test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
A Suggestion for Making PUGs Better
leviathan99
Member Posts: 7,747 Arc User
I'm not sure exactly what the best way to trigger this would be but I think the optionals should be set to automatically fail and disappear from the objectives in all public queue events.
It would save considerable strife and drama. Most of the failure I see in STF PUGs come from people without the gear or the skill pursuing optionals (occasionally, one or two frustrated people trying to carry the rest of the team) and often people pursuing optionals in different way.
Take Khitomer Accord, I think you should clear all the Borg you encounter along the way to the chamber. If you have a good team with good firepower, there's still plenty of time for the optionals. I know some people try to sneak past Borg to shave seconds off but I think that's a selfish strategy because it doesn't allow for anyone to respawn. (Heaven forbid something goes wrong in the last room and someone respawns for their loot.)
I've seen people who treat Infected's optional as a DPS race (and that approach seems to work better IMHO) but I've seen people who claim that rushing will cost you the objective. There's no agreement.
The optionals are what split most groups. How to complete them, whether to complete them, whether completing them matters.
These disagreements lead to lots of character deaths and injuries, lots of dropped groups, and needless drama.
So... Save the optionals for pre-made groups, I say. Have them auto-fail for PUGs.
It would save considerable strife and drama. Most of the failure I see in STF PUGs come from people without the gear or the skill pursuing optionals (occasionally, one or two frustrated people trying to carry the rest of the team) and often people pursuing optionals in different way.
Take Khitomer Accord, I think you should clear all the Borg you encounter along the way to the chamber. If you have a good team with good firepower, there's still plenty of time for the optionals. I know some people try to sneak past Borg to shave seconds off but I think that's a selfish strategy because it doesn't allow for anyone to respawn. (Heaven forbid something goes wrong in the last room and someone respawns for their loot.)
I've seen people who treat Infected's optional as a DPS race (and that approach seems to work better IMHO) but I've seen people who claim that rushing will cost you the objective. There's no agreement.
The optionals are what split most groups. How to complete them, whether to complete them, whether completing them matters.
These disagreements lead to lots of character deaths and injuries, lots of dropped groups, and needless drama.
So... Save the optionals for pre-made groups, I say. Have them auto-fail for PUGs.
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10052253
Why are you not rejoicing?
Altough what would fit a random group optional?
Maybe a cap on the number of deaths?
Heck, maybe just make it an extra EDC for completing it in a PUG.
My preference would actually be for completing multiple PUGs and use the PUG optional as a counter.
Completing X number of PUGs would award friendship-themed things like a non-combat pet Companion (ie. Zefram Cochrane's energy cloud girlfriend), Kirk-style eyeglasses as a costume unlock (a gift from a friend), and build up to something like a playable Talaxian with the Spiritual trait and a bunch of team-related buffs. (Maybe, for your main, a Tuvix-inspired thing that turns you into a Talaxian. Heck, imagine an entire class of items based around replicating transporter accidents as toggle abilities.)
seems to be the common plan in many groups
Join the STFHelp channel
Building up to something like Omega Force General with a combination MACO/Honor Guard style uniform and your choice of an Honor Guard, MACO, or Omega Force Bridge Officer. (And once unlocked, the other two you didn't choose would become available for EDC.)
So you'd have titles that unlock, something like:
Omega Force Lt., Omega Force Lt. Colonel, Omega Force Colonel, and Omega Force General.
Each would come with, say a passive damage boost and resist against Borg. Highest tier reduces all remod cooldowns by 50%, awards an anti-Borg Falchion that counts towards all STF item sets, and unlocks the Omega Force General costume, plus access to a BO vendor that sells Human MACO BOs, Klingon Honor Guard BOs, and Deferi and Cardassian Omega Force BOs. All with the Veteran BO traits.
True... But I think a part of any incentivation is to not simply encourage people to become better but to lure people into sticking with mediocre or bad groups.
Spamming Help! less than 5 times could be another one.e
Join the STFHelp channel
IMHO, when it comes to STFs, only way to solve bad PuGs would be:
1) Restore the Original STFs as a single-player mission and have new player acclimated to the new STFs.
2) New Players having to unlock the Elites by completing at least 5 of every STF (Space and Ground).
Else the only way to handle PuGs is grouping with people that you know and trust.
so Ground
no more than 2 engineers 2 science or 2 tacs
Space no more than 2 science ships 2 escorts/birds of prey 2 carriers 2 cruisers or 1 shuttle
My advice is don't take optionals so darn seriously. If, for whatever reason, you really want them, play with premades. But it's just not worth sweating it in pugs; try for it, sure, but if you lose it, it's whatever.
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
Given that tacs and escorts are the most common, restricting queues to 2 would mean you never got an STF going.
Join the STFHelp channel
I don't. I'm saying that the optionals destroy capable teams because people register it as a failure when they don't complete one. So... save optionals for the pre-mades, I say, and improve PUG cohesion.
Make the optionals require a pre-made. Give the PUGs an optional or extra benefit that only happens for PUGs.
This will improve group cohesion... and I think it's essential to design PUG content to improve cohesion and not to ecnourage people to adopt different goals or strategies.
Right now the optionals are just a timer to make things "harder".
Oh you didn't finish in 15 mins, no loot for you.
I'd like to see it just tie into the mission itself. Infected ground has the right idea in terms of a penalty; if you don't save the hostages you'll have to fight them assimiliated. Something to make the rest of the map harder.
But there's no reward mechanic. If you pass the optional it should just be "normal mode". ex a force field came down to let you bypass a group of mob you'd have to fight if you failed, or activate turrets to help you with a next group.
Too many times I've seen two out of three pieces of optional gear, up to and including rare salvage (the only worthwhile thing in those bags) got to the one dillweed that did jack squat to help with the optional.
If it gave everyone one random extra piece of loot, I'd be content with it.
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
On top of that you have a plethora of bugs and poor design, such as the assimilation radius, hubs with no purpose and lack of bridges on Infected Ground, the slow start to cureG, the constant redundant popups in all STFs, speed hacking and teleporting borgs on cureG, the infamous invisible torpedoes in space, Donatra's instant cast Thalaron attack, the hypos not curing assimilation and so forth.
Too many things working against a PUG.
Anyone that gets bent out of shape from not getting optionals should be looking for a fleet to do STFs with on a regular basis. Same goes for those who moan hard about elites - you should be doing elites with a fleet b/c they were not designed for pugs in the first place.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Seriously. That's all they need to do. Back then STF's were so much easier, and you could actually complete PUG STFs more often than not. As much as it pains me to say this, but this showing up, and Gozer's dismissal of the fact that instant deaths still run rampant, I'm almost glad to see him go.
There was some wiggle room for mistakes to be made, and even if there were leavers or saboteurs, you would most likely loose the optional, but if everyone was mostly competent, you could still finish the STF a man short.
Now with the game itself demanding utmost perfection, it hasn't made the quality of player better, it's made it far, far worse. Sure, players whine, leave, sabotage, claim to be the godsend of gaming while they accuse you of rainbow-boating and insult your mother... even though you're using retrofit phasers alongside Borg ones...
If you want to know what's causing needless stress and encouraging poor attitudes, it's not optionals, it's this. Blame the players sure, but not when the game is encouraging it.
Sure, keep it for the "No Win Senario" and other future Xtreme-difficulty-missions, but keep it out of things so easily accessed, or meant for a grind.
It's not that they can't be done. It's that PUG content should be less frustrating than planned content, in order to ease people into it.
STO has a LOT of people who don't play STFs.
An MMO where people don't run dungeons has a problem.
There needs to be a level of group content that is breezy and dumb fun.
Normals really are but people get upset over the optionals.
The first priority, above all else, should be to make people like playing with strangers. This is essential to get people into group content.
How many times have you heard a podcaster say, "I don't play STFs"? That just shouldn't happen. It represents a design flaw that anyone would say that and I think the design flaw is that all group content is effectively somewhere between a heroic dungeon and a raid.
If you want the optionals (or the special costume they unlock), get together a premade.
The game needs some kind of entry level veneer to convince people who don't like teaming that they should like it.
Public queue normal mode should be that IMHO.
That is the point. There is no real reason to be upset about optionals because it is optional. In my experience most new people are just trying stfs and want to beat them. Its the so called "pros" that get upset about not getting the optional. They scream at the team when someone messes them up and often quit on everyone. Its out of selfishness and impatience.
Those are the ones who should be looking for premades to get the optionals done if it upsets them that much. The rest of us dont mind the random nature of pugs and will get optionals when it happens. Its really np as long as we the pug can beat the main mission and get the end loot.
Now if you really want to discuss experiences that are causing people to never do stfs again, lets talk about the 'Gates From Hell' and 'OP Armek' haha.
I really hope they don't start pursuing the path of trying to make people happy in the STFs. The whole concept of the STFs is designed to induce frustration among players, they have been that way from the start and will continue doing so as long as they exist in the game.
You may be able to change the game but you'll never change the fundamental fact that there are quite a few people in this game that are just not much fun to play with.
Forced team content may be a lot of fun if you have a group of people with whom you have an existing relationship, but it can be a pretty miserable experience if you're just playing with random people from the game.
Captain Ariel Trueheart Department of Temporal Investigations
U.S.S. Valkyrie - NCC 991701
=/\= ================================= =/\=
I think you are right... about Elite STFs.
STO is a lot of people's first MMO and some folks first multiplayer game, period.
It needs some introduction to some things. One of which is: "Why would you ever want to team?"
In WoW terms, the STFs may not quite be Black Temple or Icecrown but they are somewhere between Karazhan and the Occulus. But where's the Deadmines? The RFC? The Scarlet Monastery? All the stuff that introduces people to the idea of teaming?
It's NOT HERE.
You maybe have the Borg Alerts. Fleet Actions, which few people play. And even if people play those, they say, "I don't play STFs" without ever playing one. Because STFs have a reputation.
There needs to be an STF that is silly easy just to convince people to try it. And then one slightly less so. And one slightly less so.
And that easy stuff needs to be called an STF because it's absolutely the designer's job to manipulate behavior and convince people to play this game as an MMO. Because this game is full of people who haven't.
I'm absolutely NOT suggesting anyone take away your "The Cure - Ground" Elite Mode with optionals.
I just think it needs to be #12 in progression for people instead of somebody's first or even sixth. And I'm not saying it should be gated off. I'm saying there should be a list of STFs and it should go from "blink and you win, congrats!" to "Okay. Get on the vent server and coordinate our strategy. I'll tank the boss by moving in a backwards semi-circle. Give me two heal turrets here and here.." And that should be a spectrum.
Heck... 3 STFs is too few. I also think limiting STFs to being about the Borg makes them seem boring. I also think all STFs being a degree harder than solo content means you don't introduce people to them who have no inclination to play group content... and if you ever DO get them into group content, you get into this pedantic business of releasing stuff where you say, "This is a 5 man but NOT an STF."
ALL 5 mans should be STFs. There should be a clear, suggested order of progression. The early ones should be training wheels that answer questions like "Why would I want to team?" and hold your hand while introducing basic teaming mechanics.
Because normal mode dungeons are not painful with strangers there. Because a really good player (who maybe has a class that deserves a nerf) can solo an even level normal mode dungeon.
And heroic mode are not painful with random people if you have gear.
And raids? Okay, raids generally HURT with random people.
But there's a difference:
Regular dungeons and heroics are intended for people to pass time grinding all day, every day. You're not INSTANTLY allowed to skip normal mode without a certain quality of gear.
And raids are NOT something you repeat regularly. They're something you may need a lot of practice to finish and part of a campaign that may stretch over multiple nights of play with friends. And you only GET to kill the bosses once a week.
And the person who doesn't like raids, they can get CLOSE to the same gear by playing their Heroic or Normal mode a few hundred times. It's painless but repetitive... and the games have a wide variety of environments.
And the person who raids, they may only need to kill that boss 5 times. But it may take them six weeks to get the gear and strategy down to kill that boss once.
Repetitive content and painful content should be opposites in some ways.
I would be in favor of Normal Mode being nerfed, getting NO COOLDOWN.
I would be in favor of Elite Mode getting buffed slightly, getting better droprates on cool stuff.
I would be in favor of other modes being added, maybe including an INSANE difficulty mode where nothing desirable has less than a 20% droprate, but you can only try it once a week.
If you want a successful STF, at least go through a chat channel or something so you know that people will, notionally at least, read their chat.
But, I'd agree with Leviathan that it is a flaw in the game that it doesn't encourage teaming until you reach STFs. You get players teaming up in STFs the first time who may not have even talked to another player for any length in the game before. And most of the PvE is so easy, particularly on Normal difficulty which a lot of first time players never leave, that you can get away with any half-assed build that won't last 2 seconds in an STF. There aren't even many open instances (the tutorial and Deferi Ground are the only two I think) so you never have the impression that there are other players in the game outside a social zone, and you don't see other players in combat and ask them how they're doing stuff.
Unless you actively seek out other people to talk to, discuss builds with, and team with, the game doesn't encourage you to until level 45. Which is just silly. The Fleet Actions generally aren't good enough. They're not anywhere near the STF level in terms of co-ordination and tactics, and the reward system encourages you to play for youself, not the team.
This results in a situation whereby the game's difficulty curve, for a new player, basically goes vertical when they reach STFs. And to boot, the people who PuG (and apologies to good, helpful players who blind PuG, I know you exist) are probably among the more likely to lose their **** completely in Team chat, and rage without actually provide any real help or constructive advice. They just make someone feel like **** and potentially alienate them from any social interaction in the game.
The game needs to encourage properly co-ordinated teams at a much earlier stage. So that's compelx objectives where players have to do things in a certain order, or not do certain things because they'll trigger something you don't want. An STF mission for each story arc would be good.
In terms of difficulty,leeway for sub-optimal builds wouldn't hurt so long as it gets smaller and smaller as you advance. The key is a curve - it encourages players to improve without there being a sudden quantum leap anywhere. And above all: no optional timers until you get to the end level ones. Let people talk about what tactics to use, let people think etc. without feeling they have to rush it.
It won't completely eliminate issues with STFs, but it'll help.
This is just a side effect of the revamp. The old STFs were supposed to be raids. But now they're somewhere between a normal dungeon and a heroic depending on difficulty.
Probably because there isn't a dedicated "raid" level thing yet, the loot drops doesn't seem progressive.
Normal fleet actions should prepare you for the current STFs, and the current STFs should gear you out for the next big one.
Maybe the Starbase gear is in addition to this but yeah, there is just that lack of "first this, then this then that", like how most MMOs have done it.
The 2 difficulties for STFs right now is a bandaid because there isn't any other way to get the MK XI gear elsewhere.
I asked somewhere else maybe your 3rd option could be combining the ground and space portions into 1 and do it less often. Like just a Cure, or Infected, and have them bring back the classic story stuff.
Maybe even bring back the old STFs and update the loot tables.
True, you don't want a queue to fail because no Science captains queued up.
But if there are a lot of people who do happen to be queued up at the same time, a preferencial sorting of some kind makes sense.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Given that we're looking at, according to Geko, no level cap increase -- possibly ever -- and all endgame content being treated as parallel advancement tracks...
I personally think the way you do that is you need to focus the stats on high end STF gear towards that STF, maybe specifically towards that STF chain.
As in, a flat "+5/10/15/20/25% boost to all healing and damage in Borg STFs" on gear that works nowhere else.
Because if the plan is now to introduce multiple, parallel endgame progression paths, you do want them to be roughly parallel. So that a Borg Mk XIII might be better than using an Undine Mk X in an Undine STF but you'll want to maintain a separate Undine gear set and progression for when you do the Undine STFs. But somebody else could do the Undine series first and the Borg second and would encounter the same thing, that their Undine Mk XIII gear beats Borg Mk X but they'll want to wear Borg gear in Borg STFs.
We did succeed (Cure space normal) but it did take a while (almost 20 minutes ) no optional on this occasion but that was down to a lucky hit putting two of us on respawn at the same time
and you could barely see the Borg vessels in the swirling mess of fighters , bops and boarding party shuttles
I have also seen A ground mission that was All Engineers (could barely move for turrets)