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Please get rid of (cross-)Healing in space
flekh
Member Posts: 233 Arc User
We're all used to it.
The classic MMO-Trinity of Tank, Healer and DPS.
The might warrior, deflecting blows with his shield; the noble cleric, invoking the power of the gods; and the lofty mages and sneaky rogues, slinging spells or backstabbing to kill the opposing forces.
While this works in a fantasy setting, it leaves quite a couple questionmarks when applied to a SciFi space battle.
"Wait, I'm sending over my crew to repair the other ship's hull ... in the mid of battle? Without a drydock? While that ship is getting shot at?"
"Wait, my green magic beam can weld close the breaches on that other ship ... while its shields are up ... and preventing the enemy's beams from making more holes?"
"Wait, I can remote-control my ally's shields, redirect their facing, and change their polarity?"
"All that while the enemy can't use the same to actually KILL them?"
It's also highly un-canon. Imagine the Battle of Worf 359 with healing abilities:
40 ships focusing their magic green and blue beams on the U.S.S. Saratoga, turning it into an indestructible fortress.
The Borg would have given up in frustration and went home.
It also does have quite tangible drawbacks in terms of gameplay and gamebalance, and since these are a lot more objective to argue than immersion, canon or suspension of disbelief, I'll use that line:
#1 Healers make forming groups harder
Most gamers see the healing role as un-fun.
This is easily visible in any game that offers PvE-queus based on roles - healers get instant pops, while dps often sit in the same queue for half an hour or more ... waiting for ... a healer!
And indeed, there's little more frustrating things in gaming than baby-sitting a bunch of strangers who seem hell-bend on getting themselves and everyone around them killed, rushing from battle to battle without regard for others. Even those people who actually enjoy healing will try hard to avoid random groups and instead stick with groups of friends and guildies that can offer coordinated runs.
And there aren't many people who enjoy it in the first place. Most gamers want to be the hero, charging ahead, doing battle - not be babysitting the heroes from the back. Healers are the one thing most guilds in any game are always looking for. They simply are rare.
Good ones even more.
Forming groups becomes less an issue of running with people you like, or with people that are available - than an issue of having a good healer.
Not that that'd make them more apreciated in general, though - they're still the guys and gals hanging back while the heroes go to battle.
#2 Healers make the balancing of content harder
With healers, you have basically two choices as a game-designer:
a) Make healers mandatory, and healing challenging. This leads to healers being the bottleneck for every group activity, and it makes any group activity without a good healer either impossible to do, or at least extremely tedious.
b) Make healers an extra, or healing easy. This leads to groups with a healer/good healer having the content turn into super-easy-mode, no matter how hard it was intended to be.
... well, in theory there's c) Make healers ineffective and tedious. But of course that's not really an option.
This is even more true for PvP!
The group with better healing will usually win, unless it's so overstacked with healers that it lacks the capacity to kill anything.
This turns most non-organized PvP into a frustrating experience, and more often than not a battle is already decided with the queue. More like rolling a die to see if you end up on the right side of a battle, than a test of skills.
In organized PvP, healers allow for a lot of strategic options, I'll not deny that - but it also makes for long, drawn-out engagement focused on healer-control and denial of healing, of burst-dps against isolated focus-targets between long streches of ineffective shoot-outs without casualities or effect.
Battles of attrition.
#3 Healers limit playstyle options and force people into roles
This is basic game-theory.
Having someone that can heal others leads to the need of having someone who can be healed efficiently. It leads to needing this person to take as much of the incoming damage as possible.
-> Leads to the role of tank.
With the tank in place, the need for survivability on all other group members is reduced, often to a point of uselessness. All that counts are maximised killing potential, or enough utility to offset some of this and instead aid the other group member's killing potential by more than is lost.
-> Leads to the roles of DPS, and - if the game allows - CC/Mezzer.
But since survivability is still an issue for solo-content as well as PvP, game-balance dictates that this trait has to come at a cost to either dps or utility. What could be a fun class to play solo as jack-of-all-traits-master-of-none suddenly becomes a useful-at-nothing-sucky-at-everything in group content.
Specialization and indeed over-specialization become forced necessities.
So, what's the alternative?
Easy: Self-sufficiency and different playstyles.
In fact, we already pretty much have this in STO:
- Cruisers can repair (*see below for a disctinction between repair and heal) themselves against incoming damage while defeating their opponents with sustained dps.
- Escorts can use burst-dps strikes to quickly take out key targets, and have just enough self-repair ability to run from retaliation.
- Birds-of-prey take this even a step further, striking from cloak and disapearing again completely.
- Sci-ships can disable the opponents, preventing damage to themselves and their allies and weaken them for easier kills, again with just enough self-repair ability to survive.
All ships also have some basic abilities to prevent or reduce damage to them.
Different playstyles, different strategies, self-sufficiency.
Doesn't that harm teamplay?
The answer is No.
It just sets up a different trinity, that of Burst-DPS, Tank and CC/Mezz - but this one has the advantage that hybrid roles are neither necessarily over- nor underpowered. Tank, Burst and CC can be traded inbetween without harming the overall group effectiveness.
But it still leaves a lot of room for actual teamplay: focusing targets, smart use of CC, smart use of CC-prevention, positioning. You'll still have to watch out for what you team is doing to maximize your effectivness. You'll still have to watch out for what the enemy is doing to prevent getting focused or disabled.
You actually DO have to watch out. You can't rely on someone else doing it for you, nor does any single player get forced to be responsible for everyone else. Gameplay gets more intense and immersive for everyone.
What do you mean by Repair vs. Heal?
Not every form of healing is necessarily bad.
Repairing damage to yourself in combat is as effective and desireable an ability than preventing that damage.
Out-of-combat repairs allow for shorter downtimes and a more fluid game experience.
Using "Repair" and "Heal" is simply easier than saying "unproblematic heals" and "potentially unbalancing or gamebreaking heals".
What would need to change?
Good question, and basically the key question. Any change that requires too much effort to implement ... won't be implemented.
Fortunately, this one is relatively easy to do.
1. Make all heals and heal-like abilities self-cast-only. HE, Aux2SIF, TSS, ET, ST, TT, RSP, you name it.
2. Revamp Extend Shields to a damage-prevention buff (which it basically already is, just with a slightly too strong heal compontent. Put it on a long'ish cooldown (~2min, but that's a guess, subject to actual balance testing) and make it make the user more vulnerable for the duration. This last part could be countered with Active Duty DOffs.
3. Add automatic shield rebalancing to Engineering and Science Teams, then rebalance the secondary components (damage increase for TT, hull repair for ET, shield repair for ST). This gives each type of ship the necessary self-reliance and actually opens up build paths for diversity.
4. Add an out-of-combat Repair-HoT as a general captain ability, cast-able of yourself while powering down, or on a powered-down ally (in game terms: target and caster need to be out-of-combat and withing a short range, while not moving at full-impulse or using other abilities). This would be necessary to keep the pace of gameplay interesting.
... Done!
Not much effort involved except for some weeks of testing on Tribble.
What are you tryinging to achive by doing this?
Even better question, that's why I'm closing with this one.
1. Allow PvE content to move away from one-shot-kill abilities by NPC. Currently, those one-shot-kills are the only real balancing factor in eSTF and Fleet content, all that's left from stopping a well-organized group from facerolling through content. With cross-healing eliminated, STO could get rid of this highly unfun and unfair mechanic and back to more sustained threats.
2. Make PvP more attractive.
Currently, a well-organized groups will simply roll over any PUG, no matter the individual skills. And even PUG vs. PUG is decided as soon as teams are set. This turns away many potential players, and even makes it a long-term chore to set up any new team to actively compete against the established ones - requiring an amount of dedication few players are willing or able to endure.
These changes would considerably level the playing field.
3. Allow for more individually challenging end-game content.
Content that would require dedicated team setups always limits the portion of the playerbase that can attempt such content. Half of the challenge, if not more, is to actually assemble a group of dedicated roles.
Getting rid of roles and replacing them by self-reliance with different styles gets rid of this pre-game hurdle, and allows people to simply team up with others based on individual abilities, not based on the role they are able to fill.
No "Sorry, we already have a Sci", no "Sorry, we can't use another Cruiser".
Instead a "Yes, sure, come along, we know you can play your ship".
Okay, wall of text is over.
Ideas? Comments?
Did I miss something important that would invalidate the whole idea?
I'll be keeping track of important arguments in the next post, for ease of following the thread and to prevent repetition (if it doesn't simply sink to the bottom, that is).
Thank you for reading.
The classic MMO-Trinity of Tank, Healer and DPS.
The might warrior, deflecting blows with his shield; the noble cleric, invoking the power of the gods; and the lofty mages and sneaky rogues, slinging spells or backstabbing to kill the opposing forces.
While this works in a fantasy setting, it leaves quite a couple questionmarks when applied to a SciFi space battle.
"Wait, I'm sending over my crew to repair the other ship's hull ... in the mid of battle? Without a drydock? While that ship is getting shot at?"
"Wait, my green magic beam can weld close the breaches on that other ship ... while its shields are up ... and preventing the enemy's beams from making more holes?"
"Wait, I can remote-control my ally's shields, redirect their facing, and change their polarity?"
"All that while the enemy can't use the same to actually KILL them?"
It's also highly un-canon. Imagine the Battle of Worf 359 with healing abilities:
40 ships focusing their magic green and blue beams on the U.S.S. Saratoga, turning it into an indestructible fortress.
The Borg would have given up in frustration and went home.
It also does have quite tangible drawbacks in terms of gameplay and gamebalance, and since these are a lot more objective to argue than immersion, canon or suspension of disbelief, I'll use that line:
#1 Healers make forming groups harder
Most gamers see the healing role as un-fun.
This is easily visible in any game that offers PvE-queus based on roles - healers get instant pops, while dps often sit in the same queue for half an hour or more ... waiting for ... a healer!
And indeed, there's little more frustrating things in gaming than baby-sitting a bunch of strangers who seem hell-bend on getting themselves and everyone around them killed, rushing from battle to battle without regard for others. Even those people who actually enjoy healing will try hard to avoid random groups and instead stick with groups of friends and guildies that can offer coordinated runs.
And there aren't many people who enjoy it in the first place. Most gamers want to be the hero, charging ahead, doing battle - not be babysitting the heroes from the back. Healers are the one thing most guilds in any game are always looking for. They simply are rare.
Good ones even more.
Forming groups becomes less an issue of running with people you like, or with people that are available - than an issue of having a good healer.
Not that that'd make them more apreciated in general, though - they're still the guys and gals hanging back while the heroes go to battle.
#2 Healers make the balancing of content harder
With healers, you have basically two choices as a game-designer:
a) Make healers mandatory, and healing challenging. This leads to healers being the bottleneck for every group activity, and it makes any group activity without a good healer either impossible to do, or at least extremely tedious.
b) Make healers an extra, or healing easy. This leads to groups with a healer/good healer having the content turn into super-easy-mode, no matter how hard it was intended to be.
... well, in theory there's c) Make healers ineffective and tedious. But of course that's not really an option.
This is even more true for PvP!
The group with better healing will usually win, unless it's so overstacked with healers that it lacks the capacity to kill anything.
This turns most non-organized PvP into a frustrating experience, and more often than not a battle is already decided with the queue. More like rolling a die to see if you end up on the right side of a battle, than a test of skills.
In organized PvP, healers allow for a lot of strategic options, I'll not deny that - but it also makes for long, drawn-out engagement focused on healer-control and denial of healing, of burst-dps against isolated focus-targets between long streches of ineffective shoot-outs without casualities or effect.
Battles of attrition.
#3 Healers limit playstyle options and force people into roles
This is basic game-theory.
Having someone that can heal others leads to the need of having someone who can be healed efficiently. It leads to needing this person to take as much of the incoming damage as possible.
-> Leads to the role of tank.
With the tank in place, the need for survivability on all other group members is reduced, often to a point of uselessness. All that counts are maximised killing potential, or enough utility to offset some of this and instead aid the other group member's killing potential by more than is lost.
-> Leads to the roles of DPS, and - if the game allows - CC/Mezzer.
But since survivability is still an issue for solo-content as well as PvP, game-balance dictates that this trait has to come at a cost to either dps or utility. What could be a fun class to play solo as jack-of-all-traits-master-of-none suddenly becomes a useful-at-nothing-sucky-at-everything in group content.
Specialization and indeed over-specialization become forced necessities.
So, what's the alternative?
Easy: Self-sufficiency and different playstyles.
In fact, we already pretty much have this in STO:
- Cruisers can repair (*see below for a disctinction between repair and heal) themselves against incoming damage while defeating their opponents with sustained dps.
- Escorts can use burst-dps strikes to quickly take out key targets, and have just enough self-repair ability to run from retaliation.
- Birds-of-prey take this even a step further, striking from cloak and disapearing again completely.
- Sci-ships can disable the opponents, preventing damage to themselves and their allies and weaken them for easier kills, again with just enough self-repair ability to survive.
All ships also have some basic abilities to prevent or reduce damage to them.
Different playstyles, different strategies, self-sufficiency.
Doesn't that harm teamplay?
The answer is No.
It just sets up a different trinity, that of Burst-DPS, Tank and CC/Mezz - but this one has the advantage that hybrid roles are neither necessarily over- nor underpowered. Tank, Burst and CC can be traded inbetween without harming the overall group effectiveness.
But it still leaves a lot of room for actual teamplay: focusing targets, smart use of CC, smart use of CC-prevention, positioning. You'll still have to watch out for what you team is doing to maximize your effectivness. You'll still have to watch out for what the enemy is doing to prevent getting focused or disabled.
You actually DO have to watch out. You can't rely on someone else doing it for you, nor does any single player get forced to be responsible for everyone else. Gameplay gets more intense and immersive for everyone.
What do you mean by Repair vs. Heal?
Not every form of healing is necessarily bad.
Repairing damage to yourself in combat is as effective and desireable an ability than preventing that damage.
Out-of-combat repairs allow for shorter downtimes and a more fluid game experience.
Using "Repair" and "Heal" is simply easier than saying "unproblematic heals" and "potentially unbalancing or gamebreaking heals".
What would need to change?
Good question, and basically the key question. Any change that requires too much effort to implement ... won't be implemented.
Fortunately, this one is relatively easy to do.
1. Make all heals and heal-like abilities self-cast-only. HE, Aux2SIF, TSS, ET, ST, TT, RSP, you name it.
2. Revamp Extend Shields to a damage-prevention buff (which it basically already is, just with a slightly too strong heal compontent. Put it on a long'ish cooldown (~2min, but that's a guess, subject to actual balance testing) and make it make the user more vulnerable for the duration. This last part could be countered with Active Duty DOffs.
3. Add automatic shield rebalancing to Engineering and Science Teams, then rebalance the secondary components (damage increase for TT, hull repair for ET, shield repair for ST). This gives each type of ship the necessary self-reliance and actually opens up build paths for diversity.
4. Add an out-of-combat Repair-HoT as a general captain ability, cast-able of yourself while powering down, or on a powered-down ally (in game terms: target and caster need to be out-of-combat and withing a short range, while not moving at full-impulse or using other abilities). This would be necessary to keep the pace of gameplay interesting.
... Done!
Not much effort involved except for some weeks of testing on Tribble.
What are you tryinging to achive by doing this?
Even better question, that's why I'm closing with this one.
1. Allow PvE content to move away from one-shot-kill abilities by NPC. Currently, those one-shot-kills are the only real balancing factor in eSTF and Fleet content, all that's left from stopping a well-organized group from facerolling through content. With cross-healing eliminated, STO could get rid of this highly unfun and unfair mechanic and back to more sustained threats.
2. Make PvP more attractive.
Currently, a well-organized groups will simply roll over any PUG, no matter the individual skills. And even PUG vs. PUG is decided as soon as teams are set. This turns away many potential players, and even makes it a long-term chore to set up any new team to actively compete against the established ones - requiring an amount of dedication few players are willing or able to endure.
These changes would considerably level the playing field.
3. Allow for more individually challenging end-game content.
Content that would require dedicated team setups always limits the portion of the playerbase that can attempt such content. Half of the challenge, if not more, is to actually assemble a group of dedicated roles.
Getting rid of roles and replacing them by self-reliance with different styles gets rid of this pre-game hurdle, and allows people to simply team up with others based on individual abilities, not based on the role they are able to fill.
No "Sorry, we already have a Sci", no "Sorry, we can't use another Cruiser".
Instead a "Yes, sure, come along, we know you can play your ship".
Okay, wall of text is over.
Ideas? Comments?
Did I miss something important that would invalidate the whole idea?
I'll be keeping track of important arguments in the next post, for ease of following the thread and to prevent repetition (if it doesn't simply sink to the bottom, that is).
Thank you for reading.
Post edited by flekh on
0
Comments
Updates, Comments and Arguments will go here.
<reserved>
Yeah, you forgot two major things, in order of importance:
1) This is an MMO. You're supposed to interact with each other every now and then. In fact, ships are currently so much self healers/tankers already (have a look at recent cruiser vs. escort threads), that nobody really needs external healing/tanking any more as it is (except maybe for the small niche that is PvP). This already 'breaks' the game where escorts don't really need to rely on cruisers for support any more, for one. Your suggestions only make it WORSE.
2) They already put the kaibash on spider-tanking with the recent "Emergency Power to Shields has been added to the cooldown category shared by Extend Shields and Reverse Shield Polarity" nerf.
/thread.
#1A: The reason that Escorts don't need Cruisers much as tanks is actually just what I'm proposing to eliminate: cross-healing.
Without cross-healing, Escorts go *boom*, they can't tank forever.
#1B: You'd still interacting with others, just as much as now. Interactions would use actual TALK though, coordinating responsibilities, assigning targets. Not simply clicking a health-bar and pressing a button.
Personally I actually find it a bit ... quaint ... that you even categorize this as "interaction". :mad:
#2: The nerf that will be undone in the next patch?
You mean that one?
The nerf that was very shortsighted and didn't really help the problem?
Really, that one?
I'll admit, this idea tries to combat the problem that actually spawned that nerf - is that a bad thing these days, to actually eliminate the root problem? :P
I do not agree at all.
That would be a bad mistake.
But I am not worried, as no one in Cryptic or PWE would find this to be a good idea. No matter how many walls of text you throw up.
No. Escorts are currently basically everything: DD + self-sufficient tank. An escort can basically tank so well, it doesn't really need anyone else. Heck, we got to wave 6 in No Win today, and I *still* didn't have a scratch on my Mobius escort! (With not even a single field gen or anything loaded; it was almost embarrassing). And apart from wicked shield-tank, escorts DPS-tank too, of course (= kill every foe so fast they can't even do real harm).
In EVE, for instance, big battleship can do more DPS, but are less accurate against smaller targets; and smaller frigates, in turn, do less DPS, but hit very precisely. Thus (amongst other reasons) teams become dependent on each other's ships to get the job done. STO, basically a dummied-down EVE variant, lets every ship use the same weapons, which all do equal DPS, and all with the same accuracy. Hence, escorts can pretty much do it all, and all by themselves.
If anything, we want to break this trent. Like make it so cruisers can fulfill their innate purpose of healer (and actually be needed in that role). Last thing we want is take away people's dependency on each other! We ere want to promote it.
No healing took place, every enemy died screaming and in fear.
The trinity system is nice but that's really all it is. no need to change it as it's not actually a requirement.
The days of the invincible Escort are numbered and then only the true P2W escorts will be king, all others will be back to being made of paper.
Why? becuase Escorts in and of themselves do not tank well by design since they have the least Engineering and Science slots but they can tank very well when using TT, Borg trinity equipment, DOffs and cycling certain Tac powers.
Once that cycle is changed then the tank leaves and the only way escorts have to survive in focus fire is the speed bonus and killing the target before it can kill back.
R.I.P
Ummm ... how about you try eSTF for a change?
Go tank Donatra in an Escort without getting cross-healed.
Or try a Gateway.
Then come back.
Or maybe PvP?
Some foucs fire from three opponents?
A Cruiser can do that - an Escort without crosss-healing? *BOOM*!
Uhhh, and Mobius ... you DO know that "Destroyer" means Escort/Cruiser hybrid, do you? Shield and Hull like a Cruiser, and just the minimum of Tac BOff slots. If you couldn't tank a couple ships in NWS, then you'd need to L2P real hard. That's not saying anything.
C'mon, at least get your basics straight.
This isn't EVE. Not at all.
EVE is balanced around PVP, around corporations, around ships that cost fortunes and are actually GONE(!) when destroyed, around a player-driven universe with little PvE content.
STO is PvE-centric, with stories, episodes and events.
And it's meant to attract the casual crowd, the weekend-Kirks, not the hardcore PvPers.
You're really trying to compare these two? Seriously?
What????????
Where did you get that idea?
The innate purpose of Cruisers is TANK!
The reason they're filling the healer role in current PvP is that you can't tank players, and that whoever is healing gets gunned at and focused - Cruisers, due to being tanks, can survive that. Sci-ships, which would actually be just as well suited as healers, if not more, can't - that's the sole reason.
And guess what the proposed idea does, among other things: Right, give the purpose of TANK back to cruisers.
... Right.
Because games that actually do that are prospering, and .... WAIT!
The era of specialization-depenency is over. Was nice while it lasted.
You know why it is gone?
Because it required highly specialized, dependable, dedicated and SKILLED(!) players. That meant though that more than 95% of the playerbase never got to see the content.
We're in the era of casual MMOs now.
I don't particularily like it either, I actually enjoyed my elitist raiding guilds, enjoyed racing for first-kills, enjoyed the competition, enjoyed my share of high-end PvP ... but it's gone for now. If not for good.
And the idea of turning STO into such a game is ... just hilarious.
The only way to get challenging content into this game is by finding ways to offer it to the casual crowd, too. To even the most unskilled. To everyone.
And then add optionals, higher difficulty settings and better rewards for the hardcore crowd.
At which point ... oh, right, you'll suddenly have to depend on each other again. Such a surprise. Dependencies and Interaction are in no way related to the need of having a healer. That one is just a very special case, not the only way. And it's not a good one at that, either.
This is actually a pretty good description of the current state, yes.
Of course the current course also means that non-P2W Sci and Cruisers also get shafted, hard. They're as much paper as the Escorts if we go down this road.
Which leaves nothing but P2W, for offense as well as for defense.
There's one thing with P2W-games though: they don't last. They cannibalize their playerbase and die.
And while STO has the advantage of a heavy-weight IP, that's not going to stop it, just slow it down.
But let's not turn this into a doom and gloom thing, we got enough of those - this thread is meant as a way to revitalize this game, make it more accessible, and more enjoyable for the majority of the playerbase ... you know, the people who actually bring in the money.
The people who won't even get 20% of the performace out of their P2W beasts, and will still be weaker than a tricked-out F2P ship ... and will end up even more shafted than anyone else - and you can't sell P2W if you take away the "W".
But yeah, I agree, this game is very VERY PvE, mostly because the PvP is kinda wonky (no offense). It's hard to get in (15 minute queues? CHALLENGE ACCEPTED... not), and hard to get into. I used to play BSGO and that game is HEAVY in PvP, as in you could be out mining an asteroid minding your own business one moment, then in a huge gunfight with other players the next. It was free PvP. In other words, you leave your outpost and go out into the system, you're a viable target. Course that then resulted in lots of noob hunting (or baby seal clubbing as my fleet-mates liked to call it), but to me, that was pure, unadulterated PvP madness. And I loved it. Until the numbers got too skewed in favor of one side. Cuz tbh, no matter how good of a pilot you are, and how tricked out your ship is, you can't take on 5 enemy players by yourself and expect to survive. You better take at least one or two of them with you, but don't expect to be the LMS.
I came here, and I saw how borked the PvP was, and decided to become a PvEr. I only recently entered PvP, and I was appalled at the skill gap between players. I mean, it's disgusting. It's like there are only two types of PvPrs. Grubs, the bugs that you smash for fun (probably bored PvErs like me, or total idiots), and the falcons, the flying death players who slash you to ribbons without hesitation, for no rhyme or reason other than you were there to kill. There is no middle ground, no average joe PvPr. Just the morons and the pros.
It's a sad state of affairs when an MMO has PvP issues XD. But even sadder when a mostly PvE oriented game is also oriented towards just one class. Oh wells.
Its not D&G, just a look at whats happening to the "tanking" escort in the future and wondering how long it'll take before we see the "Buff Escorts" threads after all the changes go through and people have played awhile with them.
As to money for STO. I given plenty over the last two+ years.
R.I.P
What I do agree with is that the game is overly DPS-centric and somewhat favors escorts in that regard. They've also lost some of the "glass cannon" aspect, and the ability to heal allies isn't the reason for that. That's been part of the game since launch.
Cruisers can't "tank" very well because they don't generate nearly enough threat to do it. They're incapable of "taking the heat" off other ships (excepting the playing skills of the Captain). They don't match the escorts in being able to focus fire because of weapon distribution and turn rate, so they're simply not as dangerous aside from the fact that they're durable. But they're relatively ineffective as far as defending other ships goes.
EDIT: Or better said, they're less effective at defending ships than escorts are at blowing them up.
Without the ability to "cross-heal", Cruisers can't function in a protective role. There would be even less reason to fly one.
What Cruisers ought to get, that would really make them dangerous in a team-play setting, is something that innately extends some kind of protection to nearby allied ships and generates additional threat besides. What form that ought to take, I don't know. But it would put them in a protective anchor role that's way more suited for what they're supposed to do.
About the only thing I can think of that might make sense is an innate ability that continuously buffs nearby allies' shield resists vs energy and generates additional threat against enemies within the same range. Leave the cruiser's protective envelope, and suffer the consequences. Maybe reduce the range of healing abilities for good measure.
What Sci Vessels need, I can't even begin to speculate. But going with a similar theme, I would say that the ability to buff allies' defense via counter-measures and also generates threat might work. This one shouldn't be passive, though, and should be on a cooldown. It would give Sci Vessels a limited innate ability to protect other ships at the cost of drawing fire.
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Generic Cruiser.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah weapon shields goodies.
+5 Power to all Subsystems.
+TRIBBLE Threat Control skill.
There's your aggro, and it already uses an in-game mechanic to do it. Simply make the ship itself add to threat control; if you can't take the heat, stay out of a cruiser. If you're a real glutton for tank-type punishment, you can skill even more of it in your captain skills.
As an aside, and more in line with OP's grumbling, cross-healing is not the reason that I can run through all PvE content in this game without any real trouble at all, using a free escort or BoP; I hardly ever receive cross heals at all, and am more likely to be giving them to people in trouble. Some of the mechanics that allow it have been hit upon by Roach, but it's certainly not cross-healing. I don't often receive it, and I certainly don't expect it or depend on it.
It's my experience that most people who have problems running their ships and staying alive in PvE on their own haven't taken the time to maximize the doff system and learn keybinds. Simply slapping distribute shields on your space bar is like night and day; start adding things like Tac Team, chained EPtS, and a few more chain/complex keybinds on other keys, and you start seeing a real difference in your survivability. It gives you the time you need to pay attention and avoid damage, since you're not fooling around clicking the toolbar or hunting for what you need to deploy. My eyes stay on the screen more than 95% of the time since I learned to keybind. My binds don't reach near the complexity of premade cross-heals, but I can activate every single ability with the press of a key; my mouse is for camera movement or manual target selection, and rarely if ever needs to see the toolbar.
Personally I think it's the best thing since the game went F2P and it would allow the casual player to be competent again.On top of this we would see an end to "Buff cruisers" threads that we've seen so many of recently. I used to run a Jack-of-all-trades cruiser and I found it to be far more fun than the newest build.
The only thing I can think of that I can say against this idea is that for things like CSE and the new fleet actions cross heals are essential so while I like this whole self-sufficiency idea I think we do still need a set of ally heals even if we only keep 3 of them: hull heal, shield heal and debuff remover that would help and anyone could pack those 3 without taking away from the self-sufficiency aspect.
However even without that; this idea gets my full support
We've been discussing this for a while in half a dozen threads in the Fed Gameplay and Shipyard - threads that were made complaining that Cruisers suck and don't deal damage.
Truth though is: The P2W Cruisers are very close in dps output to Escorts. Top Escorts clock in at low 8k'ish dps, while Cruisers like the Galor can reach 7k+ (7k on an Engineer, btw, witnesses just yesterday
The P2W power creep has fully close this gap.
I'll admit though that the P2W power creep has also bumped ... well, not Escorts, but Destroyers: the Temporal Destroyers have the perfect BOff setup for indestructable killing machines, with 6 Tac BOff slots and 3/2/1 extra Sci and Eng slots - that's 2xEPtS, 2xTSS, 1xHE + 1xAux2SIF or 1xRSP.
That's why I had a good laugh when meimeitoo said he didn't get a scratch running NWS to wave 6 - d'oh. What'd you expect, running the perfect Cruiser/Escort hybrid with optional I-Win-Button? At 210$ average, it better perform. :rolleyes:
It's a bit weird - when people quote Escort abilities, they refer to SOTA P2W ships like the Bug or the Temporal Destroyer - when they refer to Cruiser inadequacy, they argue base-line Star Cruisers.
Either one, or the other. Compare P2W ships to P2W ships, or compare F2P ships to F2P ships. And just as the Star Cruiser hasn't much to offer at dps, so do the Patrol and Advanced Escort offer not enough at tanking to prevent them from getting two-shot or even one-shot.
You do have a point with keybinds.
Actually, this is another topic that plays quite well into my line of argument:
Keybound rotations are incredibly powerful. To compete, you can't go without. Even to do well in PvE, you're pretty much relying on them.
But let's face it - very few players get that far. Most click. Some use keys. Only a very small minority knows how to set up a proper bindfile.
Personally, I can't complain. I've set up my binds, and can basically fly onehanded using my Naga. Easymode.
But that's by far not what the average players go through.
What this leads to: the average player gets hit by every nerf, but they weren't even close to getting half the potential out of their ships. They're suffering gameplay problems because of what the elite players COULD do.
It's that bad.
Taking away the single most important synergy point for those elite players allows for a far wider range of options that are viable at the bottom.
On a sidenote, since it comes up again and again:
Are you guys really trying to tell me that you can tank Donatra or a Gateway on elite ... without getting healed or exploding constantly?
Are you telling me you can tank charged up Isometric Charges from NPC ships?
Are you telling me you can tank 350k+ invisible torpedo salvos that even one-shot a dedicated tank Cruiser or Carrier?
I'll call bull**** on that one.
No matter how tricked out your Escort, you're getting two-shot. Yes, yes, Temporal Destroyer ... okay, one exception ... and that's not really an Escort anymore, it's a Destroyer.
Yes, you can complete the current content without a tank. But you're basically zerking it down, death by death. Is that your definition of working game mechanics?
One of the goals of this proposal, as stated above, is to allow STO to move away from these single-shot kills a balancing mechanics. But to allow for that, without turning content into a pure faceroll-orgy, something has to give.
And it's either a general nerf to everything, that only 200$ P2W ships are left - or it comes down to leveling the playing field.
If you got a better idea than eliminating cross-healing: I'm all ears. But to just cling on to the status quo because YOU are not effected too much ... isn't helping.
(Well, technically I'll count myself under "not effected too much", too - I'm getting by quite fine, thanks for asking.)
If you read the first post completly (yes, I know, it's long, but ...), you'd have found that excactly this case is mentioned there.
Currently, these one- and two-shot attacks are the only balancing mechanic left to PvE. To get rid of these, and replace them with more sane threats from NPC, something has to give - you can't have the current game's healing and cross-healing potential, and nothing that actually requires it.
Remove cross-healing, and these invisible torpedoes and other over-charged one-shot killers are not needed any longer.
For those who actually read my walls of text: yes, I'm repeating myself. *shrug* Can't be helped if I want to do this seriously.
Actually my escorts can tank gates and tac cubes on elite rather easily, and to some extent even BoP's can (although BoP's will die to high crits when escorts wont). Donatra is a different story, because she cloaks when her target gets within range5, so I havnt managed managed to solo donatra in an escort yet. The key is, as has been pointed out, 3 purple shield distribution officers and at least 2 pieces of the borg set, as well as the usual epts and tac team rotation.
There would still be healing. It's just that there would be self healing and I have suggested that there should still be a set, even if only 3, of cross heals.
I agree but as he said, there would be no need for invisible torpedoes to kill people so they shouldn't exist under the suggested system
and this is the bloody point (Yes I will support this suggestion until the day I leave this game) Escorts tank too well under the current system, you add cross heals to that and you need unfair "balancing" mechanisms in PvE, the ESTF NPCs are stupid and simply damage sponges which is a stupid way to play the game hence you see all the threads begging for cruiser damage buffs. Heck the enemies in Final Fantasy VII were better than the ones in STO (they were tougher, the ones with heals felt like they had sense of self preservation, the list goes on) that was made in 1998 on a playstation 1 for goodness sake! Cryptic can do better 14 years later I'm sure (I mean hey I did 6 weeks of basic programming and I could write the code behind FF7s NPCs, I think programming experts can do better)
I for 1 am all for this idea and anyone who stands for balance in the game should be also... unless of course they have a better idea
I've played many Elites in an Escort, thank you. And gateways are quite tankable (if you put any skill points into Starship Power Insulators, that is; you did do that, right?). As for Donatra, seems you're doing it wrong: you can tell, from the way the Scimitar moves, that she's about to deploy her Cascading Biogenic Pulse, so you can take proper evasive action to stay out of its firing arc. Her 'normal' attacks, however, are quite tankable, even by an Escort.
First of all, 33k hitpoints are not a 'hull like a Cruiser.' Now, an Odyssey, with 42k hitpoints, THAT is a cruiser hull. C'mon, at least get your basics straight.
Also, nice try with the Mobius; but I've been running Elites in my Fleet Patrol Escort for the longest time, too. And survived equally well. And you know why? Because hull doesn't really play into it. As has been outlined to you, in this thread, Escorts can tank very well because of things like chaining EPtS and TT.
You're uncomprehending on the fact that every ship is such a self-sufficient tanker these days, that one can play the game pretty much without the aide of Cruisers to heal you. The fallacy in your reasoning is thinking the Escort would go *BOOM* without the Cruiser being able to heal it. Well, it doesn't. It stays alive wonderfully by itself. So, the 'solution' (assuming a problem, for the sake of argument) is NOT to take away the Cruiser's ability to heal others, thus obsoleting them even more, but to nerf Escorts' ability to tank so darn well themselves.
Your rationale for making things even simpler than they already are is wholeheartedly NOT supported by me. Easy accessibility leads to boredom. Boredom leads to the Dark Side. PvE is already ridiculously easy as it is.
Yeah, cuz STO doesn't have ships that cost fortunes. :P
Also, the irony of your statement! A typical lv 4 EVE PvE mission is a *lot* harder, and more dangerous, than any PvE mission STO offers, *especially* because you can lose your ship for ever!
Mutual dependency (let's not call it co-dependency) is not automagically born ex nihilo, simply because missions are harder, but because of a system that supports innate profession/ship roles. Cries from folks like you, to have everthing hit with the 'great equalizer' bat even further, run counter to having specialized roles -- and thus to needing each other.
So, still a big resounding NO to your proposal.
The other popular method is the 'different but equal' approach. This also works well and I feel STO was originally designed with this in mind as follows.
Escort
Burst DPS: Can deal the most damage in a short amount of time with a limiting factor preventing it from being sustained for a long period of time. IE the nuker or wizard.
Avoidance Tank: Survives combat and damage simply by avoiding it. IE dodging
Utility: Increases a teams damage potential, like APB.
Cruiser
Sustained DPS: Deals a consistent, steady amount of damage with very few limiting factors. IE the warrior.
Mitigation Tank: Has high resistances to reduce incoming damage. IE warrior again
Utility: Protects allies increasing their survival, like extend shields.
Sci Vessel
Building/AoE/Exotic DPS: Longer the engagement goes, and the more enemies their are the more damage dealt. In addition can reduce the enemies ability to avoid/reduce the damage.
Sustain/Buffer Tank: Has alot of raw health and can regenerate it quickly.
Utility: CC/Exotic Effects.
This is how the game was originally designed from the existing mechanics and in-game setups. Unfortunately so many core systems are deeply flawed and the lack of proper scaling of various systems/mechanics have created what we now have.
Escorts have gone from burst to sustained completely FUBARing the entire design of heavy cannons. Sci Boff ability damage has been gutted to compensate for tac captain abilities. The amount of sustain/tank in the game has led to the primary tanking method being E-Power to shields which can be blamed on how the boff abilities scale with gear, various proc effects, and the insane ratio of mitigation compared to buffer in tanking effectiveness along with the messed up subsystem power mechanics where shield power scales with gear while auxiliary power does not for the most part. I could go on and on.
*Edit* As a side note even this style of proposal would allow some ships to perform better against various NPCs. Say if spheres had really high accuracy allowing them to shred escorts while a cube could penetrate resistances to pound a cruiser and you still get co-dependancy to an extent. It really comes down to do you prefer the 'soft counter' style of Starcraft, or the 'hard counter' style of Age of Empires. Keep in mind which one was more successful as an E sport while you think on that.
Yes, did that, and no one needs to tank the gates, ever. Just stay out 9.5km and a shuttle can down a gate without a scratch.
While that's quite a good advice to follow, it's not a surefire way.
Well, at least unless you stay at excactly the right angle to it, too, there seems to be an actual safespot where it can't shoot back while you can shoot at it.
... well, if a dev reads this, then this might not last much longer, it looks a lot like an exploit and not an intended mechanic.
It's not the distance alone though - I've had it happen more than once that a gate greeted me with a friendly one-shot-kill torp the second I dropped below 10 klicks range.
You also sacrifice quite a bit of dps there, which can get close unless you're flying with a hand-picked group (which is, let's face it, utterly boring, nor always possible).
When flying with a less optimal group, you'll have to take risks to get the optionals - and at that point you need a tank again.
Still, a good piece of advice, at least while it lasts - just not something I'd really rely on.
Oh, btw: this is getting quite a bit off-topic.
Or at least, side-topic.
This isn't supposed to be a thread about how a group of really good players in tricked-out ships can faceroll through PvE content - this is a proposal to actually CLOSE some of those ways and make things more interesting again, both in PvE and PvP.
Without turning the game into a frustrating nightmare for the casual crowd.
*Sits down*
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Mostly balanced ships
was 80%+ pvp for a few years was everyones
Space game to play very fun the best space combat
Simulator I've ever played
It failed because pvp was all it had, no characters
No skill tree no ground content at all no strategic
Content that was worthwhile
Destroyers
Cruisers
Battleships
Carriers
All fought each other by ( Choice ) and it was fun
There was no dungeons and dragons adventure party
Forcing people I'n unrealistic roles I'n sto is the
Problem with this game as I see it
Compared to star wars galaxies it could really
Be improved on I'n ground content
Crafting ,entertainment ,resource gathering , creature
Handling heck very limited character professions we have
Only 3 swg had over 20 are not being exploited by STO
If ships were put into more traditional and balanced
Roles I think the game would prosper greatly. It has
A lot going for it but forcing players into 3 very
Unrealistic to cannon roles is what is holding
This game back
That's my opinion anyway
Theme at all
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Once a conversation among peers drops to that level it is fairly much useless, so how about you both cut each other some slack and agree to disagree.
Each of us sees the game in our own view, while both make great points, both of you also make statements that many do not agree with. Some things I like that I have read here, some things I simply do not.
Still, Flekh does have one thing correct...
Something has to change.
Flekh, thank you so much for sharing and for taking the time to write out your ideas and concerns. It is a great deal to consider along with some other thoughts that many others have given here. I am not commenting much more that this, simply because, heck I have my own ideas, but listening first to others express their views helps me view the game as they do. It is an interesting path to be sure and something to give honest consideration to all possibilities.
A good amount to consider.