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Fixing PVP balance without changing PVE
fakehilbert
Member Posts: 252 Arc User
I will outline some basic problems in PVP balance and a solution for these problems that does not affect PVE.
The problems:
1) Proliferation of SNB doffs
The latest lock boxes have caused a flood of SNB doffs. This made their prices drop so low that entire teams have been able to outfit their players with 3 SNB doffs per player. Now you can do the math and find out that a team with 15 SNB doffs among them will generate an SNB proc roughly every 8 seconds. This makes any meaningful gameplay impossible.
2) BFI doffs
The massive healing from BFI doffs that makes all ship classes and professions extremely tanky has lead to a situation where matches between evenly matches teams take multiple hours to end. It can partially be overcome by bringing more SNBs and more spike damage, but ultimately forces teams to run near-perfect full team setups all the time to avoid these extremely long and boring fights.
3) Useless Sci abilities
The skill tree revamp introduced resist skills that have made abilities like e.g. CPB/TachBeam essentially useless for PVP because everyone is specced into the relevant resist skills. This has lead to even more dominance of healing and a significant reduction in the value of sci ships.
P2W consoles and carrier pets are also a problem, but those would need to be balanced by slightly tweaking the numbers (details which I won't try to do because my proposals would be ignored anyway) or changes that would inevitably also affect PVE.
The solution:
I will only outline two very basic ideas and don't make any suggestions as to which abilities could also have their numbers tweaked. It is more important to find a way to deal with the fundamental flaws in the current system than it is to do fine adjustment of some individual abilities.
1) Disable Doffs for PVP
This is a radical step, but it would instantly fix all balance problem from Doffs and since Doffs only give passive boosts and no click abilities, it has no impact on the perceived control over the ships (this is in contrast to e.g. disabling P2W consoles in PVP).
Disabling them in PVP means that PVE remains unaffected and the problem of balancing them for both single players (in PVE) or groups of 5 stacking certain types (in PVP) is not solved, but sidestepped. And I think that sidestepping major problems by using easy solutions is better than trying to find a complex solution, given Cryptic's lack of manpower and interest for these issues.
2) Make the sci resist skills in the skill tree work only against NPCs (including pets in PVP)
STO has always had a skill tree that allowed one to basically fully maximise any one build. So balancing against a build with all abilities fully specced was a sensible approach. Prior to the skill tree revamp in S5, we had no resist skills in the skill tree. The introduction of these resist skills meant a much larger variance in how abilities affect players and thus a much wider range of possible scenarios that needed to be balanced (and obviously weren't).
I propose once again to sidestep the underlying issue by making the sci resist skills apply only against NPCs and pets. Again this leaves PVE entirely unaffected, makes PVP easier to balance, restores abilities like CPB and TachBeam to usefulness and most importantly does all that without having to touch the skill tree itself.
By having the resist skills still apply against pets in PVP, the issue of excessive carrier pets is not made worse than it already is and it also opens up a way to balance pet abilities without hurting the players themselves.
The problems:
1) Proliferation of SNB doffs
The latest lock boxes have caused a flood of SNB doffs. This made their prices drop so low that entire teams have been able to outfit their players with 3 SNB doffs per player. Now you can do the math and find out that a team with 15 SNB doffs among them will generate an SNB proc roughly every 8 seconds. This makes any meaningful gameplay impossible.
2) BFI doffs
The massive healing from BFI doffs that makes all ship classes and professions extremely tanky has lead to a situation where matches between evenly matches teams take multiple hours to end. It can partially be overcome by bringing more SNBs and more spike damage, but ultimately forces teams to run near-perfect full team setups all the time to avoid these extremely long and boring fights.
3) Useless Sci abilities
The skill tree revamp introduced resist skills that have made abilities like e.g. CPB/TachBeam essentially useless for PVP because everyone is specced into the relevant resist skills. This has lead to even more dominance of healing and a significant reduction in the value of sci ships.
P2W consoles and carrier pets are also a problem, but those would need to be balanced by slightly tweaking the numbers (details which I won't try to do because my proposals would be ignored anyway) or changes that would inevitably also affect PVE.
The solution:
I will only outline two very basic ideas and don't make any suggestions as to which abilities could also have their numbers tweaked. It is more important to find a way to deal with the fundamental flaws in the current system than it is to do fine adjustment of some individual abilities.
1) Disable Doffs for PVP
This is a radical step, but it would instantly fix all balance problem from Doffs and since Doffs only give passive boosts and no click abilities, it has no impact on the perceived control over the ships (this is in contrast to e.g. disabling P2W consoles in PVP).
Disabling them in PVP means that PVE remains unaffected and the problem of balancing them for both single players (in PVE) or groups of 5 stacking certain types (in PVP) is not solved, but sidestepped. And I think that sidestepping major problems by using easy solutions is better than trying to find a complex solution, given Cryptic's lack of manpower and interest for these issues.
2) Make the sci resist skills in the skill tree work only against NPCs (including pets in PVP)
STO has always had a skill tree that allowed one to basically fully maximise any one build. So balancing against a build with all abilities fully specced was a sensible approach. Prior to the skill tree revamp in S5, we had no resist skills in the skill tree. The introduction of these resist skills meant a much larger variance in how abilities affect players and thus a much wider range of possible scenarios that needed to be balanced (and obviously weren't).
I propose once again to sidestep the underlying issue by making the sci resist skills apply only against NPCs and pets. Again this leaves PVE entirely unaffected, makes PVP easier to balance, restores abilities like CPB and TachBeam to usefulness and most importantly does all that without having to touch the skill tree itself.
By having the resist skills still apply against pets in PVP, the issue of excessive carrier pets is not made worse than it already is and it also opens up a way to balance pet abilities without hurting the players themselves.
Post edited by fakehilbert on
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Comments
This is exactly what needs to happen. It would be the easiest, best solution. It would remove the necessity for the Devs to rebalance sci skills and remove the lulfest DOFFs which have taken balance and thrown it out the window.
DOFF's are clearly intended to be as powerful/important to your ship and character progression as your weapon, console, shield, engine, and deflector choices, though, the UI's poor design sticks them over in a corner where new folks aren't likely to notice or interact with them. DOff's also have the potential, and even currently do, open up a wide variety of ship builds that are not viable without them.
I cannot support this suggestion.
2. I don't particularly agree with this point, either. That said, resistances are so fickle to balance, I don't know if this wouldn't be a better way to handle them. Once powers w/ resistances are strong enough to really be dangerous, resistances become a mandatory tax when creating a character (this is, kind of, what we have now, bring passive resistances or be murdered by Science), made worse when there isn't a worthwhile trade-off for not taking them. On the other hand, if powers are weak enough that no resistances are required, then you just ignore them and nobody ever specs into resistances because it's become a trap option that punishes players who are new and unfamiliar with the mechanics of the game.
The best mechanics here are active counters... if passive resistances are to stay, they must have a meaningful trade-off when building your character. You have to give up something else that's really useful, and they (the resistances) have to be good enough to be a choice worth seriously considering.
I support this, only in so far as the current skill system does not provide a meaningful cost for speccing in to defenses. If that were remedied, then I'd be against it as well.
Already exist doffs like that in the game and it could be a easy solution for Cryptic without killing the entire doffs
www.divisionhispana.com
This idea makes too much sense.
The SNB doff is a cheesy little doff, requires not a single skill, and its simply adding another random factor chance to an already unstable and unbalanced pvp system.
I bet its getting more horrible now. Yet we all complain, yet we all toss 3 of them stacked onto our ships.
-MT
yes, and the common sense bear is never going to reach systems to kcik em where it hurts. How long has this been put to the Devs from the PvP community? 10month, 12??? How much have you gotten in response, by all the new Devs working their behinds off for pvp?
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
By the Way, the SNB duty officer is the only one that gives players a Career specific Profession ability. That alone makes it BS>
No, I think what needs to happen is that the system teams need to maybe consider PVP when they do things. Right now, everything seemingly is decided with only PVE in mind.
i know for sure none of the super kirk builds i enjoy puging with would have half their ability to actually do well without the aid of doffs, they have become the 5 most important pieces of equipment you can have on your ship. several doffs do need a balance pass though, snb and bfi the most.
I agree that doffs have basically replaced build diversity, like back when we had non-set gear.
I really think that they overshot the target, chroniton DBB coming next..... there is no turning back, and there is no balancing this TRIBBLE anymore...it is what it is.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Limit every doff to 1 instead of 3 imo.
This^
Let's do a cd pass instead.
CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that?
Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
Keep in mind that the category would then get limited, so the impact would be beyond the single DOFF in question.
The SNB Doff is an Energy Weapons Officer, and you can currently slot a maximum of 3 Energy Weapons Officers regardless of what their power is.
So that change would then limit the following EWOs as well to 1 total (as in you could slot any one of those only or one SNB doff and that's your maximum):
EWO: Chance to reduce the time for any subsystem targeting attack to recharge after use.
EWO: Chance to reduce recharge time on Cannon Rapid Fire and Cannon Volley.
EWO: Chance to reduce recharge time on Beam Overload and Fire at Will.
Those could obviously be brought in line to function well as a single slotted doff - but it's a consideration as it does defeat the purpose of Hilbert's OP.
EDIT: I found this after I posted.
On the other hand the Field Generator change proves that it can be done if they actually want it.
Maybe some kind of "global cooldown" for Doffs could help? Assign each Doff a category (the ones they have now) and a sub-category (the effect they do) and make limits like "no more than 3 of the main category and no more than 1 (or 2,3) of the sub-category".
But this doesn't solve the problem of them having to run cleanup scripts which apparently their database isn't designed to do.
Allow me to translate that quote:
"if you think we're going to change a doff ppl spend money on to open, you all are out of your ****ing minds. I suppose that may be true though since you guys continue to complain about balance and after three years you continue to expect a different result."
This game blows
Either have DOFF abilities removed from PvP in its entirety, or limited the number of items making them 1x unique.
I just learned I am out of my mind. Thank you!
This is exactly one of the solution I proposed in another thread today, and my fav by far.
If you get out some now useless sci ability and bring in some active counter, you could re-balance the game this way.
1) de-nerf (re-empower) sci abilities.
2) give active runtime counters as natural abilities to sci players and to rare sci doffs.
Counters should do things as shutting down GW or TR, disable tractor beams or tachyon beams currently firing on allied ships, give protection or reverse the effect of shockwaves, bursts, sensor scans and sensor jamming/scrambling.
There could be more expensive free-for-all counters like the famous CounterSpell in Magic The Gathering, or less expensive restricted range counters (expensiveness measured in boff level and/or recharge time).
This would force a PVP team into bringing a sci ship along for the ride to provide counters at least, and give more play-style options to sci players.
For this to work, it would be useful to introduce the ability to switch Boff at during combat. This would give sci ships the ability to switch between completely different tactical modes depending on the combat phase; it's not a thing you will want to do or be able to do as you'd regulate your power levels, but as the target of a PVE match changes, or as the phase of a team PvP match changes, you'll want to change the way you approach the fight. Also, this would give non-science players the ability to bring in some counters as spare abilities to be employed as they see science based tactics thrown against them.
Finally, this would be good for Perfect World/Cryptic finances. This would give a reason to buy extra Boff slots and ships with multi Boff stations.
So, what are you waiting for, Cryptic? -- at least boff switch during combat, maybe with a lead-in time as the boff is being switched of, say, 10 seconds to have any of the new ability ready, is a thing you can put in a single weekly update!
LOVE IT!!! BTW Magic was a great card game. Played it since 1992 and am just now selling off my collection. :P
I realized I fit into einsteins definition of insanity long ago by continuing to do the same thing over and over but expecting a different result in this game
A queue option for "clean" PVP in a competitive environment with actual balance would be so nice. It's sad to see the pvp balance go downhill and even the one dev who seems to care (thanks, Borticus) doesn't appear to understand how dire the situation really is.
I am starting to worry that the only real way to fix Startrek Online would be to launch Startrek Online 2... There is too much already in place, too much interdependencies, to really clean things up.
Also add to that list make a tier 6 rank and level for all the tier 6 ships fighting along side tier 5 ships.
This game is not getting fixed. When are you idiots going to realize nobody is doing anything to balance pvp. Yes certain powers got fixed recently notice I said fixed not balanced. Fixing is double work that shouldn't have had to be done. So no pvp is not getting attention. No thanks are deserved and nobody collects $200 for passing go. Just keep getting played like ******* by them they enjoy your a--hole. Im so glad everything I own comes from either farmed dilthium or energy credits. I am proud to not be one of these jackasses dropping $100's to $1,000's of dollars cause they have no skill to kill. : )
Another quality post brought to you by...totallyrolled
Many new flavour Doffs, some of the P2W consoles, etc can be excluded from the PvP arena. The queue should have a pvp tag check like the shuttle check for STFs or the vault.
I still think in a private pvp anything should go, sometimes people just want to test something in a controlled environment.
What cryptic needs to get is that by having PvP such a disaster it does nothing for their bottom line, if you want people to enjoy and play part of the game you need to have it working, only then will people start to pay.
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Many of us have asked for this change in the past. Bort has made it clear that they wont even consider disabling consoles and doffs. This leaves our only option to try to "appeal" to bort and the other devs to try to balance all this garbage the best they can. Bort has shown that he's listening by spending a significant amount of time in these forums and even making some changes based on our feedback. If this would have been happening a year ago, this games pvp wouldn't be in the trouble it is today. Bort has got a tough job ahead of him if his goal is to get pvp back on track, but if he keeps chipping away at it the way he is, I believe it is possible. The history of devs involved in pvp has obviously been rocky, but I hope bort is here for the long haul.
well not the most eloquent, but who is really trolling here. Cryptic by releasing unbalanced and broken item directly on holodeck, which is when Bort apparently starts to care about it, or Dan making one empty promise after the other, with zip to show for it...freighter Mission, new maps, leaderboards, new tech, starbase PvP, PWE really wanting two faction open world pvp, Kerrat getting fixed....
Or totally, who simply points out that despite all the full mouthed marketing pitches, nothing has happened, and nothing ever will. Simply because it was to difficult/time consuming in the past, and it sure as hell hasn't gotten any easier.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013