence the name.
i love the difficulty on elite in space combat now, i got overwhelmed the first time i tried it out cuz i lulled into using my same old "normal mode" tactics and they didnt work nearly as efficiently, and subsequently i was defeated
took a while to adapt but its great cuz now i have to use my head and think about the combat situation...on normal, if ive got an enemy's shield down and he turns his strong shield towards me, i really dont care cuz in a couple volleys, that shield is down too
on Elite, if i have a shield down so i can do hull damage, im doing EVERYTHING i can to get my weapons trained on that depleted shield quarter otherwise the enemys regen rate will nullify much of my effort.
i have to exhaust every skill i have, and really have to pay attention to what is happening in the fight in order to win...it also made me think about my loadout and my power levels, of which i was changing frequently to try and find the right balance of shield/weapon strength for most success
the only gripe i have so far is that i found by the end of every battle i won, the enemies shield strength was always 60% or better even though i was able to wear down his hull, and ive killed a number where the battle ended with them having almost full shields, but died to the bleedthrough damage
id like to see that tweaked a little bit
have not had a chance to test ground combat yet but from the looks of things, a number of ground NPC's are doing super sick damage, maybe ill wait for a patch
Comments
elite difficulty should be soloable if that is what you are doing, but with more of a challenge added (and better rewards/loot).
But I do want to say, depending on gear and ship, this can change a lot.
Is the better loot confirmed and built-in with the difficulty slider system? PVE might interest me again if I can get good loot out of it, but there's no reason to waste time on elite-level PVE if there aren't elite-level rewards to go along with it.
For the most part - Elite is intended to be Very Hard, but do-able by yourself. While teaming should help, at least *someone* should be able to do this content solo. That doesn't mean everyone should be able to do Elite solo - but so long as *some* people are completing mission solo on Elite - we think this is a good spot.
Its always going to be a highly subjective thing and heavily dependent on builds, gear, tactics, luck.
If no-one can complete a particular episode on Elite by themselves, we'd consider it too hard.
As an anology - there were very few players on the team outside of the system designers who could solo RA5 missions in our internal tests - I've discovered that I thought I was Elite, but I'm really Advanced.
Don't take that as a definitive answer - if you think somethings borked - let us know.
I can do Undine on Elite in Space. It's *tough* - but I can do it. (Haven't tested Borg yet; we'll see on them)
On the ground, generic guys, like the Dref, Strekklan, etc... are one shotting me. (Actually this happens on Advanced too)
Now normally one would say "well, maybe there's a gear problem there..."
... Except I have purple Energy Resistant armor, and Purple Capx3 shields.
This isn't a question of simply lacking skill, lacking skill would presume if I were doing something differently I wouldn't be dying. I'm dying in one, *maybe* two shots, even with Overwatch III up and skill points spent in my ground combat abilities. I'm not being flanked either; this is straight up "shot in the face" damage.
Now what makes this doubly odd? Ground-Borg I can take on. They're not a cakewalk; but they're definitely doable.
So, just in case there's a bug somewhere in the code, rather than me just having weirdly inverted luck compared to what one would expect:
The Combat Log was indicating that what was killing me was High Density Beam rifles and I believe Pulse Rifles. The former doing some 500+ damage in one shot. (For reference, a PC with a High Density Beam rifle against a non-exposed opponent is going to be lucky to pull 150 damage, even with some buffs, 200+ on a flank.)
Just to be certain, I've never ever seen an exposed symbol on myself, so I'm doubting that was it. Like I said, it could just be bad luck, but given that I seem to be able to handle Borg on the ground and Undine in space, finding out I can't take Generic Action Guys on the ground is... odd. And a little disturbing.
(All of this was Exploration in the B'Tran cluster, RA5 on my main Tac officer, FYI; I've not had time to try much with my lower level characters)
There is one, its called "normal".
You Guys should take a look on this thread: :
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=153648
In this thread is a summary of such races which are appearently heavily overpowered on GROUND !!! We found out different reasons (with Combat Log) why those races could wipe out an entire group in less than 10 seconds...
brief summarize:
- the Standard Attack is highly overpowered, doing an average of 150 Damage per NORMAL shot (we, the players doing roughly 20-30 Damage per Shot) !!!
- some of the special attacks are broken
Normal isnt easy, its normal. I think hardcore players are really in their own world, some people actually think Elite is easy, so there you go, you cant go by what some of you people think otherwise Elite would be "normal" and only 20 people could play the game.
Except in the case of STO, normal IS easy. Seriously, you can solo the entire game with the rare exceptions of instances that were specifically designed for groups.
I agree. As it stands it's not a "Difficulty Slider"... it's really a "Difficulty Increaser".
What is easier than everything being soloable?
Under Normal mode, you can joke that you could complete every non-STF mission while asleep.
Under a proposed Easy mode, you could literally complete every non-STF mission while in deep REM sleep.
Soloability does not denote easy, you have other hardcores still soloing on elite, and claiming its easy, but its not otherwise you wouldnt have people complaining about Elite mode. The Fact is that hardcores find everything easy and incorrectly assume it to be that way for everyone. People need to learn that they play the game one way that find enjoyable however that level is not the same for everyone else.
To think otherwise is ignorant and selfish.
But we're not talking about hardcores or elite mode. We're talking about normal mode that everyone can solo(with some rare exceptions). How do you really get easier than that?
I completely disagree with that philosophy. Elite should require a group to win. No one should be able to solo Elites at level.
I completely disagree with this, since... everything already scales to groups. You want to play a level that requires a group to win? Get a group together and play a mission.
I had a similar experience in Delta Volanis on Elite...
Space Combat was very tough, but got through. Only died a couple times. On the ground I faced off on some Gorn. My first thought was to try and position my BOs around them for some flanking, except that my positioning was just off a bit and the Gorn literally one-shot my BO.
Tried moving in as a group and one shot took down all of my shield and left me at about 75% health, the other shot wiped me completely.
It's easy enough to dip in and out of their combat range in space, but taking on ground troops it's not always easy to get your BOs to follow you out of combat. Hopefully ground combat on Elite can be tweaked some to compensate for the AI abilities of the BOs. Having them hit a LITTLE less harder wouldn't take away from the fun any either.
There is definitely an enormous disparity in difficulty between space and ground when changing your difficulty.
I ran a few missions last night on Advanced and a few on Elite to try out the new system. Space combat on higher difficulty is much more engaging, challenging and in my opinion a lot more fun. However, my experiences doing ground missions against Jem'Hadar and a couple of your "alien of the week" NPCs was very similar to yours... my BOs and I are getting 2 shot killed. That isn't fun. I wasn't just rushing in to combat either. I took great care in setting up BOs in position and trying to use tactics/flanking to the best of my ability. This became a fruitless effort as BOs could not last long enough for a Doctor to keep up with the healing or use Hypos. It's not a gear issue either as I keep my BOs equipment up-to-date.
The problem I see is that minion level NPCs can 2 shot you which is on the overpowering side, to say nothing of a boss level NPC who just looks at you funny and you're dead. Melee damage on Elite is also rather insane as shields are essentially useless.
Personally, I believe that ground combat could use a second pass. The damage being inflicted on Elite (Advanced is manageable, but still a tad OP) is way too high.
Am I missing something here?
I did one ground combat with my Tac officer. It was very very hard, and took a lot more planning than the normal frontal assault tactics used on normal difficulty. I have not fought Borg though, just random space bad guy aliens. I will definitely retry this tonight and see if I can get a BTran ground mission vs Borg.
I raised a ticket for this when I noticed it on Tribble. Space Elite - very hard but do-able. Ground Elite very, very, very hard but you can beat it. My main issue is with some NPCs being able to one shot a well equipped and trained away party member, second to that is the issue of those NPCs getting down to almost no shield or health then just refusing (as it where) to die - even if being hit by several player characters.
The NPCs in question seem to be the higher ranked (more powerful) ones such as the 'swordmaster'. Also, though this is an issue that players can affect very much, the 'targ handler' can be extremely tough and, on Elite, seems to spawn targs at an unprecidented rate - maybe this rate could be slightly lowered.
At the end of the day when the sun goes down though, Elite is supposed to by hard - hence the name.
took a while to adapt but its great cuz now i have to use my head and think about the combat situation...on normal, if ive got an enemy's shield down and he turns his strong shield towards me, i really dont care cuz in a couple volleys, that shield is down too
on Elite, if i have a shield down so i can do hull damage, im doing EVERYTHING i can to get my weapons trained on that depleted shield quarter otherwise the enemys regen rate will nullify much of my effort.
i have to exhaust every skill i have, and really have to pay attention to what is happening in the fight in order to win...it also made me think about my loadout and my power levels, of which i was changing frequently to try and find the right balance of shield/weapon strength for most success
the only gripe i have so far is that i found by the end of every battle i won, the enemies shield strength was always 60% or better even though i was able to wear down his hull, and ive killed a number where the battle ended with them having almost full shields, but died to the bleedthrough damage
id like to see that tweaked a little bit
have not had a chance to test ground combat yet but from the looks of things, a number of ground NPC's are doing super sick damage, maybe ill wait for a patch