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PvP Weekly Update 06/08/2012
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
PvP Weekly Update - 06/08/2012
Hello again everyone.
There are a few things to talk about this week, but lets start by discussing the concept of the Weekly PvP Update thread itself.
When I started reading through all the PvP feedback in these forums one of the largest complaints I noticed was that the PvP community didnt feel like they had anyone listening to them. While this is not true, I can see why it seemed that way. As developers, we only have so much time during the day to interact with the community. Many of the developers read through the forums everyday as part of their normal routine, however, most wont post on a topic unless they are directly involved in the creation (or maintenance) of a particular game feature (like PvP for example).
If the topic of a thread isnt really in our individual area of expertise, we generally just read through it and then pass it on to one of our colleagues (assuming of course there is good information in the thread). Ive already explained in an earlier weekly update that PvP didnt really have an owner until just a few weeks ago, so while Im sure there were great threads with good information in them, there was really no one on the STO team to funnel that information to.
One of the other problems we have is that its really easy to completely miss a great thread thats filled with excellent feedback. There are just too many topics, and they change so often, that unless a developer spent all of his or her time reading through each and every thread every day, we are never going to see that information. We cant spend that much time reading the forums of course, because if we did we wouldnt be able to do our actual job developing things.
Brandon (BranFlakes) reads lots of posts on these forums, collects feedback, and sends it into the devs who are involved in the aspect of the game that is discussed in the thread. His added to my list of feedback posts are actually passed along quite frequently. However, it's hard for him to know what might or might not be relevant depending on the topic at hand.
So, to solve at least a few of those problems, I created the Weekly PvP Update. I may not be able to read every thread every day, but I can make sure I read all of at least one thread completely on a weekly basis. That doesnt mean I can spend all of my time answering every question in that one thread though. I still only have so much time every day to complete my other work-related tasks.
I also realize that you guys want more information on the changes coming to PvP. However, at the moment, there really isnt that much to talk about. This will change in future updates as more of the new system falls into place. There will times where I have the basics of a new feature in place and Ill look to the PvP community to tell me what they like or dont like about that feature, and then based on that feedback, Ill adjust the new feature.
This weekly update is a good example to start with. It is a new feature in its own right. Some folks like the current weekly format and some dont think its worthwhile because there isnt a huge amount of new information coming from it. I think the overall concept needs to stay because I feel its helpful overall, but I can certainly change the format to one that has more information in it. I can post this monthly instead of weekly for example. Monthly updates will have a lot more information in them.
So, here is your first chance to change a PvP related feature
Do you want me to continue the weekly updates or would you rather me do them monthly and have more things to talk about? The choice is up to you. Ill be watching the feedback in this thread over the next week and go with the majority.
Okay, on to where we are at for this week:
I havent made much PvP progress this week because Im at a point right now in the process where Im waiting on a little bit of software support. I have a couple of maps ready to test some of the new back end engine features, but the new Scoreboards are not fully ready yet. The scoreboards tell the players lots of information about the match that is in progress. Some of the information is vital to the gameplay, and without it, testing the maps are somewhat pointless. They are not ready yet because the old scoreboards are all looking at a specific place for the relevant data, however the relevant data is coming from a new location now. There is also much more relevant data to track, but it just hasnt been hooked up yet.
At the moment, all of our programmers are focused on Season Six. I will get the software attention I need, but it probably wont happen until after Season Six has been released. I know that this is kind of a bummer, but you really shouldnt look at it that way. In fact, as a PvPer, you should be very excited about Season Six.
Let me explain why.
One of the great things that comes with a complete re-design of a large system like PvP after a MMO has matured a little bit is that you can look at ways to tie in other new features or systems that have come along since the game has shipped: overall engine performance, cut scene improvements, voice over updates, Red Alerts, DOFFs, Events, Small Craft, etc. -- the list could go on and on. I can pull from all of these new things that didnt exist when we originally made the current PvP system and figure out cool new ways to tie them into the new design.
The new features you are getting with Season Six will open up lots of new avenues for me to look at in relation to PvP. Fleet Starbases just scream PvP to me, at least in some form. I dont know exactly how the Season Six updates will be used for PvP yet, but there is a great deal of potential there and that excites me, it should really excite you.
Thats it for this week.
Have a good weekend.
Goz
Hello again everyone.
There are a few things to talk about this week, but lets start by discussing the concept of the Weekly PvP Update thread itself.
When I started reading through all the PvP feedback in these forums one of the largest complaints I noticed was that the PvP community didnt feel like they had anyone listening to them. While this is not true, I can see why it seemed that way. As developers, we only have so much time during the day to interact with the community. Many of the developers read through the forums everyday as part of their normal routine, however, most wont post on a topic unless they are directly involved in the creation (or maintenance) of a particular game feature (like PvP for example).
If the topic of a thread isnt really in our individual area of expertise, we generally just read through it and then pass it on to one of our colleagues (assuming of course there is good information in the thread). Ive already explained in an earlier weekly update that PvP didnt really have an owner until just a few weeks ago, so while Im sure there were great threads with good information in them, there was really no one on the STO team to funnel that information to.
One of the other problems we have is that its really easy to completely miss a great thread thats filled with excellent feedback. There are just too many topics, and they change so often, that unless a developer spent all of his or her time reading through each and every thread every day, we are never going to see that information. We cant spend that much time reading the forums of course, because if we did we wouldnt be able to do our actual job developing things.
Brandon (BranFlakes) reads lots of posts on these forums, collects feedback, and sends it into the devs who are involved in the aspect of the game that is discussed in the thread. His added to my list of feedback posts are actually passed along quite frequently. However, it's hard for him to know what might or might not be relevant depending on the topic at hand.
So, to solve at least a few of those problems, I created the Weekly PvP Update. I may not be able to read every thread every day, but I can make sure I read all of at least one thread completely on a weekly basis. That doesnt mean I can spend all of my time answering every question in that one thread though. I still only have so much time every day to complete my other work-related tasks.
I also realize that you guys want more information on the changes coming to PvP. However, at the moment, there really isnt that much to talk about. This will change in future updates as more of the new system falls into place. There will times where I have the basics of a new feature in place and Ill look to the PvP community to tell me what they like or dont like about that feature, and then based on that feedback, Ill adjust the new feature.
This weekly update is a good example to start with. It is a new feature in its own right. Some folks like the current weekly format and some dont think its worthwhile because there isnt a huge amount of new information coming from it. I think the overall concept needs to stay because I feel its helpful overall, but I can certainly change the format to one that has more information in it. I can post this monthly instead of weekly for example. Monthly updates will have a lot more information in them.
So, here is your first chance to change a PvP related feature
Do you want me to continue the weekly updates or would you rather me do them monthly and have more things to talk about? The choice is up to you. Ill be watching the feedback in this thread over the next week and go with the majority.Okay, on to where we are at for this week:
I havent made much PvP progress this week because Im at a point right now in the process where Im waiting on a little bit of software support. I have a couple of maps ready to test some of the new back end engine features, but the new Scoreboards are not fully ready yet. The scoreboards tell the players lots of information about the match that is in progress. Some of the information is vital to the gameplay, and without it, testing the maps are somewhat pointless. They are not ready yet because the old scoreboards are all looking at a specific place for the relevant data, however the relevant data is coming from a new location now. There is also much more relevant data to track, but it just hasnt been hooked up yet.
At the moment, all of our programmers are focused on Season Six. I will get the software attention I need, but it probably wont happen until after Season Six has been released. I know that this is kind of a bummer, but you really shouldnt look at it that way. In fact, as a PvPer, you should be very excited about Season Six.
Let me explain why.
One of the great things that comes with a complete re-design of a large system like PvP after a MMO has matured a little bit is that you can look at ways to tie in other new features or systems that have come along since the game has shipped: overall engine performance, cut scene improvements, voice over updates, Red Alerts, DOFFs, Events, Small Craft, etc. -- the list could go on and on. I can pull from all of these new things that didnt exist when we originally made the current PvP system and figure out cool new ways to tie them into the new design.
The new features you are getting with Season Six will open up lots of new avenues for me to look at in relation to PvP. Fleet Starbases just scream PvP to me, at least in some form. I dont know exactly how the Season Six updates will be used for PvP yet, but there is a great deal of potential there and that excites me, it should really excite you.
Thats it for this week.
Have a good weekend.
Goz
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
As for the time between updates, weekly seems like it might be too frequent, but on a monthly basis, I think a lot of other people who don't frequent the forums as often will start feeling abandoned again. I would suggest an update every 2 weeks as a compromise.
So instead of focusing on weekly updates it could free more of your time for other stuff.
That's my opinion anyhow.
Keep up the hard work gozer
Also, if you say that this helps keeping track of issues and getting feedback not just read once, but kept track of, weekly seems almost necessary - there is a lot of feedback.
Reserved for future comment.
S*D
As for the frequency of posts, definitely keep doing it every week, even if you don't have a lot to tell us it will still matter.
The reason is in your post and that's that the community doesn't think yall are listening to us, but more importantly this has been something running for years, and there's a lot that needs doing to get the PvP community to believe that we have somebody's ear for once. I understand that yall read the forums everyday, but from an appearance standpoint we come to this forum and we might see 1 thread a month (or two months) if we're lucky that gets a Dev's response, whereas is we go into another forums we see the front page loaded with threads that have Dev responses in them and it just creates the feeling and atmosphere (among other things that are going on that I won't get into) that yall are not paying attention.
Just to give you an idea at how bad the relationship between the Dev's and PvP community is, it has been a running joke for about two years now in the OPvP channel that the Dev's don't play the game. That how much the old PvPers think the Devs pay attention to us and don't care about our feedback....
So yes please keep talking to us, keep responding even if it's just to say that you're thinking of doing X or Y but you're deciding, or w/e as long as you're talking and working with us
As for the additions to PvP with starbases and such, I assume that each fleet base will be it's own 'zone' like everything else in the game correct? Can you not just add on a function to enable PvP within the zone between fleets, and perhaps later add functions to allow fleets to raid for supplies or mission rewards?
lol.. how would you know if we were playing or not? I play all the time, but I don't do it on a Dev account. Every employee at Crytpic has a personal account. Very few even have Dev rights on Holodeck, and even those are tied to specific dev accounts that are separate from our personal accounts.
I personally have 4 Level Capped captains on my personal account.
weekly for me.
The pvp community is so malnourished on dev attention, it's like offering a glass of water to someone dieing of thirst!
This also mean that we will forgive you most things, as long as we feel we're being listened to. And that we scream "fire!" we are taken seriously. Too often we have seen gamebreaking changes on tribble and tried to let devs know about it by all possible means, just to see it go live a few days later. Please take the (veteran) pvp'ers seriously, and STO will benefit from it.
Weekly sounds good to me, but if for some reason there isn't much to say, feel free to make it a short post.
I'm a wallflower in these parts of the forums, but I'd prefer weekly updates, even if you can't tell us about anything new.
However, even though you stated you didn't really have anything new to talk about this time, your post dropped hints that you're working on new maps, with new scoreboards, and possibly new types of PvP gameplay given the mention of new maps not worth testing without the new scoreboards to relay new information. I for one find that interesting.
..and I think that's great, and I'm not asking you what your name is or w/e, I'm just saying how bad the relationship is between the community and the PvPers (especially the old PvPers from before the game with F2P). Instead if people get into the OrganizedPvP channel they'll see things like, "Cryptic wants PvP to die" or "Cryptic is winning PvP" or "Dev's need to play their ******* game" and it get progressively worse from there.
People just don't think that yall are interested in PvP. If you really want to show people that the Devs are paying attention then use your Dev account and get into the OPvP channel once a week at some random time and I promise you that you'll be inundated with ideas, suggestions, bugs (and a little venom too but there's no escaping that) and just general feedback that's more valuable to you than anything that you'll get out of the PvE players from their STF experiences.
"NO NEW INFORMATION TO REPORT AT THIS TIME"
Rock on!
-Captain Glitch-
p.s.:Its almost like the dev's visit the tts channel everyday even just to say hello. My suggestion to you is the same as Sivar's. Except I would say you should probably make it a point to visit even if only for 5 minutes before you get started or before you leave for the day. The devs have a lot of catching up to do with pvp. Communication is key. You opened the door to that communication. So a great place to start is to go to where the conversation is.
If you skip out a week on a posting project you tend to forget it's there it stops being routine and gets you out of the habit.
In this case you need to be communicating with the community as much as physically possible to get our feedback. But I have one gripe about these threads. You tend to not post back in them. You don't tend to directly respond to our ideas. We need to hear that stuff, it shows ideas are being considered, or at least heard directly.
I also second Sivars suggestion about hopping in on your dev account.
Also, we also kinda know at the very least that frankly the systems team doesn't pvp or at the very least they certainly do not do it enough. I don't mean just doing it with pugs during off hours, because really I could probably go into those hours in a shuttle and still get kills and wins. I mean during primetime, against OPVP grade players etc.
I am glad to see that you at least seem to be taking your forum posts seriously.
The PvP community simply started to assume the worst, since that seemed to reflect a lot of changes that happened to PvP.
This may sound familiar or like a broken record:
Of course we also see positive stuff that happened - but nothing really decisive since Season 1.2, really. That was when snix overhauled the powers and cooldown system to create a much more balanced PvP. It still wasn't perfect, but much better what we had before. But it seems that, despite some attempts to the contrary, later additions often made things worse.
And the only other great PvP improvement - Private Challenges and an improved Queue in Season 2- came with the loss of an enitre PvP game mode (Space Assault) and also broke the QUeues for a long time - and also introduced a new set of ships with questionable powers (Ablative Armor, Science Fleet come to mind) and a new level cap where the PvP balance implications weren't really understood yet.
I tend to think that new game features are at the moment more important than further balance tweaks, but I may be wrong, if the new features don't work well with better balance.
Just a few things balance-wise and fun-wise. Not all issues the PvP community has are really strictly speaking an issue of balance - some are simply about whether abilities are "fun". Of course all powers have an unfun component i nthat they hurt the enemy in some way (usually), but there are degrees of "unfun" that are acceptable and some that are not. Abilities that can become very unfun are especially those that take away control of players - stuns, holds, even instant-kills. They are okay in small doses, but too much, and the play is no longer enjoyable.
- Science Resists: They are too effective and ultimately nerfed many science powers. 2 Solutions I see:
- Make all affected Science Powers stronger than they were before, so that you need, say, 3 skill ranks and 1-2 resists gained from items (consoles, deflectors) to get the results before the introduction, and 6-9 ranks and 2-4 items at about 75 % before.
- Science Resists only apply after a power has been applied and affected the target fully. Similiar to stun effects basically, people get a temporary resists to follow-up uses for ~15 seconds. I think I'd prefer this approach. This makes chaining or stacking science powers less effective, but the individual power still strong.
- Carriers: The UI does not work well with so many targets. Even then the balance of Carriers is somewhat questionable, since the only thing they sacrifice really is turn rate for more firepower than a SV. And not just firepower - also more effective BO powers. Runabout Pets are more powerful than slotting a regular Tractor Beam since the up-time is much, much better. Procs from Chronitons and Phasers are very strong when they can be amassed like that as well.
- Pet Groups should act as a single targetable entity, no longer be multiple ships. Procs can be weakened in this process.
- Special abilities like Tractor Beam get turned into a power-like ability that the Carrier Captain finds on his tray and can activate manually. They have cooldowns similar to other BO powers. This gives all players more control. The Carrier because he can say when the pets are to use a power and on which target, and the targets because they are more rarely affected by these powers.
- Console Powers are highly questionable in terms of game balance. The biggest problem is that the Season 1.2 powers and cooldowns were based on several implicit factors:
- How do you get a power?
- How many powers are there for a specific purpose?
- Shared Cooldowns.
- Bridge Officer Seatings and Power
- DOFF Powers
- Some of the new DOFFs reduce cooldowns. This can also break previous assumptions on power balance - for example, witht he right DOFF; it's now entirely feasible to run only one Engineering Team 3 and have the same uptime as with 2 ETs. All this has ripple effects that are hard to understand yet - and it doesn't seem the PvP community currently keeps good track of this currently.
- Some of the DOFFs simply add new abilities that are problematic. Strong heals (Hazard Emitter DOFF) or a "mini-Subnucleonic Beam"
Addressing all this would almost need its own task force. If you still have a snix clone in your refrigerator, it would be a good idea to defrost it.Either from your Class, or from Bridge Officers, or from Devices. That limits how many powers you can use overall.
Consoles suddenly add a way to gain a power that does not cost you another power. The opportunity cost for powers are gone. Sure, there is a new opportunity cost since you lose console bonuses -but the value of a power and the value of a console buff were never designed to be similar - and even if they were once, it cannot be argued they still are as they were before - engineering consoles suddenly deliver only half the power they used to. And trust me - 3.5 points weapon power when you already get to 125 weapon power without them is not worth as much as a Theta Vent console or an Anti-Matter Spread.
This is a very important aspect. Powers like Engineering Team, Auxillary to Structural Integrity Field and Hazard Emitters were basically build with cooldowns and heal rates in mind considering that these are the 3 hull heal sources that exist, for example. If a 4th power were to be suddenly added (say, a Tactical Hull Heal), it could be possible that a ship has way more healing available than was ever intended. Hull Heals are an illustrative example, I think,but of course the area this happened most in regards to consoles were control powers like the Theta Vent, Anti-Matter Spread, Photonic Shockwave Torpedo and the like.
Powers share cooldowns so it's not that easy to use multiple ones of them on the same time. Gravity Well and Tyken's Rift cannot be used together, avoiding that you could basically automatically catch a group of enemies with a Gravity Well and follow up with a Tyken's Rift to neuter them completely. Again, consoles can break this assumption by not sharing cooldowns with abilities they synergize well. Some consoles share cooldowns with other powers, but it is overall spotty - and sometimes one has to argue they would need to share global cooldowns, not system cooldowns.
The available Bridge Officer slottings limited what kind of powers you could use. This can be a further limiter on balance. Sometimes, classes have either overlaps in abilities (say, crowd control or healing), or maybe abilities that synergize particularly well (say a strong kinetic damage power and a strong hull resist debuff). But the potential of these overlaps and synergies are limited by the fact that you cannot just combine any type of BO power usually. Before consoles and before the "non-standard" BO seatings introduced with the Excelsior (post season 1.2), you couldn't, say, combine a Tractor Beam Repulsor III with an Attack Pattern Beta II or Hazard Emitters III, Engineering Team III and Aux2SIF3. While the non-standard BO seatings introduced the problems, the C-Store consoles make it even worse - the Odysee can combine the aforementioned healing powers, but it can't add a 2nd Engineering Team II. Consoles give up even the last limitation of this kind.
The DOFF powers implications are somewhat known in the community, but I think not well enough understood so far. But they also have similar consequences for balance as consoles.
---
Oh, and Fleet Starbase PvP sounds great and a logical idea. I've heard some talk about the idea of a "wager" system - I am somewhat questionable on it - I think wagers really only make sense if the chance of winning is around 50:50. I would add at least some bonus rewards onto it so that even if you know you will likely lose, at the end you'll have more than before. Otherwise no one will risk fighting, say Sad Pandas or TSI or whoever is the PvP fleet of the day then. And that would be boring. (Maybe more interesting would be the ability to stage "unfair" odds - say two fleets challenge a 3rd. But even then, the wager may not be the best idea)
My favorite part of PvP is open PvP zones, like Ker'rat.
I would love to see PvP missions become more than, "get to 15 kills", maybe something more on par with the length of an STF, or better open areas where we can collect resources while dealing with the enemy faction (like a new, more polished and complicated version of Ker'rat), where we can maybe beam down to planets for ground PvP, perhaps after having to run an enemy blockade. There could be multiple missions like "destroy enemy ships", "enforce blockade", "capture enemy encampment,", "kill enemy away team" et cetera in a large, open zone.
I'm talking about the relevant topics at the moment, what you want information about isn't really relevant at the moment. None of the things you mention are important at this particular stage of the process.
Balance is a issue... yes.. It will be addressed, are we addressing it now? No.
Perhaps none of the powers you think have issues will even be usable in PvP, perhaps all of them will and we will have to take a look at them at some point. It's too early to make that call so I won't be talking about them.
No changes to powers or balance will matter if the framework of the system isn't fun to begin with. That's where we are right now.
I'm glad to hear that you guys do play on your personal accounts. I hope some of their up time is spent doing PvP. It might not hurt to see your Cryptic accounts involved but I suppose I can understand not wanting to be so exposed.
Weekly or monthly, I'm indifferent. Substance would be nice whatever the frequency.
A loooooooot of people would say the opposite.
Looking forward to that Monday goal setting post!!
If they're really rebuilding the combat system from the ground up then it's really not worth the effort to fix what's currently here, so I think that people will agree it's the right call to make.
We'll have to see what the new system looks like before we jump to conclusions about it as well, and if I'm understanding correctly, it's still in the planning stages at this point.
Fair enough. I appreciate your response. YOU REALLY DO CARE! Imma get you a Christmas Card. No lump of coal for one VERY SPECIAL GAME DESIGNER at Cryptic THIS YEAR!!
I love this ^^
To the point. No digging yourself into a hole with vague promises, as we usually see devs do. (and wich caused the infamous "list of broken promises")
I have all the confidence in the world, that given some time, STO pvp will be awsome. More awsome!
PS: That said: Is there no chance of getting some emergency patchwork up for the most broken abilities? Like power drain stacking and AMS/SS chaining?
Word of advice: Play on the strenghts of STO when remaking pvp. All earlier attempts have been to fix things that STO basically does worse than other games or simply copies them. Like ground pvp. STO space combat is unique, and I'm happy this is finally being overhauled.