Ground STFs Will Be Virtually Dead Come Season 7

orondis · October 2012

I'm sure pretty much everyone will agree with me when I say space STFs are the easiest to do, while ground is much harder. While I personally like the reputation system, it's most likely going to virtually kill ground STFs.

Why grind Cure ground when you can repeatedly do the super easy Infected space.

corgatag · October 2012

I know a couple of people who actually like ground missions. Don't ask me why.

My guess is that you also like ground missions (or else why would you care if they were virtually dead).

In any case, I bet there will still be enough ground STF players to keep them alive (at least in the custom channels).

diogene0 · October 2012

In the 50's people were saying that oral contraception would make everyone having sex in the streets. It didn't happen. It's not because there's a minor change that everything will dramatically change forever, etc.

I like when people predict that doom will come and that the end of the world is close because something unusual happened. Ground stfs won't die. People will still queue for it. You can still find idiots to queue with you for the gekli feeding grounds if they notice there's someone there, so why would ground stfs die?

BTW I like ground, it's even easier than space - less stuff to click on and pure keyboard gameplay FTW.

markhawkman · October 2012

And stabbity death!

I REALLY like mauling Borg with melee!

brish01 · October 2012

markhawkman wrote: »

And stabbity death!

I REALLY like mauling Borg with melee!

Yuo it shall indeed.

khayuung · October 2012

Speaking of which Into The Hive seems kinda fun. Too bad I'm wearing just Jemhadar gear.

markhawkman · October 2012

Jem gear works decently well vs Borg. You will likely want to make the Jem weapon secondary or just not use it. The armor has decent stats for fighting Borg. Good energy resist and both HP and shield regen.

tmichc · October 2012

They won't be dead; it'll be all I play now. I have my MACO Team Commander on my main from playing the Space Elites, and I only play the space ones on her for the tech (still yet to get any of that). My other characters are all Team Specialist/Specialist at least whilst they grind away to get the weapons/sets to do well at Elites. I play Ground pretty much exclusively because I find them a lot more fun!

It's one of the few times where my sci and engie captains (one for each faction) feel much more powerful and useful than my tac captains. And I love it!

Tim

azurianstar · October 2012

People were talking about this in another thread, that I think does have some credibility. People forget with the old STFs, when Marks were around, people mostly did Infected, because it was the easiest STF to get Marks of Valor and then Emblems.

So with the S7 STF changes, the only things that keeps people from solely doing Infected Space all the time is the accolades and the cooldown timer.

matridunadan1 · October 2012

azurianstar wrote: »

People were talking about this in another thread, that I think does have some credibility. People forget with the old STFs, when Marks were around, people mostly did Infected, because it was the easiest STF to get Marks of Valor and then Emblems.

So with the S7 STF changes, the only things that keeps people from solely doing Infected Space all the time is the accolades and the cooldown timer.

So basically everything will go back to the way it used to be before the overhaul that made them all equally played?

blakes7tvseries · October 2012

Any system that rewards players for two types of gear is plan silly.

If you do space get space rewards

If you do ground get ground rewards.

Funny thing is many things will cost more Dilithium so we all grind longer.

But this new system has such a huge loop hole it will reduce grinding..

What's really sad, ground is ten times more challengeing than space making it funnier.

They add the Hive and reduce all incentives to do ground doesn't add up.

thlaylierah · October 2012

I will not miss the power walking Borg zombies.

I prefer a subtler AI instead of just tweaking the difficulty.

orondis · October 2012

reyan01 wrote: »

Plus that I maintain that the Borg are an overused, overrated and not terribly interesting cliche.

I certainly can't argue with that.

atatassault · October 2012

I prefer the ground STFs. They're easier. How So? They're less variable (no lol 1 shot torps or being the 4th in an iso chain), if you do Die, people can res you, and I'm not forced to play cookie cutter escort builds (ie, there's more than one way to play that is effective).

leviathan99 · October 2012

atatassault wrote: »

I prefer the ground STFs. They're easier. How So? They're less variable (no lol 1 shot torps or being the 4th in an iso chain), if you do Die, people can res you, and I'm not forced to play cookie cutter escort builds (ie, there's more than one way to play that is effective).

Yes and no. They do require, virtually, certain weapons in certain places.

It's not like you can play them with dual pistols or hand phasers all that well.

nicha0 · October 2012

I like ground STFs, they aren't as boring and as dps oriented as the space STFs, they require team work and strategy... space requires shooting. Also on the ground being one shotted is pretty rare, unless an elite drone is going to flank and crit you, you'll survive most shots, so you have at least some control, unlike space.

I do feel ground play will drop off massively though.

1. Most people do ground to get the set pieces, that is irrelevant now
2. Ground loot SUCKS, and its not like space where you get some decent stuff popping up, it always sucks and you can't even recycle it for anything.
3. Ground STFs will take longer but provide the same rewards now.
CSE - 10 mins, CGE - 25 mins
ISE - 10 mins, IGE - 20 mins
KASE - 15-20 mins, KAGE - 15-20 mins

4. People are terrible on the ground, I find myself often among groups with people that don't even use their abilities. While most of these people are just as terrible in space, they don't really realize that..

There needs to be a reason that you either MUST or WANT to play ground, if its a set of weak requirements I'm sure people will get it and never play again, if you have better loot then you'll (at least) get the better players to keep playing ground.

markhawkman · October 2012

stoleviathan99 wrote: »

Yes and no. They do require, virtually, certain weapons in certain places.

It's not like you can play them with dual pistols or hand phasers all that well.

That depends on your tactics. Vs. Bosses, yeah, sniper rifles are typically the way to go. Regular mobs you can kill with whatever. A lot of people claim that Borg adapt faster to full-auto than pulsewaves, but they adapt to pulsewaves pretty fast too.

I personally like the Nano-pulse batleth. Yeah, it's technically plasma damage and has no shield penetration, but.... shield penetration doesn't mean jack vs an enemy with shields that are around 10% of their HP. Even 80% penetration will drop their shields before their HP. And a lot of the time some one else will be shooting the enemy. The Borg pretend to adapt, but the Adaptation proc only works on ranged weapons. They can "adapt" to regular melee too, but it doesn't mean they'll ignore the damage.

suaveks · October 2012

nicha0 wrote: »

There needs to be a reason that you either MUST or WANT to play ground, if its a set of weak requirements I'm sure people will get it and never play again, if you have better loot then you'll (at least) get the better players to keep playing ground.

Although I believe not much can be done when it comes to generic loot, I think the answer in this case is simple - reward more marks, elite marks and/or dilithium for playing ground STFs.

I've said this in two other threads but I guess it won't hurt to repeat myself- there are some very good points being brought up by concerned players when it comes to the future of ground STFs. Not many people are playing grounds now and many of them are going to stop doing so once the new system goes live. As such, Cryptic needs to realise that having different numeric rewards for different STFs is going to benefit the game more than hurt it. On average ground STFs are more time consuming and challenging than space, thus it wouldn't be unfair to have appropriately higher rewards at the end. I mean, it's already like this with different Fleet missions, each rewarding different amount of marks (especially grounds), so why not do the same with STFs? If anything, at least it's going to encourage some players to run them once in a while. Otherwise it's gonna end up in "why do ground when we can complete two space in the same amount of time?"

To be quite honest, it was a pain to collect all the prototype techs, but at least the possibility of obtaining a valuable item motivated players to keep playing. I wish something like this could remain there in ground STFs as a very very rare drop specific to a particular mission...

markhawkman · October 2012

suaveks wrote: »

Although I believe not much can be done when it comes to generic loot, I think the answer in this case is simple - reward more marks, elite marks and/or dilithium for playing ground STFs.

I've said this in two other threads but I guess it won't hurt to repeat myself- there are some very good points being brought up by concerned players when it comes to the future of ground STFs. Not many people are playing grounds now and many of them are going to stop doing so once the new system goes live. As such, Cryptic needs to realise that having different numeric rewards for different STFs is going to benefit the game more than hurt it. On average ground STFs are more time consuming and challenging than space, thus it wouldn't be unfair to have appropriately higher rewards at the end. I mean, it's already like this with different Fleet missions, each rewarding different amount of marks (especially grounds), so why not do the same with STFs? If anything, at least it's going to encourage some players to run them once in a while. Otherwise it's gonna end up in "why do ground when we can complete two space in the same amount of time?"

To be quite honest, it was a pain to collect all the prototype techs, but at least the possibility of obtaining a valuable item motivated players to keep playing. I wish something like this could remain there in ground STFs as a very very rare drop specific to a particular mission...

Diablo 2 had that.

The way it handled bosses was to give them very good odds of dropping high quality items.

For STO, it could be done as a random drop of a purple item in elites, but with each player getting one. This would be different from loot bags in that it's JUST the item and nothing else.

blakes7tvseries · October 2012

I find most people who had a bad ground experience did it unprepared.

They equipment they had the wrong PSG, Weapons, and Armor
The did not understand the timing of their abilities or kits
They did not read the guides.

They just showed expecting a cake walk instead of strategic challenge.

My fleet has a TeamSpeak server where we train our members how to do ground.

Most people who can learn and follow instructions are running like pros in one or two missions.

Players don't always invest the same time in ground as they do in space.

atatassault · October 2012

stoleviathan99 wrote: »

Yes and no. They do require, virtually, certain weapons in certain places.

It's not like you can play them with dual pistols or hand phasers all that well.

Its not like the space STFS are any different. Unless you're a carrier (and even then, hardly anything moves in STFs, so go DHCs) there's no reason to use beams. At all. Single Cannons are passable if you're using a Galor or Excel (though, if you're KDF, there's no reason to use the Galor over the Vor'Cha).

carl103 · October 2012

Its not like the space STFS are any different. Unless you're a carrier (and even then, hardly anything moves in STFs, so go DHCs) there's no reason to use beams. At all. Single Cannons are passable if you're using a Galor or Excel (though, if you're KDF, there's no reason to use the Galor over the Vor'Cha).

Science require at least one beam for their target abilities. And only a handful of cruisers can stay close enough to their targets to get an advantage out of single cannons.

Ground STFs Will Be Virtually Dead Come Season 7

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