I'm really sorry for Francesco because he has a very effective Sci-Sci build with PSW3 after draining the enemy shields, although I'm satisfied that the damned Bops have lost one of their best weapons.
However, it's not right nerfing an high end ability like PSW3 so much, it could cause a game imbalance worse than the previous and presumed one.
And now the sci ships are really useless in pvp...SNB and VM...anything else?
I'm listening to your feedback (yes, even the rude and insulting stuff, amazingly enough), but I'd like to know for certain: Which of the following do you feel is -more- accurate?
1) You feel that these powers are flat-out ineffective. (PvE and PvP)
-or-
2) You feel that these powers are ineffective against players that have high resists to them. (PvP)
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Which of the following do you feel is -more- accurate?
1) You feel that these powers are flat-out ineffective.
-or-
2) You feel that these powers are ineffective against players that have high resists to them.
Since we cannot see how high the resists are that other players have, it is a bit hard to tell. (Especially since you don't release the numbers so that we can get the full picture of the mechanics.)
But in the case of PSW3, there are no notable resist from speccing that apply. It's simply that a shockwave with that little damage is only good for its stun (which is still valuable, but since we have had such an inflation of shield-healing, knocking off extends is not as powerful as it once was). You need to keep in mind that almost every target in PVP has shields on all sides until the very end when all shields and all hull are destroyed. This makes kinetic damage with its penalty against shields especially problematic for determining a correct magnitude - a too low value will be useless because of the reduction from shields whereas a too high value that is medium-level useful against shields can potentially be absolutely op-oneshotting when it can be brought against bare hull.
I believe one of the biggest gripes is that the science skills have been nerfed so badly that they are ineffective regardless of what you use them against. I've seen this in both PVE and PVP.
Gravity Well series: Does so little damage, it's laughable at best. If you're worried about it being over powering and 5 science ships just GW3'ing anything, change the properties, making it impact shields instead, make it so only 1 GW can effect a ship by putting a counter or debuff on the opponent for 1 minute or something. I've also seen borg spheres using evasive maneuvers to run out of GW constantly, its like pop GW, here come the spheres at over 9000 KPH! Well that was a waste. Limiting the amount of speed one can fly out of GW even when using things like APO and Evasive would help the power do that much more damage. Kind of like how flying out of tractor beams using evasive maneuvers and only having 3 points in inertial dampeners allows you to move out of it, but a whole lot slower.
PSW: Immensely useful for science ships because they lack the raw firepower of the escorts or even cruisers. Drag their shields down and hit them with a PSW3 and you've got yourself a dangerous Science ship. If you don't want escorts or cruisers to have access to it, so be it. Keep the high damage only with PSW3.
Viral Matrix: Laughable really, the randomization of what it effects and how long is TRIBBLE. It switches subsystems randomly and isn't reliable. Add reliability to it possibly? Make it last for 5-10 seconds, but make it only smack one sub system at a time don't have it jump everywhere.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
[Unrepentant] Lapo@overlapo: the problem with space STF
is that you can't properly teabag your defeated opponent
Unrepentant: Home of the Rainbow Warrior and the Rainbow Brigade.
I'm listening to your feedback (yes, even the rude and insulting stuff, amazingly enough),
People have a right to be a little upset by now, I think the fact that you're even listening to "rude and insulting" feedback goes to show that deep down you realize it too.
In order for a big TRIBBLE-up to not elicit these kinds of emotions it needs to become the exception instead of the norm. Nobody is perfect, and it's unreasonable to expect every change to be a good one, but the reaction of the community to these kinds of goofs is going to come down to 1) how much goodwill you have with the community and 2) how bad the change is. In this case, you had a small amount of goodwill because you reverted the transphasic mine change, but the mistake was quite enormous.
For the record, the easiest way to learn how to make good changes is to participate in high level PvP yourself, to see what the rest of us see so easily. The easiest way to build goodwill is to make positive changes in a timely manner. Not just one or two sprinkled in a sea of mistakes, but a hefty number of consecutive positive decisions. Actually playing high level PvP with the community so we can help each other test would also go a long way towards building goodwill.
but I'd like to know for certain: Which of the following do you feel is -more- accurate?
1) You feel that these powers are flat-out ineffective.
-or-
2) You feel that these powers are ineffective against players that have high resists to them.
Depends on the power in question.
Gravity Well, Tyken's Rift, Scramble Sensors and (new) PSW fall under 1. In the case of the last two examples, having them buffed by the most expensive skills in the tree certainly doesn't help.
CPB and Tachyon Beam definitely fall under 2, assuming you change the wording from "high resist" to "even a small amount of resist, even just from items."
Never really used Energy Siphon that much, but I'm guessing it falls closer to 1 than 2 seeing as it wasn't a very good choice even before the new skill tree anyway.
Grav Well is especially sad because it should be creating a massive hazard to effectively work as zone denial. I love mechanics like this because in my experience they reward smart skill use (rather than just happening to bring an I-win/counter button to the table).
If I'm trapped in a grav well, I should be panicking and thinking "oh ****"; I should want to get out immediately, either because the pull is strong (and getting stronger the longer I stay in there) or because I'm taking hard ticks of hull damage. A Commander level GW should not, however, be a complete joke compared to the death sentence that an Ensign tractor beam often is.
As far as PSW goes, I'd again rather have the stun or the knockback jacked way up (yeah CC is annoying but this is a high level skill, there should be some appeal in taking it), that said if people would prefer the damage back then that's fine too. Maybe have the stun duration or something like a small amount of % shield pen scale off aux so it's a skill actually geared towards Sci captains and not Tacs for a change?
This thread is a perfect example of once again having the community coming together to decry something that the Cryptic Studios /PW development team has put on the test server to yet again, have the development team outright ignore us all. Even better, their response is that they don?t have time. Awesome PR guy!!!! Just like you guys didn?t have time to finish the KDF. Just like you don?t have time to do much if anything about PVP. Just like you don?t have time to balance the game in a way that makes sense! What is it you all do again? Oh right, develop lock boxes and stuff to put in them to earn that next fast and easy cash from stupid people who actually buy that TRIBBLE.
Cryptic, the reason you guys have a bunch of us, who knows, hundreds even; who dislike and some even outright hate your development team and company, is because you somehow don?t understand that it is or should be your jobs to make things overall for the better of the community?. Wait?
Actually, I?m wrong? your job is to make the company money. TRIBBLE the consumer? yeah? that makes perfect sense since we are all stupid enough to keep giving you guys money to fund even more broken, BS code and game mechanics.
Just disregard this who post?. We, the community are the asshats for supporting this game and we have two years of of experience that should tell us that things really are not going to get any better.
I'm out! Ever week it just gets worse, even when seemingly cool content is added it ends up half assed or broken or over priced or it addeds more broken mechanics on top of broken balance and mechanics. Just awsome! That or we get to sign in and find out yet another thing we have looked forward too for years is being delayed yet again or cancled altogether.
How the hell are you guys proud of this game? Oh... is it the $$$ flow? Is that it?
BTW, these forums suck! All of my explanation points turned into question marks! thats cool.
I'm listening to your feedback (yes, even the rude and insulting stuff, amazingly enough), but I'd like to know for certain: Which of the following do you feel is -more- accurate?
1) You feel that these powers are flat-out ineffective. (PvE and PvP)
-or-
2) You feel that these powers are ineffective against players that have high resists to them. (PvP)
1: this one definitely is true in pve. Sci Powers that aren't GW well blow. PvP, they also suck.
2: There are some cases where the skill itself is total Balls, like Esiphon (lol) for offense, top to bottom, and other times where the skill is too highly resisted.
Then there's 3 which is always annoying there's TRIBBLE that bypasses Resistance that Shouldn't.
Powers that just flat out Suck. Esiphon. Jam Sensors anything this does, a heal does for you better, Tachyonbeam1, and 2 the drain attack is rather pathetic to start with, Tykens 1 and 2 see above. Boarding Party (any level), Grav Well 1 and 2.
Scramble 1.
Target Subsystems (they have literally 1/2 the drain they had before the f2p Fail Skill tree did),
Attack Pattern Beta (because TT insta clears it for 10 secs at a time), High Yield 3 (too innefficient to use boff wise) FAW (it's damage out put is Terrible, due to it missing all the time) Charged particle burst 1.
Photonic Shockwave. Any level. Reasons #1, it's stun is pathetically short, #2 the damage is equally sorry, #3 now you can even use Team Abilities while stunned, as if you needed to gib this power further from 1 and 2.
DEM1, not nearly enough output. EPTW2, lulz. maybe if it's damage bonus lasted the full duration. EPTA2, anything this does for you EPTA effectively does. EPTE2, Engine Battery. Deuterium. Anything but this.
Eject warp Plasma. The dot needs a buff. It's worse than pre F2p.
Powers too strongly resisted. Jam Sensors, Scramble Sensors, Tachyon Beam 3, Gravity well 3, Target Subsystems. (as if 1/2 the drain potential was not bad enough you get it 1/2ed again), Charged Particle burst 2 and 3 (note even if you go with my solution you should probably up it's drain abit). Esiphon, Tractor beam repulsors (any level).
Scramble sensors 2 and 3.
You guys did the 50 percent to prevent people from just spamming you to death, but here's a better and more intelligent solution. 25 percent passive resistance from your resist skills. +25 percent resist after you are hit the first time, for 10 seconds giving your ship time to recover from nasty stuff. Leave stuff like Chain Stun Immunity in, because that was actually a good idea.
Now: Powers that are completely bypassed by Resistance. Power Siphon Pods. Seriously, if we can't esiphon someone down, why can this put you at nine across the board. For Free. It's better than the friggin boffs. And has 0 opp cost. Stupid.
Chroniton Procs: Yes they are Still ignoring Inertial Damp ranks.
Warp Plasma/Theta see chroniton.
Tractor beam ignores inertial damp ranks.
Not so coincidentally enough, these are also things that frankly can replace boffs as there is plenty of equipment in the game to give you access to these debuffs. You guys should be well aware of these abilities by passing resistance, with the Videos I provided you guys, on multiple occasions. Yet you chose to "fix" PSW rather than address your SKILL TREE LITERALLY NOT FUNCTIONING IN THESE CASES.
Things are not mutually exclusive. Also, as long as you hit the spec level to get the 50 percent resists it doesn't matter how much you have in the opposing skill against the targets resist. It's a flat out 50 percent. If you could some how spec your CPB up to like 12k shield damage he's still ignoring 6k of it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but with the hamfisted way the tree works (or in this case most of the time DOESN'T work) it is. If you are going to go with a flat resist system 25 should be your Passive. the other 25 percent should come in after you're hit the first time.
If you're wondering why you get so much venom from us, it's this TRIBBLE keeps happening. And we're providing you the tools tips, advice, and demos to show you how things are. And you keep doing things that aren't needed instead.
Borticus, the problem is how you are implementing things.
When i was a CIO we had a development lifecycle:
-develop
-internal test
-beta test
-release
For your job it must be the same, except that beta test has the purpose of collecting user feedback AND CORRECT things before they get released.
Let me tell you that you are not doing well your job if it is normal for you to "bugfix" a skill:
- impacting 1/3 of your ship classes or userbase
- reducing its effectiveness by 75% (20k damage uncapped vs 5k damage capped)
- releasing it on tribble and collecting overwhelming negative feedback
- don't caring about the user feedback and releasing it into production environment
- oh, and then, and only then, you start conducting surveys on the forum to understand things, in an effort to review all science powers that will require weeks, that will need your boss approval, that must be scheduled and all this after you broke the last working science offensive power.
As a side note, I'm actually in a Good Mood right now.
There is no real anger with me and Cryptic anymore, because being mad at them for failing to do their jobs properly is like being mad at a shark because it ate a fish. It's just natural.
Yeah, that's right I had a wonderful day, and I can still say things so hard on you. Because it's a fact, not an emotional thing.
As a side note, I'm actually in a Good Mood right now.
There is no real anger with me and Cryptic anymore, because being mad at them for failing to do their jobs properly is like being mad at a shark because it ate a fish. It's just natural.
Yeah, that's right I had a wonderful day, and I can still say things so hard on you. Because it's a fact, not an emotional thing.
i rage at this game because it helps me not rage at people in real life that constantly do stupid things...
some of the customers i deal with in newspaper delivery... i swear-
customer- "id like the paper at the front door"
me- "sir i cant get to your front door you have a gate thats closed at night'
customer- "well thats not my problem"
me- "no sir, but i cant deliver the paper to the front door because i cant get to it"
customer- "well then ill just call in misses until i find the paper at my front door"
me- "...."
Borticus, the problem is how you are implementing things.
When i was a CIO we had a development lifecycle:
-develop
-internal test
-beta test
-release
For your job it must be the same, except that beta test has the purpose of collecting user feedback AND CORRECT things before they get released.
Let me tell you that you are not doing well your job if it is normal for you to "bugfix" a skill:
- impacting 1/3 of your ship classes or userbase
- reducing its effectiveness by 75% (20k damage uncapped vs 5k damage capped)
- releasing it on tribble and collecting overwhelming negative feedback
- don't caring about the user feedback and releasing it into production environment
- oh, and then, and only then, you start conducting surveys on the forum to understand things, in an effort to review all science powers that will require weeks, that will need your boss approval, that must be scheduled and all this after you broke the last working science offensive power.
Give them a break. Cryptic is known for being understaffed and overworked. When someone makes "a fix" they will often tell us they don't know when it will go live. Because it's a producer, a different person, that makes that decision. Also they have told us before it's often very hard for them to test things internally, they don't have the staffing for it.
As for ignoring tribble test feedback, the majority of the "feedback" comes from people who haven't even tried it. They just didn't like what the patch notes described so they moan hard against the changes without trying jack.
When you point one finger at Cryptic you have three fingers pointing back at you!
I'm listening to your feedback (yes, even the rude and insulting stuff, amazingly enough), but I'd like to know for certain: Which of the following do you feel is -more- accurate?
1) You feel that these powers are flat-out ineffective. (PvE and PvP)
-or-
2) You feel that these powers are ineffective against players that have high resists to them. (PvP)
Option 1, going sci, you're a liability to your team, PvE or PvP. In PvP, they are resisted, in PvE enemy ships have a gazillion hitpoints and shields, meaning pure damage is the only useful tool. The only excepiton, i think, is the power drains. Those seem to be working OK in PvE. (come to think of it, they're very neatly balanced for PvE... )
And what is worst: All the useful sci-skills are good only when used by a tac captain, that can buff them to do some real damage. Why does being a sci captain not lend any advantage to sci abilities? And why DO a tac captain buff sci abilities?
Why am I not surprised by this? I remember a post being done about how odd the PSW3 percentages were but stating their effect in game was more then appropriate and something should be done to bring PSW1 and 2 more in line with 3 as the correct way to fix this...instead we get PSW3 nerfed to oblivion instead.
It's not even that tribble effects and notes were ignored they ignored what the community said to being with in favor of something else.
Yeah, I was out of line. However, I?m not wrong in pointing out that time and time again those who test stuff out on the test servers and report it get shafted by Cryptic because, oh well... they will release it broken anyway. Proof of two years of doing just that! So why even have a test server if the standard operating procedure is to release things regardless of community feedback that is begging it not to be released? I can?t seem to understand the reasoning in purposely aggravating the community in such a way when it can be prevented. Oh well, my character fault I suppose.
Anyway, bazzoka away guys! I?ll be in Kerrat later? have at it? I?ll even drop my shields!
BTW, Option #1. If you need reasons to support why? I?ll give you one quick one. DPS is extremely important in PVE! Yeah, it is important in PVP too, but not as much as in PVE.
Right now, SCI is lacking good crowd control, good or better healing than Cruisers and it really doesn?t fit a jack of all trades role. I think those who argue that SCI tree needs to be re-thought are correct.
Anyway, I?m out for a while as I said earlier because going on these forums to read about how the Team doesn?t have time to address things like balance or to come here and read how they balanced the game assuming 0 or 100 % skill bonus only; is aggravating for me, so I?ll just take a break and come back in a month or so hoping to read less bad news.
Give them a break. Cryptic is known for being understaffed and overworked. When someone makes "a fix" they will often tell us they don't know when it will go live. Because it's a producer, a different person, that makes that decision. Also they have told us before it's often very hard for them to test things internally, they don't have the staffing for it.
As for ignoring tribble test feedback, the majority of the "feedback" comes from people who haven't even tried it. They just didn't like what the patch notes described so they moan hard against the changes without trying jack.
When you point one finger at Cryptic you have three fingers pointing back at you!
They are only short staffed on STO because they are too busy working on future products... yes that is a decision made at the top true. Still doesn't mean that the consumers can't be a little miffed off about it.
Could you imagine if you had a 2011 Ford... and you had a squeak in the door... a knock in the engine... things started whining when you got up to hwy speed... the interior light flickered... your signals sometimes worked the opposite you expected left being right ect... your hazards won't turn on when you flicked the switch... and your rear windows for some reason would roll down but not up.....
So you go down to the dealer get in line... and have a nice mechanic man stop by long enough to tell you that the repairs for your 2011... can't happen until 2014 (season 9) cause frankly there over worked and they have a new shiny 2013 model to get out the door and there really under the gun on that one. lol
People are annoyed for a reason. Frankly I doubt I would have enough trust in the car producer to stop driving my 2011 to take there shiney 2013 for a drive... frankly the chances of me ever test driving another product from Crypt... er I mean such a car company like that one would be zero.
In general option 1 regarding why Sci powers are ineffective.
1. For PvE, by in large it's a dps race and Sci abilities are too weak for that in general. I was hoping you'd actually have buffed sci base values significantly and tune for PvP based on player resists. Espcially since for some things like STFs I always end up w/better rewards in greater numbers w/a dps tac than I ever did using a Sci.
2. a. For option 2 the basic issue has been non-boff abilities are more effective than player spec'd abilities this is backwards vs a player spec'd into some resists. The leads to many of the best debuffs being spammed by pets who can get around their cooldowns via respawning them and are greater in number than player ships.
b. Also, please remember how easy it is to get to the 99/100 value in either the boosts or the resists. A deflector, a console, and 3 points in a skill basically get you there. Please don't start by balancing w/the assumption 99/100 is high end. Assume it's the mode statistically.
3. Unmentioned, w/the skill change some Sci abilities require investment in multiple abilities to achieve their desired effect. But, a player can't max both effects since the consoles only boost 1 of 2 skills.
4. For damage skills you get better damage using Tac Capt than Sci Capt. This seems wrong on principle.
5. a. Please keep in mind Doffs and what they do. For example, Phontonic doffs can get PSW to global cooldown. If a Captain uses Tech doff w/aux2batt it goes under the 30 sec cooldown.
b. Part of the issue w/Sci abilities on the other side of the coin is in general w/doffs and other things it's much easier for an individual to recover from things like CPB that have large cooldowns. Perhaps have a single target option for using CPB that spikes the shield stripping to a single target for high shield damage compensate, but not be OP in terms of AoE. AoE debuffs, CC espcially should be weaker than single target skills.
[Zone] Dack@****: cowards can't take a fed 1 on 1 crinckley cowards Hahahaha you smell like flowers
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
I'm listening to your feedback (yes, even the rude and insulting stuff, amazingly enough), but I'd like to know for certain: Which of the following do you feel is -more- accurate?
1) You feel that these powers are flat-out ineffective. (PvE and PvP)
-or-
2) You feel that these powers are ineffective against players that have high resists to them. (PvP)
After having played my sci officers quite a bit, I'm going to go with option number one. The powers are flat-out ineffective. Science heals are fine, so I'm going to run down a list of offensive / CC science powers with comments for both PvE & PvP, trying to give detailed and helpful feedback.
1. Gravity Well. In PvE, this power is generally quite potent as a crowd control measure with the third rank of the power. Gravity Well 1 is effective against small craft such as corvettes and cruisers, while 3 works to tie up anything below a dreadnought. Gravity Well 2 may as well not exist. The ability's damage is overall negligible in PvE owing to inflated health numbers, though if fully specc'ed can be appreciable in PvP. In PvP however, that appreciable damage is very hard to bring to bear because the hold strength is laughable. My cruiser can get out of gravwell 3 simply by going to full throttle, my escort doesn't notice them at all. The only reason that I'd put gravwell on a sci ship in PvP is to control pet spam, and that is marginal at best since pets zip right on out usually.
2. Tyken's Rift: This power is flat out useless in PvP & PvE. The damage component is something that I'd have to get a parser out to notice, anyone with ranks in power insulators ignores it in PvP, and even throwing Tyken's 3 on a borg cube with flow caps specc'ed has no noticeable effect on either it's shield strength or damage output.
3. Photonic Shockwave: Ineffective in PvE because the damage is quite minor by NPC health standards, the stun doesn't help much, and there is no need to break Extend Shields because they're NPCs. In PvP it can be useful to break Extends, used to be worthwhile for the stun (before stun durations got a significant reduction), and once upon a time was extremely useful for the damage when combined with Charged Particle Burst / Tachyon Beam to strip shields. The damage is now so small that even if shield stripping worked, it would only be good for breaking Extends.
4. Viral Matrix: In PvP, this is an effective power to make the life of a particular enemy healer or escort miserable, and has the ability to say blunt an alpha strike or reduce a healer's out put at a crucial moment. I'd say VM is fine as is for PvP. I've never noticed it doing me any good in PvE.
5. Tachyon Beam. Due to the high numbers on NPC shields, this does nothing at all in PvE. In PvP it does nothing at all due to everyone putting ranks in Power Insulators or running the Borg Deflector.
6. Charged Particle Burst. See Tachyon Beam.
7. Scramble Sensors: Completely pointless in PvE because NPCs have a very high health to DPS output ratio. Even if they shoot each other all day it doesn't make them die much faster. Ranks 2 & 3 can be effective in PvP, distracting a healer for a few seconds before they get a sci team to clear it. Experienced players can largely ignore its effects however with careful manual targeting, though the forced target switching at the extreme end of specialization can reduce a player's effectiveness.
8. Photonic Officer: Flat out useless. This is a noob trap.
9. Tractor Beam Repulsors: Fine as is. This power can produce respectable damage in PvP if you specialize, and offers effective crowd control for both PvE & PvP in the hands of a skilled player. Most use this power poorly, but that is not something Cryptic needs to fix; skill is well rewarded here.
10. Energy Siphon. lol? See Photonic Officer.
11. Feedback Pulse: PvE-Ineffective due to afore-mentioned health:DPS ratios on NPCs. Useful on certain PvP builds, particularly tacs in sci ships so that Alpha can buff the damage.
12. Mask Energy Signature. Unnecessary / Not Helpful in PvP, and I'll give you a very funny look if you put it on a PvE build. May be useful for rolepleaying events or pretty screenshots however.
13. Tractor Beam: Fine as is, though more people need to appreciate just how strong Tractor Beam 3 can be when it comes to locking even a cruiser down completely.
14. Jam Sensors: Useful in PvE when facing small numbers of very powerful NPCs, which happens but rarely. In PvP there is almost always a better choice for this slot.
I'll also extend an invitation to you to take an hour on some weekend (or even during the workday, since this would be a productive session), hop on Vent and chat with the denizens of OPVP in a constructive conversation. We don't want to bite your nose off, and the single best way to get the detailed, constructive feedback you keep requesting is to have a two-way, real-time conversation with the pvp community on the subject. Poke Brandon about setting it up if you like; the Pandas would be happy to host this on our ventrillo server, and he's got our information.
it most likely that those that scheduled dev time don't give bort and the other system guys the time they need to do their jobs regarding these abilities and balance.
science abilities, and the science section of the skill tree is fundamentally flawed right now, and it would take weeks of full time focus from multiple people, and our feedback, to sort it out.
but all they seem to have time to do is small isolated fixes here and there, proboly with what ever ounce of spare time they have. this does not allow them to see the scope of the problem, and until they can absorb the entire essence of the complete system, best done through pvp, the problems are not obvious, and we sound like a bunch of crazed winers. but it really is as bad as we are making out.
bort, please make them understand just how bad it is? we don't want to be bent out of shape about this and take it out on you, but its time to remember that this is an alive game, its not done when it ships, if stuff needs to be gone over 100 times then it has to be done. or else you get these people so sick and discusted by the state of things that they just leave and you lose customers.
for the science skill tree do the following
do away with subspace decompiler as it is now, and distribute the powers it effects into graviton generators and countermeasure systems. then make decompilers a shield drain resistance, let power insulators only defend your power levels. CPB and tach beam could be made dangerous, but to defend against it to the levels you can now you have to spend points in a very expensive skill. power insulates are too cheap and have too much roled into them. the skills that buff damage, flow cap and particle gen are too cheap too, and should both be at the same level. reorder the skill tree as such
tier 2 Starship Countermeasure Systems- buffs duration for confuse and placate, subsystem disables from vm and target systems Starship Shield Systems- buff shield hit points
tire3 Starship Power Insulators- resistance from any power drains Starship Inertial Dampeners- resistance from holds, repel, stuns
tier4 Starship Flow Capacitors- buffs power and shield drain Starship Particle Generators- buffs dots, and science abilities that deal kinetic damage. is also a second buff to shield drains like tach beam and CPB
tier 5 Starship Graviton Generators- buffs knock, repel, slow, holds, and improves the duration of your Holds and Disable Starship Subspace Decompiler- resistance from shield draining other then direct damage.
Comments
tbr is only good with tac captains, grav well 3 doesnt suck enough or do enough damage.
leaving vm3 as the single best cmdr skill in the game for science.
Heals. That's a bout it.
I'm listening to your feedback (yes, even the rude and insulting stuff, amazingly enough), but I'd like to know for certain: Which of the following do you feel is -more- accurate?
1) You feel that these powers are flat-out ineffective. (PvE and PvP)
-or-
2) You feel that these powers are ineffective against players that have high resists to them. (PvP)
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
But in the case of PSW3, there are no notable resist from speccing that apply. It's simply that a shockwave with that little damage is only good for its stun (which is still valuable, but since we have had such an inflation of shield-healing, knocking off extends is not as powerful as it once was). You need to keep in mind that almost every target in PVP has shields on all sides until the very end when all shields and all hull are destroyed. This makes kinetic damage with its penalty against shields especially problematic for determining a correct magnitude - a too low value will be useless because of the reduction from shields whereas a too high value that is medium-level useful against shields can potentially be absolutely op-oneshotting when it can be brought against bare hull.
Gravity Well series: Does so little damage, it's laughable at best. If you're worried about it being over powering and 5 science ships just GW3'ing anything, change the properties, making it impact shields instead, make it so only 1 GW can effect a ship by putting a counter or debuff on the opponent for 1 minute or something. I've also seen borg spheres using evasive maneuvers to run out of GW constantly, its like pop GW, here come the spheres at over 9000 KPH! Well that was a waste. Limiting the amount of speed one can fly out of GW even when using things like APO and Evasive would help the power do that much more damage. Kind of like how flying out of tractor beams using evasive maneuvers and only having 3 points in inertial dampeners allows you to move out of it, but a whole lot slower.
PSW: Immensely useful for science ships because they lack the raw firepower of the escorts or even cruisers. Drag their shields down and hit them with a PSW3 and you've got yourself a dangerous Science ship. If you don't want escorts or cruisers to have access to it, so be it. Keep the high damage only with PSW3.
Viral Matrix: Laughable really, the randomization of what it effects and how long is TRIBBLE. It switches subsystems randomly and isn't reliable. Add reliability to it possibly? Make it last for 5-10 seconds, but make it only smack one sub system at a time don't have it jump everywhere.
[Unrepentant] Lapo@overlapo: the problem with space STF
is that you can't properly teabag your defeated opponent
Unrepentant: Home of the Rainbow Warrior and the Rainbow Brigade.
People have a right to be a little upset by now, I think the fact that you're even listening to "rude and insulting" feedback goes to show that deep down you realize it too.
In order for a big TRIBBLE-up to not elicit these kinds of emotions it needs to become the exception instead of the norm. Nobody is perfect, and it's unreasonable to expect every change to be a good one, but the reaction of the community to these kinds of goofs is going to come down to 1) how much goodwill you have with the community and 2) how bad the change is. In this case, you had a small amount of goodwill because you reverted the transphasic mine change, but the mistake was quite enormous.
For the record, the easiest way to learn how to make good changes is to participate in high level PvP yourself, to see what the rest of us see so easily. The easiest way to build goodwill is to make positive changes in a timely manner. Not just one or two sprinkled in a sea of mistakes, but a hefty number of consecutive positive decisions. Actually playing high level PvP with the community so we can help each other test would also go a long way towards building goodwill.
Depends on the power in question.
Gravity Well, Tyken's Rift, Scramble Sensors and (new) PSW fall under 1. In the case of the last two examples, having them buffed by the most expensive skills in the tree certainly doesn't help.
CPB and Tachyon Beam definitely fall under 2, assuming you change the wording from "high resist" to "even a small amount of resist, even just from items."
Never really used Energy Siphon that much, but I'm guessing it falls closer to 1 than 2 seeing as it wasn't a very good choice even before the new skill tree anyway.
I don't see anything wrong with his attitude.
If I'm trapped in a grav well, I should be panicking and thinking "oh ****"; I should want to get out immediately, either because the pull is strong (and getting stronger the longer I stay in there) or because I'm taking hard ticks of hull damage. A Commander level GW should not, however, be a complete joke compared to the death sentence that an Ensign tractor beam often is.
As far as PSW goes, I'd again rather have the stun or the knockback jacked way up (yeah CC is annoying but this is a high level skill, there should be some appeal in taking it), that said if people would prefer the damage back then that's fine too. Maybe have the stun duration or something like a small amount of % shield pen scale off aux so it's a skill actually geared towards Sci captains and not Tacs for a change?
vids and guides and stuff
[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples
Cryptic, the reason you guys have a bunch of us, who knows, hundreds even; who dislike and some even outright hate your development team and company, is because you somehow don?t understand that it is or should be your jobs to make things overall for the better of the community?. Wait?
Actually, I?m wrong? your job is to make the company money. TRIBBLE the consumer? yeah? that makes perfect sense since we are all stupid enough to keep giving you guys money to fund even more broken, BS code and game mechanics.
Just disregard this who post?. We, the community are the asshats for supporting this game and we have two years of of experience that should tell us that things really are not going to get any better.
I'm out! Ever week it just gets worse, even when seemingly cool content is added it ends up half assed or broken or over priced or it addeds more broken mechanics on top of broken balance and mechanics. Just awsome! That or we get to sign in and find out yet another thing we have looked forward too for years is being delayed yet again or cancled altogether.
How the hell are you guys proud of this game? Oh... is it the $$$ flow? Is that it?
BTW, these forums suck! All of my explanation points turned into question marks! thats cool.
1: this one definitely is true in pve. Sci Powers that aren't GW well blow. PvP, they also suck.
2: There are some cases where the skill itself is total Balls, like Esiphon (lol) for offense, top to bottom, and other times where the skill is too highly resisted.
Then there's 3 which is always annoying there's TRIBBLE that bypasses Resistance that Shouldn't.
Powers that just flat out Suck. Esiphon. Jam Sensors anything this does, a heal does for you better, Tachyonbeam1, and 2 the drain attack is rather pathetic to start with, Tykens 1 and 2 see above. Boarding Party (any level), Grav Well 1 and 2.
Scramble 1.
Target Subsystems (they have literally 1/2 the drain they had before the f2p Fail Skill tree did),
Attack Pattern Beta (because TT insta clears it for 10 secs at a time), High Yield 3 (too innefficient to use boff wise) FAW (it's damage out put is Terrible, due to it missing all the time) Charged particle burst 1.
Photonic Shockwave. Any level. Reasons #1, it's stun is pathetically short, #2 the damage is equally sorry, #3 now you can even use Team Abilities while stunned, as if you needed to gib this power further from 1 and 2.
DEM1, not nearly enough output. EPTW2, lulz. maybe if it's damage bonus lasted the full duration. EPTA2, anything this does for you EPTA effectively does. EPTE2, Engine Battery. Deuterium. Anything but this.
Eject warp Plasma. The dot needs a buff. It's worse than pre F2p.
Powers too strongly resisted. Jam Sensors, Scramble Sensors, Tachyon Beam 3, Gravity well 3, Target Subsystems. (as if 1/2 the drain potential was not bad enough you get it 1/2ed again), Charged Particle burst 2 and 3 (note even if you go with my solution you should probably up it's drain abit). Esiphon, Tractor beam repulsors (any level).
Scramble sensors 2 and 3.
You guys did the 50 percent to prevent people from just spamming you to death, but here's a better and more intelligent solution. 25 percent passive resistance from your resist skills. +25 percent resist after you are hit the first time, for 10 seconds giving your ship time to recover from nasty stuff. Leave stuff like Chain Stun Immunity in, because that was actually a good idea.
Now: Powers that are completely bypassed by Resistance. Power Siphon Pods. Seriously, if we can't esiphon someone down, why can this put you at nine across the board. For Free. It's better than the friggin boffs. And has 0 opp cost. Stupid.
Chroniton Procs: Yes they are Still ignoring Inertial Damp ranks.
Warp Plasma/Theta see chroniton.
Tractor beam ignores inertial damp ranks.
Not so coincidentally enough, these are also things that frankly can replace boffs as there is plenty of equipment in the game to give you access to these debuffs. You guys should be well aware of these abilities by passing resistance, with the Videos I provided you guys, on multiple occasions. Yet you chose to "fix" PSW rather than address your SKILL TREE LITERALLY NOT FUNCTIONING IN THESE CASES.
Things are not mutually exclusive. Also, as long as you hit the spec level to get the 50 percent resists it doesn't matter how much you have in the opposing skill against the targets resist. It's a flat out 50 percent. If you could some how spec your CPB up to like 12k shield damage he's still ignoring 6k of it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but with the hamfisted way the tree works (or in this case most of the time DOESN'T work) it is. If you are going to go with a flat resist system 25 should be your Passive. the other 25 percent should come in after you're hit the first time.
If you're wondering why you get so much venom from us, it's this TRIBBLE keeps happening. And we're providing you the tools tips, advice, and demos to show you how things are. And you keep doing things that aren't needed instead.
When i was a CIO we had a development lifecycle:
-develop
-internal test
-beta test
-release
For your job it must be the same, except that beta test has the purpose of collecting user feedback AND CORRECT things before they get released.
Let me tell you that you are not doing well your job if it is normal for you to "bugfix" a skill:
- impacting 1/3 of your ship classes or userbase
- reducing its effectiveness by 75% (20k damage uncapped vs 5k damage capped)
- releasing it on tribble and collecting overwhelming negative feedback
- don't caring about the user feedback and releasing it into production environment
- oh, and then, and only then, you start conducting surveys on the forum to understand things, in an effort to review all science powers that will require weeks, that will need your boss approval, that must be scheduled and all this after you broke the last working science offensive power.
There is no real anger with me and Cryptic anymore, because being mad at them for failing to do their jobs properly is like being mad at a shark because it ate a fish. It's just natural.
Yeah, that's right I had a wonderful day, and I can still say things so hard on you. Because it's a fact, not an emotional thing.
i rage at this game because it helps me not rage at people in real life that constantly do stupid things...
some of the customers i deal with in newspaper delivery... i swear-
customer- "id like the paper at the front door"
me- "sir i cant get to your front door you have a gate thats closed at night'
customer- "well thats not my problem"
me- "no sir, but i cant deliver the paper to the front door because i cant get to it"
customer- "well then ill just call in misses until i find the paper at my front door"
me- "...."
^typical customer.
Give them a break. Cryptic is known for being understaffed and overworked. When someone makes "a fix" they will often tell us they don't know when it will go live. Because it's a producer, a different person, that makes that decision. Also they have told us before it's often very hard for them to test things internally, they don't have the staffing for it.
As for ignoring tribble test feedback, the majority of the "feedback" comes from people who haven't even tried it. They just didn't like what the patch notes described so they moan hard against the changes without trying jack.
When you point one finger at Cryptic you have three fingers pointing back at you!
Option 1, going sci, you're a liability to your team, PvE or PvP. In PvP, they are resisted, in PvE enemy ships have a gazillion hitpoints and shields, meaning pure damage is the only useful tool. The only excepiton, i think, is the power drains. Those seem to be working OK in PvE. (come to think of it, they're very neatly balanced for PvE...
And what is worst: All the useful sci-skills are good only when used by a tac captain, that can buff them to do some real damage. Why does being a sci captain not lend any advantage to sci abilities? And why DO a tac captain buff sci abilities?
It's not even that tribble effects and notes were ignored they ignored what the community said to being with in favor of something else.
Anyway, bazzoka away guys! I?ll be in Kerrat later? have at it? I?ll even drop my shields!
BTW, Option #1. If you need reasons to support why? I?ll give you one quick one. DPS is extremely important in PVE! Yeah, it is important in PVP too, but not as much as in PVE.
Right now, SCI is lacking good crowd control, good or better healing than Cruisers and it really doesn?t fit a jack of all trades role. I think those who argue that SCI tree needs to be re-thought are correct.
Anyway, I?m out for a while as I said earlier because going on these forums to read about how the Team doesn?t have time to address things like balance or to come here and read how they balanced the game assuming 0 or 100 % skill bonus only; is aggravating for me, so I?ll just take a break and come back in a month or so hoping to read less bad news.
They are only short staffed on STO because they are too busy working on future products... yes that is a decision made at the top true. Still doesn't mean that the consumers can't be a little miffed off about it.
Could you imagine if you had a 2011 Ford... and you had a squeak in the door... a knock in the engine... things started whining when you got up to hwy speed... the interior light flickered... your signals sometimes worked the opposite you expected left being right ect... your hazards won't turn on when you flicked the switch... and your rear windows for some reason would roll down but not up.....
So you go down to the dealer get in line... and have a nice mechanic man stop by long enough to tell you that the repairs for your 2011... can't happen until 2014 (season 9) cause frankly there over worked and they have a new shiny 2013 model to get out the door and there really under the gun on that one. lol
People are annoyed for a reason. Frankly I doubt I would have enough trust in the car producer to stop driving my 2011 to take there shiney 2013 for a drive... frankly the chances of me ever test driving another product from Crypt... er I mean such a car company like that one would be zero.
1. For PvE, by in large it's a dps race and Sci abilities are too weak for that in general. I was hoping you'd actually have buffed sci base values significantly and tune for PvP based on player resists. Espcially since for some things like STFs I always end up w/better rewards in greater numbers w/a dps tac than I ever did using a Sci.
2. a. For option 2 the basic issue has been non-boff abilities are more effective than player spec'd abilities this is backwards vs a player spec'd into some resists. The leads to many of the best debuffs being spammed by pets who can get around their cooldowns via respawning them and are greater in number than player ships.
b. Also, please remember how easy it is to get to the 99/100 value in either the boosts or the resists. A deflector, a console, and 3 points in a skill basically get you there. Please don't start by balancing w/the assumption 99/100 is high end. Assume it's the mode statistically.
3. Unmentioned, w/the skill change some Sci abilities require investment in multiple abilities to achieve their desired effect. But, a player can't max both effects since the consoles only boost 1 of 2 skills.
4. For damage skills you get better damage using Tac Capt than Sci Capt. This seems wrong on principle.
5. a. Please keep in mind Doffs and what they do. For example, Phontonic doffs can get PSW to global cooldown. If a Captain uses Tech doff w/aux2batt it goes under the 30 sec cooldown.
b. Part of the issue w/Sci abilities on the other side of the coin is in general w/doffs and other things it's much easier for an individual to recover from things like CPB that have large cooldowns. Perhaps have a single target option for using CPB that spikes the shield stripping to a single target for high shield damage compensate, but not be OP in terms of AoE. AoE debuffs, CC espcially should be weaker than single target skills.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
1. Gravity Well. In PvE, this power is generally quite potent as a crowd control measure with the third rank of the power. Gravity Well 1 is effective against small craft such as corvettes and cruisers, while 3 works to tie up anything below a dreadnought. Gravity Well 2 may as well not exist. The ability's damage is overall negligible in PvE owing to inflated health numbers, though if fully specc'ed can be appreciable in PvP. In PvP however, that appreciable damage is very hard to bring to bear because the hold strength is laughable. My cruiser can get out of gravwell 3 simply by going to full throttle, my escort doesn't notice them at all. The only reason that I'd put gravwell on a sci ship in PvP is to control pet spam, and that is marginal at best since pets zip right on out usually.
2. Tyken's Rift: This power is flat out useless in PvP & PvE. The damage component is something that I'd have to get a parser out to notice, anyone with ranks in power insulators ignores it in PvP, and even throwing Tyken's 3 on a borg cube with flow caps specc'ed has no noticeable effect on either it's shield strength or damage output.
3. Photonic Shockwave: Ineffective in PvE because the damage is quite minor by NPC health standards, the stun doesn't help much, and there is no need to break Extend Shields because they're NPCs. In PvP it can be useful to break Extends, used to be worthwhile for the stun (before stun durations got a significant reduction), and once upon a time was extremely useful for the damage when combined with Charged Particle Burst / Tachyon Beam to strip shields. The damage is now so small that even if shield stripping worked, it would only be good for breaking Extends.
4. Viral Matrix: In PvP, this is an effective power to make the life of a particular enemy healer or escort miserable, and has the ability to say blunt an alpha strike or reduce a healer's out put at a crucial moment. I'd say VM is fine as is for PvP. I've never noticed it doing me any good in PvE.
5. Tachyon Beam. Due to the high numbers on NPC shields, this does nothing at all in PvE. In PvP it does nothing at all due to everyone putting ranks in Power Insulators or running the Borg Deflector.
6. Charged Particle Burst. See Tachyon Beam.
7. Scramble Sensors: Completely pointless in PvE because NPCs have a very high health to DPS output ratio. Even if they shoot each other all day it doesn't make them die much faster. Ranks 2 & 3 can be effective in PvP, distracting a healer for a few seconds before they get a sci team to clear it. Experienced players can largely ignore its effects however with careful manual targeting, though the forced target switching at the extreme end of specialization can reduce a player's effectiveness.
8. Photonic Officer: Flat out useless. This is a noob trap.
9. Tractor Beam Repulsors: Fine as is. This power can produce respectable damage in PvP if you specialize, and offers effective crowd control for both PvE & PvP in the hands of a skilled player. Most use this power poorly, but that is not something Cryptic needs to fix; skill is well rewarded here.
10. Energy Siphon. lol? See Photonic Officer.
11. Feedback Pulse: PvE-Ineffective due to afore-mentioned health:DPS ratios on NPCs. Useful on certain PvP builds, particularly tacs in sci ships so that Alpha can buff the damage.
12. Mask Energy Signature. Unnecessary / Not Helpful in PvP, and I'll give you a very funny look if you put it on a PvE build. May be useful for rolepleaying events or pretty screenshots however.
13. Tractor Beam: Fine as is, though more people need to appreciate just how strong Tractor Beam 3 can be when it comes to locking even a cruiser down completely.
14. Jam Sensors: Useful in PvE when facing small numbers of very powerful NPCs, which happens but rarely. In PvP there is almost always a better choice for this slot.
I'll also extend an invitation to you to take an hour on some weekend (or even during the workday, since this would be a productive session), hop on Vent and chat with the denizens of OPVP in a constructive conversation. We don't want to bite your nose off, and the single best way to get the detailed, constructive feedback you keep requesting is to have a two-way, real-time conversation with the pvp community on the subject. Poke Brandon about setting it up if you like; the Pandas would be happy to host this on our ventrillo server, and he's got our information.
science abilities, and the science section of the skill tree is fundamentally flawed right now, and it would take weeks of full time focus from multiple people, and our feedback, to sort it out.
but all they seem to have time to do is small isolated fixes here and there, proboly with what ever ounce of spare time they have. this does not allow them to see the scope of the problem, and until they can absorb the entire essence of the complete system, best done through pvp, the problems are not obvious, and we sound like a bunch of crazed winers. but it really is as bad as we are making out.
bort, please make them understand just how bad it is? we don't want to be bent out of shape about this and take it out on you, but its time to remember that this is an alive game, its not done when it ships, if stuff needs to be gone over 100 times then it has to be done. or else you get these people so sick and discusted by the state of things that they just leave and you lose customers.
for the science skill tree do the following
do away with subspace decompiler as it is now, and distribute the powers it effects into graviton generators and countermeasure systems. then make decompilers a shield drain resistance, let power insulators only defend your power levels. CPB and tach beam could be made dangerous, but to defend against it to the levels you can now you have to spend points in a very expensive skill. power insulates are too cheap and have too much roled into them. the skills that buff damage, flow cap and particle gen are too cheap too, and should both be at the same level. reorder the skill tree as such
tier 1
Starship Sensors- buff stealth detection, FOMM, duration reduction from confuse and placate
Starship Shield Emitters- buff shield ability effectiveness
tier 2
Starship Countermeasure Systems- buffs duration for confuse and placate, subsystem disables from vm and target systems
Starship Shield Systems- buff shield hit points
tire3
Starship Power Insulators- resistance from any power drains
Starship Inertial Dampeners- resistance from holds, repel, stuns
tier4
Starship Flow Capacitors- buffs power and shield drain
Starship Particle Generators- buffs dots, and science abilities that deal kinetic damage. is also a second buff to shield drains like tach beam and CPB
tier 5
Starship Graviton Generators- buffs knock, repel, slow, holds, and improves the duration of your Holds and Disable
Starship Subspace Decompiler- resistance from shield draining other then direct damage.