^ He already said he never paid much attention to pets so..
Anyway what the other guy said was developers would never change pet spam because of pvp'ers, that it was laughable.
The links I posted prove otherwise to the point developers use the word "pet spam" themselves. Going as far back as the origin of the game.
And, since we know no one from pve ever complained about respawning pets that sort of narrows it down...
I don't know why it's so hard for you to understand, what is the point in removing a feature if it's an upgrade ?
How is it I need to be able to NOT respawn pets to have new HUD, exactly ? I'd love for you to explain how, exactly, those 2 are connected ?
You spawn fewer pets more slowly PLUS you have to rely on AI; the AI always having been the problem of the carriers and still is. It's that simple.
Now granted, if you only found out yesterday how to actually play a carrier you went from nothing to nothing and haven't lost anything.
Your witch hunt is based on a single misconception. "Pet spam" as used in those threads you linked by those devs (who don't even work there anymore, IIRC) is used to refer to the large number of pets that can exist. Not, as you seem to think, the replacement launches of pets at high rate. PvPers don't care a hoot about that. In fact, it doesn't do a thing to address high maximum numbers of pets - which means that this change has nothing to do with PvP concerns.
Look - you've already said that the problem is the AI. The only reason why this is a nerf for you is because it removes a workaround for bad AI. Why in the world are you blaming PvPers for something that is only a nerf because of bad AI? In fact, if there was better AI, we'd love it! Look at the patch notes - they knew that the removing replacement spawning would make you rely on AI - so they release it with an AI improvement! How is it PvPers' fault that the AI improvements do not work properly?
Furthermore, look through the threads and see how many - both PvE players and PvP players - are requesting upgrades to control of pets and AI. If this upgrade worked as it was intended to by the devs based on the patch notes, it would simply be the fulfilments of these requests! No need to go through the conspiracy theories and logical contortions of PvPers asking for pet launch replacements to be nerfed (untrue) - devs releasing a patch with new UI and changes to AI in patch notes but lying about it, cunningly camouflaging a nerf behind lies. If the devs actually did it in response to PvP feedback, they'd just dump that change alone on us. Give them some credit - if it was actually in response to the devs caring about PvP feedback, they'd tell the PvP community that and trumpet the fact - why would they hide it if they didn't care about PvE player opinions?
I almost exclusively fly carriers, My rommy dreadnought only has one hanger, and my only non carrier is my Talshiar BC on my sci.
That being said, this was a attempt to improve pets, I found my self not knowing of my pets were alive or dead half the time, if I needed to pop them out again or not. I didn't spam them, like some did.
Spam pets to bypass cool downs, the cool downs their shortening right now, was a exploit in the system, it was not a feature, or a bonus, or working as intended, it was a exploit.
right now their trying to correct other pet behavior too, so that they don't wander off and act stupid, like intercept them flying off after every mine and torp, even if its 30km over that way and not aimed at you.
Escort mode never worked right, now it seems to be working for the most part. and with escort mode Im seeing even higher dps since I can put in all three of my escort doffs for 30% more damage on my recluse.
Should pet spam have been FIXED, correcting a exploit is not a nerf because the behavior or ability was not intended, yes.
Does the UI need work, not that I can see. Does the pet AI need work still, yes, they still act a bit odd now and then, sometimes in escort they wont engage, even when your attacked. sometimes they still like to fly right through a warp core explosion.
The biggest problem I have right now is with my mesh weaver on my recluse pulling agro off players, thanks partially to their boosted 30% damage with my doffs in, and I think they have their agro gen set a bit high.
Does the AI still need work, yes, they need to follow faster, the docked heal needs to be looked at and improved.
but crying nerf because of a fix of a exploit or because things change is silly, and just makes you look silly.
the AI always having been the problem of the carriers and still is. It's that simple.
No contest to that statement. Pet AI, for all combat pets, has always been a bugaboo in this game. Sometimes it works out okay and sometimes it doesn't. The other day it seemed to be working fine in the scenarios I tried it out in. Since I'm not flying a full carrier, and I'm not flying my Vesta primarily as a carrier, I'm not really taking a lot of time to test it.
I only recently bought my Vesta bundle and never experienced carriers before that. About the only way I knew the fighters were doing anything was to look for the beam flash and look for moving allies on the minimap. I don't have keybinds set up to cycle through allied targets and had no idea whether they were healthy or not.
Now I can see their shield and hull status at a glance. I know when they go boom and I need to relaunch another one. It's a step in the right direction, IMO.
I still can't swear that I know that they're actually following the commands I gave them. There's no visual indication I saw that tells you whether an individual fighter is in Attack, Intercept, Escort, or Recall mode. So yeah, that could stand to be tweaked too.
(A simple letter 'A', 'I', 'E', or 'R' as an indicator would be helpful, or putting a status icon over each fighter would be enough)
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I brought them up to say it's nerf to help a minority in the game.
Frankly either or doesn't matter I am saying it to point why it is indeed a nerf and the "reasoning" behind it since people are still struggling with the concept of losing the respawn function not being an upgrade.
So I am glad to hear you say respawning pets was an OP exploit that totally broke the game that HAD to be dealth with.
Because that's all this here carrier incident is about and really my only buttom line, I have no beef with pvp'ers or developers - albeit I am not going to come out and thank them for nerfing all my ships.
Season 7 broke the ground sets for me, LoR broke sector space so it's only fair the next step is breaking my ships too.
Just need to have the exchange stop working too that'd be perfect.
/edit
ps. The AI issue I can't blame them for. AI is a problem not just in all games but of any kind and knowing that it's a wrong bet to put any kind of trust in the pet AI ever becoming remotely good.
I brought them up to say it's nerf to help a minority in the game.
Frankly either or doesn't matter I am saying it to point why it is indeed a nerf and the "reasoning" behind it since people are still struggling with the concept of losing the respawn function not being an upgrade.
So I am glad to hear you say respawning pets was an OP exploit that totally broke the game that HAD to be dealth with.
Because that's all this here carrier incident is about and really my only buttom line, I have no beef with pvp'ers or developers - albeit I am not going to come out and thank them for nerfing all my ships.
Season 7 broke the ground sets for me, LoR broke sector space so it's only fair the next step is breaking my ships too.
Just need to have the exchange stop working too that'd be perfect.
/edit
ps. The AI issue I can't blame them for. AI is a problem not just in all games but of any kind and knowing that it's a wrong bet to put any kind of trust in the pet AI ever becoming remotely good.
The original pet spam was a totally different beast, what was going on recently was the resetting of pet power cool downs to artificially inflate dps. The original was the ability to put out swarms of pets, you could swap the hanger bay pet after spawning pets, and have 4 frigs, 12 fighters, 12 siphon drones, 12 slavers, 12 muraders, so on, so forth. if you have a different pet type, you could swap it, and spawn a batch.
Something tells me you're a spammer! Love spamming frigates for maximum dps and that is why you're upset you can't do that anymore!
No wonder I don't get 1st place for SB or CE anymore...that explains it well...wait....another stealth nerf or working as intended :eek:
"Make players grind until their eyes bleed or make them pay through the urethra. We don't care how you milk them dry, just make sure that milking them dry until their nipples petrify and fall off is your only goal. Don't deviate from this goal unless you'd rather be on the bread line." - Prime Directive from PWE
Haha, Cryptic making this change because PvPers said so? Get real.
And to the OP: You clearly don't understand how the game works. Once the old stuff is gone, there is no 'switch' to put it back to that just for you.
and what i have to do with pvp Players what do TRIBBLE in the game?
the last 2 years all was great with carriers then fed get carriers for unknown reason start doing TRIBBLE and now all carriers get a destroyed gameplay?
thats why PVE only Players get a destroyed ship class, if that Change was made for pvp then put it in there and remove this from PVE Players and PVE maps?
now STF become unplayable with carriers coz stupid fighters still do what they want like always but now you can not stop them, that is the new feature!!!!
in the past if a petgroup start doing Nonsens, yes still bug AI, you simply recall a new wing and become this easy under your control, now the Buggy pets are unstopable.
they fly 40KM away from me start to attak whatever and ignore all comands what Options i have now? do a STFs without pets? seriously?
they fly 40KM away from me start to attak whatever and ignore all comands what Options i have now? do a STFs without pets? seriously?
a carrier without pets great Job cryptic!!!!
Do STFs in a different ship. Carriers really aren't hugely suited to STFs anyway, nothing is around long enough for sustained pet damage to be much use.
and what i have to dp with pvpo Players what do TRIBBLE in the game?
the last 2 years all was great with carriers then fed get carriers for unknown reason start doing TRIBBLE and now all carriers get a destroyed gameplay?
thats why PVE only Players get a destroyed ship class, if that Change was made for pvp then put it in there and remove this from PVE players?
now STF become unplayable with carriers coz stupid fighters still do what they want but now you can not stop them!!!!
in the past if a petgroup start doing Nonsens you simply recall a new wing and become this under your control, now the Buggy pets are unstopable.
they fly 40KM away from me start to attak whatever and ignore all comands what Options i have now? do a STF without pets? seriously?
a carrier without pets great Job cryptic!!!!
they did that whole flying off and doing what they please before the changes, if you didn't know that, you didn't play carriers.
and their hardly destroyed, in fact several annoying behaviors have been limited, or removed. you sound more and more like you just want to reset cool downs, and be able to summon for a alpha into one shield facing, sorry that's not what carrier pets were built for, that's what torps, and boff powers are for.
If this change has destroyed your flying space brick, then perhaps you should re examine how your playing, so far I have seen nothing but improvement over all from my recluse, Karfi, Jemhadar dreadnought, and my Scimitar. I know when pets are dead now, I can give separate wings separate orders, they are better about warp explosions, though far from perfect, and because I didn't abuse the resummons to reset pet powers, I'm seeing more dps on average. Im also finally able to actually use my flight deck Escort Doffs, 30 % more damage for 3, yes please~
The changes to the intercept range limit I haven't gotten to look at, but it looks good on paper.
Most of what your complaining about seem to be the respawn option, and since pets did all the stupid stuff before the change, and some what less of it now, your complaints about seem like a smoke screen. My guess is, as I already stated, you just want your resummon, one facing, reset abilities, alpha back. which relied mostly on a exploit. Now I haven't tested it yet, but I'm fairly sure that pets don't activate abilities while in recall and docked, so you could still get that initial by launching docked craft, I need to test that my self. If however your primary reason for calling it a absolute break of carriers, is as I think, that you can abuse resetting pet abilities, then too bad, ill take functionality, being able to see my pets are alive or dead, working pet commands, even if they still need work and refinement , over a cheap TRIBBLE exploit any day of the week.
and as a edit, and addition, they are shortening pet power cool downs anyways, so pets are using powers more often.
what happened to the carrier UI, I can barely get mine to work, and the recall command doesn't stow the fighters in the hanger anymore, I loved how it was yesterday, but after the patch, my old commands don't even work unless the new UI is on the screen (not hidden), please tell me your going to fix this. on another note, thx for fixing the romulan fabrication specialist kit
i do last month all STFs with carrier most of them are perfect runs in 6-8 min.
and the carriers itself have low dps thats right and thats why pets needet, carrier+pet dps= near escort dps.
carrier+ uselsess pets= low dps= dead STF
now if i loose my petscontrol totally STF become random Nonsens, my first SFTs failed afther this patch, all that is a very sad Point.:mad:
there is also no way to get all my lost dil+fleet marks back what i have waste for elite pet Upgrades.:mad:
Try using FDO escorts now that escort works right now to make up any dps loss. I have two purples and primarily use Elite Slavers and finally escort worked great so I'm a happy camper. Glad I followed my instincts and invested in them as I expect the price to sky rocket now on the rxchange.
i will not Change to escorts only coz a shipclass is destroyed!!!!
i waste real Money to buy recluse+dreadnouht+karfi+....... 10x elite pets..... :mad:
i found a way at Moment to replace pets with Buggy AI but ist no nice way.
first fly away from a battle after 30 sec you get your Hangars unlocked and replace them with a random other pettype then put your Basic battlepets in , on the map your Buggy pets will be removed after that and you can call fresh wings with a new AI, after that return back to battlefild....
this process cost you in totall ~3min of time in that you not help your Team in a STF but get working pets.
The carrier nerf, yes nerf, was exclusively about pvp'ers crying about "pet spam", nothing more.
It wasn't about HUD or "increased control" or "enhanced gameplay" or whatever other decoy you fell for.
This was the biggest ship nerf in the history of the game period.
So as a pve'er I'd just like to thank all the pvp'ers who wrecked all my ships
I agree; my Scorpion pet fighters die much faster now. The fighters are much weaker when they launch.
Tyr shall give me strength! For the glory of Tempus! I am the hands of Shar! Flames of Kossuth, protect me! Oghma, grant me knowledge! Lolth commands, and I obey!
I have a Engineer flying a Kar'Fi Battle Carrier with 2 Fer'Jai Frigate Hanger and those Frigates love to ignore orders and fly out of range that they no longer show up as being alive in the pet box. Can't launch new Frigates when that happens. They really need to do something to fix problems like this.
I agree; my Scorpion pet fighters die much faster now. The fighters are much weaker when they launch.
Your scorpion fighters power at initial launch have not changed in power, they just get more powerful the longer you are able to keep them in combat starting from the point they already had been at.... in beta they had a small start penalty so they did not reach the power as before until T2.. but that was removed.
The UI in and of itself wasn't bad. In fact, most people have been wanting some sort of status display showing how many pets they had deployed. Their current state/health is nice but since they tend to die quickly, not really mission-critical. Thanks anyway.
My biggest concern is the big nerf-bat they swung so dam hard. Why was this done? Was there some outcry that said pets were too powerful? I don't get it.
Don't even get me started on the Slaver changes; a broken pet that was left nonfunctional since LoR and was hit so hard with the loot table nerf simply in an attempt to slow down a potential supply of dilithium. Not just that, like many pets, at T5 Xp they still have less Hull HP then before. Why was this done?
In short, the status display was needed - the nerf, not at all.
PLAYER: Hey Devs, this is broked. Plz fix now!!11!1 Dev Response: Working as intended. *See all references to Cloak Bug.
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Registered: Oct/2009 , LTS : Feb/2011
Fleets: Warriors of the Phoenix, Kirian Industries[/SIGPIC] Three years and still no Captain Klaa hair...
^ He already said he never paid much attention to pets so..
Anyway what the other guy said was developers would never change pet spam because of pvp'ers, that it was laughable.
Contradiction means two statements that are mutually exclusive. That was not what was happening. At best your argument was "He said he didn't pay attention to pets, which means he can't know anything about them." That is a silly argument for many reasons. At the very least, there is no reason why not knowing about pets prevents someone from understanding the dynamics between the PvP players and developers.
The links I posted prove otherwise to the point developers use the word "pet spam" themselves. Going as far back as the origin of the game.
No, they don't, because pet spam in that context doesn't mean what you think it means. The current understanding of 'Pet Spam' as "cycling pets to get better uptime on their annoying powers" didn't even become an issue until pets like the danubes etc. existed in game (so, basically around when the Atrox came out).
If anything, your posts prove the exact opposite of what you're seeking to establish - those posts are about reducing the number of pets in PvP, and since then we've only seen the number go up. PvPers have not, at all, gotten what they were asking for, and to suggest that they were the drivers behind the change is nonsense.
And, since we know no one from pve ever complained about respawning pets that sort of narrows it down...
1) we don't know that, since from a PvE perspective I always personally felt respawning pets that way was lazy, and removed what I wanted from the mechanic - namely pets that rewarded me for managing my resources and keeping them healed etc. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who felt that way, so....
2) This precedes from a faulty assumption anyway - not every change Cryptic makes is necessarily in response to a specific piece of feedback. I strongly suspect that even if nobody had ever said ANYTHING about pets and carriers, we still would have had this change, since it's simply a better play mechanic that I believe better matches Cryptic's vision for what carriers always should have been.
I don't know why it's so hard for you to understand, what is the point in removing a feature if it's an upgrade ?
How is it I need to be able to NOT respawn pets to have new HUD, exactly ? I'd love for you to explain how, exactly, those 2 are connected ?
See above - the point of removing the feature as part of the upgrade is that it creates better play and makes the game match the intended vision more closely.
You spawn fewer pets more slowly PLUS you have to rely on AI; the AI always having been the problem of the carriers and still is. It's that simple.
I'm not sure if the first part of this is a lie, or a misunderstanding. The number of pets we can spawn total has stayed the same. The rate at which pets respawn is the same as well - the CD on pet launch powers hasn't changed either. The only thing that changed is that now if a pet is still out and active, it doesn't get replaced. At any given moment, then, the number of pets we have active should be the same or greater, and the pets themselves are better, so the only 'loss' is the cheesy CD reduction on powers, which was a) stupid and b) largely compensated for by the reduction in CD timers on the powers.
As an example - my Adv. Rom Drones used to be cycleable every 25ish seconds based on my power settings, which functionally meant that was the CD on their Beam Overload and FAW. Now both those powers cycle at 30 seconds instead, but the pets are overall stronger, AND it's easier for me to manage them. A net gain for our fair city!
Now granted, if you only found out yesterday how to actually play a carrier you went from nothing to nothing and haven't lost anything.
Actually, I've used carriers off and on since the Atrox came out. I thought the recycling thing was stupid, and wanted it gone because it made pets into something that it felt I was supposed to fire and forget, and that's not what I wanted. This is strictly better in every way that counts to me. I'm sorry that your experience isn't the same. I also don't care, because I think on balance this is better for the game overall.
I looked over a through lines but didn't see anything worth reading.
I posted links with developers reacting to pvp'ers crying about "pet spam" that's pretty much all there is to say.
Some guy said the idea of that being possible was laughable, well he was wrong.
This is a nerf and it was done because of pet spam in pvp. You can write 900 essays if you want doesn't change reality.
Point being it's a nerf - pvp part as such doesn't matter in itself.
Again I will go as far as if you never realized how to control shield facing attacks and dps in your carrier then hey I get it, you don't feel you lost anything.
Before the changes, a single bay of elite scorpions in ISE was consistantly doing over ~3k DPS by themselves.
After the first round of changes hit the Holodeck, their DPS consistantly dipped below 2.5k DPS.
After this week's changes, their DPS went back up to ~3k DPS.
I looked over a through lines but didn't see anything worth reading.
I posted links with developers reacting to pvp'ers crying about "pet spam" that's pretty much all there is to say.
Some guy said the idea of that being possible was laughable, well he was wrong.
This is a nerf and it was done because of pet spam in pvp. You can write 900 essays if you want doesn't change reality.
Point being it's a nerf - pvp part as such doesn't matter in itself.
Again I will go as far as if you never realized how to control shield facing attacks and dps in your carrier then hey I get it, you don't feel you lost anything.
So. You posted links to a discussion that you didn't bother really reading, and didn't say what you thought they did. Noted. Do you get why that doesn't prove what you were seeking to prove? Your arg was this was a change based on PvP. It is manifestly not. I will interpret your line "Point being it's a nerf - pvp part as such doesn't matter in itself." as a concession on this point. Please stop bloviating about a link that's not there. It is, in fact, laughable.
Now, let's talk about the part that you evidently care about yet inexplicably failed utterly to defend, which is the idea that it is a nerf. I already pointed out all the reasons I feel this is not true. The only thing that people have lost is the ability to recycle pets to reset CDs, which was mostly made up for by pet power CD reductions anyway. The benefits of more powerful pets is, in my opinion, a much greater trade off.
To your final point. Recall always brought pets back to the carrier, then attack to send them out again. Then again, I was always trying to actually manage my pets, because that's what I wanted out of running a carrier. So, again, not a nerf. Buff. Straight buff.
But I can say it again if you want. Some guy said the idea of developers reacting to "pet spam" was laughable.
I posted a link where developers have had a meeting and nerfed carrier pet spam. Period.
It is in fact so real that developers themselves use the phrase "pet spam".
I will stretch it your way as far as to say sure, if don't fly a carrier optimally you might not feel a loss but that doesn't change it being a nerf.
The main problem now is the same it always were, namely AI. But before it was balanced with respawning where now you are forced into an AI that's not improved.
And that's also part of what should tell you it's a nerf. They didn't come out with a fixed AI FIRST. What they released was what they had prioritized to get working; killing pet spam.
They were in a rush to kill pet spam since a certain fleet put elite pets into pvp 3 weeks ago. And so they pushed the killing of pet spam without the AI because killing the respawning was the goal - not the AI.
True we can debate if it's a fair nerf, if respawning say HY torps every 14 seconds when the CD was supposed to have been 70 seconds, was an exploit or not.
I will stretch it your way as far as to say sure, if don't fly a carrier optimally you might not feel a loss but that doesn't change it being a nerf.
I fly a Vesta with 130 aux on top of 2 hangar bay cooldown reduction DOFFs.
I have the launch hangar bay button bound to the spacebar, along with other abilities, that I press every second.
How do you fly your carrier and how is it "optimal"?
But I can say it again if you want. Some guy said the idea of developers reacting to "pet spam" was laughable.
I posted a link where developers have had a meeting and nerfed carrier pet spam. Period.
It is in fact so real that developers themselves use the phrase "pet spam".
I will stretch it your way as far as to say sure, if don't fly a carrier optimally you might not feel a loss but that doesn't change it being a nerf.
The main problem now is the same it always were, namely AI. But before it was balanced with respawning where now you are forced into an AI that's not improved.
And that's also part of what should tell you it's a nerf. They didn't come out with a fixed AI FIRST. What they released was what they had prioritized to get working; killing pet spam.
They were in a rush to kill pet spam since a certain fleet put elite pets into pvp 3 weeks ago. And so they pushed the killing of pet spam without the AI because killing the respawning was the goal - not the AI.
True we can debate if it's a fair nerf, if respawning say HY torps every 14 seconds when the CD was supposed to have been 70 seconds, was an exploit or not.
The price of tinfoil on the stock exchange has gone up :rolleyes:
I would agree if Cryptic didn't always put things out half a** all the time.
But I can say it again if you want. Some guy said the idea of developers reacting to "pet spam" was laughable.
I posted a link where developers have had a meeting and nerfed carrier pet spam. Period.
It is in fact so real that developers themselves use the phrase "pet spam".
I will stretch it your way as far as to say sure, if don't fly a carrier optimally you might not feel a loss but that doesn't change it being a nerf.
The main problem now is the same it always were, namely AI. But before it was balanced with respawning where now you are forced into an AI that's not improved.
And that's also part of what should tell you it's a nerf. They didn't come out with a fixed AI FIRST. What they released was what they had prioritized to get working; killing pet spam.
They were in a rush to kill pet spam since a certain fleet put elite pets into pvp 3 weeks ago. And so they pushed the killing of pet spam without the AI because killing the respawning was the goal - not the AI.
True we can debate if it's a fair nerf, if respawning say HY torps every 14 seconds when the CD was supposed to have been 70 seconds, was an exploit or not.
No. Just. No. The devs used the term Pet Spam in a different context and in a different way than you think. You have had this pointed out to you at least twice. There is no evidence at all for your supposition. In fact, all evidence points in the opposite direction.
Click the link(s) and you will see developers reacting to pvp'ers complaining about pet spam. Period.
As for "flying the carrier optimally" it's in the context of the nerf. The people who haven't taken shield facing and reloading abilities into account don't understand the nerf is all it's meant to say.
Does it apply to every build, map, pet, ship and situation of course not
Click the link(s) and you will see developers reacting to pvp'ers complaining about pet spam. Period.
As for "flying the carrier optimally" it's in the context of the nerf. The people who haven't taken shield facing and reloading abilities into account don't understand the nerf is all it's meant to say.
Does it apply to every build, map, pet, ship and situation of course not
Last try:
Words mean things. Specific things. Like how "contradiction" doesn't mean the same thing as "laughable", which in turn doesn't actually mean the same thing as "wrong" (which is the concept you were really shooting for).
The trick is, words also CHANGE meaning over time. For example, back in ye olden days of the posts you dug up, the PvP complaint about pet spam had NOTHING to do with Elite Pets (they didn't exist yet), and really nothing to do with pets spamming powers like tractor beam, power siphon, etc. It was purely about having too many pets flying around. Nothing more. This is NOT the same thing that this upgrade addressed.
In point of fact, if your thesis is really going to be that PvPers somehow exert undue influence on the game, pointing to threads where PvPers ask for the EXACT opposite of what they ended up getting (Less pets, not more) probably doesn't help your cause. I mean, I'm no expert in debate (actually I am, but you have no realistic way of verifying that), but it seems like using evidence that goes the wrong way is not the best way of making your point.
So, yes, the devs talked about Pet Spam, but your argument was never "They used those words", it was "They did this in response to a complaint from the PvP community", which is not borne out by your evidence. You've been tripped up by the ambiguities of language, and how words can mean different things at different times,and in different contexts. It's really that simple. And if you still don't get it, then some might argue that so are you.
Comments
Your witch hunt is based on a single misconception. "Pet spam" as used in those threads you linked by those devs (who don't even work there anymore, IIRC) is used to refer to the large number of pets that can exist. Not, as you seem to think, the replacement launches of pets at high rate. PvPers don't care a hoot about that. In fact, it doesn't do a thing to address high maximum numbers of pets - which means that this change has nothing to do with PvP concerns.
Look - you've already said that the problem is the AI. The only reason why this is a nerf for you is because it removes a workaround for bad AI. Why in the world are you blaming PvPers for something that is only a nerf because of bad AI? In fact, if there was better AI, we'd love it! Look at the patch notes - they knew that the removing replacement spawning would make you rely on AI - so they release it with an AI improvement! How is it PvPers' fault that the AI improvements do not work properly?
Furthermore, look through the threads and see how many - both PvE players and PvP players - are requesting upgrades to control of pets and AI. If this upgrade worked as it was intended to by the devs based on the patch notes, it would simply be the fulfilments of these requests! No need to go through the conspiracy theories and logical contortions of PvPers asking for pet launch replacements to be nerfed (untrue) - devs releasing a patch with new UI and changes to AI in patch notes but lying about it, cunningly camouflaging a nerf behind lies. If the devs actually did it in response to PvP feedback, they'd just dump that change alone on us. Give them some credit - if it was actually in response to the devs caring about PvP feedback, they'd tell the PvP community that and trumpet the fact - why would they hide it if they didn't care about PvE player opinions?
That being said, this was a attempt to improve pets, I found my self not knowing of my pets were alive or dead half the time, if I needed to pop them out again or not. I didn't spam them, like some did.
Spam pets to bypass cool downs, the cool downs their shortening right now, was a exploit in the system, it was not a feature, or a bonus, or working as intended, it was a exploit.
right now their trying to correct other pet behavior too, so that they don't wander off and act stupid, like intercept them flying off after every mine and torp, even if its 30km over that way and not aimed at you.
Escort mode never worked right, now it seems to be working for the most part. and with escort mode Im seeing even higher dps since I can put in all three of my escort doffs for 30% more damage on my recluse.
Should pet spam have been FIXED, correcting a exploit is not a nerf because the behavior or ability was not intended, yes.
Does the UI need work, not that I can see. Does the pet AI need work still, yes, they still act a bit odd now and then, sometimes in escort they wont engage, even when your attacked. sometimes they still like to fly right through a warp core explosion.
The biggest problem I have right now is with my mesh weaver on my recluse pulling agro off players, thanks partially to their boosted 30% damage with my doffs in, and I think they have their agro gen set a bit high.
Does the AI still need work, yes, they need to follow faster, the docked heal needs to be looked at and improved.
but crying nerf because of a fix of a exploit or because things change is silly, and just makes you look silly.
No contest to that statement. Pet AI, for all combat pets, has always been a bugaboo in this game. Sometimes it works out okay and sometimes it doesn't. The other day it seemed to be working fine in the scenarios I tried it out in. Since I'm not flying a full carrier, and I'm not flying my Vesta primarily as a carrier, I'm not really taking a lot of time to test it.
I only recently bought my Vesta bundle and never experienced carriers before that. About the only way I knew the fighters were doing anything was to look for the beam flash and look for moving allies on the minimap. I don't have keybinds set up to cycle through allied targets and had no idea whether they were healthy or not.
Now I can see their shield and hull status at a glance. I know when they go boom and I need to relaunch another one. It's a step in the right direction, IMO.
I still can't swear that I know that they're actually following the commands I gave them. There's no visual indication I saw that tells you whether an individual fighter is in Attack, Intercept, Escort, or Recall mode. So yeah, that could stand to be tweaked too.
(A simple letter 'A', 'I', 'E', or 'R' as an indicator would be helpful, or putting a status icon over each fighter would be enough)
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I brought them up to say it's nerf to help a minority in the game.
Frankly either or doesn't matter I am saying it to point why it is indeed a nerf and the "reasoning" behind it since people are still struggling with the concept of losing the respawn function not being an upgrade.
So I am glad to hear you say respawning pets was an OP exploit that totally broke the game that HAD to be dealth with.
Because that's all this here carrier incident is about and really my only buttom line, I have no beef with pvp'ers or developers - albeit I am not going to come out and thank them for nerfing all my ships.
Season 7 broke the ground sets for me, LoR broke sector space so it's only fair the next step is breaking my ships too.
Just need to have the exchange stop working too that'd be perfect.
/edit
ps. The AI issue I can't blame them for. AI is a problem not just in all games but of any kind and knowing that it's a wrong bet to put any kind of trust in the pet AI ever becoming remotely good.
The original pet spam was a totally different beast, what was going on recently was the resetting of pet power cool downs to artificially inflate dps. The original was the ability to put out swarms of pets, you could swap the hanger bay pet after spawning pets, and have 4 frigs, 12 fighters, 12 siphon drones, 12 slavers, 12 muraders, so on, so forth. if you have a different pet type, you could swap it, and spawn a batch.
They fixed that a long time back.
No wonder I don't get 1st place for SB or CE anymore...that explains it well...wait....another stealth nerf or working as intended :eek:
"Make players grind until their eyes bleed or make them pay through the urethra. We don't care how you milk them dry, just make sure that milking them dry until their nipples petrify and fall off is your only goal. Don't deviate from this goal unless you'd rather be on the bread line." - Prime Directive from PWE
"Ohh my gosh its full of EXPLOITs...shut it down"
and what i have to do with pvp Players what do TRIBBLE in the game?
the last 2 years all was great with carriers then fed get carriers for unknown reason start doing TRIBBLE and now all carriers get a destroyed gameplay?
thats why PVE only Players get a destroyed ship class, if that Change was made for pvp then put it in there and remove this from PVE Players and PVE maps?
now STF become unplayable with carriers coz stupid fighters still do what they want like always but now you can not stop them, that is the new feature!!!!
in the past if a petgroup start doing Nonsens, yes still bug AI, you simply recall a new wing and become this easy under your control, now the Buggy pets are unstopable.
they fly 40KM away from me start to attak whatever and ignore all comands what Options i have now? do a STFs without pets? seriously?
a carrier without pets great Job cryptic!!!!
Do STFs in a different ship. Carriers really aren't hugely suited to STFs anyway, nothing is around long enough for sustained pet damage to be much use.
Kirk's Protege.
and the carriers itself have low dps thats right and thats why pets needet, carrier+pet dps= near escort dps.
carrier+ uselsess pets= low dps= dead STF
now if i loose my petscontrol totally STF become random Nonsens, my first SFTs failed afther this patch, all that is a very sad Point.:mad:
there is also no way to get all my lost dil+fleet marks back what i have waste for elite pet Upgrades.:mad:
they did that whole flying off and doing what they please before the changes, if you didn't know that, you didn't play carriers.
and their hardly destroyed, in fact several annoying behaviors have been limited, or removed. you sound more and more like you just want to reset cool downs, and be able to summon for a alpha into one shield facing, sorry that's not what carrier pets were built for, that's what torps, and boff powers are for.
If this change has destroyed your flying space brick, then perhaps you should re examine how your playing, so far I have seen nothing but improvement over all from my recluse, Karfi, Jemhadar dreadnought, and my Scimitar. I know when pets are dead now, I can give separate wings separate orders, they are better about warp explosions, though far from perfect, and because I didn't abuse the resummons to reset pet powers, I'm seeing more dps on average. Im also finally able to actually use my flight deck Escort Doffs, 30 % more damage for 3, yes please~
The changes to the intercept range limit I haven't gotten to look at, but it looks good on paper.
Most of what your complaining about seem to be the respawn option, and since pets did all the stupid stuff before the change, and some what less of it now, your complaints about seem like a smoke screen. My guess is, as I already stated, you just want your resummon, one facing, reset abilities, alpha back. which relied mostly on a exploit. Now I haven't tested it yet, but I'm fairly sure that pets don't activate abilities while in recall and docked, so you could still get that initial by launching docked craft, I need to test that my self. If however your primary reason for calling it a absolute break of carriers, is as I think, that you can abuse resetting pet abilities, then too bad, ill take functionality, being able to see my pets are alive or dead, working pet commands, even if they still need work and refinement , over a cheap TRIBBLE exploit any day of the week.
and as a edit, and addition, they are shortening pet power cool downs anyways, so pets are using powers more often.
Try using FDO escorts now that escort works right now to make up any dps loss. I have two purples and primarily use Elite Slavers and finally escort worked great so I'm a happy camper. Glad I followed my instincts and invested in them as I expect the price to sky rocket now on the rxchange.
i waste real Money to buy recluse+dreadnouht+karfi+....... 10x elite pets..... :mad:
i found a way at Moment to replace pets with Buggy AI but ist no nice way.
first fly away from a battle after 30 sec you get your Hangars unlocked and replace them with a random other pettype then put your Basic battlepets in , on the map your Buggy pets will be removed after that and you can call fresh wings with a new AI, after that return back to battlefild....
this process cost you in totall ~3min of time in that you not help your Team in a STF but get working pets.
Flight deck doff, for the escort setting, see now I'm very sure you don't fly carriers all that much, or you'd know more about the flight deck doffs.
For the glory of Tempus!
I am the hands of Shar!
Flames of Kossuth, protect me!
Oghma, grant me knowledge!
Lolth commands, and I obey!
Your scorpion fighters power at initial launch have not changed in power, they just get more powerful the longer you are able to keep them in combat starting from the point they already had been at.... in beta they had a small start penalty so they did not reach the power as before until T2.. but that was removed.
The UI in and of itself wasn't bad. In fact, most people have been wanting some sort of status display showing how many pets they had deployed. Their current state/health is nice but since they tend to die quickly, not really mission-critical. Thanks anyway.
My biggest concern is the big nerf-bat they swung so dam hard. Why was this done? Was there some outcry that said pets were too powerful? I don't get it.
Don't even get me started on the Slaver changes; a broken pet that was left nonfunctional since LoR and was hit so hard with the loot table nerf simply in an attempt to slow down a potential supply of dilithium. Not just that, like many pets, at T5 Xp they still have less Hull HP then before. Why was this done?
In short, the status display was needed - the nerf, not at all.
Registered: Oct/2009 , LTS : Feb/2011
Fleets: Warriors of the Phoenix, Kirian Industries[/SIGPIC]
Three years and still no Captain Klaa hair...
Contradiction means two statements that are mutually exclusive. That was not what was happening. At best your argument was "He said he didn't pay attention to pets, which means he can't know anything about them." That is a silly argument for many reasons. At the very least, there is no reason why not knowing about pets prevents someone from understanding the dynamics between the PvP players and developers.
No, they don't, because pet spam in that context doesn't mean what you think it means. The current understanding of 'Pet Spam' as "cycling pets to get better uptime on their annoying powers" didn't even become an issue until pets like the danubes etc. existed in game (so, basically around when the Atrox came out).
If anything, your posts prove the exact opposite of what you're seeking to establish - those posts are about reducing the number of pets in PvP, and since then we've only seen the number go up. PvPers have not, at all, gotten what they were asking for, and to suggest that they were the drivers behind the change is nonsense.
1) we don't know that, since from a PvE perspective I always personally felt respawning pets that way was lazy, and removed what I wanted from the mechanic - namely pets that rewarded me for managing my resources and keeping them healed etc. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who felt that way, so....
2) This precedes from a faulty assumption anyway - not every change Cryptic makes is necessarily in response to a specific piece of feedback. I strongly suspect that even if nobody had ever said ANYTHING about pets and carriers, we still would have had this change, since it's simply a better play mechanic that I believe better matches Cryptic's vision for what carriers always should have been.
See above - the point of removing the feature as part of the upgrade is that it creates better play and makes the game match the intended vision more closely.
I'm not sure if the first part of this is a lie, or a misunderstanding. The number of pets we can spawn total has stayed the same. The rate at which pets respawn is the same as well - the CD on pet launch powers hasn't changed either. The only thing that changed is that now if a pet is still out and active, it doesn't get replaced. At any given moment, then, the number of pets we have active should be the same or greater, and the pets themselves are better, so the only 'loss' is the cheesy CD reduction on powers, which was a) stupid and b) largely compensated for by the reduction in CD timers on the powers.
As an example - my Adv. Rom Drones used to be cycleable every 25ish seconds based on my power settings, which functionally meant that was the CD on their Beam Overload and FAW. Now both those powers cycle at 30 seconds instead, but the pets are overall stronger, AND it's easier for me to manage them. A net gain for our fair city!
Actually, I've used carriers off and on since the Atrox came out. I thought the recycling thing was stupid, and wanted it gone because it made pets into something that it felt I was supposed to fire and forget, and that's not what I wanted. This is strictly better in every way that counts to me. I'm sorry that your experience isn't the same. I also don't care, because I think on balance this is better for the game overall.
If you can't do STFs in a carrier without pets you're doing it wrong.
I posted links with developers reacting to pvp'ers crying about "pet spam" that's pretty much all there is to say.
Some guy said the idea of that being possible was laughable, well he was wrong.
This is a nerf and it was done because of pet spam in pvp. You can write 900 essays if you want doesn't change reality.
Point being it's a nerf - pvp part as such doesn't matter in itself.
Again I will go as far as if you never realized how to control shield facing attacks and dps in your carrier then hey I get it, you don't feel you lost anything.
After the first round of changes hit the Holodeck, their DPS consistantly dipped below 2.5k DPS.
After this week's changes, their DPS went back up to ~3k DPS.
So. You posted links to a discussion that you didn't bother really reading, and didn't say what you thought they did. Noted. Do you get why that doesn't prove what you were seeking to prove? Your arg was this was a change based on PvP. It is manifestly not. I will interpret your line "Point being it's a nerf - pvp part as such doesn't matter in itself." as a concession on this point. Please stop bloviating about a link that's not there. It is, in fact, laughable.
Now, let's talk about the part that you evidently care about yet inexplicably failed utterly to defend, which is the idea that it is a nerf. I already pointed out all the reasons I feel this is not true. The only thing that people have lost is the ability to recycle pets to reset CDs, which was mostly made up for by pet power CD reductions anyway. The benefits of more powerful pets is, in my opinion, a much greater trade off.
To your final point. Recall always brought pets back to the carrier, then attack to send them out again. Then again, I was always trying to actually manage my pets, because that's what I wanted out of running a carrier. So, again, not a nerf. Buff. Straight buff.
But I can say it again if you want. Some guy said the idea of developers reacting to "pet spam" was laughable.
I posted a link where developers have had a meeting and nerfed carrier pet spam. Period.
It is in fact so real that developers themselves use the phrase "pet spam".
I will stretch it your way as far as to say sure, if don't fly a carrier optimally you might not feel a loss but that doesn't change it being a nerf.
The main problem now is the same it always were, namely AI. But before it was balanced with respawning where now you are forced into an AI that's not improved.
And that's also part of what should tell you it's a nerf. They didn't come out with a fixed AI FIRST. What they released was what they had prioritized to get working; killing pet spam.
They were in a rush to kill pet spam since a certain fleet put elite pets into pvp 3 weeks ago. And so they pushed the killing of pet spam without the AI because killing the respawning was the goal - not the AI.
True we can debate if it's a fair nerf, if respawning say HY torps every 14 seconds when the CD was supposed to have been 70 seconds, was an exploit or not.
I fly a Vesta with 130 aux on top of 2 hangar bay cooldown reduction DOFFs.
I have the launch hangar bay button bound to the spacebar, along with other abilities, that I press every second.
How do you fly your carrier and how is it "optimal"?
The price of tinfoil on the stock exchange has gone up :rolleyes:
I would agree if Cryptic didn't always put things out half a** all the time.
No. Just. No. The devs used the term Pet Spam in a different context and in a different way than you think. You have had this pointed out to you at least twice. There is no evidence at all for your supposition. In fact, all evidence points in the opposite direction.
As for "flying the carrier optimally" it's in the context of the nerf. The people who haven't taken shield facing and reloading abilities into account don't understand the nerf is all it's meant to say.
Does it apply to every build, map, pet, ship and situation of course not
/edit
Ps. and of course also AI
Last try:
Words mean things. Specific things. Like how "contradiction" doesn't mean the same thing as "laughable", which in turn doesn't actually mean the same thing as "wrong" (which is the concept you were really shooting for).
The trick is, words also CHANGE meaning over time. For example, back in ye olden days of the posts you dug up, the PvP complaint about pet spam had NOTHING to do with Elite Pets (they didn't exist yet), and really nothing to do with pets spamming powers like tractor beam, power siphon, etc. It was purely about having too many pets flying around. Nothing more. This is NOT the same thing that this upgrade addressed.
In point of fact, if your thesis is really going to be that PvPers somehow exert undue influence on the game, pointing to threads where PvPers ask for the EXACT opposite of what they ended up getting (Less pets, not more) probably doesn't help your cause. I mean, I'm no expert in debate (actually I am, but you have no realistic way of verifying that), but it seems like using evidence that goes the wrong way is not the best way of making your point.
So, yes, the devs talked about Pet Spam, but your argument was never "They used those words", it was "They did this in response to a complaint from the PvP community", which is not borne out by your evidence. You've been tripped up by the ambiguities of language, and how words can mean different things at different times,and in different contexts. It's really that simple. And if you still don't get it, then some might argue that so are you.
A guy said developers reacting to pvp'ers complaining about pet spam was laughable.
I post a link where they had a meet over it and nerfed carriers.
1-2 period.