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Attn Captain Gecko and Systems Team
mavairo
Member Posts: 579
Recently, Captain Gecko stated that the reason people complained about tractors, chronitons, and power drain is that people do not specialize into resistances and do not build their ships properly.
This is of course completely false, as any pvper will tell you that we know how to build ships. We know this game better than ANYONE in terms of the actual execution of the mechanics. We proved it time and time again over the last two years, and most famously with Voldemort which Cryptic (gecko among them) insisted was only a visual display bug. (remember that Gecko?) http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/index.php?build=Mav4_0 this is the full spec of the cruiser in the video footage. As you can see, resistances are specced, as are mobility, and power generation.
Well here's round 2. I and two very generous KDF logged onto tribble on 7/11/2012. To capture on video what we already knew. That the resistances either do not work at all, (or might as well not work) or in some cases work far too effectively.
In the videos you will see the following. One a pretty pretty Assault Cruiser getting maimed (remember those! Some of us will NEVER put them away! And no. the Lt Cmdr Tac AC is NOT good for an engineer in pvp.. this is something else they don't understand)
By, Chronitons, Warp Plasma, Tractor Beam, and Power Drain.
You will see the same ship, completely laughing off shield drain powers like they weren't even fired.
We will start with the worst of the bunch. Power Drains. Siphon drones, Assimilators and plasmonic leech are all supposed to be resisted by Power Insulators. Quite heavily resisted infact, and there are supposed to be diminishing returns on Drain. If this is the case it is such a minor resistance, with such a very slight factor in diminishing returns that you might as well have set your PI skill to 0. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2jVKaLNnqs&feature=plcp
You will notice, several things in this video. 1: the speed of the drain makes it easily fast enough for someone to simply time their siphon pod deployments between firing cycles. 2: Once the drain starts it becomes cumulative very rapidly which leads to 3: no effective defense against it once it is on you. 4: the carrier could simply have equippped Viral Matrix or targeted my weapons first and then deployed freely and without issue. 5: this was just -one- ship hitting me. Who was not even full bore on drain. He could have had Polaron Weapons, and Viral Matrix to finish the job on my subsystems entirely.
Also, you will notice, that despite EPS power transfer, EPTX skills, -and- batteries my power levels did not budge even by 1 point. Meaning once it starts, there is no stopping it. You are simply Done. 9 power or less is certain death. It is every bit as bad as having 0. (the second klink shooting me was shooting me at /25 weapon power and no consoles)
Point 6, thanks to flight deck officers carriers can actually out pace anti spam abilities. You can run a full team of area of effect powers, and the best you can hope for (until the plasmonic leech stacks get on you) is to mitigate the pods. That is assuming again, no Target Weapons, Viral Matrix, or Subnucleonic beam is deployed to counter AOE Tac skills. (the primary anti spam system. as GW's cooldown is rather lengthy, it also has firing arc concerns)
The Next Offender is Inertial Dampeners. Gecko claimed that this skill is a very effective counter to tractor beam, chroniton and other movement debuffs in his video. This is quite simply not the case. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvLnZ_Ouo-M&feature=plcp
As you can see even just -one- chroniton proc is enough to half speed (multiple procs do worse), Tractor stops the ship entirely, and warp plasma 1/2s speed. All identical to no speccing in I.D.
This is yet another example of just how badly the skill tree functions at present time. As someone that allegedly has tons of information on Excel about skill powers you would think such basic measures were actually recorded somewhere. These are basic tests, and basic builds, and this is easily replicated, found and duplicated, infact these happen quite often in the pvp ques. (the only effective difference being in the siphon pod case, that the first wave and maybe second wave are defeated by anti spam techniques... which only a cruiser is going to effectively deploy, thanks to the narrow arcs of torp spread and CSV, and long CDs of science skills)
The Last Offender of the unholy trinity of the skill tree is on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. Shield Stripping is completely useless. PI protects far, far more than it should. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmuBCOnz8WI&feature=plcp As seen here.
Simarly, Inertial Dampeners ironically protects you far too much from gravity wells, and tractor beam repulsors. I will have a video for proof later of this. But suffice to say, I have been TBR3ed by seriously specced toons and hardly been repelled. (my team mates on the other hand who didn't spec into ID get kicked around like soccer balls)
Now I am all fine for debuffs being in the game. Infact most people will tell you that I traditionally fly some of the most infuriating ships you can deal with without touching the Cstore consoles. What I am -not- fine with however is the lack of effective counters. PvP is supposed to be a game of wits, skills, spec, gear, and good old fashioned Know How. A lack of counters means, that it simply devolves into whomever brought the broken skills of the month to the battle. There is no Choice in build selection right now, between the skill tree not functioning and a myriad of counter boff abilities also not functioning (APO is especially guilty of this one) you simply avoid counter choices on spec and you'll do just fine, vs the guy that didn't. It narrows build diversity, and game play variety. Which is a great detriment to the gameplay.
Also contrary to the comments Gecko made, you -want- working counters in any game that has pvp. The most popular franchise of all time for pvp Starcraft and it's sequel are entirely predicated on balance and working counters. Those two games have such a huge following that there are three television networks devoted to it, with all of the working counters in place, you almost never see the exact same plays twice, game to game even between consistent opponents. Bad Balance Kills Game Diversity by presenting an incredibly narrow margin for builds, and counters to exist within. It also kills interest in pvp, by creating trap options which newbies invariably get sucked into, and then they get it handed to them so hard that there frankly is nothing they can learn without buying respecs and new ships. This game has intentions on launching in Asia, and frankly it won't succeed without solid pvp, because that is all they do over there, is PvP.
Now how does this affect the most allegedly important aspect of the game. PvE? Quite simply, it makes STFs and other allegedly challenging content impossible to make challenging when the game is broken. If we took this stuff in the stf ques we'd simply faceroll our way over it, maybe even quicker than 5 tac escorts can. You simply can not improve the state of the game in pvp or pve, without addressing the foundation that this game is built upon, which is the skill tree, and bridge officer abilities. Newbies in stfs that would be challenging for the guys running the flavor of the month OP stuff, will not be able to complete the quests.. Which is a very bad thing in a game that only has 3 effective five man instances.
Again, this was all done on Tribble on 7/11. (and has been backed up by countless hours of REAL pvp on holodeck since f2p launched) So it is as current as possible.
This is of course completely false, as any pvper will tell you that we know how to build ships. We know this game better than ANYONE in terms of the actual execution of the mechanics. We proved it time and time again over the last two years, and most famously with Voldemort which Cryptic (gecko among them) insisted was only a visual display bug. (remember that Gecko?) http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/index.php?build=Mav4_0 this is the full spec of the cruiser in the video footage. As you can see, resistances are specced, as are mobility, and power generation.
Well here's round 2. I and two very generous KDF logged onto tribble on 7/11/2012. To capture on video what we already knew. That the resistances either do not work at all, (or might as well not work) or in some cases work far too effectively.
In the videos you will see the following. One a pretty pretty Assault Cruiser getting maimed (remember those! Some of us will NEVER put them away! And no. the Lt Cmdr Tac AC is NOT good for an engineer in pvp.. this is something else they don't understand)
By, Chronitons, Warp Plasma, Tractor Beam, and Power Drain.
You will see the same ship, completely laughing off shield drain powers like they weren't even fired.
We will start with the worst of the bunch. Power Drains. Siphon drones, Assimilators and plasmonic leech are all supposed to be resisted by Power Insulators. Quite heavily resisted infact, and there are supposed to be diminishing returns on Drain. If this is the case it is such a minor resistance, with such a very slight factor in diminishing returns that you might as well have set your PI skill to 0. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2jVKaLNnqs&feature=plcp
You will notice, several things in this video. 1: the speed of the drain makes it easily fast enough for someone to simply time their siphon pod deployments between firing cycles. 2: Once the drain starts it becomes cumulative very rapidly which leads to 3: no effective defense against it once it is on you. 4: the carrier could simply have equippped Viral Matrix or targeted my weapons first and then deployed freely and without issue. 5: this was just -one- ship hitting me. Who was not even full bore on drain. He could have had Polaron Weapons, and Viral Matrix to finish the job on my subsystems entirely.
Also, you will notice, that despite EPS power transfer, EPTX skills, -and- batteries my power levels did not budge even by 1 point. Meaning once it starts, there is no stopping it. You are simply Done. 9 power or less is certain death. It is every bit as bad as having 0. (the second klink shooting me was shooting me at /25 weapon power and no consoles)
Point 6, thanks to flight deck officers carriers can actually out pace anti spam abilities. You can run a full team of area of effect powers, and the best you can hope for (until the plasmonic leech stacks get on you) is to mitigate the pods. That is assuming again, no Target Weapons, Viral Matrix, or Subnucleonic beam is deployed to counter AOE Tac skills. (the primary anti spam system. as GW's cooldown is rather lengthy, it also has firing arc concerns)
The Next Offender is Inertial Dampeners. Gecko claimed that this skill is a very effective counter to tractor beam, chroniton and other movement debuffs in his video. This is quite simply not the case. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvLnZ_Ouo-M&feature=plcp
As you can see even just -one- chroniton proc is enough to half speed (multiple procs do worse), Tractor stops the ship entirely, and warp plasma 1/2s speed. All identical to no speccing in I.D.
This is yet another example of just how badly the skill tree functions at present time. As someone that allegedly has tons of information on Excel about skill powers you would think such basic measures were actually recorded somewhere. These are basic tests, and basic builds, and this is easily replicated, found and duplicated, infact these happen quite often in the pvp ques. (the only effective difference being in the siphon pod case, that the first wave and maybe second wave are defeated by anti spam techniques... which only a cruiser is going to effectively deploy, thanks to the narrow arcs of torp spread and CSV, and long CDs of science skills)
The Last Offender of the unholy trinity of the skill tree is on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. Shield Stripping is completely useless. PI protects far, far more than it should. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmuBCOnz8WI&feature=plcp As seen here.
Simarly, Inertial Dampeners ironically protects you far too much from gravity wells, and tractor beam repulsors. I will have a video for proof later of this. But suffice to say, I have been TBR3ed by seriously specced toons and hardly been repelled. (my team mates on the other hand who didn't spec into ID get kicked around like soccer balls)
Now I am all fine for debuffs being in the game. Infact most people will tell you that I traditionally fly some of the most infuriating ships you can deal with without touching the Cstore consoles. What I am -not- fine with however is the lack of effective counters. PvP is supposed to be a game of wits, skills, spec, gear, and good old fashioned Know How. A lack of counters means, that it simply devolves into whomever brought the broken skills of the month to the battle. There is no Choice in build selection right now, between the skill tree not functioning and a myriad of counter boff abilities also not functioning (APO is especially guilty of this one) you simply avoid counter choices on spec and you'll do just fine, vs the guy that didn't. It narrows build diversity, and game play variety. Which is a great detriment to the gameplay.
Also contrary to the comments Gecko made, you -want- working counters in any game that has pvp. The most popular franchise of all time for pvp Starcraft and it's sequel are entirely predicated on balance and working counters. Those two games have such a huge following that there are three television networks devoted to it, with all of the working counters in place, you almost never see the exact same plays twice, game to game even between consistent opponents. Bad Balance Kills Game Diversity by presenting an incredibly narrow margin for builds, and counters to exist within. It also kills interest in pvp, by creating trap options which newbies invariably get sucked into, and then they get it handed to them so hard that there frankly is nothing they can learn without buying respecs and new ships. This game has intentions on launching in Asia, and frankly it won't succeed without solid pvp, because that is all they do over there, is PvP.
Now how does this affect the most allegedly important aspect of the game. PvE? Quite simply, it makes STFs and other allegedly challenging content impossible to make challenging when the game is broken. If we took this stuff in the stf ques we'd simply faceroll our way over it, maybe even quicker than 5 tac escorts can. You simply can not improve the state of the game in pvp or pve, without addressing the foundation that this game is built upon, which is the skill tree, and bridge officer abilities. Newbies in stfs that would be challenging for the guys running the flavor of the month OP stuff, will not be able to complete the quests.. Which is a very bad thing in a game that only has 3 effective five man instances.
Again, this was all done on Tribble on 7/11. (and has been backed up by countless hours of REAL pvp on holodeck since f2p launched) So it is as current as possible.
Post edited by mavairo on
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LTS, here since...when did this game launch again?
Illustrates the problems very well
Fed Random-Sci Monte-Eng Monte Banks-Tac
Klingon Warfarin-Sci Gamble-Tac
I will take this into consideration.
thanks for testing, pls hold the line
btw i hear we are building a KDf premade?? room for sci or eng (preferably sci)
in case this wan't clear enough, i agree with everything stated by the OP, good balance is fun and desirable, what we have is not
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
And the most funny part, is that PI and ID don't work...PI just started to work decently 2 months ago, and ID is still not working (according to borticus is fixed for season6, but... i wont hold my breath). You should try to learn something about what borticus is doing lately, asking for feedback to the ppl who actually PLAY the game, in order to find good solutions for current problems
Don't worry mav, getcko won't answer this topic, maybe with some elusive answer..
Vin Naftero@playhard88 - FED Sciencie
K'tan@playhard88 - KDF Tactical
Argento@playhard88 - RRF Tactical (FED)
Every skill in STO needs a review pass to verify if it works correctly before we even GET to balance issues.
And the habit of every major update breaking random abilities needs to stop.
[Kluless][Kold][Steel Heels][Snagtooth]
[Louis Cipher][Outta Gum][Thysa Kymbo][Spanner][Frakk]
[D'Mented][D'Licious]
Joined October 2009. READ BEFORE POSTING
Think about this:
American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
I truly wish you could refrain from taking such an antagonistic stance in your editorial surrounding them, but I know you're passionate about these issues. You catch more flies with honey, they say...
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Your coworker could use the same advice when he does podcasts about our game knowledge
There will be future tests, videos and Articles if you want them. The next batch that I was planning on working on was a sequel to this one. Covering Inertial Dampeners (On the Near Immunity to Grav Wells, and TBR repels it gives), and Starship Sensors (and whether or not it works or not period. No one seems to be sure if it does anything!)
Thank you again, for taking the time to respond (and hopefully watch the videos
This is one of the reasons why I stopped PvPing, because they make that crack larger and larger, use putty to patch it up, then call it fixed. (And people laughed at me and said I was wrong. :rolleyes:)
During F2P testing, I told people that many of those skills were useless, especially Inertial Dampeners. It's just as useless as the consoles (remember we got both Engineering and Sci ID Consoles now). Only the ID ability is useful.
I really would like them to redo the skill system again and implement the 2-value system (values which have PvE values and PvP values). Unfortunately, I don't think Cryptic has it in them to do that. So best if they just kill PvP altogether since it's too far beyond fixing at this point.
- Angry Black Man
As does PI vs Shield Drain attacks, and target subs. (TS is just icing on the cake to the Problems)
maybe do a test on subsystem repair too, spec that to 6 or 9, and have them target sub systems and see how long it takes for them to get repaired. then have some one theta you, and run the test again.
I think melee needs a serious check.
The only thing making it viable right now are the ridiculously imbalanced Security BOs that came with the last DOff expansion.
I know some people aren't a fan of even seeing melee because it affects their "guns are better than swords/this isn't a fantasy MMO" prejudice.
In Star Trek, melee combat is pretty much co-equal with ranged. Heck, it's even advertised in the artwork.
I'm not saying they should do the same damage. I maintain that melee should be a higher survivability/lower damage option. People don't shoot at people who are point blank in Trek and moving in close is good for controlling/distracting an enemy.
The problem is, we have the lower damage (and it is lower damage unless the value of personal shields gets buffed; it's the transphasic torpedo of ground combat; it sacrifices damage to penetrate shields but penetrating shields is easy). In a game with multiple enemies, even one switching to ranged doesn't affect that his buddies are targeting you.
I maintain that melee weapons should get a bundle of Adrenal Stimulator type boosts. It makes sense in that it's a high adrenaline activity and even with imbalanced DOffs, melee involves a lot of hypo popping and praying.
The alternative to that would be that melee, being higher risk, needs more damage than ranged or, at the least, flanking through shields needs a buff, which could take many forms. Including upping rear shields, which enhances the value of melee shield pen since melee is in a much better position to flank relative to ranged's much better position to take cover.
According to some very early tests I did back when I came back at the start of f2p I determined that the reason melee is where it is right now, is because it is still following the old additive values and not the current ones, which were seriously higher than the old values for energy weapons (the new melee weapons make the keeping melee distance on target easier, or rather the Swords did. batleth and lirpa sucked even if they did more dps.. your toon wouldn't leap to the target with them)
Maybe I'll do a third sequence of videos, and some combat log tests to verify the early testing I performed.
Big thumbs up for coming in here. I didn't see it happening. WTG bort
wow azurian back on pvp if that doesn't scream pvp is in trouble in know not what does. I'd rather pvp stayed in game, targeted fixes could go a long long way, imv.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
I remember seeing PvPers show those tests.
My point is, you could keep the old values if you wanted to delegitimize melee as a pure DPS option but then you need to enhance either the strategic value of melee or buff its survivability to a point where it's the tanking strategy of choice. (Which doesn't mean everyone should do it. A high survivability, low DPS option becomes a strong choice for 1-2 people to use in an Elite STF, for instance, but a whole team doing it will fail timers, which is generally the MMO approach to discouraging "all tanks" in PvE whereas long cooldown burst damage in PvP discourages it as a perfect strategy there.)
Well, in Mav's defence, this was provoked by the transcript of the interview Geko did.
Dunno what the audio sounds like, but the transcript reads alot like: lol, all this QQ about nothing. People just need to specc right.
When in reality, players know the resistance skills are off, and have been /bug-ing the issues for some time... The sort of issues we would expect a lead (perhaps he is even the lead, I do not know) systems guy to be aware of.
From what I remember in my testing before I left in last October, the reason melee's dps sucked so hard was the relatively high kinetic/melee damage resistance every single armor had. (the swords did mitigate the Mobility Problem somewhat.. it was still an issue but it was not nearly as bad as it was back int eh battleth days) Now, energy dps got buffed melee dps stayed where it was shields got a nerf, and Armor has stayed the same as well.
I do feel melee needs to be a viable option. Mind you it's something that Tacs would be doing (and that does make sense... Tac officers on the ground are Assault Specialists we are the best with shotguns, dual pistols, and split beams out of anyone) in pvp.
I'm pretty sure I know what the vids and analysis will show, but it will be nice to have Verified and "Caught On Camera" results.
My take on that entire section of the interview was Gecko's long-winded way of saying "L2P noob!" The words weren't there, but the smug attitude certainly was. Very off-putting.
Also, the process itself is very antagonistic. PvP'ers claim there is a problem with a new item through theory crafting, get told "no there isn't", "we fully tested it internally" or "quit whining before live testing". PvP'ers post bug reports with evidence of logs and such, get told "working as intended". PvP'ers show that "as intended" is unfun and unbalanced, get told "L2P noob." I've observed this ever since Snix left.
Arawn - SOB
OP *is* the new balance whether you know so or not!
OP *is* the new balance, whether you know it or not! Gecko says so.
Season 7 - Exodus, available online. U buy nao!
http://seekingalpha.com/article/738221-monetizing-perfect-world-s-latest-update
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Oh yeah I wanted to say thanks for the input Borticus.
Cheers.
OP *is* the new balance, whether you know it or not! Gecko says so.
Season 7 - Exodus, available online. U buy nao!
http://seekingalpha.com/article/738221-monetizing-perfect-world-s-latest-update
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
That's a bit backwards. Melee shouldn't offer survivability, you are afterall at point blank range to a ranged weapon, you should sacrefice survivability for increased damage at the cost of safety.
Isn't it getting a bit old that Tacs are "supposed" to do everything the best? Target Optics/APAlpha/Fire on my Mark already contribute a large part to the disparity between the classes in terms of raw damage output which is what most of the STO combat boils down to in the end.
Anyway, your OP is an interesting read, if only you could drop the "us vs them, PvP vs PvE" from the presentation you might garner better support from the rest of the "unwashed PvE masses". Might even make some converts to PvP one day.
Maybe they should hire you for play testing. Your brought the game balance issue down to its roots. Maybe Danubes, siphons, Plasmonic and the rest of the P2W/OP consoles, pets etc wont be regarded as such once Cryptic changes resistances. Not to mention science drains becoming stronger.
Its broken in that it overstacks instead of having a limit of 15 total, regardless of number of attackers.
Other than that I agree with the OP, though I must wonder if the fact that the target was stationary may have been a factor in the results of the testing.
R.I.P
Not especially. If it involves Damage that's what tacs are built to do at the expense of survivability. Sci are supposed to be the Mac Daddies at AOE Crowd control and debuffs (which in theory also changes the weapons they should be using, while Engineers are supposed to provide a mix of durability and aoe fire. (kind of a Generalist vs the other two specialists) The problem comes in, that cryptic has forgotten this and turned sci into walking zombies, with so so AOE CC, and engineers into.. well either engineers setup uber turret defenses of doom, or they don't que.
It's not an PvPer vs Pveer argument actually. It's a PvPers and PvEers vs the Devs. Particularly ones that insist that none of us know nothing of what we are talking about or of the game we play. I hope this clarifies and makes things abit more enjoyable for you.
There's a dev however that is working on getting my respect and he's already posted in this thread. So there's not a total loss factor at The Cryptic yet for me. Also Jman if you're still reading this thread I'd like a quick question or two fielded. Do you want more of these video tests and Articles? (I can try to be less harsh. but I'm a direct and blunt kind of guy) If so, do you want a new thread for each one, or updates to this thread? Or for them to be sent to you in PMs? And now for a minor request, get our pvp dev down there to at least say Hi to us. :P
As a tangential side note: any pveers reading this thread that have any interest in pvp, feel free to ask questions down in the pvp gameplay forums, or shoot me a tell, either here or in game. We like to field questions for people willing to learn "the trade".
Defense score is not relevant in any factor vs direct boff abilities or things like siphon pods. I also stayed stationary to reflect what a 5v5 environment would be like, with multiple leeches, and assims on the field. (stack of up to 40 Leeches IIRC right now is possible which is pretty much an All Stop for most ships) Throw in other stuff that can and will stop you (like things shown in the I.D section of the post and videos) and you have a just get up walk away and do something else till your respawn timer is complete experience.
Honey doesn't hold a candle to a 5000W custom built bug zapper...
Not being a fan of PVP or most of it's enthusiasts, I do have to say that was a very tactful and extremely well put together analysis. I hope the dev team will diligently study and use that information to improve the balance of the game.
I've read a lot of extremely antagonistic posts in the PVP forums and the OP was nothing of the sort. Trying to call it out as antagonistic was rather unprofessional...
Captain Ariel Trueheart Department of Temporal Investigations
U.S.S. Valkyrie - NCC 991701
=/\= ================================= =/\=