First of all Crypic, the difficulty levels are very welcome. I've been playing a lot of space based exploration missions on elite and liking things a lot more (I would like it even more if enemies sought you out instead of waiting for you to approach them!). However, as someone who has never liked your implementation of ground combat (instead of looking to WoW for inspiration you should have looked to games like Mass Effect and GoW or even Elite Force, Star Trek ground combat most resembles a cover shooter more than anything else) I just want to get that part of the game to be over as quick as possible.
I can't do elite on ground at all, and even advanced just draws out an already (imho) boring part of the game. Not only that, but because of the global pool for ground and space skills, most (all) space PvP players dump ground skills and vice-versa. With two drastically different facets of the game, one all-inclusive difficulty level doesen't make as much sense. I think most players will agree that being able to set ground and space difficulty seperately would be a *very* welcome addition.
I've found space on Elite to be challenging yet not impossible. Ground has been... well lets say if i get a gound mission i tend not to do them anymore.
I dont mind the AI being smarter for the bad guys. I like it. it makes it more challenging. but the power level seems too skewed on the ground. I set my people up in a nice defendable position, snuck up and picked off a random grunt who had wandered away from the herd. it was great. didn't agro the rest of them. he came running. shot me once, shield down. shot me again. dead before i could turn to run. and that was just a grunt.
Was never a fan of ground missions to begin with. but a little tweaking is still in order I think.
Kudos on the space scaling though. fights are tough and challenging.
no, that is unneccessary. they just need to further tweak ground difficulty on elite.
The issue is that some players simply don't like the ground game Cryptic has made and don't want it to be stretched out, most players aren't equally skilled at ground and space combat, and almost all players (and all player's worth their salt in pvp) are not equally spec'd for ground and space combat. There's nothing wrong with the ability to scale the difficulty of the two (completely different) portions of the game to the users' tastes.
If they do like you are suggesting and lower the difficulty of ground combat on elite, then you're shortchanging the players who do like ground combat, and are skilled and spec'd for it. The people who are complaining that they can't kill borg spheres in elite might have no problems at that difficulty on the ground. Simply lowering the ground difficulty doesen't work unless you have seperate skill point pools for ground and space, otherwise you're simply making things worse for the minority of ground spec'd players who would rather run space on a lower difficulty than ground. The difficulty discrepency runs both ways because of the nature of the skill point system and the desire of players to min-max.
Part of the problem is the skill system in the game was supposed to have no cap. They made a decision at the last second to cap so that our toons will not be too overpowered for the end game content they plan to add. That and to keep casual players viable in STFs. Now there are too many skills and not enough skill points to make a compromise for a character to be good in space and on the ground especially if they want to enjoy PvP as well as PvE. You'd think they would have put separate ground and space difficulty sliders in for just that reason.
There is most likely a technical limitation that is preventing this suggestion from being plausible. Remember that the setting affects the mission you are on. Remember that the setting does not affect PVP or DSEs or Fleet Actions or STFs. They are only active on missions which you basically do yourself. Patrols, Story Arcs, Explorations.
Many people suggesting this are thinking in a linear sense. Because many people suggesting this are RA5s doing these missions in the B'Tran Cluster. And have forgotten about the story arcs that got them to RA5.
One of the first missions you do is the rescue of the U.S.S. Azura.
The mission itself involves space combat. Then you beam aboard the ship and engage in ground combat.
The setting for that mission would be?
In the current system, it would be elite if you set it at elite.
In the proposed system it would be ...
Broken most likely. Glitched beyond the system's capability to function.
In the current system, it would be elite if you set it at elite.
In the proposed system it would be ...
Set to whatever you set space to for the space part, and whatever you set ground to for the ground part. The only potential problem would be if Cryptic scaled the rewards given at mission completion to difficulty level, which they currently do not. Even then, if the mission had both ground and space components they would just need to average the reward. Funny how non-programmers can either completely under or (in this case) over-estimate how hard it is to implement things.
Set to whatever you set space to for the space part, and whatever you set ground to for the ground part.
The game doesn't work like that.
I just read a post earlier today about the changes to memory alpha and in a lot of the feedback on it, people are pointing out how disorganized the itemization is among the three fields of research. The post itself basically states that these things have to be manually input. And they don't particularly have the time to revamp that much data by hand.
A bit of a tangent. But the lesson you need to learn from this tale is that the game can't do what you say it can do.
Or they'd have already done that.
As with a lot of things they are implementing with STO ... you take what you can get. And granted it's just a guess on my part ... but based on my experience with Cryptic games, MMOs and testing, it's my guess that the reason they can't separate ground and space settings is because many of the missions have BOTH types of combat in them. So the difficulty setting mechanic was designed to be tied into the mission itself. Not the mode of combat.
Even then, if the mission had both ground and space components they would just need to average the reward.
Again, that's now how the mechanics of this game work.
It may seem logical to you. And make lots of sense.
But this game doesn't work that way. There's soooooooooo many examples of how it doesn't work that way. Just look around the forums.
this is a silly request. it's a godamn game, next you will be wanting difficulty sliders for individual enemies.
like I said all they need to do is tweak elite difficulty ground enemies so they don't 1-shot people anymore and it's fine. if it's still too hard for you then I suggest going back down to Advanced mode.
If you were a programmer you would realize that setting difficulty would look like: If difficulty = 'X', use these enemy stats and behaviours. The hard part is coming up with those stats because they need to be play tested. Adding seperate ground and space difficulty is as simple as changing the difficulty check from mission start to the start of each individual map, moving enemy stat init. from mission to map (if it isn't already), have space maps read a value for space difficulty, ground maps read a seperate value for ground difficulty; When in a group, find and use the value of the group leader's difficulty levels at each map load instead of only at mission start. You're looking at 30 minutes of programming if their code isn't a mess, rebalancing ground difficulty would take much longer (playtesting) and be ineffective for the minority of ground spec'd players who probably want the exact opposite.
But whatever, this isn't a very productive conversation. Crytpic knows how hard this would be to code into their engine far better than we do, speculation on our part isn't going to change cryptic's mind one way or the other.
If you were a programmer you would realize that setting difficulty would look like: If difficulty = 'X', use these enemy stats and behaviours. The hard part is coming up with those stats because they need to be play tested. Adding seperate ground and space difficulty is as simple as changing the difficulty check from mission start to the start of each individual map, moving enemy stat init. from mission to map (if it isn't already), have space maps read a value for space difficulty, ground maps read a seperate value for ground difficulty; When in a group, find and use the value of the group leader's difficulty levels at each map load instead of only at mission start. You're looking at 30 minutes of programming if their code isn't a mess, rebalancing ground difficulty would take much longer (playtesting) and be ineffective for the minority of ground spec'd players who probably want the exact opposite.
But whatever, this isn't a very productive conversation. Crytpic knows how hard this would be to code into their engine far better than we do, speculation on our part isn't going to change cryptic's mind one way or the other.
I don't care how big or a little of a job your idea would be to code into the game. they aren't just going to add every single idea some hack on the forums comes up with just because they said they want it in the game. there's another little consideration to factor in called GAME DESIGN.
If you were a programmer, you'd realize Cryptic's games don't work the way you think they do.
Heck, if you were a gamer you'd realize this.
There are dozens of examples in this game where their code and their mechanics do not work the way you want them to.
There are dozens more in their other game.
You won't believe me. I'm not really all that worried about it. As each day passes and more and more things do not work the way you think they do ... lessons will eventually get picked up on.
It's a game with two contrasting components and a user base that will only invest points into one of those components while dumping the other. How does seperate difficulty levels not make sense in that scenario? All you've done is state your opinion without explaining your logic and reason, which isn't constructive at all.
Sure, Cryptic can nerf ground elite so people aren't one shoted, but that is a negative change for players who can actually play at that level and enjoy it (aka, those spec'd for ground). Likewise, people are complaining of getting insta-crit-killed by borg cubes and the like in the space game. Cryptic could nerf elite space difficulty, but that would be a negative outcome for people like me who are able to play and enjoy the space portion on elite difficulty.
A one-size-fits-all difficulty system would be fine if we had seperate skill point pools for ground and space, but we don't. No matter how you try to balance it someone is always going to come out the loser. The only real solution for players right now is to go by their lowest common denominator, or simply skip missions that include ground/space combat depending on what they are spec'd in. That is in no way a good system.
By the way ... Hurley ... what MMORPGs are you a programmer for? You keep hinting that you have some great experience in this field. Let's get a taste of this resume.
I just read a post earlier today about the changes to memory alpha and in a lot of the feedback on it, people are pointing out how disorganized the itemization is among the three fields of research. The post itself basically states that these things have to be manually input. And they don't particularly have the time to revamp that much data by hand.
A bit of a tangent. But the lesson you need to learn from this tale is that the game can't do what you say it can do.
Or they'd have already done that.
As with a lot of things they are implementing with STO ... you take what you can get. And granted it's just a guess on my part ... but based on my experience with Cryptic games, MMOs and testing, it's my guess that the reason they can't separate ground and space settings is because many of the missions have BOTH types of combat in them. So the difficulty setting mechanic was designed to be tied into the mission itself. Not the mode of combat.
Again, that's now how the mechanics of this game work.
It may seem logical to you. And make lots of sense.
But this game doesn't work that way. There's soooooooooo many examples of how it doesn't work that way. Just look around the forums.
You attempt to speak with some authority on this - but you cite examples of "other mechanics" (like Memory Alpha?) as a reason why ground and space missions cannot scale independently?
Sorry - not buying it.
I'm not even personally advocating this particular change, but I've been around these forums as long as you have - and I accept it when a DEV explains why certain things cannot be done. But not from you. And not with this kind of explaination.
The TL: DR version? All you have simply said is "there are many examples of things that cannot be done in this game - I've decided this must be one of them!" To which I must say "Thats rubbish, until a DEV explains it can't be done and says why - and even then it should not be ruled out because we know some things can be done despite initial claims it can't be"
The next time you repond to a post to so definitively tell someone what is and isn't possible in the game, please first think back to examples of other mechanics that we were originally told could not be changed because of the way they worked. Like turning off shield rings, for instance. The very first feedback we had on this was that it was simply not possible because of the way everything is coded. Followed later by "difficult - but we're looking into it" followed shortly afterwards by "we've found a way to do it and its in the next patch". This would seem to go against the theme of your above post which simply suggests "you'll get what you're given" and nothing else is possible.
The ground and space portions of any mission are seperately loading instances. When a map loads I assume that the game does a look-up of your difficulty level and the mobs then spawn on the map appropriately for that setting. Now, whether I am entering/loading a map from another space/ground mission instance or whether I am entering/loading it from Sector space - there is materially no difference (whatever the case is, its just a map load) - and the game should be able to perform that same look-up when any mission instance is being loaded.
Alternatively - its possible that when the mob spawns (rather than when the map loads) that the game looks up your difficulty level at this point instead. This may in fact be more likely as we often enter maps that enemies do not appear on until we approach the spawn point.
Ground and Space maps and ground and space mobs are categorised seperately in the game. I fail to see (until a DEV explains it to me) why a ground map loading or ground mob spawning could not reference one preference setting, whilst a space map/mob loading could not reference a different player preference.
I've seen no other directly comparable mechanics in this game that would suggest this could not be done and you have failed to highlight one other than to say "there are many explamples of OTHER things this game engine can't do" as evidence why this can't be.
By the way ... Hurley ... what MMORPGs are you a programmer for? You keep hinting that you have some great experience in this field. Let's get a taste of this resume.
And I'm sure you'll tell us all about your programming experience too, right? Along with your technical insights (not just your player observations) about the proprietary cryptic engine?
I'm an experienced gamer and an experienced MMO player and I've got enough experience under my belt to say that most average player requests are not impossible. Just varying degrees of difficult.
Power colouring in CoX anyone? Impossible? No. Just challenging. An extreme example, maybe as it probably took months to do. But it demonstrates the point, nonetheless.
And also I've learned that Development teams DO NOT always give you everything they can, by default. And not to assume that because something is not in game off the bat, that it simply can't be done.
By the way ... Hurley ... what MMORPGs are you a programmer for? You keep hinting that you have some great experience in this field. Let's get a taste of this resume.
No MMO. I'm not a proffesional programmer, not even close, but I did take some comp sci courses mainly dealing with c++. Right now I'm studying computer architecture. In any case, I think that we might both be right. Reading your posts again I think what you're trying to say is that a change can have unintended consequences and introduce bugs, which is true. I'm arguing that implementation of the functionality would not be difficult, which is also most likely true (most of the legwork has been done getting the current difficulty implementation... err... implemented). But in any case, Cryptic knows the answer better than us. Our time is best spent discussing the merits of the idea rather than how hard it would be to code.
No MMO. I'm not a proffesional programmer, not even close, but I did take some comp sci courses mainly dealing with c++. Right now I'm studying computer architecture. In any case, I think that we might both be right. Reading your posts again I think what you're trying to say is that a change can have unintended consequences and introduce bugs, which is true. I'm arguing that implementation of the functionality would not be difficult, which is also most likely true (most of the legwork has been done getting the current difficulty implementation... err... implemented)..
Any game changes create bugs - thats what testing and tribble are there for.
But in any case, Cryptic knows the answer better than us. Our time is best spent discussing the merits of the idea rather than how hard it would be to code.
Absolutely right!
As I said, I wouldn't be advocate for this particular change. I really think they just need to tweak the ground portion a little more to be honest. but thats just my 2c.
I've found space on Elite to be challenging yet not impossible. Ground has been... well lets say if i get a gound mission i tend not to do them anymore.
I dont mind the AI being smarter for the bad guys. I like it. it makes it more challenging. but the power level seems too skewed on the ground. I set my people up in a nice defendable position, snuck up and picked off a random grunt who had wandered away from the herd. it was great. didn't agro the rest of them. he came running. shot me once, shield down. shot me again. dead before i could turn to run. and that was just a grunt.
Was never a fan of ground missions to begin with. but a little tweaking is still in order I think.
Kudos on the space scaling though. fights are tough and challenging.
Yes you are right. I like elite but some of the ground enemy's are much harder then the elite tactical borgs in the cure
As I said, I wouldn't be advocate for this particular change. I really think they just need to tweak the ground portion a little more to be honest. but thats just my 2c.
It seems like you have a good head on your shoulders, so I'm curious -- what type of player are you going to base the ground difficulty on. The majority of space PvPers who have 0 points invested into ground skills? What then do you suggest doing about ground PvPers who have most of their points in ground skills? Would that not create the same (but opposite, where space PvE is too hard) problem for that minority of players?
It seems like you have a good head on your shoulders, so I'm curious -- what type of player are you going to base the ground difficulty on. The majority of space PvPers who have 0 points invested into ground skills? What then do you suggest doing about ground PvPers who have most of their points in ground skills? Would that not create the same (but opposite, where space PvE is too hard) problem for that minority of players?
I don't think you can base the difficulty around a playstyle that favours ONE aspect of the game - hardcore style - at the deteriment of other parts of the game.
I'm not an hardcore PvPer - I PvP'd a fair bit on one of the toons I rolled (but recently deleleted her as had my hands full with my other 2 RAs) and so I can't answer as to whether removing a rank or 2 from a few of the space skills and putting them into Ground skills would really make much noticeable difference to your PvP performance in space or not (I would say not really, but a hardcore space PvP min-maxer no doubt will disagree with me).
When the difficulty mechanic was introduced, I knew that I had to make changes to my build in order to be better prepared to handle it.
I respecced my toon in order get points into ground skills. How did I do that? Well, most players (including myself) that prefer space had previously ranked their space skills all the way up to 9 in order to try and maximise them.
What most players don't realise however is that ranking a skill all the way up to 9 usually provides only very small (decimal in many cases) benefits to that skill because of the dimishing returns factor that is built in. Beyond rank 7, many skills provide such small benefits that they are barely noticeable at all in fact, in average gameplay.
During my respec, I took most of the skills in each of the ranks only to 7 or 8 and only ranked up a select few to 9 (where perhaps a skill unlocks a training power I wanted for example) .
This left a surprisingly large pool of points to invest into Ground. And because those points were taken from the high ranked space skills and put into the low ranked ground skills - those Skill Points effectively work a lot harder to improve my character and round them out for space AND ground.
Even ranking ground skills to 3,4 or 5 makes a tremendous difference because at the low end of the skill ranking (ie. the first ranks you give to a skill) they give the biggest improvements to those skills.
If you are going to up the difficulty in PvE you need to make good choices about your build and ensure its balanced.
I really genuinely feel they just need to make a few changes to some of the higher end mobs on Advanced and Elite and remove/tone down some of the "2 shot" abilities some of these mobs seem to have - which there is little or no defense against for some character classes. Once some balance is done I don't think a decent, well rounded toon with an experienced player behind it should have an major problems with the ground game, even on Elite.
But you never know, if enough people like your idea and you can get some weight behind it from other players it could take off.
What most players don't realise however is that ranking a skill all the way up to 9 usually provides only very small (decimal in many cases) benefits to that skill because of the dimishing returns factor that is built in. Beyond rank 7, many skills provide such small benefits that they are barely noticeable at all in fact, in average gameplay.
During my respec, I took most of the skills in each of the ranks only to 7 or 8 and only ranked up a select few to 9 (where perhaps a skill unlocks a training power I wanted for example) .
This left a surprisingly large pool of points to invest into Ground. And because those points were taken from the high ranked space skills and put into the low ranked ground skills - those Skill Points effectively work a lot harder to improve my character and round them out for space AND ground.
Even ranking ground skills to 3,4 or 5 makes a tremendous difference because at the low end of the skill ranking (ie. the first ranks you give to a skill) they give the biggest improvements to those skills.
If you are going to up the difficulty in PvE you need to make good choices about your build and ensure its balanced.
Dude Dark-Oberion is slingin real hash here not TRIBBLE. The skill system is based on the law of depreciating returns and actually benefits those who generalize a bit. I had my weapons skills set up as energy weapons 9, cannons 9, and phasers 9 but my ship used a mix of beams and cannons. I took an articles advice and for about the same skill point cost got energy weapons at 7, beams and cannons at 5 and phasers at 9. Where I was doing 100 points bonus damage with only my cannons and 48 pts with my beams I now do 93 bonus damage with both. Scavenged up some nice points for ground skills as well. Read this article http://theenginescannaetakeit.wordpress.com/articles-3/skills-the-numbers/ it is illuminating to say the very least. Special thanks to BigBadB for researching and writing the article.
First of all Crypic, the difficulty levels are very welcome. I've been playing a lot of space based exploration missions on elite and liking things a lot more (I would like it even more if enemies sought you out instead of waiting for you to approach them!). However, as someone who has never liked your implementation of ground combat (instead of looking to WoW for inspiration you should have looked to games like Mass Effect and GoW or even Elite Force, Star Trek ground combat most resembles a cover shooter more than anything else) I just want to get that part of the game to be over as quick as possible.
I can't do elite on ground at all, and even advanced just draws out an already (imho) boring part of the game. Not only that, but because of the global pool for ground and space skills, most (all) space PvP players dump ground skills and vice-versa. With two drastically different facets of the game, one all-inclusive difficulty level doesen't make as much sense. I think most players will agree that being able to set ground and space difficulty seperately would be a *very* welcome addition.
Hey! there's that slippery Slope people have been talking about. :rolleyes:
If you open your log there's a difficulty slider at the bottom. Can you use it to set the difficulty on a per mission basis? I haven't tried it myself, but I figured that was the point of it since the main slider is in the options and the mission tracker has a difficulty indicator in the corner.
I agree with the point that the ground games needs some balancing work done. I had to drop an exploration mission because the Klingon warriors on the ground would wipe out my away team in seconds. As a new level 3-ish character it was impossible to win. Space missions at that same difficulty (advanced) have been more challenging and enjoyable, but in no way impossible.
I also agree that skill points should be separated. There just aren't enough points at any particular rank to spec into both space and ground unless you don't mind being mediocre at both. There are two halves to this game so why not have two skill point pools? I suggest we earn space skill points in space and ground skill points on the ground.
Personally, I'd rather Space and Ground skills be completely separate with their own pool of skill points-- kind of like how captain skill points and bridge officer skill points are separate.
I am mainly a PVPer and I do not enjoy Ground PVP in the slightest, so I never spent points in Ground skills (save where I had bonus points with no other useful space skills to spend them on, or if I needed a Rank 3 skill to teach an officer). I know this is a conscious choice on my part to do this... but because of the total split in abilities between ground and space, I really think it would be healthy for the game to split skill points, too.
This would also allow Cryptic to develop many more ground skills than we currently have. Wouldn't that be fun?
I only play on Advanced, but the absolute ****ing moron who deals with the ground 'balance' is still the bane of my life. Even before the difficulty slider the Reman Commanders were pathetically unbalanced, now they are even mroe so and there has been absolutely no indication they will EVER be fixed.
Just now I tried to do the 'Wargames' mission, and the 8472 captain is literally undefeatable. His wrist blaster is a one shot kill weapon.....that is a cone. Oh, and he heals himself.
The ground combat is fun at advanced, except for the one or two utterly unbalanced enemies that have completely evaded all balancing, especially those Reman Commanders who have been pointed out from day ****ing one but never actually fixed. But then, if there was any balancing at all they never would have been so ridiculously skewed in the first place.
I respecced my toon in order get points into ground skills. How did I do that? Well, most players (including myself) that prefer space had previously ranked their space skills all the way up to 9 in order to try and maximise them.
Good post!
I think where we differ is you're thinking of how people can change their builds in order to adapt to the new system, where as I'm thinking about all the people who simply won't change their builds. Everyone understands that you don't lose much when you take out the last three skill points in a tree and put them into another skill, eg. ground. A lot of PvPers though will want every advantage they can get no matter small and will be well suited to playing elite difficulty of one half of the game but not the other. The last thing you want to do is have players simply skip missions that require them to play the half of the game they aren't spec'd for, like one of the earlier posters. Obviously the best solution is to have seperate skill poin pools, but in the meantime, I think having seperate dificulty sliders is a good way to accomodate all play styles, compared to forcing players to balance their builds or not be able to do half of the content on higher difficulty.
There are a couple things everyone needs to keep in mind before bashing the anger at the elite system on ground.
There were several "Boss" characters that presented a hue challenge on the normal difficulty such as the Reman commander from the Hobus map or anytime you fight an Undine with psychic powers. On elite these guys will kill you in 2 hits. On normal these same guys were a challenge but still beatable during ground combat. It seems as though that Bosses and some TYPES of ground units were not balanced with the difficulty slider.
The other issue that I encounter, and I love the difficulty of Elite, is that there is ussually NO cover available to break LOS. I do not invest in ground skills but playing on Elite shouldn't exclude me from doing my mission (which are ussually half space and half ground...you almost NEVER find one that is 100% one or the other.) When there is no cover, you are going to get alpha striked 100% of the time.
In summary, Boss MoB's and Health direct MoB's need a balance pass with the difficulty slider. You shouldn't die before you can react (assuming same level gear.)
The second issue with ground combat is lack of LoS breaking cover. If the point of Elite is to alpha strike me, give me some cover that I can use in order to protect myself.
I cannot give feedback on space elite since the first part of my mission was ground based so I was unable to get to the space portion of the mission due to wipes.
EDIT:
One addition to my post, and this is simply my opinion, but part of the issue here is the segregation of ground and space skills. IF they were part of 2 seperate skill trees (or merged into boxes together) Right now you simply have to choose one or the other.
Comments
I dont mind the AI being smarter for the bad guys. I like it. it makes it more challenging. but the power level seems too skewed on the ground. I set my people up in a nice defendable position, snuck up and picked off a random grunt who had wandered away from the herd. it was great. didn't agro the rest of them. he came running. shot me once, shield down. shot me again. dead before i could turn to run. and that was just a grunt.
Was never a fan of ground missions to begin with. but a little tweaking is still in order I think.
Kudos on the space scaling though. fights are tough and challenging.
The issue is that some players simply don't like the ground game Cryptic has made and don't want it to be stretched out, most players aren't equally skilled at ground and space combat, and almost all players (and all player's worth their salt in pvp) are not equally spec'd for ground and space combat. There's nothing wrong with the ability to scale the difficulty of the two (completely different) portions of the game to the users' tastes.
If they do like you are suggesting and lower the difficulty of ground combat on elite, then you're shortchanging the players who do like ground combat, and are skilled and spec'd for it. The people who are complaining that they can't kill borg spheres in elite might have no problems at that difficulty on the ground. Simply lowering the ground difficulty doesen't work unless you have seperate skill point pools for ground and space, otherwise you're simply making things worse for the minority of ground spec'd players who would rather run space on a lower difficulty than ground. The difficulty discrepency runs both ways because of the nature of the skill point system and the desire of players to min-max.
Part of the problem is the skill system in the game was supposed to have no cap. They made a decision at the last second to cap so that our toons will not be too overpowered for the end game content they plan to add. That and to keep casual players viable in STFs. Now there are too many skills and not enough skill points to make a compromise for a character to be good in space and on the ground especially if they want to enjoy PvP as well as PvE. You'd think they would have put separate ground and space difficulty sliders in for just that reason.
Many people suggesting this are thinking in a linear sense. Because many people suggesting this are RA5s doing these missions in the B'Tran Cluster. And have forgotten about the story arcs that got them to RA5.
One of the first missions you do is the rescue of the U.S.S. Azura.
The mission itself involves space combat. Then you beam aboard the ship and engage in ground combat.
The setting for that mission would be?
In the current system, it would be elite if you set it at elite.
In the proposed system it would be ...
Broken most likely. Glitched beyond the system's capability to function.
Set to whatever you set space to for the space part, and whatever you set ground to for the ground part. The only potential problem would be if Cryptic scaled the rewards given at mission completion to difficulty level, which they currently do not. Even then, if the mission had both ground and space components they would just need to average the reward. Funny how non-programmers can either completely under or (in this case) over-estimate how hard it is to implement things.
The game doesn't work like that.
I just read a post earlier today about the changes to memory alpha and in a lot of the feedback on it, people are pointing out how disorganized the itemization is among the three fields of research. The post itself basically states that these things have to be manually input. And they don't particularly have the time to revamp that much data by hand.
A bit of a tangent. But the lesson you need to learn from this tale is that the game can't do what you say it can do.
Or they'd have already done that.
As with a lot of things they are implementing with STO ... you take what you can get. And granted it's just a guess on my part ... but based on my experience with Cryptic games, MMOs and testing, it's my guess that the reason they can't separate ground and space settings is because many of the missions have BOTH types of combat in them. So the difficulty setting mechanic was designed to be tied into the mission itself. Not the mode of combat.
Again, that's now how the mechanics of this game work.
It may seem logical to you. And make lots of sense.
But this game doesn't work that way. There's soooooooooo many examples of how it doesn't work that way. Just look around the forums.
on my alts, science and engineering its much better as your abilities protect you
the enemies do have a habit of all targeting your first which often means death within a few seconds
like I said all they need to do is tweak elite difficulty ground enemies so they don't 1-shot people anymore and it's fine. if it's still too hard for you then I suggest going back down to Advanced mode.
If you were a programmer you would realize that setting difficulty would look like: If difficulty = 'X', use these enemy stats and behaviours. The hard part is coming up with those stats because they need to be play tested. Adding seperate ground and space difficulty is as simple as changing the difficulty check from mission start to the start of each individual map, moving enemy stat init. from mission to map (if it isn't already), have space maps read a value for space difficulty, ground maps read a seperate value for ground difficulty; When in a group, find and use the value of the group leader's difficulty levels at each map load instead of only at mission start. You're looking at 30 minutes of programming if their code isn't a mess, rebalancing ground difficulty would take much longer (playtesting) and be ineffective for the minority of ground spec'd players who probably want the exact opposite.
But whatever, this isn't a very productive conversation. Crytpic knows how hard this would be to code into their engine far better than we do, speculation on our part isn't going to change cryptic's mind one way or the other.
I don't care how big or a little of a job your idea would be to code into the game. they aren't just going to add every single idea some hack on the forums comes up with just because they said they want it in the game. there's another little consideration to factor in called GAME DESIGN.
If you were a programmer, you'd realize Cryptic's games don't work the way you think they do.
Heck, if you were a gamer you'd realize this.
There are dozens of examples in this game where their code and their mechanics do not work the way you want them to.
There are dozens more in their other game.
You won't believe me. I'm not really all that worried about it. As each day passes and more and more things do not work the way you think they do ... lessons will eventually get picked up on.
It's a game with two contrasting components and a user base that will only invest points into one of those components while dumping the other. How does seperate difficulty levels not make sense in that scenario? All you've done is state your opinion without explaining your logic and reason, which isn't constructive at all.
Sure, Cryptic can nerf ground elite so people aren't one shoted, but that is a negative change for players who can actually play at that level and enjoy it (aka, those spec'd for ground). Likewise, people are complaining of getting insta-crit-killed by borg cubes and the like in the space game. Cryptic could nerf elite space difficulty, but that would be a negative outcome for people like me who are able to play and enjoy the space portion on elite difficulty.
A one-size-fits-all difficulty system would be fine if we had seperate skill point pools for ground and space, but we don't. No matter how you try to balance it someone is always going to come out the loser. The only real solution for players right now is to go by their lowest common denominator, or simply skip missions that include ground/space combat depending on what they are spec'd in. That is in no way a good system.
You attempt to speak with some authority on this - but you cite examples of "other mechanics" (like Memory Alpha?) as a reason why ground and space missions cannot scale independently?
Sorry - not buying it.
I'm not even personally advocating this particular change, but I've been around these forums as long as you have - and I accept it when a DEV explains why certain things cannot be done. But not from you. And not with this kind of explaination.
The TL: DR version? All you have simply said is "there are many examples of things that cannot be done in this game - I've decided this must be one of them!" To which I must say "Thats rubbish, until a DEV explains it can't be done and says why - and even then it should not be ruled out because we know some things can be done despite initial claims it can't be"
The next time you repond to a post to so definitively tell someone what is and isn't possible in the game, please first think back to examples of other mechanics that we were originally told could not be changed because of the way they worked. Like turning off shield rings, for instance. The very first feedback we had on this was that it was simply not possible because of the way everything is coded. Followed later by "difficult - but we're looking into it" followed shortly afterwards by "we've found a way to do it and its in the next patch". This would seem to go against the theme of your above post which simply suggests "you'll get what you're given" and nothing else is possible.
The ground and space portions of any mission are seperately loading instances. When a map loads I assume that the game does a look-up of your difficulty level and the mobs then spawn on the map appropriately for that setting. Now, whether I am entering/loading a map from another space/ground mission instance or whether I am entering/loading it from Sector space - there is materially no difference (whatever the case is, its just a map load) - and the game should be able to perform that same look-up when any mission instance is being loaded.
Alternatively - its possible that when the mob spawns (rather than when the map loads) that the game looks up your difficulty level at this point instead. This may in fact be more likely as we often enter maps that enemies do not appear on until we approach the spawn point.
Ground and Space maps and ground and space mobs are categorised seperately in the game. I fail to see (until a DEV explains it to me) why a ground map loading or ground mob spawning could not reference one preference setting, whilst a space map/mob loading could not reference a different player preference.
I've seen no other directly comparable mechanics in this game that would suggest this could not be done and you have failed to highlight one other than to say "there are many explamples of OTHER things this game engine can't do" as evidence why this can't be.
And I'm sure you'll tell us all about your programming experience too, right? Along with your technical insights (not just your player observations) about the proprietary cryptic engine?
I'm an experienced gamer and an experienced MMO player and I've got enough experience under my belt to say that most average player requests are not impossible. Just varying degrees of difficult.
Power colouring in CoX anyone? Impossible? No. Just challenging. An extreme example, maybe as it probably took months to do. But it demonstrates the point, nonetheless.
And also I've learned that Development teams DO NOT always give you everything they can, by default. And not to assume that because something is not in game off the bat, that it simply can't be done.
No MMO. I'm not a proffesional programmer, not even close, but I did take some comp sci courses mainly dealing with c++. Right now I'm studying computer architecture. In any case, I think that we might both be right. Reading your posts again I think what you're trying to say is that a change can have unintended consequences and introduce bugs, which is true. I'm arguing that implementation of the functionality would not be difficult, which is also most likely true (most of the legwork has been done getting the current difficulty implementation... err... implemented). But in any case, Cryptic knows the answer better than us. Our time is best spent discussing the merits of the idea rather than how hard it would be to code.
Any game changes create bugs - thats what testing and tribble are there for.
Absolutely right!
As I said, I wouldn't be advocate for this particular change. I really think they just need to tweak the ground portion a little more to be honest. but thats just my 2c.
Yes you are right. I like elite but some of the ground enemy's are much harder then the elite tactical borgs in the cure
It seems like you have a good head on your shoulders, so I'm curious -- what type of player are you going to base the ground difficulty on. The majority of space PvPers who have 0 points invested into ground skills? What then do you suggest doing about ground PvPers who have most of their points in ground skills? Would that not create the same (but opposite, where space PvE is too hard) problem for that minority of players?
I don't think you can base the difficulty around a playstyle that favours ONE aspect of the game - hardcore style - at the deteriment of other parts of the game.
I'm not an hardcore PvPer - I PvP'd a fair bit on one of the toons I rolled (but recently deleleted her as had my hands full with my other 2 RAs) and so I can't answer as to whether removing a rank or 2 from a few of the space skills and putting them into Ground skills would really make much noticeable difference to your PvP performance in space or not (I would say not really, but a hardcore space PvP min-maxer no doubt will disagree with me).
When the difficulty mechanic was introduced, I knew that I had to make changes to my build in order to be better prepared to handle it.
I respecced my toon in order get points into ground skills. How did I do that? Well, most players (including myself) that prefer space had previously ranked their space skills all the way up to 9 in order to try and maximise them.
What most players don't realise however is that ranking a skill all the way up to 9 usually provides only very small (decimal in many cases) benefits to that skill because of the dimishing returns factor that is built in. Beyond rank 7, many skills provide such small benefits that they are barely noticeable at all in fact, in average gameplay.
During my respec, I took most of the skills in each of the ranks only to 7 or 8 and only ranked up a select few to 9 (where perhaps a skill unlocks a training power I wanted for example) .
This left a surprisingly large pool of points to invest into Ground. And because those points were taken from the high ranked space skills and put into the low ranked ground skills - those Skill Points effectively work a lot harder to improve my character and round them out for space AND ground.
Even ranking ground skills to 3,4 or 5 makes a tremendous difference because at the low end of the skill ranking (ie. the first ranks you give to a skill) they give the biggest improvements to those skills.
If you are going to up the difficulty in PvE you need to make good choices about your build and ensure its balanced.
I really genuinely feel they just need to make a few changes to some of the higher end mobs on Advanced and Elite and remove/tone down some of the "2 shot" abilities some of these mobs seem to have - which there is little or no defense against for some character classes. Once some balance is done I don't think a decent, well rounded toon with an experienced player behind it should have an major problems with the ground game, even on Elite.
But you never know, if enough people like your idea and you can get some weight behind it from other players it could take off.
Dude Dark-Oberion is slingin real hash here not TRIBBLE. The skill system is based on the law of depreciating returns and actually benefits those who generalize a bit. I had my weapons skills set up as energy weapons 9, cannons 9, and phasers 9 but my ship used a mix of beams and cannons. I took an articles advice and for about the same skill point cost got energy weapons at 7, beams and cannons at 5 and phasers at 9. Where I was doing 100 points bonus damage with only my cannons and 48 pts with my beams I now do 93 bonus damage with both. Scavenged up some nice points for ground skills as well. Read this article http://theenginescannaetakeit.wordpress.com/articles-3/skills-the-numbers/ it is illuminating to say the very least. Special thanks to BigBadB for researching and writing the article.
Hey! there's that slippery Slope people have been talking about. :rolleyes:
I agree with the point that the ground games needs some balancing work done. I had to drop an exploration mission because the Klingon warriors on the ground would wipe out my away team in seconds. As a new level 3-ish character it was impossible to win. Space missions at that same difficulty (advanced) have been more challenging and enjoyable, but in no way impossible.
I also agree that skill points should be separated. There just aren't enough points at any particular rank to spec into both space and ground unless you don't mind being mediocre at both. There are two halves to this game so why not have two skill point pools? I suggest we earn space skill points in space and ground skill points on the ground.
I am mainly a PVPer and I do not enjoy Ground PVP in the slightest, so I never spent points in Ground skills (save where I had bonus points with no other useful space skills to spend them on, or if I needed a Rank 3 skill to teach an officer). I know this is a conscious choice on my part to do this... but because of the total split in abilities between ground and space, I really think it would be healthy for the game to split skill points, too.
This would also allow Cryptic to develop many more ground skills than we currently have. Wouldn't that be fun?
Just now I tried to do the 'Wargames' mission, and the 8472 captain is literally undefeatable. His wrist blaster is a one shot kill weapon.....that is a cone. Oh, and he heals himself.
The ground combat is fun at advanced, except for the one or two utterly unbalanced enemies that have completely evaded all balancing, especially those Reman Commanders who have been pointed out from day ****ing one but never actually fixed. But then, if there was any balancing at all they never would have been so ridiculously skewed in the first place.
Good post!
I think where we differ is you're thinking of how people can change their builds in order to adapt to the new system, where as I'm thinking about all the people who simply won't change their builds. Everyone understands that you don't lose much when you take out the last three skill points in a tree and put them into another skill, eg. ground. A lot of PvPers though will want every advantage they can get no matter small and will be well suited to playing elite difficulty of one half of the game but not the other. The last thing you want to do is have players simply skip missions that require them to play the half of the game they aren't spec'd for, like one of the earlier posters. Obviously the best solution is to have seperate skill poin pools, but in the meantime, I think having seperate dificulty sliders is a good way to accomodate all play styles, compared to forcing players to balance their builds or not be able to do half of the content on higher difficulty.
There were several "Boss" characters that presented a hue challenge on the normal difficulty such as the Reman commander from the Hobus map or anytime you fight an Undine with psychic powers. On elite these guys will kill you in 2 hits. On normal these same guys were a challenge but still beatable during ground combat. It seems as though that Bosses and some TYPES of ground units were not balanced with the difficulty slider.
The other issue that I encounter, and I love the difficulty of Elite, is that there is ussually NO cover available to break LOS. I do not invest in ground skills but playing on Elite shouldn't exclude me from doing my mission (which are ussually half space and half ground...you almost NEVER find one that is 100% one or the other.) When there is no cover, you are going to get alpha striked 100% of the time.
In summary, Boss MoB's and Health direct MoB's need a balance pass with the difficulty slider. You shouldn't die before you can react (assuming same level gear.)
The second issue with ground combat is lack of LoS breaking cover. If the point of Elite is to alpha strike me, give me some cover that I can use in order to protect myself.
I cannot give feedback on space elite since the first part of my mission was ground based so I was unable to get to the space portion of the mission due to wipes.
EDIT:
One addition to my post, and this is simply my opinion, but part of the issue here is the segregation of ground and space skills. IF they were part of 2 seperate skill trees (or merged into boxes together) Right now you simply have to choose one or the other.