test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
#1 Problem In STO
bareel
Member Posts: 3 Arc User
Tribal Knowledge AKA Game Knowledge
What it is
Information not freely given by the game to the player that empowers them to make good decisions inside the game. This includes but is not limited to activities they should partake in along with how some systems or mechanics work that allow them to customize their characters, ships, boffs, gear, etc in a way that they will enjoy and be effective with.
Give me an Example?
How many players know how their damage from weapons is calculated? Not many, not many at all. This leads to confusion on what gear to aim for, how to build their ships, how important or unimportant specific aspects are and so on. This could also be extended to keeping your ship alive. Ever see someone tank a tac cube in an escort without any effort while the four ships around him all explode to a single sphere? Yeah.
Problems it Causes?
Bad Feedback
How can someone be expected to give quality feedback about something they do not understand?
Bad Advice
People see another player doing poor damage in a skittle boat. They rage at them for not using a single weapon type. The player they are raging at doesn't even know tactical consoles stack nor are the multiple energy type weapons the true problem with a bad boff ability build.
Senseless 'Hot' Debates
How many arguments on these forums really come down to a poor understanding of game mechanics? Pretty much every single one I have ever been involved in I hate to say.
Poor Play Experience
It has been said that only a small portion of the playerbase even bothers to visit the forums. How on earth are they supposed to be expected to make informed decisions in game during character customization? How many would rather just quit the game then put the effort required to learn how it works after the borg smash 'em?
How to Fix it
Improve In-Game Information
The game tells you very little. Most information inside the game is extremely vague and/or misleading. Fix it. For example tactical consoles add a flat damage amount depending upon the weapon type. LIST THAT NUMBER instead of the misleading and often confusing %.
Create Informative Webpage
Each and every formula should be compiled in an OFFICIAL central location. All information required to make good in game decisions. This will create an actual 'authority' on how things truly work.
Thank you for your time.
What it is
Information not freely given by the game to the player that empowers them to make good decisions inside the game. This includes but is not limited to activities they should partake in along with how some systems or mechanics work that allow them to customize their characters, ships, boffs, gear, etc in a way that they will enjoy and be effective with.
Give me an Example?
How many players know how their damage from weapons is calculated? Not many, not many at all. This leads to confusion on what gear to aim for, how to build their ships, how important or unimportant specific aspects are and so on. This could also be extended to keeping your ship alive. Ever see someone tank a tac cube in an escort without any effort while the four ships around him all explode to a single sphere? Yeah.
Problems it Causes?
Bad Feedback
How can someone be expected to give quality feedback about something they do not understand?
Bad Advice
People see another player doing poor damage in a skittle boat. They rage at them for not using a single weapon type. The player they are raging at doesn't even know tactical consoles stack nor are the multiple energy type weapons the true problem with a bad boff ability build.
Senseless 'Hot' Debates
How many arguments on these forums really come down to a poor understanding of game mechanics? Pretty much every single one I have ever been involved in I hate to say.
Poor Play Experience
It has been said that only a small portion of the playerbase even bothers to visit the forums. How on earth are they supposed to be expected to make informed decisions in game during character customization? How many would rather just quit the game then put the effort required to learn how it works after the borg smash 'em?
How to Fix it
Improve In-Game Information
The game tells you very little. Most information inside the game is extremely vague and/or misleading. Fix it. For example tactical consoles add a flat damage amount depending upon the weapon type. LIST THAT NUMBER instead of the misleading and often confusing %.
Create Informative Webpage
Each and every formula should be compiled in an OFFICIAL central location. All information required to make good in game decisions. This will create an actual 'authority' on how things truly work.
Thank you for your time.
Post edited by bareel on
0
Comments
Unfortunately...
From the April 19th patch notes:
The game really needs more information about how everything works. How it's presented is a problem though. People will just skip it if the game tries to force it down their throats, but if it's buried in some sub-menu somewhere, chances are nobody will see it.
If nothing else, tool tips need to be more helpful (and stop showing different values depending on where you are when you look at it).
A thousand times this.
The amount of confusion created by the in space/ on the ground bias is rather painful to watch sometimes.
85% Knowledge
10% Skill
5% Gear
I do not think that is an exaggeration in the slightest either. A great build in the hands of a baddie with mk 10 whites will outperform the highest skilled player with ultra rare everything in a bad build.
*edit addon*
It is not even that they need to elaborately display the math in the game with formulas. But to try and make it more user friendly or obvious to everyone how things work. Why on earth are so many consoles so vague on what they do?
An RCS console for example, would it kill someone to add the words "% of the ship's base turn rate value" to the tooltip?
Or on skills would it be that bad if under gravity well it stated "Damage is doubled for every 200 points of particle generators" not accurate?
Plenty of problems could be negated if there was another tutorial specifically for fitting ships. Just a basic overview of what shields/engines/deflector are best for what ship, the different consoles and what they mean and stuff like that.
I flew a rainbow boat when I started because I didn't know otherwise, I used the rewards from every mission and just plugged them in because I thought that was the right thing to do. It was only when I started to look at online guides it occurred to me that I was doing things wrong.
Yeah. Nothing quite as frustrating as spending ages grinding for all the stuff that we supposedly 'absolutely must have', only to get crushed anyway. Single biggest reason PvP has such a bad rep in this game IMO.
If the game properly conveyed the necessary information to the player such a tutorial would be unnecessary. Not an easy goal at all, but it should be a goal.
The 10k dps builds will still require expensive trial and error work unless you are with an elite fleet (insert shameless plug for my own fleet here), but I think the dev's do that on purpose too to generate zen sales.
This part isn't true in PvP.
In PvP game knowledge is basically the baseline to improving.
You seem to be crossing some odd wires here.
Bad Player + "Good" Build + MK 10 White Gear
vs.
Good Player + "Bad" Build + +MK XII VR/UR Gear
?
Skill is not the same as Knowledge.
I outknowledge my friend on every single game we ever played. He has a higher skill ceiling though and it always makes things interesting. Especially in an RTS game for example.
I have to think situation is really by design on the part of the devs to be frank. Moreover since the game when F2P, I really dont see it changing soon if ever.
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
Yes, I recognize that.
I just think your assertion isn't accurate.
Very Rare Personal Shield
Bind On Pickup
Values do not reflect skills or other modifiers
278.4 Maximum Shield Capacity
Fully regenerates after not taking damage for 3 secs.
Chance to damage the attacker when you take damage. The stronger the attack, the more powerful the retaliation.
Chance to provide a 10% energy damage buff for 4 sec when you take damage.
This is a example of a item that needs to provide better information. The part that says chance to damage the attacker when you take damage is vague. What is the chance? Is it a 2.5% chance? Is it a 5% chance? I don't know. Their are other shields that says the same thing without telling someone what the chance percentage is.
EPS Flow Regulators. They do not affect the weapons power regeneration like it says they do in the wiki.
See my sig for relevant patch from years ago when the change was made.
Start up a new character... Is it not very blatantly implied or outright stated that Tactical Captains fly Escorts, Engineers Cruisers, and Science Science? That is frequently a recipe for a horrible build and there are SO many times people ask in ESD "If I am Captain type X does that mean I have to fly ship type X or can I fly ship type Y?" which should not be a question.
Transparancy = honesty. When someone is refusing to be transparent in a business dealing, there is a reason.
Agreed, and this game pretty much is victory by calculator at the moment.
Thing is, way back in the day the devs came out and said obscuring how things worked was actually part of the game design. I honestly can't recall if it was CO or STO devs that said it but I'm pretty sure it was a conscious design decision made company wide.
A massively writer noticed it and wrote about it in an STO article just last week. He called STO more complex than it needs to be".
Especially when they went out of their way to hide values at the design stage, not that the writer would know that.
I want to say that the consensus the forums came to at the time, as to why they would decide to go in such an annoying design direction was that they wanted to distance themselves from WoW and its infamous theorycrafting.
Last I checked WoW is still showing everyone else how its done....
How very true. There's also the possibility the devs themselves don't have a good understanding of the mechanics they're in charge of overseeing. So even when well intentioned they fumble about.
Mix that with what I said above about actively obscuring how mechanics works and you get where we are today. We can all certainly feel w we got nerfed, when the NPCs got a buff, etc. But w're hard pressed to prove anything. Almost everytime Cryptic has acknowledged an NPC buff its because players kept bringing it up. Or when they buff something, then nerf it, then stealth buff it back again.... lack of credibility is what that ends in.
Why on earth would you want to do something like that as a designer? That would be like selling board games but not providing rule books. It just makes no sense! I mean don't get me wrong rules lawyering gets annoying when playing tabletop RPGs or board games but to intentionally obscure the rules is just mind boggling.
STO Forum member since before February 2010.
STO Academy's excellent skill planner here: Link
I actually avoid success entirely. It doesn't get me what I want, and the consequences for failure are slim. -- markhawman
It was a few years ago, but at the time all the forumites could come up with was a desire to distance themselves from WoW. Of course that was then, in those days Cryptic's design focus was totally different to today's Dil/Lockbox/grind focused design. Content was still considered something the company wanted to keep putting out for all its games.
In no game, is Gear > Skill. I agree with the OP, More information, however, we need Simplified Info Toolips, and Advanced Toolips for Math players.
The reason people can fail in pvp is not that they don't have the gear. Its that they aren't correctly informed, and there is no Curve, All PvE in STO is SO INSANELY EASY once you hit pvp, u don't know how to play or what items do.
There needs to be ALOT more info, and ALOT harder low level content.
Click ---> Here <--- for my guidebook
Click My SigPic to go to the boot camp forum page.
Sales and diversity.
If it was proven by "theorycrafting" that a certain class, with a certain skill setup, on a certain ship with a certain boff/doff crew, with a certain rotation of skill would be the best, no one would aim to be flying anything else and everyone not flying it would be put down.
Since STO doesn't progress "forward" but "sidewards", they wouldn't create any sales with ships or gear, unless they'd make it better everytime, hence creating a true P2-win dynamic.
I've advocated for STO to let us create mods and addons to reliable parse our encounters, but it's kinda nice to be able to mount phasers and quantums on every one of my Fed ships, without having to be reminded that I could improve my DPS by 0,91% if I'd replace them with flame-cannons and transphasics...
Try playing some of the old neverwinter games without reading up, good luck.
For pve all I can say is you can pretty much get away with anything and I know from experience.
I placed skillpoints wrong but never bothered to respec, I switch build when I want and have all green consoles - yet, I feel overpowered to the NPCs.
What I mean to say is, the game isn't overly complex and isn't overly demanding in pve.
And it's also what's right about sto, that you can play it casually even with a tripple hybrid build in the weakest t4 ship there is.
For pvp it comes down to be ready to pay for all purple consoles or not. It's assumed once you get bored enough to do that, you are far enough along you have learned the game.
I think the #1 problem in STO is whoever makes the design decisions.
Science has been nerfed into uselessness.
Tactical & escorts have been buffed to absolutely idiotic levels of incredibly performance.
KDF still does not receive attention (bugs, glitches, ships)
...and the list goes on.