unfortunatly it seems like the devs have got themselves into a system of; escort superiority leads to more escort popularity, more escort popularity which leads to more sales of escorts,
which leads to more sales of escorts which leads to more perks for escorts,
which leads to more escort superiority which leads to more escort popularity,
pretty sure i have seen that kind of system in textbooks:rolleyes:
personally id like to see ship stats by size and the current broken classification system to refer only to the boff power & console bias.
Agreed...this is a vicious circle...would be nice if they could focus on "balancing" ships/skills a bit more. After all this is becoming ESCORTS online....if you dont have one you are missing alot of gameplay. I'm all for balancing all ships to skills equally...they already nerfed SCIENCE in lieue of TACTs for profit making....isnt time to balance the game again....:cool:
I will challenge your statement that Starfleet is a cruiser heavy force. Based on what we see in the various series I'd say that TNG starfleet was mostly Mirandas/Nebulas and smaller ships. The series follows the Enterprise but it hardly ever meets up with other cruisers.
Post Dominion War I'd assume Starfleet is rebuilt, in part with more combat capable vessels. These more combat oriented vessels are what we now call "escorts". Their classification is not based on size but on function. Starfleet makes warships that are fast, heavily armed and heavily shielded, their purpose to never again find themselves with no recourse should diplomacy fail. But Starfleet also uses other, less combat oriented ships. This is where cruisers and sci vessels come in.
While the original design intent is lost to us, its not hard to imagine that a pre launch STO was planned to include more than just combat. Imagine if there were also diplomatic or scientific type encounters along with the combat encounters we have now? Cruisers and Sci Vessels would shine in such situations. As we all know, Cryptic was unable to bring to life such an implementation. BUT! I find it interesting that there was mention of other uses becoming available for cruisers and sci vessels. Maybe we'll see another system that revolves around tasks that cruisers and sci vessels would excell at? We can only hope.
Actually, starfleet is a cruiser heavy organization. Thing is, the only 'escort' ever shown was the defiant. As the ship of the main character it was obviously made to look larger than life.
however, if you actually watch DS9 and see what the defiant actually did in combat.
The entire series has it shooting at jemhadar attack ships, birds of prey, shuttle sized ships and in the few instances it attacks cruisers it is shown taking a beating and generally forced to withdraw. The only time it killed a cruiser sized ship was when it shot down 2 breen cruisers...and it did so in just 2 bursts of phaser cannon and 1 volley of quantum torps... so it can hardly be considered realistic to think it alpha striked them down but more likely the ships were already heavily hurt (shields down).
Actually, starfleet is a cruiser heavy organization. Thing is, the only 'escort' ever shown was the defiant. As the ship of the main character it was obviously made to look larger than life.
I guess I didn't explain myself very well. I meant cruisers as we know them today. The big general purpose ships. In cannon I think everything was a cruiser of some variety with the exceptions of the Defiant and maybe the Oberth.
I guess I didn't explain myself very well. I meant cruisers as we know them today. The big general purpose ships. In cannon I think everything was a cruiser of some variety with the exceptions of the Defiant and maybe the Oberth.
More than anything else, I would put it down more to Cryptic's poor grasp of what cruisers really are: multipurpose vessels that are suited for a variety of missions. If we were to take that at face value, most cruisers should have one boff slot each for tactical, science, and engineering, with the remainder either universals or tailored towards a given goal. Whatever the case, they shouldn't all be lumbering space whales that take ten kilometers to make a full 180 turn and hit like an emaciated child.
I don't know that escorts are really so OP - my feeling is that cruisers and sci ships are just really broken.
STO tried to not use the DPS/Tank/Healer MMO trinity. This (imho) was a mistake. As an escort captain, I can't remember the last time I got a heal from anyone that wasn't already my friend or on a premade. I also can't remember the last time a cruiser actually held agro from a big mob while a sci ship buffed/healed them.
The game is very focused around rewarding you for kills, and kills are what escorts/BOPs are good at. There are no dedicated tanks or healers, or rewards for doing either of those things. As a result, the people after the big rewards don't play cruisers or science ships so much.
The PVE game is also balanced for the average (solo) player, not the min-maxer or the hardcore PVPer (or even just a compotent premade team). PVP is fierce and if you (or your build) are not competitive - you die. Lots of PVPers fly escorts and BOPs - and they are very very good at it because they have to be. They aren't fighting NPC battleships that use the same weak tactics over and over again, they are fighting smart people with good builds and the best gear. As a result, these players are just devastating in any PVE encounter. (Have you seen the TRIBBLE has completed wave 8+ of No Win Scenario messages?) That said, there are LOTS of terrible escort builds out there. I just don't think it's fair to compare an average player (in any ship) to a min-maxer or PVPer (in any ship but especially escorts).
I do think it's fix-able though.
First, IMHO they need to add sepearte Tanking and Healing rewards to ALL of the STFs. They should not count self-heals for the healing. There just has to be some reason for players to want to heal people (that they don't know) in the STFs and missions.
Second, the big mobs (battleships, etc.) need to be tougher and hit harder in general, not rely on super high damage attacks to make them hard. Giving every battleship a 200k dmg instakill every 60 sec is not fun or clever or condusive to teams working together. The big mobs need to require a tank - and the really hard ones need to require a tank and a healer to keep the tank alive. That's the way MMOs work - they just need to accept that and fix it.
Finally, they need to give cruisers more ability to tank (pull and hold agro) and more resist abilities. Likewise, science ships need more healing and buffing abilities. If the escort and science captains see a cruiser join the team and think - Yay, we have a tank. That's a good sign that cruisers are needed/wanted to fill that role. If cruiser and escort captains see a science ship join the team and think - Yay, we have a healer - that's a good sign science ships are needed/wanted to fill that role.
As things are now - cruisers and science ships are not able to be effective tanks or healers... and the big mobs don't require tanks or healers... and there is no reward or other reason for them to tank or heal. It's all just kill-kill-kill (everyone for themselves). This is what escorts are good at so of course they beat the cruisers and science ships at it.
Escorts are currently the only ships in the game that both do what they are suppsoed to do AND have something to do in the missions that earns a reward. We need to fix cruisers, science ships, and mission rewards, not break the escorts.
ok, i see alot of u complaining about escorts. i have both a VA tact and a VA engi., and
i dont see the issue here, they seem balanced to me. only problem i ever have with escorts is the Jem-bug. ridiculously powerful. have you guys ever "tried" playing a tactical officer? they DO NOT excell at everything. u put a tact in a sci ship hes gonna get pounded to hell and back by damn near anyone! i say if they nerf the cannons, nerf the heals engineers can dish out. sounds to me you just want cruisers to run the game..just m/o..
I will challenge your statement that Starfleet is a cruiser heavy force. Based on what we see in the various series I'd say that TNG starfleet was mostly Mirandas/Nebulas and smaller ships. The series follows the Enterprise but it hardly ever meets up with other cruisers.
Post Dominion War I'd assume Starfleet is rebuilt, in part with more combat capable vessels. These more combat oriented vessels are what we now call "escorts". Their classification is not based on size but on function. Starfleet makes warships that are fast, heavily armed and heavily shielded, their purpose to never again find themselves with no recourse should diplomacy fail. But Starfleet also uses other, less combat oriented ships. This is where cruisers and sci vessels come in.
While the original design intent is lost to us, its not hard to imagine that a pre launch STO was planned to include more than just combat. Imagine if there were also diplomatic or scientific type encounters along with the combat encounters we have now? Cruisers and Sci Vessels would shine in such situations. As we all know, Cryptic was unable to bring to life such an implementation. BUT! I find it interesting that there was mention of other uses becoming available for cruisers and sci vessels. Maybe we'll see another system that revolves around tasks that cruisers and sci vessels would excell at? We can only hope.
DS9 was filmed with limited ship models. They only had the Ships that were left over from TNG. and the Movies. So they had to use Mirandas and Excelsior and Galaxy and Nebula class ships beacuse thats all they had. In later episodes you can see the Model builders running out of options and creating the famious "Shelley" class ships.
DS9 was filmed with limited ship models. They only had the Ships that were left over from TNG. and the Movies. So they had to use Mirandas and Excelsior and Galaxy and Nebula class ships beacuse thats all they had. In later episodes you can see the Model builders running out of options and creating the famious "Shelley" class ships.
The cost of CGI production dropped dramatically after LightWave 3D became commercially available, off-the-shelf, in 1994. Although both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager had already implemented CGI in their title sequences (created in 1992 and 1994, respectively), they both started their runs predominantly using traditional visual effects methods but transitioned to regular use of CGI in the late 1990s. The transition to CGI was completed in 1997, during DS9's sixth season and Voyager's fourth season;
Whenever a script called for a new design but – due to time or budgetary restraints – a design of such newness was not feasible, using existing models of starships were used, as they were easily adaptable into another type of ship, a method frequently employed during VOY (1) and ENT (2). Using CGI also meant that pre-production evaluation shots of VFX, by visual effects supervisors, could be done on a computer screen instead of having it played out in real-time, thereby (in the process) eliminating the need for physical camera test models.
(DS9 did use CGI in the season 7 battles but had to use existing models for budget reasons.) you will notice the same scenes repeating themselves in alot of the battles and the same 3 or 4 ships used over and over. The shelley class kitbashes are visible in the Episode "A Time to Stand" My basic point is that due to budget reasons DS9 has to use only the ships that the studio had laying around to map them into CGI and use them in the battle scenes. People try to justify that starfleet could only spare older ships to fight in the battles and that the newer intrepid and soverign classes were not assigned to the Front line ect. But in reality is was just that studio was cheap.
During a recent interview, Geko suggested a nerf to Dual Heavy Cannons. May I say that this is first sensible idea he has ever had. Escorts Alpha Strike has gone from mildly annoying in Season One to outright ridiculous in Season Six.
I am aware that Cryptic prefer Escorts over Cruisers and Science Vessels. Possibly because they fail to understand that Starfleet is a cruiser heavy organisation, vessels they classed as escorts are not actually escorts, for example;
Saber = Frigate
Steamrunner = Cruiser
Akira = Heavy Cruiser
Intrepid = Light Cruiser (Classed as Science Vessel only because Janeway of Voyager was a former Science Offficer)
Perhaps it is time to go further and change the "ship trinity" completely for one more in keeping with traditional Starfleet. Cryptic has already shown they are willing to do this by classing the Chimera as a "Destroyer", a comfortable mix between Escort and Cruiser.
So maybe Engineering and Science powers need to be completely reworked and we need to lose the "Escort" catagory, to which the Defiant-Class is the only true escort in that sense and provide uniqueness to each vessel rather then just being one of a catagory.
Lets finally remove all the barriers and let people truly be creative with their own vessels. I find it really hard to get attached to my ships if it has such gaping flaws which are not apparent in canon.
So maybe this game could learn from EvE Online's success with their ship catagories and provide more.
Sounds like someone must have thought cruisers are better. this "cannon" movement of making cruisers good, isn't going yo happen.
" I believe that I speak for us all sir when I say: To hell with our orders." - Lt. Cmdr. Data
Sounds like someone must have thought cruisers are better. this "cannon" movement of making cruisers good, isn't going yo happen.
Thats because they are better.
In EVERY Star Trek major release game from Interplays Starfleet Command in the late 90's to Activisions Bridge Commander in 2001 and even the dumbed down Starfleet Command 3 by Activision the cruisers was the heavywheights, sure, they turned damn slow, but they packed a massive punch.
However, as long as Cryptic are out of touch with the playerbase and listen to young kids like the troll i quoted above who knows nothing about the basics of Star Trek or the last two decades of Star Trek Gaming history (at one point this franchise was the biggest around) then this game isnt going to go anywhere.
I signed up for gold sub last week, after seeing just how out of touch Cryptic is with a large silent majority i'm wondering if its worth my time continuing as a Gold and even spending money to buy zen.
"You know when that shark bites, with its teeth dear... scarlet billows start to spread..."
It sounds like you don't consider STO to be a major release Star Trek game. That's disappoint.
I signed up for gold sub last week, after seeing just how out of touch Cryptic is with a large silent majority i'm wondering if its worth my time continuing as a Gold and even spending money to buy zen.
The sub is a waste of money. You shouldn't have subbed anyways.
Two fundamental questions I would like to casually throw at the OP -
1. Why don't we see a team made of 5 tactical escorts running amok (edit: in pvp) pwning everything under the sun?
2. Why does my cruiser deals more damage than does my best escort in PvE (STFs, CE, SB24, etc)
Two fundamental questions I would like to casually throw at the OP -
1. Why don't we see a team made of 5 tactical escorts running amok pwning everything under the sun?
2. Why does my cruiser deals more damage than does my best escort in PvE (STFs, CE, SB24, etc)
Hi, I'm not the OP but I find your questions interesting.
1.) I've actually seen something like that assuming by tactical escort you don't mean 5 tactical escorts (as in "Defiants") but 5 tacticals in escort-type ships;)
I've never seen and ESTF end so quickly. We still had 8 minutes left in ISE.
2.) Without your build, it's hard to say. The usual suspect: might be you put an engineer in your escort and a tac into the cruiser...but that's 500% speculation without any further info.:)
Two fundamental questions I would like to casually throw at the OP -
1. Why don't we see a team made of 5 tactical escorts running amok pwning everything under the sun?
2. Why does my cruiser deals more damage than does my best escort in PvE (STFs, CE, SB24, etc)
Because despite multiple posts on these forums, no one seems to understand you can fit a cruiser for traditional tank/heal o doom, or escort levels of DPS if you put the time/EC in to getting technicians and running A2B.
Although re: 1, on the speed runs post in the PVE forum you'll see a mix of runs that have had 5 escorts, or a few escorts and a few A2B cruisers
Hi, I'm not the OP but I find your questions interesting.
1.) I've actually seen something like that assuming by tactical escort you don't mean 5 tactical escorts (as in "Defiants") but 5 tacticals in escort-type ships;)
I've never seen and ESTF end so quickly. We still had 8 minutes left in ISE.
2.) Without your build, it's hard to say. The usual suspect: might be you put an engineer in your escort and a tac into the cruiser...but that's 500% speculation without any further info.:)
Yes, that's correct. What I meant was tactical captains in escort class ships. Also to clarify (I missed it in my post, my bad), question 1 was oriented to the subject of PvP.
Tactical escort vs tactical cruiser. My best tactical escort can do 12k single target dps in ISE.
Because despite multiple posts on these forums, no one seems to understand you can fit a cruiser for traditional tank/heal o doom, or escort levels of DPS if you put the time/EC in to getting technicians and running A2B.
Although re: 1, on the speed runs post in the PVE forum you'll see a mix of runs that have had 5 escorts, or a few escorts and a few A2B cruisers
I guess we can thank DS9 and the Defiant for this, making it canon that small ships are able to defeat larger ships on their own.
In all the movies before, a B'rel often had to have some kind of gimmick to be able to have a chance on its own, like the Enterprise only having a skeleton crew, or firing while cloaked, or using Laforge's visor to get the shield frequencies.
Then suddenly in DS9 the Defiant, B'rel, and JHAS are suddenly able to take on massive ships like Galors, Galaxies, and Vorchas. :rolleyes:
I fly all ship types and have lots of escorts but if I could have do it over again I would rather have had a less escort focused game, but I guess its too late for that now.
Then suddenly in DS9 the Defiant, B'rel, and JHAS are suddenly able to take on massive ships like Galors, Galaxies, and Vorchas. :rolleyes:
Actually in canon the JHAS is the ultimate glass cannon, it makes the BoP look like a cruiser, the JHAS policy is "If you can't incapacitate it in 20 seconds flat the KAMAKAZIE!"
Hi, I'm not the OP but I find your questions interesting.
1.) I've actually seen something like that assuming by tactical escort you don't mean 5 tactical escorts (as in "Defiants") but 5 tacticals in escort-type ships;)
I've never seen and ESTF end so quickly. We still had 8 minutes left in ISE.
2.) Without your build, it's hard to say. The usual suspect: might be you put an engineer in your escort and a tac into the cruiser...but that's 500% speculation without any further info.:)
1) Really want to use the content that considers one of the three captain types useless to show some type of twisted balance? Amusing.
2) Complicated. First of all most of your precious DPS meter rating is simply faw spamming into oblivion and doesn't actually matter. Secondly your escort (I hope) is slapping APB 2/3 on each and every target costing valuable high level boff slots while your cruiser is benefiting from the escort on the team doing so. Look I could build a selfish DPS meter warrior escort that ran nothing but CSV/TS/APO and purposely shoot things that auto heal, but that would be kinda silly don't you think? A better test than those extremely misleading (yet still valuable for those who understand the context of the information they provide) DPS meters for your ships capacity to 'bring the damage' is the starbase mission, which of your ships has a faster time with that eh?
I'm going to assume bareel is drunk or otherwise impaired because normally his posts make more sense than that ramble iirc
No just more grumpy than usual. Honestly I have lost all hope that this game will ever have even a semblance of balance to someone such as myself who values a variety of ships that contribute in a variety of ways in group endgame encounters, and its not the trinity I speak of. It is of when a Sci could turn a Tac Cube into a weak puppy, back before I could face tank them while half asleep mashing my spacebar keybind in a defiant anyway. Or perhaps the entire paladin/aura/Co-ordinate X capacity being added to cruisers so their effect in groups could be more than adding an extra minute to the duration of the encounter.
I'd be thrilled if 'Fly an Escort when solo' wasn't the best advice you could give to new players. Or if they even remotely attempted to lower the amount of Tribal Knowledge needed to excel in this game. But no default ship weapon layouts are still absolutely awful not to mention that temporal ambassador build that appeared to be created via a random generator recently added to the game.
I find it terribly disheartening when I log in. I look over my list of 12 VAs and realize that they all fly the same ship for all intents and purposes. Well thats not completely true but those who don't fly a warship are really only used for DOFFing anymore. And soon I will add 3 more to the stable, all packing enough defense to survive (EPtS/TT/HE) and then damage buffs flavored to the slot (TB/CRF/EPtW) so their DHCs can melt enemies with due haste. Sure the ship skins will be slightly different, and they'll have fancy pants singularity powers most of which are about as useful as the T5 romulan ability, but meh.
Why on earth is it fine with Cryptic to let an escort melt an opponent in seconds but a sci ability that can merely disable them it needs to be granted an immunity? Hell even Azure Nebula which I greatly enjoy for a twisted reason has been demoted to DPS only unless you know how to exploit the asteroid to hide. At first you could simply TBR away the pesky Tholians, or grab agro and they would chase you a bit creating a gap to (for only the second time in STO group content history i'm aware of) complete content without simply blowing everything up. But no that bothered someone and now their wonder range is shorter, they are much more difficult to push, and they race back to FaW at that pesky player who found it more important to rescue someone instead of pew pewing first and pressing F latter.
I find the variety in this game is truly surface deep. When 2/3rd of your stuff is junk it may as well not even exist. When your systems team lacks a clear direction on how they want the game to work nothing gets fixed. Beams are fine eh? THEN WHY DO ALL 3 REPUTATIONS PROVIDE AN ITEM SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO BUFF BEAM BOATS?
Yeah yeah, ranty and rambly, I find it difficult to express my thoughts in a concise manner. So instead I shall use a story to illustrate my point. My buddy and I both of whom are MMO Vets of the EQ era originally started to play NWO and he has been reading the forums a good bit and is worried that it seems clerics are the goto tanks endgame while the defensive warrior is kind of left in the dust. Now I have no idea how true that is, nor is that relevant, for he asked me a simple question. Does Cryptic ever balance their games? Are they any good at it? After a good hearty laugh that I sure did need by the way I responded with a simple 'no'.
Lol. In centuries to come when STO and star trek are just a fond memory in the history of mankind, I wonder if this debate will sit alonside the Chicken and the Egg as unsolvable?
Why on earth is it fine with Cryptic to let an escort melt an opponent in seconds but a sci ability that can merely disable them it needs to be granted an immunity?
Maybe its because you dont know how to use your sci ship and your sci abilities?
Well, he's right though, some Sci has a big place in pvp, but in pve there is virtually no use for it, more damage is almost always the quickest answer (grav well being the possible exception). It's great that cruisers now have high damage options with A2B, 2pc omega adapted set proc and Marion + DEM to cover up the short comings of limited tac seating and beam array energy drain, but it's still an all damage all the time approach versus gameplay that would require more traditional cruiser/sci roles. Pvp of course opens up different options, but has it's own set of worthless skills to go along, and unfortunately the majority of the server population appears to avoid pvp like the plague anyway.
And the tribal knowledge/default ship layouts is a legit problem too. Just look how many posters still complain about cruisers being worthless in pve and escorts ruling all when the above options actually make them easier to pull decent damage out. Hell, every single torpedo is worthless once everyone on the team is doing insane damage. Fitting 2+ on a beam boat where you can't maximize the firing arcs all at once is just setting the average player up for a painful experience when they start working with others. The first thing you should do when getting a new ship is trash 90% of the default layout.
I'm actually going to give the devs credit, assuming they created A2B builds with cruisers in mind, and further bumped them with the borg cutter/2pc set and then Marion doff for icing on the cake (and lolalpha bop builds). It made cruisers relevant in pve. But it still doesn't address that dps is the only driving force for relevancy in pve. No Win is probably the closest to needing some utility, but with the current damage numbers possible I'm still not convinced you couldn't take a full ALL THE DPSES team in there and wipe the floor.
Ultimately I assume this is driven because they just don't care about the efficiency/raid/whatever hardcore term you want to use market. You can get by with about any ship and a decent build (once you figure out what that is), which means the Star Trek or casual fans can relive whatever ship based glory they want. They aren't going to pull in mass player numbers with high end raid content involving multiple role types working together, or they would have created more than 1 new STF in the past year. Instead they focus on the Romulan arc and mostly pre-end game content with intriguing storylines because that's going to pull in the ST fan or casual player (the latter of which whom are also more likely to shell out for those lockbox keys or buy a ship because they like the canon). Which is fine in its own right and is certainly the correct business decision to make, but it leaves the game mechanics/efficiency/complex gameplay crowd out of the loop. Of course I could be talking out my TRIBBLE at this point, so ymmv
Maybe its because you don't know how to use your sci ship and your sci abilities?
Let us take 2 examples in ISE shall we.
A) Sphere spawns from gateway.
Sci Options: Grav Well them into a clump and let the escort kill them.
Escort Options: Burn them all before they go active.
If you can please share you vast wisdom on just what exact option a Sci Vessels has in it's arsenal to kill all 200k hull spheres by itself please do share. PS: Sci Scort Vesta doesn't count it is more an escort than a Sci Vessel not to mention the vast quantity of escort options with access to the two best PvE Sci powers (TBR/Grav Well).
Tac cube
Sci Options: Rift + Syphon and, nevermind they fixed that option to no longer do anything at all.
Escort Options: Facetank and while yes you might eat a HY and esplode it will hurt that cube with no shield, APB3 debuff, and disruptor proc more than any Sci ability.
Once again an escort can LOLFace tank it all day and toast it's shields in a single volley yet a Sci using energy drains or subsystem attacks/VM to neuter it was problematic? Please share with me your wisdom once again.
-snip-
Ultimately I assume this is driven because they just don't care about the efficiency/raid/whatever hardcore term you want to use market. You can get by with about any ship and a decent build (once you figure out what that is), which means the Star Trek or casual fans can relive whatever ship based glory they want. They aren't going to pull in mass player numbers with high end raid content involving multiple role types working together, or they would have created more than 1 new STF in the past year. Instead they focus on the Romulan arc and mostly pre-end game content with intriguing storylines because that's going to pull in the ST fan or casual player (the latter of which whom are also more likely to shell out for those lockbox keys or buy a ship because they like the canon). Which is fine in its own right and is certainly the correct business decision to make, but it leaves the game mechanics/efficiency/complex gameplay crowd out of the loop. Of course I could be talking out my TRIBBLE at this point, so ymmv
I agree with you except for one major thing. By allowing the effectiveness of the player to be so reliant upon Tribal Knowledge and the ability to avoid the worthless options while min/maxing the good ones to the extreme you create a vast barrier to entry for casual players to participate in the end game that keeps 'em hooked and buying lockbox keys.
When the casual player joins an elite STF, or a fleet action, or anything really, and sees the hardcore(?min/max?) player perform better than the rest of the team combined it does not create a good environment. You end up creating a haves and have nots barrier between the two groups of players. In any PuG I am a member of there is no socialization, there is no teamwork, there are simply those who are baddies and those who carry them.
When the casual player confronts the Crystaline Entity for the first time and his supposed tanky Eng Cruiser dies rapidly while the hardcore Tac Escort is barely being scratched is either player truly being satisfied with the experience? No, the casual doesn't understand why he exploded and the hardcore doesn't understand why Cryptic continues to release such easy watered down content difficulty wise.
And that is the root of the problem. Performance is rarely based on actual skill, or tactical decision making capability, or even co-ordination between players. Those can help don't get me wrong. But the cold hard truth of the matter is that performance is already determined before you ever leave the shipyard and if you managed to create an effective combination of 12(out of 47 with 3 ranks each) boff abilities, 5(out of 100ish?) doff abilities, 300k skill points, 0-8 reputation perks, 13 pieces of equipment, and 6-8 weapons while being offered little to no guidance on how to do so or the basic information on what they all truly do or interact with one another. Expecting to capture a casual player base when the disparity between the various combinations of those can be so extreme is a bit misguided if you ask me.
Look at how the skill tree is designed. It is setup in such a way that the actual raw difference in performance in most cases between the player who put 3-6 ranks into every skill and the one who perfectly min/max it for their build is honestly relatively minor. But what is the difference in survivability between the ship with tac team, epts, and hazard emitters and the one using engineering team, attack pattern delta, and transfer shield strength? Pretty significant. Let alone the difference between a ship with 4 dhcs/3 turrets sporting CRF/APB and the one with 2 dhcs, 2 beam arrays, a torp, a turret, and a mine launcher using beam overload and CRF. This costs Cryptic Customers. They do not bother learning all the little details and nuances of the game mechanics to create effective builds and participate in end game content. They get frustrated and quit until the next story content is released, perhaps not all but many. Alternately the min/max guy gets bored with his limited options. And I haven't even started to grumble about the absolutely moronic approach of increasing the viability of underpowered options via exotic additions (Doffs/Gear) that just continue to increase both the performance disparity between the min/maxer who knows about them and the casual player who scratches his head wondering what on earth weapon power drain resistance actually means to his beam arrays.
Comments
Agreed...this is a vicious circle...would be nice if they could focus on "balancing" ships/skills a bit more. After all this is becoming ESCORTS online....if you dont have one you are missing alot of gameplay. I'm all for balancing all ships to skills equally...they already nerfed SCIENCE in lieue of TACTs for profit making....isnt time to balance the game again....:cool:
Actually, starfleet is a cruiser heavy organization. Thing is, the only 'escort' ever shown was the defiant. As the ship of the main character it was obviously made to look larger than life.
however, if you actually watch DS9 and see what the defiant actually did in combat.
The entire series has it shooting at jemhadar attack ships, birds of prey, shuttle sized ships and in the few instances it attacks cruisers it is shown taking a beating and generally forced to withdraw. The only time it killed a cruiser sized ship was when it shot down 2 breen cruisers...and it did so in just 2 bursts of phaser cannon and 1 volley of quantum torps... so it can hardly be considered realistic to think it alpha striked them down but more likely the ships were already heavily hurt (shields down).
I guess I didn't explain myself very well. I meant cruisers as we know them today. The big general purpose ships. In cannon I think everything was a cruiser of some variety with the exceptions of the Defiant and maybe the Oberth.
More than anything else, I would put it down more to Cryptic's poor grasp of what cruisers really are: multipurpose vessels that are suited for a variety of missions. If we were to take that at face value, most cruisers should have one boff slot each for tactical, science, and engineering, with the remainder either universals or tailored towards a given goal. Whatever the case, they shouldn't all be lumbering space whales that take ten kilometers to make a full 180 turn and hit like an emaciated child.
STO tried to not use the DPS/Tank/Healer MMO trinity. This (imho) was a mistake. As an escort captain, I can't remember the last time I got a heal from anyone that wasn't already my friend or on a premade. I also can't remember the last time a cruiser actually held agro from a big mob while a sci ship buffed/healed them.
The game is very focused around rewarding you for kills, and kills are what escorts/BOPs are good at. There are no dedicated tanks or healers, or rewards for doing either of those things. As a result, the people after the big rewards don't play cruisers or science ships so much.
The PVE game is also balanced for the average (solo) player, not the min-maxer or the hardcore PVPer (or even just a compotent premade team). PVP is fierce and if you (or your build) are not competitive - you die. Lots of PVPers fly escorts and BOPs - and they are very very good at it because they have to be. They aren't fighting NPC battleships that use the same weak tactics over and over again, they are fighting smart people with good builds and the best gear. As a result, these players are just devastating in any PVE encounter. (Have you seen the TRIBBLE has completed wave 8+ of No Win Scenario messages?) That said, there are LOTS of terrible escort builds out there. I just don't think it's fair to compare an average player (in any ship) to a min-maxer or PVPer (in any ship but especially escorts).
I do think it's fix-able though.
First, IMHO they need to add sepearte Tanking and Healing rewards to ALL of the STFs. They should not count self-heals for the healing. There just has to be some reason for players to want to heal people (that they don't know) in the STFs and missions.
Second, the big mobs (battleships, etc.) need to be tougher and hit harder in general, not rely on super high damage attacks to make them hard. Giving every battleship a 200k dmg instakill every 60 sec is not fun or clever or condusive to teams working together. The big mobs need to require a tank - and the really hard ones need to require a tank and a healer to keep the tank alive. That's the way MMOs work - they just need to accept that and fix it.
Finally, they need to give cruisers more ability to tank (pull and hold agro) and more resist abilities. Likewise, science ships need more healing and buffing abilities. If the escort and science captains see a cruiser join the team and think - Yay, we have a tank. That's a good sign that cruisers are needed/wanted to fill that role. If cruiser and escort captains see a science ship join the team and think - Yay, we have a healer - that's a good sign science ships are needed/wanted to fill that role.
As things are now - cruisers and science ships are not able to be effective tanks or healers... and the big mobs don't require tanks or healers... and there is no reward or other reason for them to tank or heal. It's all just kill-kill-kill (everyone for themselves). This is what escorts are good at so of course they beat the cruisers and science ships at it.
Escorts are currently the only ships in the game that both do what they are suppsoed to do AND have something to do in the missions that earns a reward. We need to fix cruisers, science ships, and mission rewards, not break the escorts.
Just my .02,
- SC
Buff what is weak, not nerf what is good and working properly.
Give Science ships better returns at high AUX power for abilities, and give the cruisers more health and shield modifiers.
Also, a thread for great PVE Cruiser builds might stop all the whiners that want every escort ship taken out of the game.
Counter-Quote:
"Surrender? Perish the thought! The Dominion has never surrendered in battle for 10,000 years since it's founding!" -Weyoun "What You Leave Behind"
(Just watched that episode to watch Miranda's get blown to bits, and happened to hear Weyoun say that XD)
i dont see the issue here, they seem balanced to me. only problem i ever have with escorts is the Jem-bug. ridiculously powerful. have you guys ever "tried" playing a tactical officer? they DO NOT excell at everything. u put a tact in a sci ship hes gonna get pounded to hell and back by damn near anyone! i say if they nerf the cannons, nerf the heals engineers can dish out. sounds to me you just want cruisers to run the game..just m/o..
DS9 was filmed with limited ship models. They only had the Ships that were left over from TNG. and the Movies. So they had to use Mirandas and Excelsior and Galaxy and Nebula class ships beacuse thats all they had. In later episodes you can see the Model builders running out of options and creating the famious "Shelley" class ships.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/7/dscn1249a.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/837/005qjj.jpg/
funny, i thought DS9 from season 6 on used exclusively CG and no models for ALL battle scenes
Whenever a script called for a new design but – due to time or budgetary restraints – a design of such newness was not feasible, using existing models of starships were used, as they were easily adaptable into another type of ship, a method frequently employed during VOY (1) and ENT (2). Using CGI also meant that pre-production evaluation shots of VFX, by visual effects supervisors, could be done on a computer screen instead of having it played out in real-time, thereby (in the process) eliminating the need for physical camera test models.
(DS9 did use CGI in the season 7 battles but had to use existing models for budget reasons.) you will notice the same scenes repeating themselves in alot of the battles and the same 3 or 4 ships used over and over. The shelley class kitbashes are visible in the Episode "A Time to Stand" My basic point is that due to budget reasons DS9 has to use only the ships that the studio had laying around to map them into CGI and use them in the battle scenes. People try to justify that starfleet could only spare older ships to fight in the battles and that the newer intrepid and soverign classes were not assigned to the Front line ect. But in reality is was just that studio was cheap.
Sounds like someone must have thought cruisers are better. this "cannon" movement of making cruisers good, isn't going yo happen.
Thats because they are better.
In EVERY Star Trek major release game from Interplays Starfleet Command in the late 90's to Activisions Bridge Commander in 2001 and even the dumbed down Starfleet Command 3 by Activision the cruisers was the heavywheights, sure, they turned damn slow, but they packed a massive punch.
However, as long as Cryptic are out of touch with the playerbase and listen to young kids like the troll i quoted above who knows nothing about the basics of Star Trek or the last two decades of Star Trek Gaming history (at one point this franchise was the biggest around) then this game isnt going to go anywhere.
I signed up for gold sub last week, after seeing just how out of touch Cryptic is with a large silent majority i'm wondering if its worth my time continuing as a Gold and even spending money to buy zen.
It sounds like you don't consider STO to be a major release Star Trek game. That's disappoint.
The sub is a waste of money. You shouldn't have subbed anyways.
1. Why don't we see a team made of 5 tactical escorts running amok (edit: in pvp) pwning everything under the sun?
2. Why does my cruiser deals more damage than does my best escort in PvE (STFs, CE, SB24, etc)
Elite Defense Stovokor
Hi, I'm not the OP but I find your questions interesting.
1.) I've actually seen something like that assuming by tactical escort you don't mean 5 tactical escorts (as in "Defiants") but 5 tacticals in escort-type ships;)
I've never seen and ESTF end so quickly. We still had 8 minutes left in ISE.
2.) Without your build, it's hard to say. The usual suspect: might be you put an engineer in your escort and a tac into the cruiser...but that's 500% speculation without any further info.:)
Because despite multiple posts on these forums, no one seems to understand you can fit a cruiser for traditional tank/heal o doom, or escort levels of DPS if you put the time/EC in to getting technicians and running A2B.
Although re: 1, on the speed runs post in the PVE forum you'll see a mix of runs that have had 5 escorts, or a few escorts and a few A2B cruisers
Yes, that's correct. What I meant was tactical captains in escort class ships. Also to clarify (I missed it in my post, my bad), question 1 was oriented to the subject of PvP.
Tactical escort vs tactical cruiser. My best tactical escort can do 12k single target dps in ISE.
Exactly right.
Elite Defense Stovokor
In all the movies before, a B'rel often had to have some kind of gimmick to be able to have a chance on its own, like the Enterprise only having a skeleton crew, or firing while cloaked, or using Laforge's visor to get the shield frequencies.
Then suddenly in DS9 the Defiant, B'rel, and JHAS are suddenly able to take on massive ships like Galors, Galaxies, and Vorchas. :rolleyes:
I fly all ship types and have lots of escorts but if I could have do it over again I would rather have had a less escort focused game, but I guess its too late for that now.
Actually in canon the JHAS is the ultimate glass cannon, it makes the BoP look like a cruiser, the JHAS policy is "If you can't incapacitate it in 20 seconds flat the KAMAKAZIE!"
1) Really want to use the content that considers one of the three captain types useless to show some type of twisted balance? Amusing.
2) Complicated. First of all most of your precious DPS meter rating is simply faw spamming into oblivion and doesn't actually matter. Secondly your escort (I hope) is slapping APB 2/3 on each and every target costing valuable high level boff slots while your cruiser is benefiting from the escort on the team doing so. Look I could build a selfish DPS meter warrior escort that ran nothing but CSV/TS/APO and purposely shoot things that auto heal, but that would be kinda silly don't you think? A better test than those extremely misleading (yet still valuable for those who understand the context of the information they provide) DPS meters for your ships capacity to 'bring the damage' is the starbase mission, which of your ships has a faster time with that eh?
Lol, I just went looking through all the other pages of the thread only to find that you posted beneath him... I think that speaks for itself
No just more grumpy than usual. Honestly I have lost all hope that this game will ever have even a semblance of balance to someone such as myself who values a variety of ships that contribute in a variety of ways in group endgame encounters, and its not the trinity I speak of. It is of when a Sci could turn a Tac Cube into a weak puppy, back before I could face tank them while half asleep mashing my spacebar keybind in a defiant anyway. Or perhaps the entire paladin/aura/Co-ordinate X capacity being added to cruisers so their effect in groups could be more than adding an extra minute to the duration of the encounter.
I'd be thrilled if 'Fly an Escort when solo' wasn't the best advice you could give to new players. Or if they even remotely attempted to lower the amount of Tribal Knowledge needed to excel in this game. But no default ship weapon layouts are still absolutely awful not to mention that temporal ambassador build that appeared to be created via a random generator recently added to the game.
I find it terribly disheartening when I log in. I look over my list of 12 VAs and realize that they all fly the same ship for all intents and purposes. Well thats not completely true but those who don't fly a warship are really only used for DOFFing anymore. And soon I will add 3 more to the stable, all packing enough defense to survive (EPtS/TT/HE) and then damage buffs flavored to the slot (TB/CRF/EPtW) so their DHCs can melt enemies with due haste. Sure the ship skins will be slightly different, and they'll have fancy pants singularity powers most of which are about as useful as the T5 romulan ability, but meh.
Why on earth is it fine with Cryptic to let an escort melt an opponent in seconds but a sci ability that can merely disable them it needs to be granted an immunity? Hell even Azure Nebula which I greatly enjoy for a twisted reason has been demoted to DPS only unless you know how to exploit the asteroid to hide. At first you could simply TBR away the pesky Tholians, or grab agro and they would chase you a bit creating a gap to (for only the second time in STO group content history i'm aware of) complete content without simply blowing everything up. But no that bothered someone and now their wonder range is shorter, they are much more difficult to push, and they race back to FaW at that pesky player who found it more important to rescue someone instead of pew pewing first and pressing F latter.
I find the variety in this game is truly surface deep. When 2/3rd of your stuff is junk it may as well not even exist. When your systems team lacks a clear direction on how they want the game to work nothing gets fixed. Beams are fine eh? THEN WHY DO ALL 3 REPUTATIONS PROVIDE AN ITEM SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO BUFF BEAM BOATS?
Yeah yeah, ranty and rambly, I find it difficult to express my thoughts in a concise manner. So instead I shall use a story to illustrate my point. My buddy and I both of whom are MMO Vets of the EQ era originally started to play NWO and he has been reading the forums a good bit and is worried that it seems clerics are the goto tanks endgame while the defensive warrior is kind of left in the dust. Now I have no idea how true that is, nor is that relevant, for he asked me a simple question. Does Cryptic ever balance their games? Are they any good at it? After a good hearty laugh that I sure did need by the way I responded with a simple 'no'.
R.I.P
Maybe its because you dont know how to use your sci ship and your sci abilities?
And the tribal knowledge/default ship layouts is a legit problem too. Just look how many posters still complain about cruisers being worthless in pve and escorts ruling all when the above options actually make them easier to pull decent damage out. Hell, every single torpedo is worthless once everyone on the team is doing insane damage. Fitting 2+ on a beam boat where you can't maximize the firing arcs all at once is just setting the average player up for a painful experience when they start working with others. The first thing you should do when getting a new ship is trash 90% of the default layout.
I'm actually going to give the devs credit, assuming they created A2B builds with cruisers in mind, and further bumped them with the borg cutter/2pc set and then Marion doff for icing on the cake (and lolalpha bop builds). It made cruisers relevant in pve. But it still doesn't address that dps is the only driving force for relevancy in pve. No Win is probably the closest to needing some utility, but with the current damage numbers possible I'm still not convinced you couldn't take a full ALL THE DPSES team in there and wipe the floor.
Ultimately I assume this is driven because they just don't care about the efficiency/raid/whatever hardcore term you want to use market. You can get by with about any ship and a decent build (once you figure out what that is), which means the Star Trek or casual fans can relive whatever ship based glory they want. They aren't going to pull in mass player numbers with high end raid content involving multiple role types working together, or they would have created more than 1 new STF in the past year. Instead they focus on the Romulan arc and mostly pre-end game content with intriguing storylines because that's going to pull in the ST fan or casual player (the latter of which whom are also more likely to shell out for those lockbox keys or buy a ship because they like the canon). Which is fine in its own right and is certainly the correct business decision to make, but it leaves the game mechanics/efficiency/complex gameplay crowd out of the loop. Of course I could be talking out my TRIBBLE at this point, so ymmv
No, you make some very good points.
Elite Defense Stovokor
Let us take 2 examples in ISE shall we.
A) Sphere spawns from gateway.
Sci Options: Grav Well them into a clump and let the escort kill them.
Escort Options: Burn them all before they go active.
If you can please share you vast wisdom on just what exact option a Sci Vessels has in it's arsenal to kill all 200k hull spheres by itself please do share. PS: Sci Scort Vesta doesn't count it is more an escort than a Sci Vessel not to mention the vast quantity of escort options with access to the two best PvE Sci powers (TBR/Grav Well).
Sci Options: Rift + Syphon and, nevermind they fixed that option to no longer do anything at all.
Escort Options: Facetank and while yes you might eat a HY and esplode it will hurt that cube with no shield, APB3 debuff, and disruptor proc more than any Sci ability.
Once again an escort can LOLFace tank it all day and toast it's shields in a single volley yet a Sci using energy drains or subsystem attacks/VM to neuter it was problematic? Please share with me your wisdom once again.
I agree with you except for one major thing. By allowing the effectiveness of the player to be so reliant upon Tribal Knowledge and the ability to avoid the worthless options while min/maxing the good ones to the extreme you create a vast barrier to entry for casual players to participate in the end game that keeps 'em hooked and buying lockbox keys.
When the casual player joins an elite STF, or a fleet action, or anything really, and sees the hardcore(?min/max?) player perform better than the rest of the team combined it does not create a good environment. You end up creating a haves and have nots barrier between the two groups of players. In any PuG I am a member of there is no socialization, there is no teamwork, there are simply those who are baddies and those who carry them.
When the casual player confronts the Crystaline Entity for the first time and his supposed tanky Eng Cruiser dies rapidly while the hardcore Tac Escort is barely being scratched is either player truly being satisfied with the experience? No, the casual doesn't understand why he exploded and the hardcore doesn't understand why Cryptic continues to release such easy watered down content difficulty wise.
And that is the root of the problem. Performance is rarely based on actual skill, or tactical decision making capability, or even co-ordination between players. Those can help don't get me wrong. But the cold hard truth of the matter is that performance is already determined before you ever leave the shipyard and if you managed to create an effective combination of 12(out of 47 with 3 ranks each) boff abilities, 5(out of 100ish?) doff abilities, 300k skill points, 0-8 reputation perks, 13 pieces of equipment, and 6-8 weapons while being offered little to no guidance on how to do so or the basic information on what they all truly do or interact with one another. Expecting to capture a casual player base when the disparity between the various combinations of those can be so extreme is a bit misguided if you ask me.
Look at how the skill tree is designed. It is setup in such a way that the actual raw difference in performance in most cases between the player who put 3-6 ranks into every skill and the one who perfectly min/max it for their build is honestly relatively minor. But what is the difference in survivability between the ship with tac team, epts, and hazard emitters and the one using engineering team, attack pattern delta, and transfer shield strength? Pretty significant. Let alone the difference between a ship with 4 dhcs/3 turrets sporting CRF/APB and the one with 2 dhcs, 2 beam arrays, a torp, a turret, and a mine launcher using beam overload and CRF. This costs Cryptic Customers. They do not bother learning all the little details and nuances of the game mechanics to create effective builds and participate in end game content. They get frustrated and quit until the next story content is released, perhaps not all but many. Alternately the min/max guy gets bored with his limited options. And I haven't even started to grumble about the absolutely moronic approach of increasing the viability of underpowered options via exotic additions (Doffs/Gear) that just continue to increase both the performance disparity between the min/maxer who knows about them and the casual player who scratches his head wondering what on earth weapon power drain resistance actually means to his beam arrays.
If you like sustainability then fly a cruiser
If you like a mix of sustainability and healing/shields then fly a sci vessel.
The problems arise when folks want a cruiser to be on par with an escort or a sci vessel to pew pew with the best of them...
It is not the ships fault but the players for choosing the wrong class of ship to materialize their desires.
In neverwinter we pug an epic dungeon will all Rogues...and complete it all the time.......just takes more effort.
I will conceede that STO does, to a small degree, push the DPS mantra...and IMO a lil too hard by the content they release.
In most games you cannot survive end content with all DPS u need a balance of all of them...but then again STO is not an avg MMo.....much is askew