Cryptic always had something special with [dmg] modifiers, look at the old crafting system all awesome weapons had [dmg]x2, the new Quads got [dmg]x4 !!! OMGZWOW
I think they actually believe they are the best modifiers for every purpose in this game, BECUWZZ THEY DOOEWWW DAMAGE, you know. DMG.
You're missing the point here. We do not want the weapons to be BETTER than stf weapons...we want them to be ALTERNATIVES to the stf set. Especially considering that for most people, just unlocking acces to them is a HUGE grind...and then, you STILL have to pay dilithium. If they're inferior to stf gear anyway, then why not make them buyable by fleet credits only?
The biggest issue is that, after spending that much dilithium on unlocking them. If they would just cost fleet credits, they'd have a purpose (being a starter VA set or something). But STF weapons are much, MUCH easier to get and cost no dilithium. Having them cost dilithium is just...
...well, to be honest I'm surprised I need to explain why it's a bad thing they cost dilithium as well.
^^^ This. Exactly this. From a minority PvP point of view weapons without ACCx2 won't hit fast moving targets (escorts). Which makes them undesirable. The same issue is present with the Phaser/Disruptor Quad cannons. I'm not proposing they should be ACCx4 or even [ACCx3] [CritD]. However, an [ACC]x2 [Something][Something] won't break PvP.
While I can understand the weapons being balanced against the sets, you have to realize that the sets have been around for a LONG time in a game with no infusion of PvE story content and new gear STF gear.
Gear creep happens. Time for NEW STFs with NEW set items. The old stuff shouldn't stay top dog forever... Just my opinion.
I just replied to the similar thread about Advanced Ground Weapons, and a lot of the same comments apply here. Rather than copy and paste, here's a link to my reply to that thread:
The other designers and I do read these threads and listen to your feedback. If you have specific data that demonstrates that weapons with DMGx3 + 1 additional property are performing poorly, I'd be glad to review that data. In the meantime, I'll be looking at the numbers internally to see if any improvements need to be made.
I'm using the polaron pulsewave assault with [Dmg]x3 and [CritX] in ground fleet actions, and I can tell you that the damage output is a clear upgrade over the STF elite equipment in this situation, especially with the nice bonus in 'aim mode'. With a skilled tricorder scan ability, my shots can deal more than 600 each, and crit ones can get to 1000, even without flanking. Would be nice to try this out in PVP, I'm sure I could one shot people even without using the omega set. I'm not sure how it works, but I guess the [Dmg] modifier also improves the damage a critical hit makes. I never get such figures with my Mk XII borg antiproton pulsewave assault, and the polaron fleet weapon crits fairly often.
The current fleet ground weapons are nice, people just need to get over their prejudices about the modifier, it is a nice imporovement over the STF equipment in many situations, except in STFs. My main concern is the lack of inventory space. Now that we need different weapons in different situations, it causes big storage issues.
The current fleet ground weapons are nice, people just need to get over their prejudices about the modifier, it is a nice imporovement over the STF equipment in many situations, except in STFs.
The ground weapons are actually great, but for space ACC is so much of a sweeter perk (at least for PVP, in STFs hardly anything is moving alot)
That said, a lot of growing players in our fleet love the opportunity to grab a good (it's MKXII ultra rare after all) weapon once they reach VA.
Only downside being the 10K Dilithium you have to pay in addition to Fleetcredits.
What I was expecting from the Advanced Fleet weapons:
Good weapons for fleet creds. After all the grind for them, I really wouldn't expect them to cost anything more than a lump of fleet creds so that all those people who put their resources into actually unlocking it all would have a good reason to spend it.
What we get:
Decent enough weapons for fleet creds and more dilithium. But the 'lackluster' modifiers isn't what bugs me about it really, it's the extra dil cost. I really don't get why after all the Dil for advancing the tiers and provisioning the equipment, that even more is required to get the equipment. Shouldn't any cost have been covered through the provisioning? The Starbase is meant to have those weapons now (or the components to put them together) and it should just be a matter of distrubiting those resources to members who've contributed enough to the fleet, so why charge more than just some fleet creds?
The requirements for advancing the base is pretty screwy at the moment as it is, largely because of the exhorbitant prices of Doffs on the exchange. Which without some kind of fairly major intervention by Cryptic, is unlikely to improve much over the next 6 months. Even the grind down higher Doffs to more common ones I think will only help the situation for a short time. There's just too much demand for them, and not enough sources.
Between the headache of building the base, and the 'reward' of having to pay more dilithium makes me question bothering much with the science/engineering aspects of the starbase, or even with any of it. As it is, it'll probably be a good year before I could get any fleet ships I'd like. I was expecting all of this to be long term goals, certainly. But I was also expecting that it would yield appropriate rewards.
Well maybe the Fleet Elite stuff will be worth the significant time and resources required just to even reach the required Sci/Eng tier. Though, looks like even if it is, it'll still be overshadowed by the dilithium price tag it'll have attached.
The ground weapons are actually great, but for space ACC is so much of a sweeter perk (at least for PVP, in STFs hardly anything is moving alot)
That said, a lot of growing players in our fleet love the opportunity to grab a good (it's MKXII ultra rare after all) weapon once they reach VA.
Only downside being the 10K Dilithium you have to pay in addition to Fleetcredits.
Ow well, this thread was about the fleet space weapons? The title and this dev post are confusing, sorry about that.
Well, the interest of accuracy is simple : what's the point of doing damage if you miss the target? The number of "missed" is impressive if we don't use weapons with accuracy, especially against extremely mobile targets, such as escorts or pets. I remember I had to buy an [accuracy]x3 cannon to hit the pets in the vault event, for instance, otherwise, it was just a long and tedious list of "miss" with a standard phaser. Same for pvp.
For ground, DMGx3 or whatever is fine really. You can't miss so whatever sort of mods you throw on is just icing. Maybe CRTD provides bigger return than CRTH but overall thats a meh thing to me.
Though for space (in particular pvp) ACC is EVERYTHING. Seriously if space pvp players could get it they would sell there souls for ACCx4 this is because you can and WILL miss, and when you are pumping out 7+ weapons of fire at once instead of just a single weapon like on ground pvp, ACC is your life.
My understanding for space weapon modifiers goes something like this ACC>>>>CRTD>CRTH>DMG. The only time you can "skimp" on ACC weapons for space pvp is if you are making a FAW beam boat because FAW apparently doesn't really take into account ACC mods so you can freely run crit beams to try to pump more damage from it. Even then atleast ACCx1 is still nice since you wouln't be FAW'ing 24/7.
At the very least you should be offering these 4 mod space weapons with ACCx2 options as that would be usable for beams and cannons alike, still leave a market for ACCx3 weapons on the exchange(including phased tetryons, and other potential/future similar options), and leave you open to do whatever you want with the other two mods as you saw fit.
So... My Question is... Since ALL this was Viewable for a while on TRIBBLE before it went live. Why have there been no complaints until then? I mean they threw Events. Multiple fleets had Active starbases going up and built high enough to see all this. Oh, that's right, half of you can't be arsed to get on the Test server and actually give your input to improve the things before its released. The ships, the weapons have been viewable for a while. THE npc's while locked, showed Everything they sold. Why not the complaints, Why now the "this is a waste" commentary. With a little research you would of seen what was available before you dumped your resources into it.
Been there, done that and got the t-shirt. When you can tell me that testing stuff on the tribble and giving feedback that the devs actually take notice of and act on BEFORE it goes live, I will of course happily go back to test stuff for cryptic.
Until then, I consider tribble a test drive for my own personal ship and ground builds and nothing more..
As for the fleet MK12 weapons, I doubt very much if I will bother will them. They should be superior to stf weapons and sets when the cost of getting the base to access them is far greater in time and resources...
The fleet weapons are good weapons. During ground fleet actions and episodes that don't involve borg, they are extremely effective. I just don't know if they're worth the asking price. In fact, I know that they aren't. 24k FC is more than you pay for a fleet ship. And 10k dilithium is more than you can refine in a day - both spent on a single ground weapon that is not even all that useful in the most popular ground missions in the game (STFs). Honestly, dilithium shouldn't even be part of the equation. What's the point of having Fleet Credits at all if you're still going to charge dilithium (besides landing PWE more zen sales)?
The fleet weapons are good. They're just not THAT good. It's the fact that you could simply wait for a couple Prototype Salvage drops from any elite STF (which doesn't take long at all) and get a comparable weapon without throwing away valuable resources that make these weapons a hard sell. For 24k FC and 10k Dilithium, they shouldn't be comparable with anything. They should be better than everything - much better. As is, they are worth 25k FC at most. I know Cryptic needs new ways to suck up all our dilithium and earn more zen for PWE, so why not do yourselves a favor and make these weapons worth the asking price?
The fleet weapons are good weapons. During ground fleet actions and episodes that don't involve borg, they are extremely effective. I just don't know if they're worth the asking price. In fact, I know that they aren't. 24k FC is more than you pay for a fleet ship. And 10k dilithium is more than you can refine in a day - both spent on a single ground weapon that is not even all that useful in the most popular ground missions in the game (STFs). Honestly, dilithium shouldn't even be part of the equation. What's the point of having Fleet Credits at all if you're still going to charge dilithium (besides landing PWE more zen sales)?
The fleet weapons are good. They're just not THAT good. It's the fact that you could simply wait for a couple Prototype Salvage drops from any elite STF (which doesn't take long at all) and get a comparable weapon without throwing away valuable resources that make these weapons a hard sell. For 24k FC and 10k Dilithium, they shouldn't be comparable with anything. They should be better than everything - much better. As is, they are worth 25k FC at most. I know Cryptic needs new ways to suck up all our dilithium and earn more zen for PWE, so why not do yourselves a favor and make these weapons worth the asking price?
That's a good point. Space anti-borg purple Mk XII weapons, with [acc], cost only 2k dilithium (one proto borg salvage). Fleet space weapons cost a lot more: 10k dilithium. It's just not worth it. Unless they remove the dilithium cost, it will never be more competitive than the borg stuff anyway.
I just replied to the similar thread about Advanced Ground Weapons, and a lot of the same comments apply here. Rather than copy and paste, here's a link to my reply to that thread:
The other designers and I do read these threads and listen to your feedback. If you have specific data that demonstrates that weapons with DMGx3 + 1 additional property are performing poorly, I'd be glad to review that data. In the meantime, I'll be looking at the numbers internally to see if any improvements need to be made.
LOL, Just LOL.
There won't be any data showing poor weapon performance, the issues here are ROI related (a word CRYPTIC knows VERY WELL, at-least dstahl does). Maybe you other devs should familiarize yourself with it too.
It's simply far to expensive and not worth any type of benefit that you are offering for going through this Starbase process. I think there are several threads at this point regarding that.
Oh, that's right, half of you can't be arsed to get on the Test server and actually give your input to improve the things before its released.
Why should I get on what is laughingly called a "test server"? They don't take feedback from it. The game was released to Holodeck the same week as their event, which doesn't give time for any relevant changes to be made. The bugs and complaints people did have were all ignored. The ones that weren't ignored were given the reply of "what you see is 5 or 6 iterations behind what is actually going to be released" which is pure BS (and if it isn't, again, what is the point if we can't test what is ACTUALLY going to be released? The Tribble server is nothing more than a glorified preview of what is to come, and they could care less what we think.
I personally submitted 6 or 7 tickets on Tribble during the test, and posted in the forums, and every item I posted a ticket for (and nearly every one I commented on in the forums) still made it into Holodeck. So you tell me, what is the point when they could care less what their customers think?
But to answer your question, Starbases weren't even released on Tribble until about 2 weeks before the system went live. Even the official test fleet (Cryptic Tribbles) didn't get T2 Engineering until this week (or maybe late last week, regardless it was after the system went live).
It's simply far to expensive and not worth any type of benefit that you are offering for going through this Starbase process. I think there are several threads at this point regarding that.
"First off, every additional modifier takes additional time to make, as well as additional time for QA to test for functionality and balance."
This is unfortunate. I think I can say this for everyone here, that we recognize and appreciate all the time you invest into your work and efforts to make this game. However, this starbase grind although maybe fun for some players but for others mostly pvp players, it is not the reason why we play this game. We play for the PvP and its enhancements. Hence, we also are putting in our time and work, while we could be appreciating a good old pvp match. Most pvp fleets if not all, are working on their starbases. They are doing this to stay competitive in a very competitive community of players.
So, when you are as kind to let us know what details it takes to enhance these weapons, we at the same time fully recognize and understand what it takes. We too make an effort to acquire something that is not even worth it in this case.
Please recognize that if these weapons are made worth acquiring it would further progress the common goal of balancing the game. Example: Fleet ships have increased number of consoles, turn rate, hitpoints etc. One of the counters to this is better weapons and consoles. Childrens toys doff mission does offer a solution to this, however is not something readily available for most pvp players. It involves the acquisition of some very expensive and very very rare doffs to have tangible results. However, the biggest necessity to counter the "upping" of everything, is the upping of weapons.
More hitpoints, consoles, maneuverability, should all be met with more accuracy to inflict the necessary damage needed to counter those three categories.
I will also go on to say that the PvP community has worked hard to address some bugs in the past, and helped your work become easier by testing/finding problems with the game. In return, please make this starbase thing worth while for us too.
"First off, every additional modifier takes additional time to make, as well as additional time for QA to test for functionality and balance."
This is unfortunate. I think I can say this for everyone here, that we recognize and appreciate all the time you invest into your work and efforts to make this game. However, this starbase grind although maybe fun for some players but for others mostly pvp players, it is not the reason why we play this game. We play for the PvP and its enhancements. Hence, we also are putting in our time and work, while we could be appreciating a good old pvp match. Most pvp fleets if not all, are working on their starbases. They are doing this to stay competitive in a very competitive community of players.
So, when you are as kind to let us know what details it takes to enhance these weapons, we at the same time fully recognize and understand what it takes. We too make an effort to acquire something that is not even worth it in this case.
Please recognize that if these weapons are made worth acquiring it would further progress the common goal of balancing the game. Example: Fleet ships have increased number of consoles, turn rate, hitpoints etc. One of the counters to this is better weapons and consoles. Childrens toys doff mission does offer a solution to this, however is not something readily available for most pvp players. It involves the acquisition of some very expensive and very very rare doffs to have tangible results. However, the biggest necessity to counter the "upping" of everything, is the upping of weapons.
More hitpoints, consoles, maneuverability, should all be met with more accuracy to inflict the necessary damage needed to counter those three categories.
I will also go on to say that the PvP community has worked hard to address some bugs in the past, and helped your work become easier by testing/finding problems with the game. In return, please make this starbase thing worth while for us too.
Thanks for your time.
PvP, Starbase, What? What is PvP? And the dev is right, dmg x4 is the best weapons u can get! Pretty obvious dmg means damage, which is what weapons should do right. Highest base dmg id even say the [dmg] mod is somewhat overpowered atm..
This is pretty clear cut. If STF weapons are the best available, don't bother with anything else.
Let's not forget the real key, they (STF/Borg weapons) are much easier to receive also. It's a shame they spend so much time and effort planning this stuff out, they obsoleted their own new weapons on arrival.
Now let's say you gave us [ACC]x3 instead, we would probably be drooling on our keyboards right now. Oh wait maybe even help PvP out a bit, you know, just maybe?
Comments
I think they actually believe they are the best modifiers for every purpose in this game, BECUWZZ THEY DOOEWWW DAMAGE, you know. DMG.
^^^ This. Exactly this. From a minority PvP point of view weapons without ACCx2 won't hit fast moving targets (escorts). Which makes them undesirable. The same issue is present with the Phaser/Disruptor Quad cannons. I'm not proposing they should be ACCx4 or even [ACCx3] [CritD]. However, an [ACC]x2 [Something][Something] won't break PvP.
While I can understand the weapons being balanced against the sets, you have to realize that the sets have been around for a LONG time in a game with no infusion of PvE story content and new gear STF gear.
Gear creep happens. Time for NEW STFs with NEW set items. The old stuff shouldn't stay top dog forever... Just my opinion.
I'm using the polaron pulsewave assault with [Dmg]x3 and [CritX] in ground fleet actions, and I can tell you that the damage output is a clear upgrade over the STF elite equipment in this situation, especially with the nice bonus in 'aim mode'. With a skilled tricorder scan ability, my shots can deal more than 600 each, and crit ones can get to 1000, even without flanking. Would be nice to try this out in PVP, I'm sure I could one shot people even without using the omega set.
The current fleet ground weapons are nice, people just need to get over their prejudices about the modifier, it is a nice imporovement over the STF equipment in many situations, except in STFs. My main concern is the lack of inventory space. Now that we need different weapons in different situations, it causes big storage issues.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
The ground weapons are actually great, but for space ACC is so much of a sweeter perk
That said, a lot of growing players in our fleet love the opportunity to grab a good (it's MKXII ultra rare after all) weapon once they reach VA.
Only downside being the 10K Dilithium you have to pay in addition to Fleetcredits.
Good weapons for fleet creds. After all the grind for them, I really wouldn't expect them to cost anything more than a lump of fleet creds so that all those people who put their resources into actually unlocking it all would have a good reason to spend it.
What we get:
Decent enough weapons for fleet creds and more dilithium. But the 'lackluster' modifiers isn't what bugs me about it really, it's the extra dil cost. I really don't get why after all the Dil for advancing the tiers and provisioning the equipment, that even more is required to get the equipment. Shouldn't any cost have been covered through the provisioning? The Starbase is meant to have those weapons now (or the components to put them together) and it should just be a matter of distrubiting those resources to members who've contributed enough to the fleet, so why charge more than just some fleet creds?
The requirements for advancing the base is pretty screwy at the moment as it is, largely because of the exhorbitant prices of Doffs on the exchange. Which without some kind of fairly major intervention by Cryptic, is unlikely to improve much over the next 6 months. Even the grind down higher Doffs to more common ones I think will only help the situation for a short time. There's just too much demand for them, and not enough sources.
Between the headache of building the base, and the 'reward' of having to pay more dilithium makes me question bothering much with the science/engineering aspects of the starbase, or even with any of it. As it is, it'll probably be a good year before I could get any fleet ships I'd like. I was expecting all of this to be long term goals, certainly. But I was also expecting that it would yield appropriate rewards.
Well maybe the Fleet Elite stuff will be worth the significant time and resources required just to even reach the required Sci/Eng tier. Though, looks like even if it is, it'll still be overshadowed by the dilithium price tag it'll have attached.
Ow well, this thread was about the fleet space weapons? The title and this dev post are confusing, sorry about that.
Well, the interest of accuracy is simple : what's the point of doing damage if you miss the target? The number of "missed" is impressive if we don't use weapons with accuracy, especially against extremely mobile targets, such as escorts or pets. I remember I had to buy an [accuracy]x3 cannon to hit the pets in the vault event, for instance, otherwise, it was just a long and tedious list of "miss" with a standard phaser. Same for pvp.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Though for space (in particular pvp) ACC is EVERYTHING. Seriously if space pvp players could get it they would sell there souls for ACCx4 this is because you can and WILL miss, and when you are pumping out 7+ weapons of fire at once instead of just a single weapon like on ground pvp, ACC is your life.
My understanding for space weapon modifiers goes something like this ACC>>>>CRTD>CRTH>DMG. The only time you can "skimp" on ACC weapons for space pvp is if you are making a FAW beam boat because FAW apparently doesn't really take into account ACC mods so you can freely run crit beams to try to pump more damage from it. Even then atleast ACCx1 is still nice since you wouln't be FAW'ing 24/7.
At the very least you should be offering these 4 mod space weapons with ACCx2 options as that would be usable for beams and cannons alike, still leave a market for ACCx3 weapons on the exchange(including phased tetryons, and other potential/future similar options), and leave you open to do whatever you want with the other two mods as you saw fit.
Been there, done that and got the t-shirt. When you can tell me that testing stuff on the tribble and giving feedback that the devs actually take notice of and act on BEFORE it goes live, I will of course happily go back to test stuff for cryptic.
Until then, I consider tribble a test drive for my own personal ship and ground builds and nothing more..
As for the fleet MK12 weapons, I doubt very much if I will bother will them. They should be superior to stf weapons and sets when the cost of getting the base to access them is far greater in time and resources...
The fleet weapons are good. They're just not THAT good. It's the fact that you could simply wait for a couple Prototype Salvage drops from any elite STF (which doesn't take long at all) and get a comparable weapon without throwing away valuable resources that make these weapons a hard sell. For 24k FC and 10k Dilithium, they shouldn't be comparable with anything. They should be better than everything - much better. As is, they are worth 25k FC at most. I know Cryptic needs new ways to suck up all our dilithium and earn more zen for PWE, so why not do yourselves a favor and make these weapons worth the asking price?
That's a good point. Space anti-borg purple Mk XII weapons, with [acc], cost only 2k dilithium (one proto borg salvage). Fleet space weapons cost a lot more: 10k dilithium. It's just not worth it. Unless they remove the dilithium cost, it will never be more competitive than the borg stuff anyway.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Definitely! It's like being slapped in the face after being kicked in the groin! These ridiculous sinks are making me not want to play at all!
LOL, Just LOL.
There won't be any data showing poor weapon performance, the issues here are ROI related (a word CRYPTIC knows VERY WELL, at-least dstahl does). Maybe you other devs should familiarize yourself with it too.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/returnoninvestment.asp/#axzz22SxzvXkp
It's simply far to expensive and not worth any type of benefit that you are offering for going through this Starbase process. I think there are several threads at this point regarding that.
Why should I get on what is laughingly called a "test server"? They don't take feedback from it. The game was released to Holodeck the same week as their event, which doesn't give time for any relevant changes to be made. The bugs and complaints people did have were all ignored. The ones that weren't ignored were given the reply of "what you see is 5 or 6 iterations behind what is actually going to be released" which is pure BS (and if it isn't, again, what is the point if we can't test what is ACTUALLY going to be released? The Tribble server is nothing more than a glorified preview of what is to come, and they could care less what we think.
I personally submitted 6 or 7 tickets on Tribble during the test, and posted in the forums, and every item I posted a ticket for (and nearly every one I commented on in the forums) still made it into Holodeck. So you tell me, what is the point when they could care less what their customers think?
But to answer your question, Starbases weren't even released on Tribble until about 2 weeks before the system went live. Even the official test fleet (Cryptic Tribbles) didn't get T2 Engineering until this week (or maybe late last week, regardless it was after the system went live).
basically this
couldn't have said it more eloquently if I tried.
Member since December 2009
"First off, every additional modifier takes additional time to make, as well as additional time for QA to test for functionality and balance."
This is unfortunate. I think I can say this for everyone here, that we recognize and appreciate all the time you invest into your work and efforts to make this game. However, this starbase grind although maybe fun for some players but for others mostly pvp players, it is not the reason why we play this game. We play for the PvP and its enhancements. Hence, we also are putting in our time and work, while we could be appreciating a good old pvp match. Most pvp fleets if not all, are working on their starbases. They are doing this to stay competitive in a very competitive community of players.
So, when you are as kind to let us know what details it takes to enhance these weapons, we at the same time fully recognize and understand what it takes. We too make an effort to acquire something that is not even worth it in this case.
Please recognize that if these weapons are made worth acquiring it would further progress the common goal of balancing the game. Example: Fleet ships have increased number of consoles, turn rate, hitpoints etc. One of the counters to this is better weapons and consoles. Childrens toys doff mission does offer a solution to this, however is not something readily available for most pvp players. It involves the acquisition of some very expensive and very very rare doffs to have tangible results. However, the biggest necessity to counter the "upping" of everything, is the upping of weapons.
More hitpoints, consoles, maneuverability, should all be met with more accuracy to inflict the necessary damage needed to counter those three categories.
I will also go on to say that the PvP community has worked hard to address some bugs in the past, and helped your work become easier by testing/finding problems with the game. In return, please make this starbase thing worth while for us too.
Thanks for your time.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
PvP, Starbase, What? What is PvP? And the dev is right, dmg x4 is the best weapons u can get! Pretty obvious dmg means damage, which is what weapons should do right. Highest base dmg id even say the [dmg] mod is somewhat overpowered atm..
Especially since they buffed the quads.
Let's not forget the real key, they (STF/Borg weapons) are much easier to receive also. It's a shame they spend so much time and effort planning this stuff out, they obsoleted their own new weapons on arrival.
Now let's say you gave us [ACC]x3 instead, we would probably be drooling on our keyboards right now. Oh wait maybe even help PvP out a bit, you know, just maybe?