It's not only about killing, it's also about healing. Most people tend to ignore the second score in the game, and it's the worst mistake someone joining a pvp queue can do.
Yeah. My recollection from my times PvPing in STO was that while escorts kill best, winning a match generally involved things that escorts weren't as good at. Like not dying.
Granted, we now have some escorts with hull close to the low end of what cruisers get.
But that's ultimately a question of whether new ships are better than old ships. And I'd say that's the case.
Two teams, each with a mix of Odyssey, Armitage, and Atrox is probably a pretty fair fight. And by fair, I mean, equally dirty. If you show up in an Assault Cruiser (non-Fleet) to that fight you better be packing some sweet consoles and know how to work the ship.
Yeah. My recollection from my times PvPing in STO was that while escorts kill best, winning a match generally involved things that escorts weren't as good at. Like not dying.
Granted, we now have some escorts with hull close to the low end of what cruisers get.
But that's ultimately a question of whether new ships are better than old ships. And I'd say that's the case.
Two teams, each with a mix of Odyssey, Armitage, and Atrox is probably a pretty fair fight. And by fair, I mean, equally dirty. If you show up in an Assault Cruiser (non-Fleet) to that fight you better be packing some sweet consoles and know how to work the ship.
The pvp requirements are pretty low, especially if you pug it, so it's not a matter of ship. A good ship helps but I often tear up odyssey hulls with my carrier - this shoudln't be possible if the player was good enough.
Free ships can be an issue. Not a major one if the player is good enough but it's up to the dev team tp give us some decent free ships if they want to give pvp a second life. But such ships wouldn't be immediately profitable and wouldn't give instant money, and it's not the kind of investment cryptic/pwe makes.
My own experience with the game in general was that I hated playing cruisers until I dug out my Galaxy-X, strapped in Mk XII weapons, 1 DHC, and a subspace jump console for EZ mode alpha strikes.
Now... I've pumped all my in-game resources (plus two months of PW survey taking, plus some cash spent on sales) into getting the two time ships and the three piece time set for the Mobius escort. On the surface, it's more or less like a Fleet Armitage minus a hanger bay and with a less optimal console loadout. But the consoles and set bonuses provide cheese to make up for my lack of skill in space. And as I maximize that cheese, I get better.
Learn every cheap trick your ship affords you and do your best to use those tricks.
Or fly a stock escort.
I'm not big on PvP but I tend to think MMO PvP is about two things:
1) For the player, maximizing your cheap tricks and gimmicks, both what you bring and when you use them. With maximum synergy.
2) For the developer, creating engaging scenarios, maps, and playstyles where those cheap tricks will backfire. True balance is either boring or impossible and is generally undesirable.
That's why the scenario matters and why any arena of less than 5v5 is a bad idea, because there's no work on the part of the development team there. It's just allowing people to grab their favorite object and bludgeon eachother... and inevitably one guy will bring a nerf bat and another guy will bring an axe.
The pvp requirements are pretty low, especially if you pug it, so it's not a matter of ship. A good ship helps but I often tear up odyssey hulls with my carrier - this shoudln't be possible if the player was good enough.
Free ships can be an issue. Not a major one if the player is good enough but it's up to the dev team tp give us some decent free ships if they want to give pvp a second life. But such ships wouldn't be immediately profitable and wouldn't give instant money, and it's not the kind of investment cryptic/pwe makes.
I think they ought to have quarterly paid tournaments where the entry fee includes a ship.
PvP just doesn't work with TRUE F2P. PvE works great. (If my teammate is overpowered? AWESOME.) PvP effectively needs to go back to the subscription model for western gamers.
and here we go again! i am a cruiser, why cant i kill anything.
1-proper gear
2-know how to fly your ship
3-if you pug dont complain, learn teamwork
4-know your role
a engineer is all about keeping alive and keeping others alive not about pure dps. that does not mean there are not good engineers who dont throw out impressive numbers but know your role.
i fly everything, have 6 toons. believe it or not i love to pvp in science ships even though sci has been nerfed to death. just rethinking my obvious role within a team made a world of difference in my performance. i dont care about how much dps i can throw out. i care about how my abilities can help enhance my team and how i can help keeping my team alive in the fight. i have learned how not to make attention to myself and when needed when to bug out. just changing how i play and not worrying about the numbers actually helped my numbers and most importantly my team. does that mean i never get my butt kicked at times, no. but i learned most of all what this game is actually about.
now remember almost nobody has a final build. we all are looking for just a little more and can get very obsessive. someone just moving into va end pvp has a lot of work refining your build and learning how to pvp correctly. even the guys who have a year or more experience will tell you it is the hardest learning curve to even become average within a pvp event.
stop complaining, pick a bunch of vets brains and learn from your mistakes. and when you think you know it all a whole new set of issues will show themselves. the training never ends.
This is a common symptom of the generally atrocious skill level of the majority of sto's playerbase.
So what you're saying is, it's entirely the fault of the players, and that you don't see any balance issue in a Star Trek game where a single science vessel can easily solo a Borg Tactical Cube, yet it takes a small armada to bring a tiny escort down?
Show me the episode where Picard soloed a Borg cube in the Enterprise-D, and the episode of DS9 where Sisko survived a combined assault by 5 Galors in the Defiant, and I'll retract my statement.
So what you're saying is, it's entirely the fault of the players, and that you don't see any balance issue in a Star Trek game where a single science vessel can easily solo a Borg Tactical Cube, yet it takes a small armada to bring a tiny escort down?
Show me the episode where Picard soloed a Borg cube in the Enterprise-D, and the episode of DS9 where Sisko survived a combined assault by 5 Galors in the Defiant, and I'll retract my statement.
Show me an episode that takes place in a Videogame
So what you're saying is, it's entirely the fault of the players, and that you don't see any balance issue in a Star Trek game where a single science vessel can easily solo a Borg Tactical Cube, yet it takes a small armada to bring a tiny escort down?
Show me the episode where Picard soloed a Borg cube in the Enterprise-D, and the episode of DS9 where Sisko survived a combined assault by 5 Galors in the Defiant, and I'll retract my statement.
I don't know that's the case.
In general, though, I think STO's documentation is missing and/or inconvenient to find. I know some people who are both Trekkies and MMO theorycrafters who couldn't get past the density of technobabble in STO. They see something like "+31 to Starship Gyro-Sensor Systems" and they think the game is more complicated than it is. When something in another game like "+5% to Resilience, +22 to Resilience rating" would be a snap for them.
I also think (and I expect this will go over like a ton of bricks) that one necessity of PvP is limiting what people can do with skill and planning so that it's not as pronounced an advantage over newbs.
So, y'know... Better education, less advantage for being educated.
Oh... And Voyager soloed a cube. And Sisko took on a fleet by himself more than once. And it's STO's fundamental design to build on that kind of play. And what does that have to do with PvP?
This game is designed for cubes/fleets of enemies to be minions and players to be bosses. A player in a shuttle will be harder than a Borg cube because it has a player in it and players are designed to be, like, James T. Kirk times ten. And that's the CORE, the HEART of what STO is. Other things can be polished or negotiated.
You are James T. Kirk in the Kobayashi Maru scenario, basically, where the enemies drop their shields and surrender. And every other player is also James T. Kirk in the Kobayashi Maru. Two players in shuttles facing off is like a clash between gods whereas NPCs are largely secondary nobodys unless propped up by plot armor or they're enemies in something like an STF.
You're Superman, They're bank robbers and muggers. You're King Arthur. They're some feudal land baron without a name. Except for STFs, strong story missions... and PvP, where everyone you face is a legendary hero on par with you or moreso.
Maybe it would be less noticeable if PvP had a few hundred easy-to-kill NPC ships on each side to help feed player ego.
In general, though, I think STO's documentation is missing and/or inconvenient to find. I know some people who are both Trekkies and MMO theorycrafters who couldn't get past the density of technobabble in STO. They see something like "+31 to Starship Gyro-Sensor Systems" and they think the game is more complicated than it is. When something in another game like "+5% to Resilience, +22 to Resilience rating" would be a snap for them.
I also think (and I expect this will go over like a ton of bricks) that one necessity of PvP is limiting what people can do with skill and planning so that it's not as pronounced an advantage over newbs.
So, y'know... Better education, less advantage for being educated.
Oh... And Voyager soloed a cube. And Sisko took on a fleet by himself more than once. And it's STO's fundamental design to build on that kind of play. And what does that have to do with PvP?
This game is designed for cubes/fleets of enemies to be minions and players to be bosses. A player in a shuttle will be harder than a Borg cube because it has a player in it and players are designed to be, like, James T. Kirk times ten. And that's the CORE, the HEART of what STO is. Other things can be polished or negotiated.
You are James T. Kirk in the Kobayashi Maru scenario, basically, where the enemies drop their shields and surrender. And every other player is also James T. Kirk in the Kobayashi Maru. Two players in shuttles facing off is like a clash between gods whereas NPCs are largely secondary nobodys unless propped up by plot armor or they're enemies in something like an STF.
You're Superman, They're bank robbers and muggers. You're King Arthur. They're some feudal land baron without a name. Except for STFs, strong story missions... and PvP, where everyone you face is a legendary hero on par with you or moreso.
Maybe it would be less noticeable if PvP had a few hundred easy-to-kill NPC ships on each side to help feed player ego.
There may be issues with class balance but it's more disparity between different ships and different players. And every post I've made in this thread has been about proposing changes, while trying to look at what IS broken.
What's broken:
It's hard to learn in STO. (Bad thing. Players can be guided and taught better.)
People who do learn can curbstomp people who are new. (To an extent, bad thing. Skill should factor in but a new player shouldn't be like an ant going up against an elephant.)
There's a mix of gear levels and ships are not supposed to be balanced. Which is great for PvE and the C-Store but bad for PvP.
Class imbalance can be GOOD in an MMO but PvP scenarios here may not be utilizing those imbalances to create compelling gameplay. The problem is when killing becomes the goal rather than an avenue to a goal or when people start trying to operate solo.
If I worked for Cryptic and designed STO to be a dueling game, I personally would have made it so there are three durability resources: Evasion, Shields, and Hull. The three would be roughly comparable and firepower would be roughly comparable but they would have different weaknesses and strengths when it comes to weapon types, rate of fire, etc. I probably would also enable Captains to multi-profession and swap professions to whatever they want to use with their ship.
That is not STO. In STO, a Bird of Prey is paper mache but rugged and unpredictable whereas a Galaxy class is durable but more limited in terms of attack capabilities. (It can, in fact, have high damage potential but that requires situational planning and it is not optimal damage.)
STO uses a variation of the RPG trinity system at its core. One class absorbs damage and deals some. One class deals the best damage. One class deals some damage and adjusts allies damage dealing and absorbing potential and/or adjusts enemies' damage dealing and potential. That is CORE design, integral, non-negotiable, intrinsic, the concept of the game. That can be played with only by matters of degree, really.
On top of that, ships that cost money are supposed to perform better, by design, although lack of matching for PvP can be a problem. An unfortunate element that can be addressed is that the game trains players poorly and players who self-educate well have an almost insurmountable advantage.
In a trinity system game, the goal of any well designed PvP match is NOT to kill but to carry out an objective that other players will interfere with. You may kill eachother to further the objective but it's not the core point if the match is well designed... and you can't design a good match around killing.
Instead, there need to be objectives which are necessary for victory which rely on having team members who don't kill but, for example, survive while carrying out an objective like crossing dangerous terrain, ferrying cargo past enemies, etc.
The problem is with judging PvP viability on killing potential, something I think Cryptic and players will both have to cope better with.
So what you're saying is, it's entirely the fault of the players, and that you don't see any balance issue in a Star Trek game where a single science vessel can easily solo a Borg Tactical Cube, yet it takes a small armada to bring a tiny escort down?
Show me the episode where Picard soloed a Borg cube in the Enterprise-D, and the episode of DS9 where Sisko survived a combined assault by 5 Galors in the Defiant, and I'll retract my statement.
Yes, that's exactly it.
Blah blah - canon- blah blah blah
Show me an episode where I give a damn. I'm playing sto, not watching reruns of tng. As I said in an earlier post, there is no plot armour in pvp. How you do is largely down to how you and your setup stack with other real life people that are trying to beat you, not brainless HP bags.
Completley at odds with what I just said, cf. VOY "Endgame"
Lack of system mastery is without a doubt the main 'barrier to entry' for top tier STO play be it PvP or crushing Elite STFs while half asleep.
The problem is just how 'cryptic' the game mechanics are shown to a player in-game and the general lack of interest and huge amount of mis-information that most players have.
Ask ten random players the following questions and see what their answers are.
do tac consoles stack (yes, additively)
do dual cannons proc more often than dual heavy cannons (no)
does auxiliary power improves turn rate. (no, it used to though)
does weapon power over 125 improve DPS (yes, as of this exact moment, but if the moon changes phases or the tide is high then the answer might be no)
And how can you learn the answers to those questions? Where is the in-game documentation, proper tool-tips, or displays? Hell half of the tooltips in this game either flat out LIE or are so misleading its not even funny.
If you don't give the player the information needed to make a proper decision in a GAME how can you expect them to actually make the correct one?
And don't get me started on the amount of things in the game that appear to be good but are actually junk.
Nor will it kill it. The cruiser will be forced to go on an endless healing spree, futilely blasting away while the escort zips around it staying at 99% - 100% hull and shield strength the entire time. Does that sound like fun PvP to you?
PvP should not consist of spamming heals on yourself while shooting rubber bullets at everyone else.
The cruiser in question could put its resist buffs, shield heals and hull resists and heals into effect while using a series of high Weapon power bursts delivered with DEM or a series of high weapon power supported beam overloads with a TB trapped foe to devestating effect in combat.
Granted the rampant use of TB means anti-TB abilities are in high use right now.
Cruisers can do DPS and survive very well. What makes many think they can not is when an unprepared Cruiser dies to a escort alpha because they where unprepared for it.
i'm quite sure the guy who made the thread was just trolling. nobody with some common sense can expect to rock PVP in a 2 year old MMO after he hit VA 10 days earlier.
also he never joined into the conversation again. a dead giveaway for trolling.
Instead of buffing the escorts just have the devs bring out new weapons that compete with the cannons. And reduce the damage dealt from the powers/abilities from the escorts?
i'm quite sure the guy who made the thread was just trolling. nobody with some common sense can expect to rock PVP in a 2 year old MMO after he hit VA 10 days earlier.
also he never joined into the conversation again. a dead giveaway for trolling.
I'd have to agree. We don't know his exact build. We don't know his boff layout. We don't know OP's captain type, or how his skill points are allocated. We don't know who he died to. We don't know who he was healing. We don't know who was healing him. Because we were told none of these things.
Did he use his CDs responsibly, to drag out the attack? Or did he oh-***** and burn them all at once, the moment he started taking fire, letting his enemies hang back for 30 seconds before trashing him in 10, because he had no heals left?
Frankly, I'd love a good cruiser backing me up in PvP. An escort can only deal damage when it's in the game and running; you don't do DPS when you're waiting to respawn.
Instead of buffing the escorts just have the devs bring out new weapons that compete with the cannons. And reduce the damage dealt from the powers/abilities from the escorts?
Beams used to compete (before the NERFs) and what they lacked in shear DPS, a crusier/Sci could make up for via survivablilty. The problem here was and is the same problem that has been in Cryptic development since day-1. OverNERF, the latest being the ACC NERF for beams in general.
There has also been sooooo many DPS adds (it seems DPS sells) to just sell something in the C-Store that it is now standard procedure to either macro or micro-manage (lots to keys to smash) EptS 1 and 2 at least along with sci sheilded heals/resists just to have half a chance. This is also becoming the standard in end-game PVE as well now due to developers adding all these 1-hit kills. Most new people to PVP either don't get this idea, don't have a G-board to set up a half-baked macro running (problems with this due to nothing more than the engine failure to pick up on keystrokes), or just lack co-ordination to run that many buttons every 15-30 secs. These deals are simply not needed in leveling PVE content and the game does not "teach" the player to use all of these buffs/powers to their best ability.
All these NERFs have lead crusiers to basicly have no role in PVP gameplay. With the latest Sci NERFs the same is about true there as well. STO has CHANGED to be a purely DPS reliant game with survivabilty of little consequence. No ship is going to survive a focus of 5good escorts in a alpha (altho back before the DPS C-Store adds a good crusier could). Now, it's a basic need for maybe 1 crusier, and then only the "pay-to-live" Oddy fashioned as a heal-boat only on the typ PVP team. Maybe then, 1 or 2 Sci, for nothing more than crowd control and then at least 2 if not 3 escorts for shear damage dealing. Fact is, you can easily get rid of the heal-boat and even the sci as PVP is dependant upon high DPS. Escorts come with that inherant "get the flock outtta dodge" ability and if used and built properly it can be so useful to the extent that the other 2 profs can become redundant to the team, not to even mention my fleet patrol escort runs higher "tanking" resists than my excel does due to the simple fact the escort does not need a power transfer eng console to make the 4 dual heavys work.
The game, good, bad, or indifferent, has became "Escorts Online" now and Cryptic development has gotten this result via their own actions.
Lack of system mastery is without a doubt the main 'barrier to entry' for top tier STO play be it PvP or crushing Elite STFs while half asleep.
Ask ten random players the following questions and see what their answers are.
do tac consoles stack (yes, additively)
do dual cannons proc more often than dual heavy cannons (no)
does auxiliary power improves turn rate. (no, it used to though)
does weapon power over 125 improve DPS (yes, as of this exact moment, but if the moon changes phases or the tide is high then the answer might be no)
And how can you learn the answers to those questions? Where is the in-game documentation, proper tool-tips, or displays? Hell half of the tooltips in this game either flat out LIE or are so misleading its not even funny.
Oh yeah. STO is an incredibly wiki-heavy and even then there's an incredible amount of Trial and Error involved. (The Wiki can be really wrong too...)
For example:
How the hell would I know what the best weapon mod is? In most games it's Damage, but in STO it's Accuracy.
How would I know that Traits can have a huge impact in game and you cannot change them?
How do you know that you need remodulators to fight endgame Borg? I made an utter fool of myself on Defera for a long time.
Oh yeah. STO is an incredibly wiki-heavy and even then there's an incredible amount of Trial and Error involved. (The Wiki can be really wrong too...)
For example:
How the hell would I know what the best weapon mod is? In most games it's Damage, but in STO it's Accuracy.
How would I know that Traits can have a huge impact in game and you cannot change them?
How do you know that you need remodulators to fight endgame Borg? I made an utter fool of myself on Defera for a long time.
STO needs better tutorials. Plain and simple.
Heck, it needs tutorials to begin with. STFs are a real laugh when you get grouped with total newbies, and it's really not their fault. You hit level, and are told to go talk to Colonel Klink on DS9. So you go talk to the fashion victim, and he gives you a widget to buy a nifty weapon or other gizmo that you're going to level past in the next two hours of gameplay. He tells you good luck, and we'll see you on the field. You meander over and talk to Roxy, Retail Helper extraordinaire, get your gizzy from one of her minions, then figure out the queue.
Then proceed to get yelled at by people because nothing in the game actually told you what to expect from these missions, what to bring, the fact that you would need a remodulator; and here you are, clueless, fighting amped-up Borg in STFs, hours of gameplay before you've even encountered them in the story arc. (Because you're probably still in the Romulan arc at this point.)
I've played console shooters with more tutorial pop-ups in the first level than this game provides over the entire course of the story arc.
-Too much pay to win ships/consoles
-Too much burst
-Large gear gap between mk xii purples from stfs and mk xi blues.
-Roaming fleets smashing pug teams.
Currently doing alot of LT.Commander & commander pvp and enjoying it very much limited boff slots and almost 0 pay to win ships/consoles & you actually have real fights instead of instagibs.
If the real concern here is escorts, the solution is probably to let escorts trade DPS for more meaningful evasion tanking, probably via low DPS dual heavies that enhance survivability in some way -- like a low DPS dual heavy with baked in plasmodic leech that enhances engines and evasion instead of power levels -- and Tac consoles with strong evasion boosts. That would allow for tankier escorts without being OP and you could choose how much firepower to sacrifice for survivability.
If the real concern here is escorts, the solution is probably to let escorts trade DPS for more meaningful evasion tanking, probably via low DPS dual heavies that enhance survivability in some way -- like a low DPS dual heavy with baked in plasmodic leech that enhances engines and evasion instead of power levels -- and Tac consoles with strong evasion boosts. That would allow for tankier escorts without being OP and you could choose how much firepower to sacrifice for survivability.
This idea could also be done for cruisers to. Honestly they should just bring out new weapons for cruisers to compete with cannons and also maybe lower the abilities powers.
Cruisers useless in PvP? Not really, in the right hands they are virtually indestructable. There is one PvPer that was a cruiser captain and knew how to survive. But unless you are at that level, Cruisers are death traps in PvP.
That's why they should look at my sig and learn from those guides.
A well built Cruiser can survive most things thrown at it. It is the easiest ship to fly too.
This seems like an odd statement to make considering what I've witnessed in very nearly every PvP match I've ever been over the last two years - escorts ripping everything apart in 2 - 3 seconds, taking zero damage even while having three ships focus fire on them, all while the cruisers burned endlessly in space, scoring no kills.
It can happen if the players in question are using horrible builds or if they get overwhelmed.
That goes back to the team game part of PvP. If you're not getting support from the rest, you will eventually die to those who can do damage.
Read my siglink for more insight into how to play the game in PvP.
It has detailed analysis from some of its best players.
I do not find Cruisers to be useless in PvP by any means.
Yes they are useless. Currently at the this time, the new meta is all about escorts and dps. Cruisers are designed bad in this game. The whole game is designed bad. The whole mechanics are designed bad. That's why no one pvps anymore because of the constant imbalances, bad mechanics, exploits, hacking, cheats that are STILL out or well hidden that Cryptic knows little or nothing about.
Of course though my escort fanboys will ALWAYS deny that everything is fine yet it really isnt. I have the bug ship and it's grossly overpowered. Escorts in general are overpowered. When I see cruisers doing no damage to my escorts that I pilot and I can blow them up with no fear and I mean against the good players, not just any random player, something then is seriously wrong with the mechanics of balance.
Federation Cruisers currently are designed to do no damage due to bad mechanics and design. Federation Science ships are on the same boat.
Deny it all you want but the developers are currently interested in the dollar right now for this game. Every ask Cryptic doesn't answer the hard questions that need to be answered and only worthless questions are answered to due to making their business look good when it's really in bad shape.
Dan Stahl " STALLS * this game more than most people realize yet people hold him and his development team like a god or deity. It's rather pathetic and disappointing how easy people get their hopes up and do so blindly.
I have no hope for this game and never will because it's been 3 damn years and nothing really has been changed, except of course the C-Store. Most of the money in this game is going to towards the development of C-Store and promotions for it. We need CONTENT, we need BALANCE, we need BETTER MECHANICS.
But whatever, this is why I don't play this game anymore.
It can happen if the players in question are using horrible builds or if they get overwhelmed.
That goes back to the team game part of PvP. If you're not getting support from the rest, you will eventually die to those who can do damage.
Read my siglink for more insight into how to play the game in PvP.
It has detailed analysis from some of its best players.
These are some decent guides, per the design that STO has today. However.......,
Mav starts his crusier guide with the cold, hard, facts of today's STO. If you decide to run a crus, you are a SUPPORT Profession, nothing more, nothing less. Sci ends up about the same via crowd control. "Stop em so the escort can kill them or heal the escort so it can continue to do it's damage". And then, really to "excel" in that, you have to pick up the "pay-to-live" Oddy and spec for basicly NO damage what-so-ever. Wouldn't really matter if you could spec for some damage as the turn rate is basicly nothing. The typ flying brick. A support prof is not the easiest role to play and is an acquired taiste. This is why healers are few and far between in just about any MMO.
Altho there are times when I can run K and my excel still shines, those days are few and far between now as that ship has been severaly outclassed and it's original design was an in-between a crus and an escort. And the new sov is basicly an excel that trades ET1 for TT1 with less turn rate. Hardly an upgrade. However, most of those times I'm not running up against well co-ordinated and well equiped pre-mades to do it. The over NERFs to beams does not help anything while even the skillbox revamps added extreme spike damage from nothing really more than points in a 1st level box choice for basicly, Tacs.
The main problem is there is basicly no damage buffs for eng and sci, and the tanking buffs have long since been forgotten about and not re-newed to complete with the "
newer" tac buffs with all the adds. And the poster above is very correct that STO has become a purly DPS reliant game now, even in the newer PVE content as well, via the P2W added to the C-Store, NERFs to beams via ACC, NERFs to healing and tanking via the skillbox revamps, and patches (any1 remember how RSP used to be?), and added damage via the new weapons and skills.
He's also correct that some escorts are very OP. Expecialy the bug. However, my new "fleet" patrol escort, with 4 DHCs in ft, now runs better resists than the excel as I can use all 4 console slots to add resists instead of power management for the typ 6 beam layout. The escort, in these 2 cases anyway, out-tanks the tank.
It's hard to have vibrant PVP gameplay when 2 out of the 3 classes are nothing more than support for the 1 decent class or they just melt. Not worth it to the typ player no matter what the in game rewards are. And if you really want to see dead PVP, add a PVP stat all in itself and then only only received via PVP gameplay. Want proff? Go take a good look at TOR PVP.
I'm just guessing here, mind you, but I suspect he meant cannons not "dual" or "dual heavy" cannons. Cannons, while not as powerful as "dual" cannons, have a 180 degree firing arc. Turrets have 360 degree arc. Not that difficult, especially in a Vor'Cha, an Excelsior or even a Negh'Var with RCS console, to keep anything short of a BOP in the firing arc long enough to so some damage. Add torps on the aft and it's a pretty potent combo.
I have nothing but cannons and turrets in one of my Vorchas.I would say the OP need more time and exprience with his ship.He should get some help from friends and do some STFs to leanr how to play with people not npcs.
It has nothing to do with escorts.My Vorcha is Capted by my Klink geer.
Tac Capt here.:)
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]Age StarTrek-Gamers Administrator
USS WARRIOR NCC 1720 Commanding Officer Star Trek Gamers
What would you say if the game hadn't had any updates for almost the entirety of its 3 year life? Because that's the position PvP finds itself in. Its not just in STO, CO has a similar problem except its also burdened with map bugs that never get fixed. The problem is that Cryptic as a whole is even more allergic to PvP than they are to story content!
So no, PvP isn't working as intended. Its been slowly degenerating as Cryptic releases completely unbalanced and untested items. Worse, they keep changing the game so the required skill lessens as the patches come. So now we have people wondering why they can't stay at max range with Beam Arrays and one shot everything. Really, some players REALLY wonder what's wrong with the game because they can't do what I've just described.
Yes they are useless. Currently at the this time, the new meta is all about escorts and dps. Cruisers are designed bad in this game. The whole game is designed bad. The whole mechanics are designed bad. That's why no one pvps anymore because of the constant imbalances, bad mechanics, exploits, hacking, cheats that are STILL out or well hidden that Cryptic knows little or nothing about.
Of course though my escort fanboys will ALWAYS deny that everything is fine yet it really isnt. I have the bug ship and it's grossly overpowered. Escorts in general are overpowered. When I see cruisers doing no damage to my escorts that I pilot and I can blow them up with no fear and I mean against the good players, not just any random player, something then is seriously wrong with the mechanics of balance.
Federation Cruisers currently are designed to do no damage due to bad mechanics and design. Federation Science ships are on the same boat.
Deny it all you want but the developers are currently interested in the dollar right now for this game. Every ask Cryptic doesn't answer the hard questions that need to be answered and only worthless questions are answered to due to making their business look good when it's really in bad shape.
Dan Stahl " STALLS * this game more than most people realize yet people hold him and his development team like a god or deity. It's rather pathetic and disappointing how easy people get their hopes up and do so blindly.
I have no hope for this game and never will because it's been 3 damn years and nothing really has been changed, except of course the C-Store. Most of the money in this game is going to towards the development of C-Store and promotions for it. We need CONTENT, we need BALANCE, we need BETTER MECHANICS.
But whatever, this is why I don't play this game anymore.
This is one of the reasons why I stopped being a gold member.
Comments
Yeah. My recollection from my times PvPing in STO was that while escorts kill best, winning a match generally involved things that escorts weren't as good at. Like not dying.
Granted, we now have some escorts with hull close to the low end of what cruisers get.
But that's ultimately a question of whether new ships are better than old ships. And I'd say that's the case.
Two teams, each with a mix of Odyssey, Armitage, and Atrox is probably a pretty fair fight. And by fair, I mean, equally dirty. If you show up in an Assault Cruiser (non-Fleet) to that fight you better be packing some sweet consoles and know how to work the ship.
The pvp requirements are pretty low, especially if you pug it, so it's not a matter of ship. A good ship helps but I often tear up odyssey hulls with my carrier - this shoudln't be possible if the player was good enough.
Free ships can be an issue. Not a major one if the player is good enough but it's up to the dev team tp give us some decent free ships if they want to give pvp a second life. But such ships wouldn't be immediately profitable and wouldn't give instant money, and it's not the kind of investment cryptic/pwe makes.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Now... I've pumped all my in-game resources (plus two months of PW survey taking, plus some cash spent on sales) into getting the two time ships and the three piece time set for the Mobius escort. On the surface, it's more or less like a Fleet Armitage minus a hanger bay and with a less optimal console loadout. But the consoles and set bonuses provide cheese to make up for my lack of skill in space. And as I maximize that cheese, I get better.
Learn every cheap trick your ship affords you and do your best to use those tricks.
Or fly a stock escort.
I'm not big on PvP but I tend to think MMO PvP is about two things:
1) For the player, maximizing your cheap tricks and gimmicks, both what you bring and when you use them. With maximum synergy.
2) For the developer, creating engaging scenarios, maps, and playstyles where those cheap tricks will backfire. True balance is either boring or impossible and is generally undesirable.
That's why the scenario matters and why any arena of less than 5v5 is a bad idea, because there's no work on the part of the development team there. It's just allowing people to grab their favorite object and bludgeon eachother... and inevitably one guy will bring a nerf bat and another guy will bring an axe.
I think they ought to have quarterly paid tournaments where the entry fee includes a ship.
PvP just doesn't work with TRUE F2P. PvE works great. (If my teammate is overpowered? AWESOME.) PvP effectively needs to go back to the subscription model for western gamers.
1-proper gear
2-know how to fly your ship
3-if you pug dont complain, learn teamwork
4-know your role
a engineer is all about keeping alive and keeping others alive not about pure dps. that does not mean there are not good engineers who dont throw out impressive numbers but know your role.
i fly everything, have 6 toons. believe it or not i love to pvp in science ships even though sci has been nerfed to death. just rethinking my obvious role within a team made a world of difference in my performance. i dont care about how much dps i can throw out. i care about how my abilities can help enhance my team and how i can help keeping my team alive in the fight. i have learned how not to make attention to myself and when needed when to bug out. just changing how i play and not worrying about the numbers actually helped my numbers and most importantly my team. does that mean i never get my butt kicked at times, no. but i learned most of all what this game is actually about.
now remember almost nobody has a final build. we all are looking for just a little more and can get very obsessive. someone just moving into va end pvp has a lot of work refining your build and learning how to pvp correctly. even the guys who have a year or more experience will tell you it is the hardest learning curve to even become average within a pvp event.
stop complaining, pick a bunch of vets brains and learn from your mistakes. and when you think you know it all a whole new set of issues will show themselves. the training never ends.
So what you're saying is, it's entirely the fault of the players, and that you don't see any balance issue in a Star Trek game where a single science vessel can easily solo a Borg Tactical Cube, yet it takes a small armada to bring a tiny escort down?
Show me the episode where Picard soloed a Borg cube in the Enterprise-D, and the episode of DS9 where Sisko survived a combined assault by 5 Galors in the Defiant, and I'll retract my statement.
Show me an episode that takes place in a Videogame
I can find an episode where Riker soloed a cube
I don't know that's the case.
In general, though, I think STO's documentation is missing and/or inconvenient to find. I know some people who are both Trekkies and MMO theorycrafters who couldn't get past the density of technobabble in STO. They see something like "+31 to Starship Gyro-Sensor Systems" and they think the game is more complicated than it is. When something in another game like "+5% to Resilience, +22 to Resilience rating" would be a snap for them.
I also think (and I expect this will go over like a ton of bricks) that one necessity of PvP is limiting what people can do with skill and planning so that it's not as pronounced an advantage over newbs.
So, y'know... Better education, less advantage for being educated.
Oh... And Voyager soloed a cube. And Sisko took on a fleet by himself more than once. And it's STO's fundamental design to build on that kind of play. And what does that have to do with PvP?
This game is designed for cubes/fleets of enemies to be minions and players to be bosses. A player in a shuttle will be harder than a Borg cube because it has a player in it and players are designed to be, like, James T. Kirk times ten. And that's the CORE, the HEART of what STO is. Other things can be polished or negotiated.
You are James T. Kirk in the Kobayashi Maru scenario, basically, where the enemies drop their shields and surrender. And every other player is also James T. Kirk in the Kobayashi Maru. Two players in shuttles facing off is like a clash between gods whereas NPCs are largely secondary nobodys unless propped up by plot armor or they're enemies in something like an STF.
You're Superman, They're bank robbers and muggers. You're King Arthur. They're some feudal land baron without a name. Except for STFs, strong story missions... and PvP, where everyone you face is a legendary hero on par with you or moreso.
Maybe it would be less noticeable if PvP had a few hundred easy-to-kill NPC ships on each side to help feed player ego.
TL;DR version: PvP is 'working as intended?'
Even Gozer disagrees with that.
Too bad he's not around anymore.
Huh?
I just outlined how it should work.
There may be issues with class balance but it's more disparity between different ships and different players. And every post I've made in this thread has been about proposing changes, while trying to look at what IS broken.
What's broken:
It's hard to learn in STO. (Bad thing. Players can be guided and taught better.)
People who do learn can curbstomp people who are new. (To an extent, bad thing. Skill should factor in but a new player shouldn't be like an ant going up against an elephant.)
There's a mix of gear levels and ships are not supposed to be balanced. Which is great for PvE and the C-Store but bad for PvP.
Class imbalance can be GOOD in an MMO but PvP scenarios here may not be utilizing those imbalances to create compelling gameplay. The problem is when killing becomes the goal rather than an avenue to a goal or when people start trying to operate solo.
If I worked for Cryptic and designed STO to be a dueling game, I personally would have made it so there are three durability resources: Evasion, Shields, and Hull. The three would be roughly comparable and firepower would be roughly comparable but they would have different weaknesses and strengths when it comes to weapon types, rate of fire, etc. I probably would also enable Captains to multi-profession and swap professions to whatever they want to use with their ship.
That is not STO. In STO, a Bird of Prey is paper mache but rugged and unpredictable whereas a Galaxy class is durable but more limited in terms of attack capabilities. (It can, in fact, have high damage potential but that requires situational planning and it is not optimal damage.)
STO uses a variation of the RPG trinity system at its core. One class absorbs damage and deals some. One class deals the best damage. One class deals some damage and adjusts allies damage dealing and absorbing potential and/or adjusts enemies' damage dealing and potential. That is CORE design, integral, non-negotiable, intrinsic, the concept of the game. That can be played with only by matters of degree, really.
On top of that, ships that cost money are supposed to perform better, by design, although lack of matching for PvP can be a problem. An unfortunate element that can be addressed is that the game trains players poorly and players who self-educate well have an almost insurmountable advantage.
In a trinity system game, the goal of any well designed PvP match is NOT to kill but to carry out an objective that other players will interfere with. You may kill eachother to further the objective but it's not the core point if the match is well designed... and you can't design a good match around killing.
Instead, there need to be objectives which are necessary for victory which rely on having team members who don't kill but, for example, survive while carrying out an objective like crossing dangerous terrain, ferrying cargo past enemies, etc.
The problem is with judging PvP viability on killing potential, something I think Cryptic and players will both have to cope better with.
Yes, that's exactly it.
Blah blah - canon- blah blah blah
Show me an episode where I give a damn. I'm playing sto, not watching reruns of tng. As I said in an earlier post, there is no plot armour in pvp. How you do is largely down to how you and your setup stack with other real life people that are trying to beat you, not brainless HP bags.
Completley at odds with what I just said, cf. VOY "Endgame"
The problem is just how 'cryptic' the game mechanics are shown to a player in-game and the general lack of interest and huge amount of mis-information that most players have.
Ask ten random players the following questions and see what their answers are.
do tac consoles stack (yes, additively)
do dual cannons proc more often than dual heavy cannons (no)
does auxiliary power improves turn rate. (no, it used to though)
does weapon power over 125 improve DPS (yes, as of this exact moment, but if the moon changes phases or the tide is high then the answer might be no)
And how can you learn the answers to those questions? Where is the in-game documentation, proper tool-tips, or displays? Hell half of the tooltips in this game either flat out LIE or are so misleading its not even funny.
If you don't give the player the information needed to make a proper decision in a GAME how can you expect them to actually make the correct one?
And don't get me started on the amount of things in the game that appear to be good but are actually junk.
The cruiser in question could put its resist buffs, shield heals and hull resists and heals into effect while using a series of high Weapon power bursts delivered with DEM or a series of high weapon power supported beam overloads with a TB trapped foe to devestating effect in combat.
Granted the rampant use of TB means anti-TB abilities are in high use right now.
Cruisers can do DPS and survive very well. What makes many think they can not is when an unprepared Cruiser dies to a escort alpha because they where unprepared for it.
R.I.P
also he never joined into the conversation again. a dead giveaway for trolling.
I'd have to agree. We don't know his exact build. We don't know his boff layout. We don't know OP's captain type, or how his skill points are allocated. We don't know who he died to. We don't know who he was healing. We don't know who was healing him. Because we were told none of these things.
Did he use his CDs responsibly, to drag out the attack? Or did he oh-***** and burn them all at once, the moment he started taking fire, letting his enemies hang back for 30 seconds before trashing him in 10, because he had no heals left?
Frankly, I'd love a good cruiser backing me up in PvP. An escort can only deal damage when it's in the game and running; you don't do DPS when you're waiting to respawn.
Beams used to compete (before the NERFs) and what they lacked in shear DPS, a crusier/Sci could make up for via survivablilty. The problem here was and is the same problem that has been in Cryptic development since day-1. OverNERF, the latest being the ACC NERF for beams in general.
There has also been sooooo many DPS adds (it seems DPS sells) to just sell something in the C-Store that it is now standard procedure to either macro or micro-manage (lots to keys to smash) EptS 1 and 2 at least along with sci sheilded heals/resists just to have half a chance. This is also becoming the standard in end-game PVE as well now due to developers adding all these 1-hit kills. Most new people to PVP either don't get this idea, don't have a G-board to set up a half-baked macro running (problems with this due to nothing more than the engine failure to pick up on keystrokes), or just lack co-ordination to run that many buttons every 15-30 secs. These deals are simply not needed in leveling PVE content and the game does not "teach" the player to use all of these buffs/powers to their best ability.
All these NERFs have lead crusiers to basicly have no role in PVP gameplay. With the latest Sci NERFs the same is about true there as well. STO has CHANGED to be a purely DPS reliant game with survivabilty of little consequence. No ship is going to survive a focus of 5good escorts in a alpha (altho back before the DPS C-Store adds a good crusier could). Now, it's a basic need for maybe 1 crusier, and then only the "pay-to-live" Oddy fashioned as a heal-boat only on the typ PVP team. Maybe then, 1 or 2 Sci, for nothing more than crowd control and then at least 2 if not 3 escorts for shear damage dealing. Fact is, you can easily get rid of the heal-boat and even the sci as PVP is dependant upon high DPS. Escorts come with that inherant "get the flock outtta dodge" ability and if used and built properly it can be so useful to the extent that the other 2 profs can become redundant to the team, not to even mention my fleet patrol escort runs higher "tanking" resists than my excel does due to the simple fact the escort does not need a power transfer eng console to make the 4 dual heavys work.
The game, good, bad, or indifferent, has became "Escorts Online" now and Cryptic development has gotten this result via their own actions.
Oh yeah. STO is an incredibly wiki-heavy and even then there's an incredible amount of Trial and Error involved. (The Wiki can be really wrong too...)
For example:
How the hell would I know what the best weapon mod is? In most games it's Damage, but in STO it's Accuracy.
How would I know that Traits can have a huge impact in game and you cannot change them?
How do you know that you need remodulators to fight endgame Borg? I made an utter fool of myself on Defera for a long time.
STO needs better tutorials. Plain and simple.
Heck, it needs tutorials to begin with. STFs are a real laugh when you get grouped with total newbies, and it's really not their fault. You hit level, and are told to go talk to Colonel Klink on DS9. So you go talk to the fashion victim, and he gives you a widget to buy a nifty weapon or other gizmo that you're going to level past in the next two hours of gameplay. He tells you good luck, and we'll see you on the field. You meander over and talk to Roxy, Retail Helper extraordinaire, get your gizzy from one of her minions, then figure out the queue.
Then proceed to get yelled at by people because nothing in the game actually told you what to expect from these missions, what to bring, the fact that you would need a remodulator; and here you are, clueless, fighting amped-up Borg in STFs, hours of gameplay before you've even encountered them in the story arc. (Because you're probably still in the Romulan arc at this point.)
I've played console shooters with more tutorial pop-ups in the first level than this game provides over the entire course of the story arc.
-Too much pay to win ships/consoles
-Too much burst
-Large gear gap between mk xii purples from stfs and mk xi blues.
-Roaming fleets smashing pug teams.
Currently doing alot of LT.Commander & commander pvp and enjoying it very much limited boff slots and almost 0 pay to win ships/consoles & you actually have real fights instead of instagibs.
This idea could also be done for cruisers to. Honestly they should just bring out new weapons for cruisers to compete with cannons and also maybe lower the abilities powers.
That's why they should look at my sig and learn from those guides.
A well built Cruiser can survive most things thrown at it. It is the easiest ship to fly too.
It can happen if the players in question are using horrible builds or if they get overwhelmed.
That goes back to the team game part of PvP. If you're not getting support from the rest, you will eventually die to those who can do damage.
Read my siglink for more insight into how to play the game in PvP.
It has detailed analysis from some of its best players.
Yes they are useless. Currently at the this time, the new meta is all about escorts and dps. Cruisers are designed bad in this game. The whole game is designed bad. The whole mechanics are designed bad. That's why no one pvps anymore because of the constant imbalances, bad mechanics, exploits, hacking, cheats that are STILL out or well hidden that Cryptic knows little or nothing about.
Of course though my escort fanboys will ALWAYS deny that everything is fine yet it really isnt. I have the bug ship and it's grossly overpowered. Escorts in general are overpowered. When I see cruisers doing no damage to my escorts that I pilot and I can blow them up with no fear and I mean against the good players, not just any random player, something then is seriously wrong with the mechanics of balance.
Federation Cruisers currently are designed to do no damage due to bad mechanics and design. Federation Science ships are on the same boat.
Deny it all you want but the developers are currently interested in the dollar right now for this game. Every ask Cryptic doesn't answer the hard questions that need to be answered and only worthless questions are answered to due to making their business look good when it's really in bad shape.
Dan Stahl " STALLS * this game more than most people realize yet people hold him and his development team like a god or deity. It's rather pathetic and disappointing how easy people get their hopes up and do so blindly.
I have no hope for this game and never will because it's been 3 damn years and nothing really has been changed, except of course the C-Store. Most of the money in this game is going to towards the development of C-Store and promotions for it. We need CONTENT, we need BALANCE, we need BETTER MECHANICS.
But whatever, this is why I don't play this game anymore.
These are some decent guides, per the design that STO has today. However.......,
Mav starts his crusier guide with the cold, hard, facts of today's STO. If you decide to run a crus, you are a SUPPORT Profession, nothing more, nothing less. Sci ends up about the same via crowd control. "Stop em so the escort can kill them or heal the escort so it can continue to do it's damage". And then, really to "excel" in that, you have to pick up the "pay-to-live" Oddy and spec for basicly NO damage what-so-ever. Wouldn't really matter if you could spec for some damage as the turn rate is basicly nothing. The typ flying brick. A support prof is not the easiest role to play and is an acquired taiste. This is why healers are few and far between in just about any MMO.
Altho there are times when I can run K and my excel still shines, those days are few and far between now as that ship has been severaly outclassed and it's original design was an in-between a crus and an escort. And the new sov is basicly an excel that trades ET1 for TT1 with less turn rate. Hardly an upgrade. However, most of those times I'm not running up against well co-ordinated and well equiped pre-mades to do it. The over NERFs to beams does not help anything while even the skillbox revamps added extreme spike damage from nothing really more than points in a 1st level box choice for basicly, Tacs.
The main problem is there is basicly no damage buffs for eng and sci, and the tanking buffs have long since been forgotten about and not re-newed to complete with the "
newer" tac buffs with all the adds. And the poster above is very correct that STO has become a purly DPS reliant game now, even in the newer PVE content as well, via the P2W added to the C-Store, NERFs to beams via ACC, NERFs to healing and tanking via the skillbox revamps, and patches (any1 remember how RSP used to be?), and added damage via the new weapons and skills.
He's also correct that some escorts are very OP. Expecialy the bug. However, my new "fleet" patrol escort, with 4 DHCs in ft, now runs better resists than the excel as I can use all 4 console slots to add resists instead of power management for the typ 6 beam layout. The escort, in these 2 cases anyway, out-tanks the tank.
It's hard to have vibrant PVP gameplay when 2 out of the 3 classes are nothing more than support for the 1 decent class or they just melt. Not worth it to the typ player no matter what the in game rewards are. And if you really want to see dead PVP, add a PVP stat all in itself and then only only received via PVP gameplay. Want proff? Go take a good look at TOR PVP.
I have nothing but cannons and turrets in one of my Vorchas.I would say the OP need more time and exprience with his ship.He should get some help from friends and do some STFs to leanr how to play with people not npcs.
It has nothing to do with escorts.My Vorcha is Capted by my Klink geer.
Tac Capt here.:)
USS WARRIOR NCC 1720 Commanding Officer
Star Trek Gamers
What would you say if the game hadn't had any updates for almost the entirety of its 3 year life? Because that's the position PvP finds itself in. Its not just in STO, CO has a similar problem except its also burdened with map bugs that never get fixed. The problem is that Cryptic as a whole is even more allergic to PvP than they are to story content!
So no, PvP isn't working as intended. Its been slowly degenerating as Cryptic releases completely unbalanced and untested items. Worse, they keep changing the game so the required skill lessens as the patches come. So now we have people wondering why they can't stay at max range with Beam Arrays and one shot everything. Really, some players REALLY wonder what's wrong with the game because they can't do what I've just described.
This is one of the reasons why I stopped being a gold member.