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bareel
Member Posts: 3 Arc User
What is "Balance"
Balance is another way of saying 'fair'. Or to say that nothing has a clear advantage or disadvantage in play. In a balanced contest skill should be the determining factor on the outcome. Perfect balance is also impossible to achieve but like anything it should be as close as you can get it.
Why should Cryptic care?
A well balanced game tends to have much more longevity than a poorly balanced one. One needs to look no further than the dead and dying MMOs to understand this, or one could look at board games. Another good example would be sports in the US where Football teams tend to be more balanced than Baseball teams and also have a larger fan base.
It also effects sales as something considered to be weak will not be highly desired. You have to really like something to be willing to pay money to 'downgrade' so to speak. I believe ship sales and the tone of the forums are a perfect example of this. A good balance allows for many options, options that can then be sold.
Accurate metrics are difficult to get when a game has balance issues as those who are using weaker options will tend to under perform. Does one design progression systems based on those who have the advantage, or use the overpowered methods? The average? Either option has a negative impact.
Typical Balancing Methods
Different but Equal: With this method the options all allow for a different method that all achieve a similar result. An example would be two characters killing monsters, one kills much faster but must rest for a longer time between kills than the other. Thus balance is achieved because over a set period of time they both kill the same number.
Forced Roles: This method attempts a 'big picture' balance by requiring different methods to be used at the same time or in various situations to achieve best results. Holy Trinity is the best example.
Time to Shine: This is similar to the roles but instead of requiring them it simply allows them to be overpowered/underpowered depending on the specific situation. This rarely applies in online games but is popular in PnP games. The thief that is poor at combat but excels in social encounters is an example.
What should be Balanced?
This is an MMO which means from a 'gamist perspective' progression is the goal of the contests in the game. Therefore everything related to it should be relatively balanced including the content, the rewards of the content, and the methods used to play the content.
An Example
For this I'm going to go a bit big picture on everyone and examine the reputation system.
The Content/Rewards
Romulan Marks can be earned many ways but two stand out from the rest as granting the most marks for the least amount of time investment and effort. Rabbit tagging and the space daily mission. And I would bet the metrics reflect that the majority of players stick to those as their primary means of earning the marks.
Omega Marks are primarily earned via STFs. The elite ones offer far more than the normals much more than the increased difficulty warrants. In addition the Defari ground zone is also a bad choice if time is a concern.
So what is the result? Those who enjoy group content with a bit of challenge find Omega marks to be an enjoyable progression experience. Those who enjoy chasing bunnies or would rather have variety in their missions prefer the Romulan mark experience.
Is this a good thing? Should you force those who do not want to partake in ESTFs to have a difficult time getting marks? Should those who hate tagging space bunnies be penalized? And what about those who say run Azure Nebula spending 15 minutes get the same rewards over time as those who spend 2 minutes tagging those bunnies? Is this fair?
Methods
Most of the content one can do to gain marks it doesn't really matter what you use to do it. However when one begins to talk about space combat that is where methods come into play. Now before I go any further let me simply state I have 3 vice admirals of each class (9 toons) and at least one is using each of the ship types and weapon setup styles. I can state without a doubt some of those methods work much better than others with Tac/Escort being the clear winner. Is that fair?
Final Thoughts
I understand that Cryptic is very concerned about pushing new things and has a high focus on expanding the playerbase and the game. That is admirable. However at some point retention comes into play and this is where balance rears it's ugly head.
I see so many posts on these forums and I see it in game all the time. Those who have the 'game knowledge' so to speak excel and rarely have issues with any form of progression thrown at them. Others who do not have that knowledge struggle. They struggle to maintain a good rate of progression, they struggle to pull their weight in group content, and they struggle to make sense of the mechanics. I can hit 8k dilithium in under an hour without exploiting can your average player? Is that fair?
Case in point. An escort with emergency power to shields 1 and tactical team 1 compared to a cruiser with transfer shield strength 1 and engineering team 1. Which will explode in a difficult combat encounter first?
I hear your systems lead say one of the main problems with PvP is that the min/max ships and builds shred the new blood and turn them away. I ask your system lead why there is such a large performance difference between the casual player and the min/max player. Typically a min/max manages to squeeze at most 10% more out of the mechanics over a casual, they do not triple their performance.
You see eventually a casual will simply stop playing. Eventually a player will tire of the endless power-creep releases that invalidate what he had before and stop playing. Balance creates player retention.
Balance is another way of saying 'fair'. Or to say that nothing has a clear advantage or disadvantage in play. In a balanced contest skill should be the determining factor on the outcome. Perfect balance is also impossible to achieve but like anything it should be as close as you can get it.
Why should Cryptic care?
A well balanced game tends to have much more longevity than a poorly balanced one. One needs to look no further than the dead and dying MMOs to understand this, or one could look at board games. Another good example would be sports in the US where Football teams tend to be more balanced than Baseball teams and also have a larger fan base.
It also effects sales as something considered to be weak will not be highly desired. You have to really like something to be willing to pay money to 'downgrade' so to speak. I believe ship sales and the tone of the forums are a perfect example of this. A good balance allows for many options, options that can then be sold.
Accurate metrics are difficult to get when a game has balance issues as those who are using weaker options will tend to under perform. Does one design progression systems based on those who have the advantage, or use the overpowered methods? The average? Either option has a negative impact.
Typical Balancing Methods
Different but Equal: With this method the options all allow for a different method that all achieve a similar result. An example would be two characters killing monsters, one kills much faster but must rest for a longer time between kills than the other. Thus balance is achieved because over a set period of time they both kill the same number.
Forced Roles: This method attempts a 'big picture' balance by requiring different methods to be used at the same time or in various situations to achieve best results. Holy Trinity is the best example.
Time to Shine: This is similar to the roles but instead of requiring them it simply allows them to be overpowered/underpowered depending on the specific situation. This rarely applies in online games but is popular in PnP games. The thief that is poor at combat but excels in social encounters is an example.
What should be Balanced?
This is an MMO which means from a 'gamist perspective' progression is the goal of the contests in the game. Therefore everything related to it should be relatively balanced including the content, the rewards of the content, and the methods used to play the content.
An Example
For this I'm going to go a bit big picture on everyone and examine the reputation system.
The Content/Rewards
Romulan Marks can be earned many ways but two stand out from the rest as granting the most marks for the least amount of time investment and effort. Rabbit tagging and the space daily mission. And I would bet the metrics reflect that the majority of players stick to those as their primary means of earning the marks.
Omega Marks are primarily earned via STFs. The elite ones offer far more than the normals much more than the increased difficulty warrants. In addition the Defari ground zone is also a bad choice if time is a concern.
So what is the result? Those who enjoy group content with a bit of challenge find Omega marks to be an enjoyable progression experience. Those who enjoy chasing bunnies or would rather have variety in their missions prefer the Romulan mark experience.
Is this a good thing? Should you force those who do not want to partake in ESTFs to have a difficult time getting marks? Should those who hate tagging space bunnies be penalized? And what about those who say run Azure Nebula spending 15 minutes get the same rewards over time as those who spend 2 minutes tagging those bunnies? Is this fair?
Methods
Most of the content one can do to gain marks it doesn't really matter what you use to do it. However when one begins to talk about space combat that is where methods come into play. Now before I go any further let me simply state I have 3 vice admirals of each class (9 toons) and at least one is using each of the ship types and weapon setup styles. I can state without a doubt some of those methods work much better than others with Tac/Escort being the clear winner. Is that fair?
Final Thoughts
I understand that Cryptic is very concerned about pushing new things and has a high focus on expanding the playerbase and the game. That is admirable. However at some point retention comes into play and this is where balance rears it's ugly head.
I see so many posts on these forums and I see it in game all the time. Those who have the 'game knowledge' so to speak excel and rarely have issues with any form of progression thrown at them. Others who do not have that knowledge struggle. They struggle to maintain a good rate of progression, they struggle to pull their weight in group content, and they struggle to make sense of the mechanics. I can hit 8k dilithium in under an hour without exploiting can your average player? Is that fair?
Case in point. An escort with emergency power to shields 1 and tactical team 1 compared to a cruiser with transfer shield strength 1 and engineering team 1. Which will explode in a difficult combat encounter first?
I hear your systems lead say one of the main problems with PvP is that the min/max ships and builds shred the new blood and turn them away. I ask your system lead why there is such a large performance difference between the casual player and the min/max player. Typically a min/max manages to squeeze at most 10% more out of the mechanics over a casual, they do not triple their performance.
You see eventually a casual will simply stop playing. Eventually a player will tire of the endless power-creep releases that invalidate what he had before and stop playing. Balance creates player retention.
Post edited by bareel on
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I said this 6 months ago and I posted a very similar post about 2 months ago, both of which gave a character and ship build and a request to the devs to play said build and see the points first hand, sadly nothing happened to my knowledge (other than being told by the community where to stick myself...)
However I second your entire post and I wish you luck with this endeavour...
Sadly it is true, welcome to Escorts online, please enjoy your stay and pew lots of things with zippy ships...
The recent interview with Geko is all the evidence we need that we wont see any changes from Escorts online as game balance is "Working as designed" (not a word for word quotation but it is the meaning of what he did say), sorry if (like the rest of us) you were looking for a Star trek MMO, if you do find one you will come back and show us wont you?
Balance doesn't exist. Everyone wants to win. Everyone wants to be the hero. In a MMO each person is the hero in their own mind. Trinity play just helps reinforce this by forcing people into roles. Archetypes. Escort tactical officers do the damage. Duh Jock. Engineers in cruisers fix things. Science egg heads in sci ships do the fun science stuff. Duh Tac gets the girl.
In the real world, we don't generate threat to build aggro numbers to hold the AIs attention so the guys with guns can blaze away. Soldiers don't say shoot me while the healer just heals away all my pains.
Combat isn't about "fair play" and "I want to be the hero". This game is similulated combat. Combat is about each military unit being the best it can be at its specialty or as designed working with other military units that are the best to achieve the objective by skills, superior fire power, superior technology, mobility, and tactics.
Balance doesn't exist. It is the stuff of whiners who can't play.
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
Expatriot Might Characters in EXILE
And those who are good enough to make one role fulfil two roles well enough to make the third one irrelevant and the person who's primary role is our secondary role also irrelevant...
Sadly this is the case with Tac/scorts... A half decent Tac/scort player can kil so fast and carry powers that make sci worthless and and tank well enough to make eng and cruisers worthless
Hence complaints about balance... or rather lack of it
the point is that roles shouldn't exist. The big thing players are complaint about is irrelevance of cruisers and science vessels over escorts. I get that. I pla all the above. Escort tacs without sympathy say too bad, know your place and role little sci and eng. Cruiser and Science drivers want to be contributing more to the DPS race to feel more important in the game. Most of the time we see an elite STF in trouble it's because there isn't enough DPS or 1 escort and 4 cruisers. But this is not an issue of "balance". The problem is the structure of the game.
A ship is a ship just like a gun is a gun, a wrench is a wrench, and so on. It is the tech that should be dictating damage. It is insane to thing we shouldn't be able to put any weapon system we want on any ship we want and get the same damage potential.
Cruisers in Star Trek serve to explore, fight and expand influence of their controlling political entity. It doesn't matter what kind of captain pilots it. It does what the machine is designed to do. Escorts are the same ship pared down to fight. It doesnt have family aboard and probably doesnt have every type of science officer and research scientist. Should have the same damage potential but be more maneuverable but just as able to stay in the field doing their job. They are not there to be explorers. They are there to bring the fight and protect ships with a higher value. Science ships, frankly, shouldn't be in combat. They are specialized and are meant for research. But in this game it the presence of a Bridge Officerthat determine if a ship has a tractor beam or not. That is stupid. The presence of a Bridge Officer determines if we can high yield a torp or tell your gunner to fire at will or use the graviton discombobulator to make a gravity well. Jeez, equally wrong. The equipment should be determining these abilities, not the presence of an officer. The same is true of captain skills and abilities.
When a cruiser shows up any enemy should understand this is a Capitol ship and its firepower should be feared. When an escort shows up they should know its a warship there to bring the hurt. I like science ships but, just from a sense of reality, they shouldn't be in the fight. Given the game we play, though, they should be able to bring the same hurt as the other two and have nasty tricks to play as well.
It is the push button game captain and Boff abilities that change this. It's an artificial game mechanic that operates at a multiplicative level to increase damage to sometimes broken levels. Ok. Maybe balance is needed there at times. But much of the threads I see in the forums are nothing but whining because someone feels the need to nerd rage when they couldn't win in Pvp or they failed in a PvE mission due to poor play that is all someones fault but theirs. v
[COLOR="rgb(0, 191, 255)"]A galaxy class ship should make an escort tremble if this simulate game were real. Out of just mass and superior power and more room for more and better weapon systems and fire controls, as well as superior damage control systems, the cruiser should have all the advantages except maneuverability.
I don't understand your first two comments about joining the navy or whatever. The first sounds like trolling so ill ignore it. the second about throwing a grenade and this not being simulated, all i can say is if you dont see a combat game as a simulation, oh boy. Anyone should be able to understand that build solid reasoning and an element of truth in game design helps with believability of the story.[/COLOR]
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
Expatriot Might Characters in EXILE
I agree with almost everything you have said here but I am simply stating reality and the sad reality is that we play Escorts online, I think that for immersion reasons the player should choose his/her captain skills as they level up giving added immersion and diversity to the game.
So basically the game either needs something like this... Never going to happen because it's too much work... or a complete balance pass of everything
Balance does not mean everyone wins, far from it. If everyone won it would be a very odd and likely unbalanced game.
Balance means everyone has a chance to win. Balance makes skill the determining factor in determining the victor.
Defense and tanking isn't the role that was initially designed for Science. Crowd Control and Debuffing was their initial role.
But most of that got tweaked out of science in the first few seasons.
I already see a ton of Odyssey's around. Barely any Regents or Galaxies though. Just imagine if those were powerful ships though, people would have far, far more reason to buy them. The thing escort pilots need to understand is I do not want to nerf you, I just want my broadside to be equally effective as your attack pass. I do not see how improving Cruiser and Sci ship damage would hurt the game, or hurt sales for Cryptic. If all three of the ships you make are viable, people have more reason to buy them!
I care not about PvP.
I find it amusing you bring up threat control I do infact have 6 ranks in it as well as a +threat console ... on my steamrunner escort.
And please explain to me what makes you think cruisers are intended to be tanks? Is it perhaps that extend shield boff ability that is the strongest shield buff in the game (aside from EPTS that is) that they cannot use on themselves?
And Sci, heh. Borg are now immune to Viral Matrix, nearly immune to energy drain and so forth. Sure a gravity well is nice, but my breen escort (yes it is an escort) and MVAE both bring it to the party along with DPS.
Anyone who thinks this game is balanced is kidding themselves. Nothing, not the boff abilities, captain abilities, rewards for the content, ship hulls, weapon types, none of it is even close to balanced.
The entire 'L2P' mentality everyone keeps touting just shows how terrible the balance is. You see in a balanced game the difference between a really good player and an average player mostly comes down to skill and even then does not allow that single good player to outperform four average players. The game should be about the skill of the player behind the keyboard, not how well they can min/max their build by avoiding using the 75% of options in this game that are junk.
Keep in mind, the current state benefits me. I only fly warships (escorts or escort like ships) the majority of the time. I have great builds. I know what content to farm and what to avoid. But I enjoy this game immensely and it pains me to see players struggling to find a decent build that cannot carry a PuG. Those who farm the wrong things and get frustrated with the grind. The vast majority of them don't come to the forums to complain, or to get advice.
They uninstall.
This first... you mean be made ineffectual by Tac buffs (be that AP:A and GDF for leading to nerfs or AP:O negating EVERYTHING Sci have left worth using) or by being a healboat damage sponge? Because both of those are fun to play and have a chance to win in 1 on 1 pvp right? I didn't think so... (I know, I've been there, done that...)
Which if you actually READ what he had to say is what he said and it's wrong that Gear should be more important than playing skill.
The problem here is that a half decent escort build can tank well enough to make any eng cruiser worthless in 90% of game content WHILE doing it's designed damage level so we're talking escort level damage with 80% of the eng cruiser's tanking yet the eng cruiser can't do 80% of the escort's damage output... That seems a little unfair doesn't it?
And I won't start on science, I could right an entire page there...
Play Starbase 24 or Klingon Scout Force or Gorn Minefield Fleet Action and the ones who get the very rare gear at the end is escorts. Where are the missions that reward Cruisers for doing what they do best? What about a Science ship one as well?
In STF missions if their are no Escorts it will be hard for most people to complete the optional objective on missions with random people and as such they feel like their second class because optional objects require DPS and non escorts DPS is just to low. Why can't their be STF missions with optional objectives that reward people for something other then DPS?
So tell me why should the tricobalt mines have been nerfed to oblivion because some very poor PvP players couldn't avoid them? What about FAW being nerfed because of PvPers? More things are nerfed because of PvP than anything else. This is completely silly as most (anyone remember the percentage of players that do PvP? 10% rings a bell) people do not PvP and instead choose to team up and take down the Borg, defend their star base or just generally pew pew against things that aren't going to PM them afterwards saying "noob", "@?&?!!'ing learn to play" and all other problems you get with the complete and utter trash you get on the Internet.
People aren't asking to DPS like an escort they're just asking to be useful in end game content, yes PvP the classes are more useful in their roles but in PvE science skills do NOTHING except repulsors, tractor beam and gravity well and even then a tractor beam is rarely useful. Cruisers if you use cutting beam and assimilated console you can do quite good damage at <1km and if you upgrade to plasma and use the embassy consoles you can increase it a little bit more. That's about it otherwise your role is to tank, which even with 6-9 in threat control and delta taunt you still can't take aggro off the freighter in star base blockade or no win.
I have done some casual PvP and my team usually win as I play sci and use skills to shut the enemy down until a pre-made decides to just mutilate a pug group and you keep getting put against them coz guess what? No one else does PvP. That's another reason few bother with PvP apart from the mandatory acc weapons or you won't hit *%#?.
People want to have the ability to let their skill decide whether they can carry a pug group in PvE and that just doesn't happen unless your in an escort. In a cruiser or science vessel you might be able to do alright but by no means will you be taking out 2 transformers on your own in KASE or killing raptors and negh'vars in CSE when people fluff up. Even if you come up with a great build and best in class you will never make up for the sheer ineptitude of pugs.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
They are the type of people that say they do not like TNG because it was too "boring" and "peaceful". The kind of people that obviously do not understand what Star Trek is supposed to represent at all.
But actually, I gotta' say, I expected Escorts to be relatively few and far between. I figured the game would be based on a much slower combat model (re: sustained moderately high damage) rather than insane damage all in the face ALL the time. I figured STO would really favor the big, heavier ships, and make up for the slow turning with MUCH increased durability.
And yet, it seems that is just not the case.
I've actually just made a Gorn Sci Off, and I was looking forward to playing with all the crazy, flashy science abilities. I was thinking they'd be say, creative use of physics to collapse dimensional space on people. ...kinda' sounding like I would be wrong.
This all sounds like they tried to shoe horn the trinity model into equipment, and it doesn't jive real well with expectations.
Yep good luck OP. Talked to them about the imbalance they made with the escorts and with tactical ships having both attack and evasive maneuvers within the same exact skill and the problems of science abilities not only not being canon but not doing accurate damage. (tyken's rift and feedback pulse come to mind instantly)
Also told them about various benefits of having the science ships strengths being placed in the game, like the two deflectors on the intrepid and the bellerophon causing the deflector abilities to have a faster cooldown or the energy abilities on the Oberth that should have enhanced the power distribution by 50% on the console, or how the nebula's sensor module should have added a faster stack of sensor analysis because there aren't many abilities that help sensor analysis along on science ships.
But have yet to see any official posts about the problems and I'm not even addressing pvp.
our only choice at this point is to hit craptic in their wallet and bug out leaving just the escort pilots to rot in this hole till the end...
as gecko said escorts are the only thing selling well...
Just a suggestion before a mod decides to rain fire and brimstone on me.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
Also, I know exactly what you mean, I do the same with my science toon and science ships. My poor wells is just not as versatile and cannot make up for bad players like the m?bius can =,(
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.