You think all, or even most, people are playing PVP? Because it's not true. Maybe science is okay when matched with tailor-built team mates who are optimized and poised to capitalize on science's abilities. I don't know and I don't care. That situation is not what a majority of players experience. PVP tactics and priorities confuse any meaningful discussion of the game most of us are playing. And as you so politely summed up,
^ This is the situation that a majority of players are confronted by.
how am i supposed to treat people who are so smug and so wrong at the same time, after i have explained these same things over and over 100 times. who say i am misinformed about the game mechanics when they themselves show no evidence they have ever pvped, from the arguments they make.
the fact that most people don't pvp is the fault of most people. thats were things other then pure damage mater. if your useing something other then a pure damage in pve your likely not having as much fun as you could be.
this is because pve is so easy, and npcs are nothing like player ships so killing npcs is just a mater of pushing the space bar for X number of seconds. there is no such thing as balance in pve, it has to look cool, and the npcs have to be easy to kill. thats it.
sci captains and ships don't fit that mold well in pve, which is why i suggested that npcs should be especially vulnerable to shield striping, so a sci/sci could bomb around in pve solo with a torpedo boat removeing npc shields easily.
how am i supposed to treat people who are so smug and so wrong at the same time, after i have explained these same things over and over 100 times. who say i am misinformed about the game mechanics when they themselves show no evidence they have ever pvped, from the arguments they make.
the fact that most people don't pvp is the fault of most people. thats were things other then pure damage mater. if your useing something other then a pure damage in pve your likely not having as much fun as you could be.
this is because pve is so easy, and npcs are nothing like player ships so killing npcs is just a mater of pushing the space bar for X number of seconds. there is no such thing as balance in pve, it has to look cool, and the npcs have to be easy to kill. thats it.
sci captains and ships don't fit that mold well in pve, which is why i suggested that npcs should be especially vulnerable to shield striping, so a sci/sci could bomb around in pve solo with a torpedo boat removeing npc shields easily.
Last time PvE saw an update and/or content? PvP? I think we know which one cryptic is more concerned about being enjoyable.
That out of the way lets talk about the bad math in STO that has us all down, PvP and PvE alike.
1) Shield Resistance rates + Shield Heals + Tac Team = stupidly strong scaling when pushed to an extreme. The system wasn't designed originally for every ship to have as many 'dump 4 tank' ensign boff slots.
2) Tac cap. Damage boosts + Sci Boff Damage = (former) stupid strong.
If you fix the bad math values can be modified to make the game better overall. The more items they add, and ships with more consoles, etc, the more broken it gets. Ironically this is also why Dablo 3 inferno is either stupid easy or table flipping difficult, bad math. Why on earth developers continue to design systems that have such poor scaling I have no idea but they do. The * is dangerous and should be respected!
sci captains and ships don't fit that mold well in pve, which is why i suggested that npcs should be especially vulnerable to shield striping, so a sci/sci could bomb around in pve solo with a torpedo boat removeing npc shields easily.
only problem with this is that then when those same pve science captains go into pvp theyd complain that their shield stripping isnt working and demand nerfs/buffs etc etc.
only problem with this is that then when those same pve science captains go into pvp theyd complain that their shield stripping isnt working and demand nerfs/buffs etc etc.
so what your saying is the level of complaining wouldn't change but sci/sci might be more fun to pve in? hey i'd call that an improvement! hopefully they would ask for better npcs at that point, how they are a sham compared to player ships.
Restore gravity well so that it actually works again.
Restore photonic shockwave so that a SCI who specs heavily into its related skills and buffs themselves with our SCI captain buffs can do severe damage to an unshielded target.
Remove the cool down that is triggered on tykens and energy leach when you use one or the other. A TAC can spam HY3 and CRF and BO, why should we be gimped by having skills that you would obviously want to use together not be available for such use?
Make it so that if you spec into a skill it is much more powerful than if you had not.
Simple.
Make it so that the cmdr level of a skill is much stronger than the Lt version.
Simple.
MAKE IT SO A TAC BUFF DOES NOT BUFF SCI SKILL DAMAGE.
SIMPLE.
A sci should not be a floating Band-Aid/debuff for spoiled TACS. We should be able to spec our builds to suit our own desires.
If I want to run a energy drain build it should be viable if I spec for it.
If I want to run a Crowd control build it should be viable if I spec for it.
If I want to run a subsystem disable build it should be viable if I spec for it.
If I want to be a floating Band-Aid it should be viable if I spec for it.
But don't make the points I invest heavily into specific skills worthless because of an OVER POWERED ability on a DIFFERENT CLASS.
i enjoy sci the most. however, i have seen the fun degrade over time simply because my abilities have less "umpf" then before.
i also get upset that in group scenerios such as SB24, that as a sci/sci there is a very high degree that i will never get the 1st place trophy since it is based on nothing but damage output.
yes, i feel sci needs some help..
i also feel that certain aspects of the game need to be revamped in order for players to gain the same trophies as a dmg output dealer does.
how to change this? as some have said, go back to the pre f2p where skills where specific to the tree and not just a general kinetic/energy dmg.
ive never seem a thief wear full plate and be able to pull off the awsome backstab abilty with bonus dmg, so why here should i see a tac get the full benefits of using sci specific abilties with bonus dmg?
meh...rant over i guess...lol
I agree 100% with this, the starbase 24 and others like it are unfairly ranked on damage alone, and as mentioned above Science captains in science ships are never going to be able to get 1st place unless the whole group are science. if science captains had a more crushing gravity well that only they could use it would equal the damage out more by dealing it to large groups and levelling the playing field.
or even change some of the rankings so that heals to others counts towards your placing
I have always thought that Gravity well and other science powers should do larger damage with science captains to offset the lower dps we have, this would give us a good chance to get 1st place in starbase 24 and work better with Starbase fleet Defence.
Each of the Skill types (tact, sci and eng) should have the potential to be main contributers in PVE and PVP by using their skill set and different tactics effectively.
Tacticals do the most dps and can tank a bit if using the right skills and tactics.
Engineers can tank and therefore last longer in a fight to have more sustained dps
Science used to be able to use its abilities well to hold strip or crush their enemies using gravity well, tkyens rift or tachyon beam
we should not pigeon hole a class to a support role because they have been nerfed.
How about Science captains getting a bonus to damage and holds of sci powers when using a sci ship so that Sci in a Sci ship is more viable than a Tact in a Sci ship when it comes to Science Boff powers
The same could be applied to engineers (though as i haven't played one I don't know what exactly) so that engineers in cruisers are more viable than tacts in cruisers
Enough! Just stop! u tac fanboys have been swinging and missing the point enough!
For almost a whole year now Sci skills have been getting A MONTHLY NERF DOSE not because the class or ships are OP, but because of TACS!!
8 bloody months of continues nerfs because of something that wasn't supposed to be so.
After 8 months of continuously increasing imbalance we finally point to the problem and here come the tacs going "hellllll no! fix u'r problems w/o touching us or shut up and deal with it!"
8 months of nerfing sci into uselessness and when we talk about what is basically a bug fix and not a nerf u have the audacity to talk about how unfair it would be??? how this is what sci should be like? how ppl dn't know how to play their class?
well silly me... i have a tac.. i can do the same. Ehemmm:
I dn't care u noobs dn't know how to play u'r sci class (even if u do),
or that u've been getting nerfed every month (and my tacs only been getting new shiny things like better cannons and an extra ~30% dmg boost),
all the classes have a job to do, if u'll learn yours every1 would be equal (even though i can kill u in 15secs),
and mby u should get a lill buff ( after 8 months of nerfs) it might make every1 even more equal (especially since when i'll use that skill, i'll get a bigger boost then u).
sound familiar?
One only can imagine the revolt if the nerfes were on the other side! One could think cryptic just might actually do something about it!
seriously this skill was never intended to buff these skills thats why it works the way it does on weapons if they want to leave it as is it hast to be swapped to how the rest of our bonus's work.
They need to get rid of the shared cooldowns. Why can't I use tachyon beam and gravity well? This doesn't make sense at all.
Sci also needs one or two more commander-level skills that DON'T share cooldowns with the all the other science skills. We have like 4 or 5 that share cooldowns with each other. Why!?
i dont mind the cool downs as much as i care about my class being nerfed because there is a broken mechanic that cryptic wont fix and thought it easier to just keep nerfing other skills instead of fixing the ONE thats broken?!?!?!
gravity well with a powerful enough pull holds someone in place, making it easy to drop tric mines on them, easy to nullify any pets they might launch, easy to aoe multiple people stuck in a the grav well wit CSV and TS, makes multiply players stuck in it getting hit with isometic a 1 shot for multiple people at once, and it lowers someone's evasion score down to nothing, and everyone on your team can easily have 100% up time on the imoble players with every single type of weapon there is.
note how the actual DOT of the grav well effects non of this, its not relevant when you can shut someone down with it and give your team mates and opening. its hard to get it ho hold that well though, you need lots of specing int grav gen and full aux. it needs to hold more like it used too.
While you so eloquently list the effects of a hold ability, and how the "multiple target hold" of GW expands on it, you still aren't explaining why you're so adamant to giving non-tacticals/escorts, or at the very least Science ships, not even an extra smidgen of DPS.
As it is, I vaguely remember reading that the entire reason GW doesn't have the "lock down hold" of a tractor beam like it used to is because the combination of damage & massive hold was OP, when hit with tactical buffs. Both are now removed (nerfed).
We would rather have the "meeker hold, more damage" version of GW than the "tight hold, no damage" version you just advocated. If you think about it, the "lighter hulled but more mobile escorts" tend to stretch to the farther end of the GW (therefore taking less numeric damage, but losing, say, 50% of their hull) while nearly immobile cruisers take more numeric damage and lose, say, 50% of their hull, is a better overall damage system than science ships needing 1-3 other people to "take advantage" of their powers.
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
So we all know that Sci powers have gotten nerf'd so many times in so many ways.
Most recently, Photonic shockwave. Someone was talking about tens of thousands of damage being done by a min/maxed build in Photonic Shockwave III, with a Tactical Captain at the helm of a ship with a Cmdr Sci boff slot.
So, TPTB, have nerf'd sci skills into being completely useless, for Sci class Captains.
I think we're not getting to the root of the problem. Tactical Captain buffs.
Attack Pattern Alpha, Tactical Fleet and especially, Going Down Fighting, which deals more damage the lower the hull, and if you shield tank, and keep your hull below 50, this is a massive percentage boost
They buff *ALL* damage done by your ship and your powers. Including Sci powers. So all those over powered Sci ships, were probably flown by Tactical captains. I know I've done it.
I've flown an Atrox as a Tactical Captain, I used Feedback Pulse III in PvP. With buffs active, and my skill and consoles in particle generators, Aux power to max, My FBP III was sending back 2.2 damage to the attacker. And 50% of that, bypassed shields. So, 1.1 of the attackers damage, is going straight to their hull. Even if it was an escort, with RSP I active, they would be dead in a matter of moments.
Forgive the quality of this video, it was a quick test I did to show my Fleet what I had done.
I've since learned new settings to improve rendering and fix the temporary blackout that happens.
People keep saying that Tactical is better than the other three classes. This is why.
Tactical Captain buffs, should only buff damage done by WEAPONS.
What does a tactical officer know about improving the damage done by particles and other crazy science magic like Gravity Well? It's not canon. It's not game balance. This is what should be fixed.
If tac buffs, buff only weapons and not Damage Dealing Sci powers, then sci powers could be rebuffed and be more effective for Engineers, or Sci captains in Science ships.
And Tactical captains in science ships wouldn't be so OP.
"I'm Commander Shepard, and I approve of this post."
As much as I hate to say it and hate things being nerfed...if it meant science abilities would get a little bit of the umph back...I wouldn't really complain to much if tac powers didn't buff science or engineering offensive powers.
Can't have a honest conversation because of a white knight with power
Comments
how am i supposed to treat people who are so smug and so wrong at the same time, after i have explained these same things over and over 100 times. who say i am misinformed about the game mechanics when they themselves show no evidence they have ever pvped, from the arguments they make.
the fact that most people don't pvp is the fault of most people. thats were things other then pure damage mater. if your useing something other then a pure damage in pve your likely not having as much fun as you could be.
this is because pve is so easy, and npcs are nothing like player ships so killing npcs is just a mater of pushing the space bar for X number of seconds. there is no such thing as balance in pve, it has to look cool, and the npcs have to be easy to kill. thats it.
sci captains and ships don't fit that mold well in pve, which is why i suggested that npcs should be especially vulnerable to shield striping, so a sci/sci could bomb around in pve solo with a torpedo boat removeing npc shields easily.
Last time PvE saw an update and/or content? PvP? I think we know which one cryptic is more concerned about being enjoyable.
That out of the way lets talk about the bad math in STO that has us all down, PvP and PvE alike.
1) Shield Resistance rates + Shield Heals + Tac Team = stupidly strong scaling when pushed to an extreme. The system wasn't designed originally for every ship to have as many 'dump 4 tank' ensign boff slots.
2) Tac cap. Damage boosts + Sci Boff Damage = (former) stupid strong.
If you fix the bad math values can be modified to make the game better overall. The more items they add, and ships with more consoles, etc, the more broken it gets. Ironically this is also why Dablo 3 inferno is either stupid easy or table flipping difficult, bad math. Why on earth developers continue to design systems that have such poor scaling I have no idea but they do. The * is dangerous and should be respected!
only problem with this is that then when those same pve science captains go into pvp theyd complain that their shield stripping isnt working and demand nerfs/buffs etc etc.
so what your saying is the level of complaining wouldn't change but sci/sci might be more fun to pve in? hey i'd call that an improvement! hopefully they would ask for better npcs at that point, how they are a sham compared to player ships.
Restore gravity well so that it actually works again.
Restore photonic shockwave so that a SCI who specs heavily into its related skills and buffs themselves with our SCI captain buffs can do severe damage to an unshielded target.
Remove the cool down that is triggered on tykens and energy leach when you use one or the other. A TAC can spam HY3 and CRF and BO, why should we be gimped by having skills that you would obviously want to use together not be available for such use?
Make it so that if you spec into a skill it is much more powerful than if you had not.
Simple.
Make it so that the cmdr level of a skill is much stronger than the Lt version.
Simple.
MAKE IT SO A TAC BUFF DOES NOT BUFF SCI SKILL DAMAGE.
SIMPLE.
A sci should not be a floating Band-Aid/debuff for spoiled TACS. We should be able to spec our builds to suit our own desires.
If I want to run a energy drain build it should be viable if I spec for it.
If I want to run a Crowd control build it should be viable if I spec for it.
If I want to run a subsystem disable build it should be viable if I spec for it.
If I want to be a floating Band-Aid it should be viable if I spec for it.
But don't make the points I invest heavily into specific skills worthless because of an OVER POWERED ability on a DIFFERENT CLASS.
I agree 100% with this, the starbase 24 and others like it are unfairly ranked on damage alone, and as mentioned above Science captains in science ships are never going to be able to get 1st place unless the whole group are science. if science captains had a more crushing gravity well that only they could use it would equal the damage out more by dealing it to large groups and levelling the playing field.
or even change some of the rankings so that heals to others counts towards your placing
I have always thought that Gravity well and other science powers should do larger damage with science captains to offset the lower dps we have, this would give us a good chance to get 1st place in starbase 24 and work better with Starbase fleet Defence.
Each of the Skill types (tact, sci and eng) should have the potential to be main contributers in PVE and PVP by using their skill set and different tactics effectively.
Tacticals do the most dps and can tank a bit if using the right skills and tactics.
Engineers can tank and therefore last longer in a fight to have more sustained dps
Science used to be able to use its abilities well to hold strip or crush their enemies using gravity well, tkyens rift or tachyon beam
we should not pigeon hole a class to a support role because they have been nerfed.
How about Science captains getting a bonus to damage and holds of sci powers when using a sci ship so that Sci in a Sci ship is more viable than a Tact in a Sci ship when it comes to Science Boff powers
The same could be applied to engineers (though as i haven't played one I don't know what exactly) so that engineers in cruisers are more viable than tacts in cruisers
For almost a whole year now Sci skills have been getting A MONTHLY NERF DOSE not because the class or ships are OP, but because of TACS!!
8 bloody months of continues nerfs because of something that wasn't supposed to be so.
After 8 months of continuously increasing imbalance we finally point to the problem and here come the tacs going "hellllll no! fix u'r problems w/o touching us or shut up and deal with it!"
8 months of nerfing sci into uselessness and when we talk about what is basically a bug fix and not a nerf u have the audacity to talk about how unfair it would be??? how this is what sci should be like? how ppl dn't know how to play their class?
well silly me... i have a tac.. i can do the same. Ehemmm:
I dn't care u noobs dn't know how to play u'r sci class (even if u do),
or that u've been getting nerfed every month (and my tacs only been getting new shiny things like better cannons and an extra ~30% dmg boost),
all the classes have a job to do, if u'll learn yours every1 would be equal (even though i can kill u in 15secs),
and mby u should get a lill buff ( after 8 months of nerfs) it might make every1 even more equal (especially since when i'll use that skill, i'll get a bigger boost then u).
sound familiar?
One only can imagine the revolt if the nerfes were on the other side! One could think cryptic just might actually do something about it!
Sci also needs one or two more commander-level skills that DON'T share cooldowns with the all the other science skills. We have like 4 or 5 that share cooldowns with each other. Why!?
I AM THE SWORD OF THE RIGHTOUS!
I can agree with this.
While you so eloquently list the effects of a hold ability, and how the "multiple target hold" of GW expands on it, you still aren't explaining why you're so adamant to giving non-tacticals/escorts, or at the very least Science ships, not even an extra smidgen of DPS.
As it is, I vaguely remember reading that the entire reason GW doesn't have the "lock down hold" of a tractor beam like it used to is because the combination of damage & massive hold was OP, when hit with tactical buffs. Both are now removed (nerfed).
We would rather have the "meeker hold, more damage" version of GW than the "tight hold, no damage" version you just advocated. If you think about it, the "lighter hulled but more mobile escorts" tend to stretch to the farther end of the GW (therefore taking less numeric damage, but losing, say, 50% of their hull) while nearly immobile cruisers take more numeric damage and lose, say, 50% of their hull, is a better overall damage system than science ships needing 1-3 other people to "take advantage" of their powers.
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
"I'm Commander Shepard, and I approve of this post."
^This
Yes please!