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Why "no BS" is BS, and you know it systems!
havam
Member Posts: 1,735 Arc User
Guys n Gals,
so this is a feeler for opinions on a different approach to fixing parts of this game, without alienating new pvp blood as much as we do now. It is not a recruitment thread for a tourney. So please stick to the hypothetical question, and check your fleet tags at the door.
Preliminaries: There are OP or broken items in this game. These are unequally distributed among factions.
Here is the thing. We had attempts at no BS preventing Rommies from participating. We had attempts at no BS where 5x Vesta team with yellowstones and elite shields was ok, but somehow a single ship with elite disruptors was not.
The problem with poorly balanced items and powers is that by excluding one we often take counterplay options out of the equation, and we create frustration for players that have spend ca$$ or time, or luck to get a shinny goody which they would like to use. I'm interested in this last part. Not everybody has the resources to freely switch out one set of op gear with another. And ruling from on high that my set and preferred choice of op stuff is cool, but yours ain't, too bad you can't afford to switch to a set. Is bad for the game, and poison to our community. Just look at the no BS tourney discussion threads. I m not too curious about a detailed discussion how Elite shields are ok, but elite disruptors (a good counter) are not. We have been there. I m interested in an alternative approach to deal with the problems systems put on our collective plates, allowing everyone to have fun, and as little frustration as possible. I also want to enable players to fly with what they like .
So here is my questions:
Would it be feasible to come up with a point system for no BS rules including ship, player class, and gear?
Depending on feedback in this thread we might produce a list and maintain it as a sticky.
Example:
Teams have 110 BS points total [total of target is 104].
Consoles: [target 20pts]
5 Pts: TIF, GVP, Black Hole,
4 Pts: Jump....
...
1 Pts. Grabble, TDG, Defiant Cloak, assim...
Ships: [target 20]
5 pts: Korath, Recluse, Fleet Warbirds (maybe not d'deridex)
4 Pts. Fleet ships, Warbirds, other Lockbox,
3 Pts. Ra Ships
Player Class: [target 20]
5 pts: Sci
3 pts: Tac
1 pts: Eng
Pets: [target 12]
2Pts: per hangar flat.
5 pts: Elite siphons, yellowstones, Elite scimi
4 pts: Other elite pets, advanced yellowstones, siphon drones, scimi
3 pts. Advanced pets
Gear: [target 20]
5 pts: Elite Disruptor and Elite Fleet shields
4 pts: Omega Gear (any 2 or 3 pc combination), remaining elite fleet
3 pts: Aegis (2 or 3 pc combination), advanced fleet
Doffs: [target 12]
5 pts: Marion, AP, ...
4 pts: technician, conn officeer (TT),
3 pts: dmg control, sdr....
....
Now before we jump onto a detailed discussion of points allocated, I m curious to hear opinions about such a system in general. If cryptic doesn't give us gear based ranking how about we do it ourselves. This way yes you can bring 5x sci in korath, but you ll have to fly without other goodies, like op Doffs or TIF,
I guess the gist of the idea should be obvious by now. I've pulled these numbers out of a dark place in between two coffees. SO lets hear it:
so this is a feeler for opinions on a different approach to fixing parts of this game, without alienating new pvp blood as much as we do now. It is not a recruitment thread for a tourney. So please stick to the hypothetical question, and check your fleet tags at the door.
Preliminaries: There are OP or broken items in this game. These are unequally distributed among factions.
Here is the thing. We had attempts at no BS preventing Rommies from participating. We had attempts at no BS where 5x Vesta team with yellowstones and elite shields was ok, but somehow a single ship with elite disruptors was not.
The problem with poorly balanced items and powers is that by excluding one we often take counterplay options out of the equation, and we create frustration for players that have spend ca$$ or time, or luck to get a shinny goody which they would like to use. I'm interested in this last part. Not everybody has the resources to freely switch out one set of op gear with another. And ruling from on high that my set and preferred choice of op stuff is cool, but yours ain't, too bad you can't afford to switch to a set. Is bad for the game, and poison to our community. Just look at the no BS tourney discussion threads. I m not too curious about a detailed discussion how Elite shields are ok, but elite disruptors (a good counter) are not. We have been there. I m interested in an alternative approach to deal with the problems systems put on our collective plates, allowing everyone to have fun, and as little frustration as possible. I also want to enable players to fly with what they like .
So here is my questions:
Would it be feasible to come up with a point system for no BS rules including ship, player class, and gear?
Depending on feedback in this thread we might produce a list and maintain it as a sticky.
Example:
Teams have 110 BS points total [total of target is 104].
Consoles: [target 20pts]
5 Pts: TIF, GVP, Black Hole,
4 Pts: Jump....
...
1 Pts. Grabble, TDG, Defiant Cloak, assim...
Ships: [target 20]
5 pts: Korath, Recluse, Fleet Warbirds (maybe not d'deridex)
4 Pts. Fleet ships, Warbirds, other Lockbox,
3 Pts. Ra Ships
Player Class: [target 20]
5 pts: Sci
3 pts: Tac
1 pts: Eng
Pets: [target 12]
2Pts: per hangar flat.
5 pts: Elite siphons, yellowstones, Elite scimi
4 pts: Other elite pets, advanced yellowstones, siphon drones, scimi
3 pts. Advanced pets
Gear: [target 20]
5 pts: Elite Disruptor and Elite Fleet shields
4 pts: Omega Gear (any 2 or 3 pc combination), remaining elite fleet
3 pts: Aegis (2 or 3 pc combination), advanced fleet
Doffs: [target 12]
5 pts: Marion, AP, ...
4 pts: technician, conn officeer (TT),
3 pts: dmg control, sdr....
....
Now before we jump onto a detailed discussion of points allocated, I m curious to hear opinions about such a system in general. If cryptic doesn't give us gear based ranking how about we do it ourselves. This way yes you can bring 5x sci in korath, but you ll have to fly without other goodies, like op Doffs or TIF,
I guess the gist of the idea should be obvious by now. I've pulled these numbers out of a dark place in between two coffees. SO lets hear it:
Post edited by havam on
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Comments
Just to clarify, the "No BS" term wasn't coined up for what's op and not op. It was coined up because people just kept arguing about petty rules which killed off all previous attempts of hosting a tournament. I just came up with a handfull of things that killed fun off in PvP for most and banned that.
The whole point of "No BS" is to be fun for all participants. The rules were meant to be an enabler for that and nothing more.
These days we have more variables than ever, so I'm highly sceptical that such an approach could work.
Another thing I find difficult to control is doffs - controlling them isn't as easy as other forms of equipment.
That aside, I think I have an interesting corollary - you know how individual cheesiness isn't very threatening to organized teams, but certain stacked abilities are? Well, with this points system, perhaps a multiplier for cheesy abilities would help solve stacking?
You know, 1 TIF costs 5 points, 2 cost 11 points, 3 cost 18 points, etc.
If we ever have enough people, we could even introduce individual point tiers - 40-60, 61-80, 80-110, 110<.
But yeah, the fundamental problem is going to be getting the PvP community to agree on something without Krakatoa-levels of rage and unpleasant behaviour.
@naz "to have fun"
thats just the thing, Someone has been grinding their TRIBBLE off to get elite siphon drones. THen he goes into the queues, and is ridiculed and screamed at for slotting. By people in lockbox ships with elite fleet gear, and a bunch of doffs worth the equivalent of the minimum wage in some areas.
By moving away from wholesale: X and Y are unfun, but X is ok because me and my friends have easy access to it. I hope that his might give people more options, on the way to pvp proper instead. Which results in more fun, and less screaming about xyz is op.... you just don't like it cauze i beat you ... stuff.
@the control crowd: Hard to control, yes, but i don't think impossible. The question is might it still be useful, knowing that we can't 100% guaranty adherence in every case.
So how satisfactory could this be? Well not as satisfactory as a cryptic made....*sorry done laughing now* version. But i think it might still offer good pointers to players and devs where we feel certain problems are.
No question the initial design would require a lot of work and testing. But I also have the hope that debates over giving 5x TIF 25 or 35 points, might lead to less vitriol and Fleet vs Fleet drama. (good idea there scurry)
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
In general a nice idea but it will only work of such a point allocation exists without the need of points being dependend on what else is already in the game say item 2 is 5 points if item 1 is already there and only 3 points if not.
In the end, although its a nice idea, it may not be possible to find such a set of points.
Guarantee not guaranty
Federation :: Fleetless :: Klingon
Jorge Silva - Tac | Nayja - Sci | Jorge E. Silva - Eng
Jorge R. Silva - Tac (Romulan Fed)
Nayja K Silva - Sci | Vurg'jah - Tac
You have some players who literally ranted in OPvP for hours simply at the idea of a PvP Bootcamp Senate, that they were even invited to!!
I think the reason the No BS Series was/has been generally popular is because:
Even with all of the above, almost every single No BS thread has turned into a juggernaut of people getting upset at something in the rules.
I don't want to discourage you though.
The only way to know if your idea can work or not in the current environment, is to try and set it up.
So give it a shot, and see what happens.
Where I think you will have the biggest challenges:
> Getting people to agree to specific points for specific powers.
> Getting teams to police their own builds.
> Some way to accurately police some of the more subtle DOFF effects.
> People who will find some other way to game the system, i.e. bringing 2 low cost Eng captains so they can drown the opposing team in Yellowstones and GPG.
If they've gone through and made any attempt at balancing things, they should have all the various scores for the various items.
As such, they should be able to display that as a stat for a character.
They should also be able to restrict access to various things based on that stat.
Likewise, players in setting up a Challenge should be able to set their own limits based on that stat.
But I don't believe that Cryptic's tried in the least to balance things, that said stat can never exist, and that in the end...balance is a relatively futile discussion.
the idea itself is not bad but i am afraid that it could be difficult to implement such a ranking system because many pvper players have a very different opinion about what is op, broken or not desired and what not.
it also caused confusion in the 3th tourney where some people complained about no-clickable universal consoles and no use of battle cloak for kdf and romulan ships.
obviously they didnt understand that since nazs and hanks tourney many many conditions changed even partly the gameplay itself in pvp and so it was no more that effective to adopt the rules from the previous tournaments 1:1.
it is absolutely no doubt that the rules of naz and ilhanks tourney were pretty well set up in the previous season but at some point those needed to be modified and adapted to the actual situation of pvp gameplay in the actual season.
it was not the intention to weaken kdf or romulan ships but to enable balanced pvp matches in some way which finally worked pretty well.
the first idea was only to ban non-clickable consoles from lobi store and lock boxes, such as iso charge, theta radiation and grav puls and to allow all the other clickable universal consoles which are ship-specific (a console which can only be used on a single ship class) such as temporal back step, mva-module, ablative armour...
this move would have required a huge list of all universal consoles of whom some are allowed and some disallowed. it simply was too complicated for some fleets to understand which consoles they could use and which not especially for pvp-fleets who still are newcomers or not very experienced. the consequence was a loss of the overview.
so the solution was to simplify the rule and ban all even the ship-specific consoles to facilitate its comprehension.
And these were universal consoles only^^.
i am not sure but folks might also loose the overview of such a ranking system containing all the consoles and doffs and assign them to a value of BS points. again there will be definetely many contrary opinions concerning this stuff which might lead to confusion and disputes.
though the idea itself is quite decent.
but thats just my opinion
-=Hannibal - Inner Circle PvP-Department=-
Hannibal's YouTube PvP-channel (under construction)
More Inner Circle PvP-Action worth watching from: Hank, Mira Theng and Zimbilimbim
Man I knew you were something of a dreamer, but I didn't realize how far that went. :P
As for complex. I would hope to come up with something that gives you a clear sense of where you character stands in terms of points. The "real" calculation would only happen for tournies and the like, where team composition is going to be a topic one way or the other. In the end it boils down to a few top offenders.
I agree that the score should be simple, and its is not intended to inhibit individual players much. On an individual level you should know if you are above the average in terms of BS points or not. But, if you build you whole team and strategy around something: like 5xsci, each with OP doffs, and TIF, and GVP, and Rommie BOs, and.... you cross the line. This is where actual numbers come into play.
But unlike the current flat ban for something, at least individual players have various options to do something about it. Wanna bring x, fine! But you or someone else on your team has to give up on something in order for it to not spiral out of control.
As for people playing the system. That would be brilliant. Imagine having a reason to bring an eng, or to bring a KDF ship into pvp.... isn't that the kind of choices we all like, take x but give up y in return.
As for the drama, well I'm about tempted to see how bad it ll get. OP or not debates tend to become binaries. Maybe by introducing more nuances we can avoid being at each others throats. Even if you don't think elite disruptors are OP, we might agree to put them in a separate bracket when looking at all other energy weapons types.
Ok i ll try to cook something up for each individual item category. Doffs being the elephant in the room, and put it up for debate. It'll take some time, let's see how far we can push this. Just to give another example:
Jorf and I disagree that 3xsci + 2x tac ain't cheese. He is against a 1 of each class rule, and I am in favor. No matter how long you let us scream at each other we are unlikely to change each other's minds. But i think we might come to an agreement that eng<tac<sci, and that through a point system 3xSci + 2xtac could make a BS concession vis-a-vis a 1 of each class team on some other point in the overall picture of things.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
@Aquitaine985
Lag Industries STO PvP Fleet - Executive
A Sad Panda of Industrial calibre.
2010: This is Cryptic PvP. Please hold the line, your call is very important to us...
Because at the core of many of those things, it's about the value given to them - so any discussion on numeric values...would be the same discussion - just numbers instead of words.
i see your point, but the big question is if the community has the will to take such efforts in order to create a ranking system giving each console, doff, boff, weapons, and ship equip. a certain value. because of the huge variety of items, boffs, doffs and ships it is going to take a very long time to create the ranking, to introduce it to the community and to implement it in the game. probably more than several months. if projects are too complex or lasting for a longer period of time it may fail quite badly as we have already seen such processes in the past.
there is simply a huge amount of stuff to deal with concerning pvp, you know
there are still many pvpers out there who still dont know the basics all around pvp and they probably wont understand the functionality of this system due to their lack of knowledge about items and its effects, boffs, doffs and so on.
Or is this ranking referred to the dozen of active pvp-fleets only?
-=Hannibal - Inner Circle PvP-Department=-
Hannibal's YouTube PvP-channel (under construction)
More Inner Circle PvP-Action worth watching from: Hank, Mira Theng and Zimbilimbim
Otherwise, not so much.
If Cryptic built it, you'd see the "build score" for each opponent and it would be calculated automatically whenever someone changed out their gear. It would be visible and incontrovertable.
It might not be enforceable, but at least you'd know who was bringing more to the party than they're supposed to and the match organizers would be able to throw out the score.
It would be an enabler for fair, player-initiated tournaments.
The downside is, you'd have to trust Cryptic's scoring of everything and couldn't make your own decision about what gear is OP.
Without it, everybody's on the honor system and someone is always going to cry "foul".
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Cryptic to enable a system sounds interesting, but something like this won't be here for sometime.
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
I don't know if this is relevant, but PWE already has a system like this in NW. It's called 'gear score.'
Elite Defense Stovokor
Been thinking about a tourny though of my own. I know I've said that before, but I mean it this time. Problem is: Do I go for a No BS tourny (I think I'd have to go for number 6, right?), or my own unique rule-set?
Unfortunately OP/Cheese for some people is in the eye of the beholder. But you can't go wrong building from the last NO BS rules.
i would add a personal one of mine. Everyone unequip their engines and see the rage and deaths that ensure lol
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
Indeed. For example, Havam in the OP mentioned Elite Shield and Elite Disruptors. Elite shields are considered 'ok' by most folks, yet Elite Disruptors aren't?
And Ultimatum, before you hop in, I already know your answer: Elite Disruptors are a force multiplier.
Even so, why are elite shields considered 'ok'? In a way, they are a force multiplier because of all the 'free' resist anyone can effortlessly obtain. They very nearly negate any other type of shield out there PvP-wise and offer really no downside, which is why I consider them OP.
I admit, that rule idea would be quite amusing for the lulz of it. Though if I was to host a tournament, while I might start with a base of the No BS rules, it'd probably end up VERY different from what most folks are used to. It'd probably upset more folks than those who would be willing to actually do it and the idea would fall through.
The difficult part as I've realized is that too many rules (even if I had weird and wacky rules), and people feel it's too restrictive or overly complex. Too few, and things could devolve into a potential cheese-fest. Heck, even if you have few rules but they are highly restrictive ones, it could still be bad.
It's not the easiest thing in the world to try and make it work. What I might do is muse on the rules, then post a potential 'draft' and see what people think.
(And apologies on kind of going off-topic there, Havam)