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A genuine proposal to help return PVP balance back to the game
espiritas
Member Posts: 54 Arc User
Tonight as I was cruising Kerrat in my B'rel, launching my usual clouds of glittering torpedoes and making a general nuisance of myself for the federation and its allies, the conversation, like it often does in the war zone, turned to the usual complaints of 'this' power being OP, or 'THAT' power being cheap... I am sure many of you know what I mean, both players and devs. The usual complaints.
however as the conversation evolved into a more rational look at the nature of how powers interact, and the consequences and vulnerabilities that players have to take into account when making these 'op' builds, It set me to looking back and trying to identify the exact time when things really jumped into the troubled lands and slippery slopes that have placed the game, and the community in the game, so deeply into this rut of tenuous (at best) balancing issues and constant complaints and observations and whinings.
I didn't actually expect it to go anywhere, but it was a nice subtext to my appearing from nowhere and sending a cloud of a hundred or so torpedoes into a mob of enemies then vanishing again to feverishly patch the craters in my hull. but then I did indeed have an a-HA! moment. looking back, I surprised myself that I actually did find a point in the history of this game where it all started. And it is a surprisingly clear and defined line that stood out like a thousand-candle light in the depth of a black cave. tac team.
More precisely, when tac team was changed to provide an automated shield balancing (and then changed to shield transferring) effect. here is how, why, and what I feel is a good way to fix it and in turn bring a WIDE number of features more in line with each other than they have been in nearly two years by simple association. (This is a LONG sucker. but read it. it's long for a reason. I am including my reasoning and offering a proof of concept experiment.)
here is what changing tac team did.
4x shields
4x shield heals
10x effectiveness of hull heals relative to damage
Resists compounded four times in effect as well. (10-80% bonus damage nullification on shields, which translates to up to 5x longer endurance, x4 from the facings being linked = 20 times the endurance!!)
-for a little proportional math. a ship with 1000 shield per facing
with tac team is now a solid shield of 4000. In effect the four facings are compressed into one (the single facing taking damage)
-80% resist means for every 100 damage that comes in only 20 actually apply to the shield hp making a facing last five times as long
-this translates to one facing having in effect 5000 health.
-combine the two, and you get 20000 health. from ONLY ONE MEASLY THOUSAND!
Shields have well over ten thousand per facing on even a weaksauce build. do the math.
In effect 10x hull heal effectiveness as well when proportioned against weapons, as while shields are up 10% of damage only gets through, not including additional hull resists which still reduce it further.
more proportional math-
-assume that heals and damage are proportionally balanced so 1000 damage/sec is paired exactly with 500 heal/sec. (think cannon rapid fire versus hazard emitters)
-when shields are not up, every 1000 damage is only 50% mitigated- ship goes boom pretty fast.
-when shields are up, only 10% (or 100 damage) registers per second as ship damage. hazards beats the snot out of the damage potential.
-say those shields have 10000 health on a facing. in ten seconds the shield is down and the ship is on its way to dying.
-with tac team, it is 40000 health, or 40 seconds to the ship being in a state of danger. (a large increase, but reasonable and still has a realistic threshold)
-with only resists (assuming max like before of 80%) it makes shields the equivalent of 50000 health. 50 seconds to the danger zone.(also creating a reasonable if slightly larger threshold)
-once again combine the two, and you have 200,000 (TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND) health. Or a timeframe of 200 seconds.
That is a jump from ten seconds, to 40 or 50 seconds (less than a minute) To three minutes and twenty seconds. Just to put a ship into the danger zone. Compare those timeframes with other potential powers and their cool downs, and how while they may be balanced when scaled to the potential danger zone of one minute, once it is then extended, said additional powers could be used a whopping THREE TIMES before the ship became in danger. And if -even one- of those are a large-scale style heal (think miracle worker) that is meant to be an emergency power that should only be available once in an encounter, that 'emergency' power can now be used multiple times before the ship enters its danger zone. This allows it to become a multiple use 'emergency' button and in effect now extends the ship life indefinitely unless an outside factor intervenes (IE; an additional ship or a sub nuc, etc)
And that is STILL not even taking into account shield heal abilities being made four times stronger as well!
Gentlemen I think this is the crux of the matter. and if you still doubt it, do a simple test with some friends. have an in fleet or private pvp with full teams and allow every power available. All of them. pay 2 win included. Everything except tac team. Even allowing the shield balance macro. after all it uses the base shield tansfer which is slower, and what the tac team ability should be adjusted to in my opinion. The test is proof of concept, repeatable with any build, any team combination, through any styles of play. Do it and see for yourself.
And for those who, in their mind, while reading, immediately thought "Like hell i am doing that!" ... you already proved my point, and don't need to do the test any more. you already recognise how your vulnerabilities change and know it will impact your survivability.
Ask any PVP team or individual why they wait for the sub nuc. which specific buff they want to get around, and they will easily tell you it is the absolute primary purpose to sub nuc to clear tac team as that is what creates the crucial window of attack (and why it is unhelpful in pve- almost no npc's use tac team, so there is nothing of worth to clear.)
My proposal is not a removal, nor a nerf, of tac team or the resists as they are. but a tweak that will keep the spirit of their intended purpose while allowing, quite literally, -everything- else to be brought closer in line. Reduce the speed that tac team pulls energy from the other facings to the one receiving damage to be the same pace of transfer as a manual adjustment.
Or, even better, tie it with eps skill and give it a variance of speed. It is a power transfer process after all. Make it affected by power transfer skill. with minimal skill point investment, make it say... 10% slower than the manual method. and when maxed out (yes using the diminishing returns mechanic) let it become 10 or 15% faster than the manual method.
Right now when a shield facing is hit, it pulls back more damage value than it received, in effect making damage heal/restore a facing rather than -actually- damaging it. It should be geared to maintain instead, and disconnected entirely from the amount of damage being received to open the possibility of the shield being damaged faster than restored. Even under this condition, it would keep tac team as an effective counter to sudden spike damages/alpha strikes. The shield facing, while no longer being immortal, will be made to still last longer than under un-buffed conditions. An alpha only lasts a few seconds, remember.
But in that few seconds, instead of the facing being left still at max health (because of the super-transfer mechanic) and rendering the alpha totally useless, the shield, while still likely up, will be weakened and at a reduced hp level. Probably red lined. And therefore opening the possibility for follow up. In addition to this it would add much more value to the idea of withering fire (constant dps) which right now is a futile gesture unless your opponent is outnumbered by 3-1 or more.
it still further adds credibility to additional options for cruiser pilots as it brings hull back into the picture to an extent, and adds value to the eps console as it now has a use other than maintaining weapon power after a beam overload (which honestly is the console's only use right now) and ALSO assists in tanking. This aspect increases the relevance of armor consoles and eps consoles- adding more possibilities and variety to ship builds without having to add new features or special equipment to the game.
In addition to this, modify resists as well to include all shield resist factors into the diminishing returns calculations, including procs such as the fleet adaptive shield. And modify the soft cap to be slightly lower. I am talking a small change here. like if the soft cap is at 80%, reduce it to 75 or 74%. Honestly this nerfhammer cycle has to stop. An adjustment like this looks tiny, but means a lot. Consider an increase of say... 100 dps. that is PER SECOND. during the course of a match that lasts say ten minutes (even that is on the short side) that translates to 60,000 (Sixty thousand) more damage.
In short, I believe that even if such a change wouldn't eradicate the problem, it would definitely be a monumental step in the right direction because for being such a small change, it has broad effects that reach across the board into, literally, -everything- related to combat damage and healing which is the absolute core of game balance. (balance being by definition the relation of the two- the capacity to kill compared to the capacity to stay alive)
What tis will do is change the requirement from having to completely deplete a targets entire shield before doing significant damage, to allowing the opportunity to 'blast through' at least partially while enemy shields can remain in part. This mitigates the 'zombie' tank build, which expands the list of viable builds, while still protecting against the one-pop quick kills that brought on the implementation of the facing fusing to begin with (and, ironically, the current need for powers and abilities being sold now to provide one-pop capability to counter the massive tanking and make use of the extreme narrow windows of opportunity that exist). Bringing Hull maintenance back into play instead of "shields down I'm dead" as it is now, and broadening the nature of role warfare and team play in the PVP setting.
Post script; for those who made it through all that, thank you for the time. I realise it's a long one. but I sincerely hope this gets a lot of attention and people follow up by testing what I mean like I suggested. I really do think this is one of those pieces of the puzzle that are at the core of the issue, and, however it gets fixed, I see it as being very, very important to the betterement of the game balance situation.
however as the conversation evolved into a more rational look at the nature of how powers interact, and the consequences and vulnerabilities that players have to take into account when making these 'op' builds, It set me to looking back and trying to identify the exact time when things really jumped into the troubled lands and slippery slopes that have placed the game, and the community in the game, so deeply into this rut of tenuous (at best) balancing issues and constant complaints and observations and whinings.
I didn't actually expect it to go anywhere, but it was a nice subtext to my appearing from nowhere and sending a cloud of a hundred or so torpedoes into a mob of enemies then vanishing again to feverishly patch the craters in my hull. but then I did indeed have an a-HA! moment. looking back, I surprised myself that I actually did find a point in the history of this game where it all started. And it is a surprisingly clear and defined line that stood out like a thousand-candle light in the depth of a black cave. tac team.
More precisely, when tac team was changed to provide an automated shield balancing (and then changed to shield transferring) effect. here is how, why, and what I feel is a good way to fix it and in turn bring a WIDE number of features more in line with each other than they have been in nearly two years by simple association. (This is a LONG sucker. but read it. it's long for a reason. I am including my reasoning and offering a proof of concept experiment.)
here is what changing tac team did.
4x shields
4x shield heals
10x effectiveness of hull heals relative to damage
Resists compounded four times in effect as well. (10-80% bonus damage nullification on shields, which translates to up to 5x longer endurance, x4 from the facings being linked = 20 times the endurance!!)
-for a little proportional math. a ship with 1000 shield per facing
with tac team is now a solid shield of 4000. In effect the four facings are compressed into one (the single facing taking damage)
-80% resist means for every 100 damage that comes in only 20 actually apply to the shield hp making a facing last five times as long
-this translates to one facing having in effect 5000 health.
-combine the two, and you get 20000 health. from ONLY ONE MEASLY THOUSAND!
Shields have well over ten thousand per facing on even a weaksauce build. do the math.
In effect 10x hull heal effectiveness as well when proportioned against weapons, as while shields are up 10% of damage only gets through, not including additional hull resists which still reduce it further.
more proportional math-
-assume that heals and damage are proportionally balanced so 1000 damage/sec is paired exactly with 500 heal/sec. (think cannon rapid fire versus hazard emitters)
-when shields are not up, every 1000 damage is only 50% mitigated- ship goes boom pretty fast.
-when shields are up, only 10% (or 100 damage) registers per second as ship damage. hazards beats the snot out of the damage potential.
-say those shields have 10000 health on a facing. in ten seconds the shield is down and the ship is on its way to dying.
-with tac team, it is 40000 health, or 40 seconds to the ship being in a state of danger. (a large increase, but reasonable and still has a realistic threshold)
-with only resists (assuming max like before of 80%) it makes shields the equivalent of 50000 health. 50 seconds to the danger zone.(also creating a reasonable if slightly larger threshold)
-once again combine the two, and you have 200,000 (TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND) health. Or a timeframe of 200 seconds.
That is a jump from ten seconds, to 40 or 50 seconds (less than a minute) To three minutes and twenty seconds. Just to put a ship into the danger zone. Compare those timeframes with other potential powers and their cool downs, and how while they may be balanced when scaled to the potential danger zone of one minute, once it is then extended, said additional powers could be used a whopping THREE TIMES before the ship became in danger. And if -even one- of those are a large-scale style heal (think miracle worker) that is meant to be an emergency power that should only be available once in an encounter, that 'emergency' power can now be used multiple times before the ship enters its danger zone. This allows it to become a multiple use 'emergency' button and in effect now extends the ship life indefinitely unless an outside factor intervenes (IE; an additional ship or a sub nuc, etc)
And that is STILL not even taking into account shield heal abilities being made four times stronger as well!
Gentlemen I think this is the crux of the matter. and if you still doubt it, do a simple test with some friends. have an in fleet or private pvp with full teams and allow every power available. All of them. pay 2 win included. Everything except tac team. Even allowing the shield balance macro. after all it uses the base shield tansfer which is slower, and what the tac team ability should be adjusted to in my opinion. The test is proof of concept, repeatable with any build, any team combination, through any styles of play. Do it and see for yourself.
And for those who, in their mind, while reading, immediately thought "Like hell i am doing that!" ... you already proved my point, and don't need to do the test any more. you already recognise how your vulnerabilities change and know it will impact your survivability.
Ask any PVP team or individual why they wait for the sub nuc. which specific buff they want to get around, and they will easily tell you it is the absolute primary purpose to sub nuc to clear tac team as that is what creates the crucial window of attack (and why it is unhelpful in pve- almost no npc's use tac team, so there is nothing of worth to clear.)
My proposal is not a removal, nor a nerf, of tac team or the resists as they are. but a tweak that will keep the spirit of their intended purpose while allowing, quite literally, -everything- else to be brought closer in line. Reduce the speed that tac team pulls energy from the other facings to the one receiving damage to be the same pace of transfer as a manual adjustment.
Or, even better, tie it with eps skill and give it a variance of speed. It is a power transfer process after all. Make it affected by power transfer skill. with minimal skill point investment, make it say... 10% slower than the manual method. and when maxed out (yes using the diminishing returns mechanic) let it become 10 or 15% faster than the manual method.
Right now when a shield facing is hit, it pulls back more damage value than it received, in effect making damage heal/restore a facing rather than -actually- damaging it. It should be geared to maintain instead, and disconnected entirely from the amount of damage being received to open the possibility of the shield being damaged faster than restored. Even under this condition, it would keep tac team as an effective counter to sudden spike damages/alpha strikes. The shield facing, while no longer being immortal, will be made to still last longer than under un-buffed conditions. An alpha only lasts a few seconds, remember.
But in that few seconds, instead of the facing being left still at max health (because of the super-transfer mechanic) and rendering the alpha totally useless, the shield, while still likely up, will be weakened and at a reduced hp level. Probably red lined. And therefore opening the possibility for follow up. In addition to this it would add much more value to the idea of withering fire (constant dps) which right now is a futile gesture unless your opponent is outnumbered by 3-1 or more.
it still further adds credibility to additional options for cruiser pilots as it brings hull back into the picture to an extent, and adds value to the eps console as it now has a use other than maintaining weapon power after a beam overload (which honestly is the console's only use right now) and ALSO assists in tanking. This aspect increases the relevance of armor consoles and eps consoles- adding more possibilities and variety to ship builds without having to add new features or special equipment to the game.
In addition to this, modify resists as well to include all shield resist factors into the diminishing returns calculations, including procs such as the fleet adaptive shield. And modify the soft cap to be slightly lower. I am talking a small change here. like if the soft cap is at 80%, reduce it to 75 or 74%. Honestly this nerfhammer cycle has to stop. An adjustment like this looks tiny, but means a lot. Consider an increase of say... 100 dps. that is PER SECOND. during the course of a match that lasts say ten minutes (even that is on the short side) that translates to 60,000 (Sixty thousand) more damage.
In short, I believe that even if such a change wouldn't eradicate the problem, it would definitely be a monumental step in the right direction because for being such a small change, it has broad effects that reach across the board into, literally, -everything- related to combat damage and healing which is the absolute core of game balance. (balance being by definition the relation of the two- the capacity to kill compared to the capacity to stay alive)
What tis will do is change the requirement from having to completely deplete a targets entire shield before doing significant damage, to allowing the opportunity to 'blast through' at least partially while enemy shields can remain in part. This mitigates the 'zombie' tank build, which expands the list of viable builds, while still protecting against the one-pop quick kills that brought on the implementation of the facing fusing to begin with (and, ironically, the current need for powers and abilities being sold now to provide one-pop capability to counter the massive tanking and make use of the extreme narrow windows of opportunity that exist). Bringing Hull maintenance back into play instead of "shields down I'm dead" as it is now, and broadening the nature of role warfare and team play in the PVP setting.
Post script; for those who made it through all that, thank you for the time. I realise it's a long one. but I sincerely hope this gets a lot of attention and people follow up by testing what I mean like I suggested. I really do think this is one of those pieces of the puzzle that are at the core of the issue, and, however it gets fixed, I see it as being very, very important to the betterement of the game balance situation.
We are many. We are legion. We are the proud, the bad, the infinitely expendable.
We! Are RED SHIRTS!
...Tremble in thy footwear.
Post edited by espiritas on
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and add more invisible ewp or tractor beam mines or Danube pets .I mean those are way less worse than tac team and the evil heavy cannons :rolleyes:
Actually, they are less problematic.
You seem to be confusing 'what personally annoys me' with 'it is unbalanced'.
Tac team benefits everyone who uses it. It's not aggravating to face because everyone is used to it, but eliminating the shield transfering would go leagues towards changing the game balance back towards relying on skill rather than pure dps.
Those other things are aggravating, but they are much less commonly used and contribute significantly less to the general state of imbalance.
Also, I can already hear the counter that a macro is available so we're basically balancing already... yadda yadda, but it is something that a person has to basically code in themselves. which means they have to learn it on their own or find someone to give them the macro. now if the shield balance function was inline to the game and automatically tied to the 'fire all beams' keybind, then I could see tt rebalance being indeed removed because everyone would then have equal acess to the function. And the transfer rate could still be affected passively through eps skilling like I mentioned.
it was the reason they implemented the auto rebalance to begin with. Removing it again will just bring back the old problems and a whole slew of new balance issues. It would just send the pendulum from the current extreme to a new extreme. That's why I tend to say -small- changes. they are easier to implement, less likely to cause wild swings, and allows for fine tuning rather than wild swinging.
We are many. We are legion. We are the proud, the bad, the infinitely expendable.
We! Are RED SHIRTS!
...Tremble in thy footwear.
it takes a lot of "skill" to stop a ship from moving/turning.
Since it takes so much "skill" to stop a ship from turning/using other shield facing it needs something similar.
1 graviton pulse and your team gets no skill.I guess that's how your version of skill works.:rolleyes:
What I am proposing will in effect reduce that massive multiplier and so normalise a ships endurance more closely with the ability cooldowns and so widening the possible roles within combat.
We are many. We are legion. We are the proud, the bad, the infinitely expendable.
We! Are RED SHIRTS!
...Tremble in thy footwear.
Chillax. No Ego. No Drama.
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How many of you ever fought someone that didn't use tac team they last a whole 5 seconds also go into a stf no tac team you die!
I came across a lone gurumba that proceeded to blow me straight to hell without taking a scratch from me. Wash, rinse, and repeat this a few times, and I finally gave up on actually trying to stay alive -frantically- and simply watch what the gurumba's buffs were. It was on this day... I found it, the holy grail of staying alive... TAC TEAM! From that moment on, I actually stood a chance of staying alive. In fact, I got quite good at it... unfortunately, the mechanics of this game made it so that I could tank 5 escorts but couldn't dent a single one of them either.
On one hand, I agree that tac team distribution is incredibly problematic because, for the 10 seconds it is active out of 15, one must essentially chew through your entire shield grid, not just a facing, to get to the chewy center of your tootsie pop. However... remove tac team against those uber scorts with ridiculous DPS that comes in massive, incredibly frequent spikes, and everyone is going to be dying every two seconds. I know some people seem to like this "quick match" mechanic where everyone is popping left and right.. I don't.
I personally prefer the combat one finds in star trek games like bridge commander. The battles took a little bit, you turned to give your target a better shield facing while also trying to stay on their bad shield facing, there was strategy involved and timing... sto requires far too much micromanagement of a whole slew of abilities, and it is not terribly difficult to have such ridiculous damage from stacked attack pattern omega with cannon rapid fire with torp spread/high yield coupled with whatever captain abilities, not to mention potential force multipliers like fire on my mark and attack pattern beta, etc, etc, and essentially, without tac team, most everyone goes boom.
You can see that I just opened a thread asking about how to tank without tac team, and largely the responses have been... well, expected. Sure, they could tank elite stf's, but it's really not THAT hard, tac team can certainly make it easier, but one can get by without it... in pvp, however... lol. If I notice someone doesn't have tac team, they are going to be my primary target all match long, as soon as they come back, that's our target.
If we remove shield distribution from tac team or even nerf it down to manual levels or even slightly higher than manual levels, escorts will be blowing through everyone in two seconds flat... they have a tendency to do that even with tac team in the mix. The devs would have to nerf all of the weapons... or perhaps all of the skills to not be such massive buffs, and I really don't think they're willing to do all that work.
Of course, a cruiser might actually stand a chance of killing an escort once tac team's distribution was taken out of the mix.. but even then, my mind's eye just sees explosions everywhere in this brave new world you propose.
As I remember it. One pops early on were a flay in pvp play especially. It needed to be fixed, and if TT is the way to fix it then add the balance to ET and ST. ST is close, and there seems to be nothing wrong with ET having an enhance feature to shields as well.
Really the solution is to do away with the shield rotation in TT and just make the game something people can play. The reactionary level of this game is ridiculous. As a healer I can look at the team, see 100% health, look away on the screen and evaluate my ship, then someone dies. It really makes pvp no fun for me, because any little bit of lag at any point, which is common in my rural area, makes the game unplayable.
TT is fine... the real issue is... Shields ARE;
1) To hard. Resistance is out of control.... and needs to have a diminishing return added. (just like hull resistance)
2) The game now has 5x the shield regeneration as it did before the tac team change. There is extra regen Rep and everyone that wants to be is sitting at 130 shield power for very long periods of time if not all the time. (also upgrades to mk xii regen levels... along with things like maco/bog/and even fleet that have a magnitude higher natural regen number)
Honestly there is no way to fix PvP anymore with one or two small or even large changes anymore.
PvP balance is broken, there is only one way to fix it. (Which Cryptic will never ever implement).
- PvP maps need to load your ship from a PvP Ship Doll.
- That doll has to only allow you to load MK XII -P (PvP gear).
- The MK XII - P gear should be Blue level (a couple mods per weapon tops)
- The MK XII - p Shields/Def/Engines should NOT be pve level. They should NOT have set bonuses. It should be on par with the purple drops we get.
- Rep Needs to be disabled in all pvp maps. (active and passive)
- Uni Consoles / Embassy consoles need to not fit on the PvP doll.
- Doffs... perhaps need to be shut off while in a pvp zone as well.
Yes I know it would be like returning the game to launch for PvP. However that is what would need to happen for pvp to really move forward in this game. There is far to much pve power creep that has really ruined PvP as a whole.
I would not agree with that. Power creep in general is not bad in pvp, it simply has to creep equally in defense and offense. Of course the rep and gear system requires a lot of pve grind until you have an equal pvp footing. That is bad because it makes it hard for new players.
But honestly if the pvp would be the same like 2 years ago and nothing would ever change, it would be bad. If you don't get new stuff, if you have no reason to try new builds it just gets boring. There might always be a very small community content with the way it is but a never changing system wont keep most people playing that long.
What they need is a few tweaks to some consoles and doffs, buff some sci powers, make engis useful again and offer new pvp content.
As for the TT, I would say you could:
-Reduce TT distribution to the speed of manual distribution
-Change subnuc so it only removes offensive powers, that makes is a defensive ability to protect teammates and while still useful not that essential
-Implement diminishing returns for shield resistance and maybe lower the hardcap
One would have to try if that works out but it would reduce the importance of sci a bit while still making them useful. With less defense maybe eng will find a role again. And without the TT distribution people have to watch their shield facings and piloting becomes more important.
Mainly while ships get more vulnerable with less resist and no TT distribution they loose the vulnerability to sub nuc making target switches more important. Don't know if that would work out in the end. You could still kill extend with a shockwave. Things like RSP might be a bit problematic, that might need a rework too in that case.
Anyway, just a thought.
My stomach is clear and my mind is full of bacon!
Don't take this the wrong way, I don't necessarily disagree with you - this just is merely a thought. The thing is, PvE is so hilariously easy, that you don't need Set Bonuses, Rep, Uni Consoles, or Doffs. If they can't be used in PvP either, it'd mean:
1) No need to do Rep
2) No need to bother getting sets.
3) Less of a need to bother with buying any new ship for consoles / do lockboxes / lobi store for consoles.
4) No need to spend on Doffs.
The knock on effect would be:
1) No need to do Rep would make people less eager to use a system Cryptic spent time developing. I doubt Cryptic would allow that.
2) Furthermore I believe the Rep system was intended to be a sort of 'drain' for EC and Dilithium. With no need to do it, people wouldn't have to spend the EC and Dilithium on it.
3) Further to the above point, people left with excess Dilithium due to not spending it on Rep would result in a hit on the Dilithium / Zen exchange rate.
4) No need for Marks or items from STFs would result in the PvE queues dying down.
5) I'd estimate there'd be a few less C-Store sales, as in some cases people do just buy a ship for the console. Also the consoles you get from the Lobi Store and from lockboxes wouldn't be worth it, meaning that people would be doing them just for the ship - which lets face it, is a small % chance of getting. Some people may not like risking things for that small % chance of a ship - at least currently you have the option of getting a console consolation prize.
6) Doffs... there's an economy in itself, and some of the better Doffs can cost tens of millions. Ignoring the fact they make for an interesting mechanic (though the need balancing), the fact is people spend EC on them. In fact it's on of my main sources of outgoing EC.
7) Not spending so many ECs on Doffs / Rep would mean that People had more ECs saved, and Doffs price would plummet. All this would mean is that other items would most likely become very expensive instead to soak up the excess EC people had. At the very least it'd have a large effect on the EC economy
8) Basically that would take out any reason at all to do any end game content.
A better solution would be something like:
1) Having what you suggested as a separate queue. Give people the option to do that, whilst keeping 'full on' PvP.
2) Opening up all previous tier queues to Admirals. So if you wanted, you could queue for Commander level PvP, and have to use a Commander level ship, and have all you stats reduces / abilities cut to what you had at that level.
Its what leads to new players going OH GOOOOd what just one shot me.
It is also what leads to people flying around wtih 5 noobs trying to kill them.
What happens is people that HAVE done all the rep and selected all the power creeped defensive gear are next to unkillable.
On the flip side the people that have selected all the offensive perks... and creep units. Are going to one shot players with out the defensive rep.
Pretty much what we have and pretty much why the PvP retention rate blows. People try it out and run away when they realize they are 6 months of grind behind the times.
As far as rep being not required... RIGHT. There is no way you should have to do all this pve to be able to PvP. Its stupid and this is the only MMO where I have ever seen that be the case.
Other MMOs either do there own PvP grind with PvP gear... (which I think is terrible as well)....
Or they do like Anet does with GW2 and implement pretty much exactly what I described.
They want to make $ off of pvp do it with cosmetics.
Drop PvP lockboxes.. (thats rigth I said drop pvp lockboxes) (give people away to earn a free PvP key after X number of matches)... sell the PvP keys for 50% the cost of a PvE lockbox key.
Inside the PvP lockboxes... you put PvP ship skins... PvP custom paint schemes... PvP Fireworks displays (all sorts of I just killed you hers some T bag buddy)...
COSTMETIC PvP weapons (no different stat wise... simply custom colours) --- come on you all know you would buy keys to get phasers that where red on the outside and black on the inside. lol
One other key to PvP lockboxes... and why you make them cheeper... DO NOT make anything that comes out of them tradable on the exchange.
If you want PvP cosmetics... you have to either PvP or drop real $ to open boxes... which you ONLY have drop in pvp. Make the boxes themselves non tradable as well. (hell make them like the old gold pve boxes... make them a reward at the end of a 10 pvp missions... every 30 missions give people a free key. Those extras in there inv will temp them to spend money)
Honestly I think an MMO needs to evolve and offer new stuff. Which most likely ends in power creep. I am also ok with some pve, I would play a game like lol or wot if I wanted pvp only.
I am not saying sto does it right. And yes rep is needed at the moment. Also being 6 months behind in grind is a dealbraker for new players. What the game would need is something like that:
Every pvp match awards marks of choice. Each rep takes only two weeks to max. I would be ok with that. If you are getting farmed too hard you can still do some pve to get your rep and 2 weeks would be doable. Also the fleet stuff is fine if you can get invites and you only need T1 for your own provisions. Pvp should simply award more marks in my opinion.
Also I would personally change the rep passives. You should not have to choose between an offensive or defensive power, maybe choose between two different offensives. Make both worthwhile in some way. Like... more dmg vs an debuff proc. Crit chance vs severity.
That way each char has the same amount of offensive and defensive passives which makes balancing easier.
My statement would simply be, a game needs to evolve and offer new things. New powers, new ships, something to make you really want to try new builds.
Reputation, new gear and new ships a fine but they should be reachable with mostly pvp and in a reasonable time (they also need balancing of course).
Now since my suggestions won't be implemented anyway that makes all my ramblings philosophical only.
My stomach is clear and my mind is full of bacon!
Next time you do some playing check out the average player buffs while they're whizzing around. Usually they will have emergency to X active, a load of resistance stack, maybe an extend, a team ability, a fleet ability etc etc.
Now can anyone answer what happens when they get subnuced and are on their own without a science team?
Yeah they usually die. Damage has increased to stupid levels and so has healing and resistances and a lot of them are buffs not tied to consoles like was originally designed. What does this mean? Well you get certain abilities that are mandatory now to survive and passive regen of shields is almost laughed at. Sure it makes a difference over time...if you survive long enough.
This is one of the reasons subnuc is so powerful. It's not really, it's just everything you need to survive has been made an active buff. If we saw shield emitter consoles and natural regen of shields put at a level where they could make a big difference and then scaled back on some of the active buffs/abilities we might see some balance.
Oh and damage would need a slight nerf too but then targets would be a bit squishier if they didn't commit the consoles for it....then again now that I think about it, Cryptic probably wants this so you fill your console slots with payed for consoles.
Also tactical is so OP it boosts shields 10bazillion percent, NARF!!!!1
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
1. Remove shield balancing from tactical team
2. Replace it with a ~+15/25/35 bonus to starship manoeuvres skill (improves defence)
3. Add in a science console that has no other function than to automatically balance shields. Note I said "balance", not focus all onto one facing.
Mk I white console:
Shield transfer rate of 100 points per second per facing (a facing can increase or decrease by this amount to balance shields)
Improved by emitter arrays (not field generators), shield modifier and Shield Emitters skill.
They stack additively - 2 consoles give double, 4 quadruple the rate of balancing.
The rate is not based on shield capacity, but instead a flat base. Therefore, you trade something like total facing strength (field generators) for auto rebalance.
This ADDS LINEARLY to any manual rebalancing. Basically, the manual rate as it is now is the ship base, this console adds automatic rebalancing. Hitting a manual rebalance removes the automatic effect and instead applies the points to the manual rebalance.
This way, you can get automatic or faster shield balancing, but it is a trade off as opposed to a cookie-cutter choice. As well, ships with more science consoles would get a slight buff, which they really do need.
Thoughts?
100% this. Especially the part about rep passives needing to be two offensive or two defensive choices, making players choose to split off into offense or defense, especially with defense having diminishing returns, is insanely difficult to balance.
I think it would be an excellent idea to make less of our defense/surviveability come from active powers. I know, I know, science is underpowered, but subnuke is ridiculously OP. It not only screws your ability to throw heals/evasives/whatever on yourself by blasting your cool downs, it also strips everything you've got on you. If less of our existence depended on 12 powers being up and running all at the same time, it might be a little less end all be all of popping so many people. Though it might also be a little less annoying if sci team got shield distribution so that using it didn't clear you of subnuke only to leave you open for 15 seconds without shield distribution so that an uber scort could blow straight through you as they so often do when tac team isn't in the picture.
Well technically you would trade capacity for auto-balance AND improved shield healing.
I don't really like the idea of creating an arguably "must have" console. If that is the case, it might as well be built into the ship. Additionally, sci ships, the ones with the uber shield modifiers that you think should have the best shield distribution don't really need it the most, they have the maneuverability to present a healthier shield facing, if anything, shield distribution should be tied to turn rate, the crappier your turn rate, the better your ship is at distributing shields to compensate. This way cruisers don't end up still sitting in the sitting duck category and escorts are forced to maneuver more to stay alive, the way it always should have been.
It would probably also be best not to make doffs or consoles or skills or passives or traits to enhance this distribution as it would only further compound how much more difficult it is to bolster defense than it is to improve damage. damage in this game is basically stack as many energy type consoles as you can, defense, you're having to chose whether or not you want to be able to turn or have armor (less so with new fleet consoles, but I digress) do you want shield capacity or shield regen or shield heals, I think that's all already so complicated that we don't need to be throwing something else into the mix. That, plus I'm sure it would find some way of best benefiting escorts over everyone else anyway if we didn't simply give them the worst distribution for their top turn and leave it at that.
Erm... no, resistance isn't the problem, have you ever tried to tank without tac team? I mean tanking one of those uber escorts that can tear through a shield facing in one volley. It can't be done unless you have ridiculously thick shields and heals for days, pretty much sacrificing all other functionality of your ship for pure ridiculous heal. If tac team shield distribution was removed, pvp would devolve into a series of alpha pops, especially from battle cloakers. Reducing resistances wouldn't result in anywhere near that level of chaos. Not everyone is running fleet shields, most people don't run emergency power to shields 3, most are running level one, and many people are running around in adapted maco/klingon honor guard for the horribly irritating placate procs. So those people don't have super high resistance, and even if they didn't get a single placate proc, they would still survive just fine, mostly from tac team distribution. Unless those shields are on a ship with a super high shield modifier, then you might be able to get away without tac team.
But yeah, bullet point: It is tac team distribution that takes your 10k shield facing with 100 regen to a collective 40k shield facing with 400 regen as tac team pulls points from all the other shields at lighting pace.
It would keep it interesting, without totally ruining it...more.
I do think shield regen should be improved. Science ships should have at least twice the shield regen they have now; the only way they survive is tac team. Escorts should rely on agility to avoid exposing hull to fire. Give them a turn bonus based on their impulse flight speed. I can't speak for cruisers; maybe give them an EPS bonus?
If transfer rate scaled with dps, then it wouldn't leave the ship with less resistance to sustained damage... because it would scale, lol. The only way for us to really reduce the impact of spike in this game is to limit the ability for spikes to be generated. And that would be a whole mess of nerf that the escort captains wouldn't swallow.
Sci ships tend to be the most durable ships in the game despite their low hulls because they already have the best shields in the game, they have both the highest regen and the highest capacity, and you want moar? And the only way most ships in the game survive is through tac team.
Yes, escorts should rely on agility and evasion to avoid damage, and they currently have the highest turn rates in the game, they don't need a turn buff, what they need is a hull/shield nerf so that if they stop moving/slow down, their evasion stat plummets and they pop. And if not shield/hull nerfed,they need to have their nigh invulnerability to crowd control removed as tractor beams and grav wells and warp plasma and whatnot are supposed to be the way you keep those suckers pinned down to take them down.
*edit* Wait, were you making a joke and it went over my head? You want scaling shields because that would make a difference... when scaling shields is the oppose of a difference, and you want to give the best shielded ships in the game better shields and the best turning ships in the game a better turn rate? Are you Ashton Kutcher, did I just get punked?
You need to read that again. I didn't say it would scale linearly. More DPS means that shield points will transfer faster. If the DPS goes down, it will transfer slower. It can't be a 1:1 relationship though. For example, at high DPS, the transfer would be 1:1. One point of damage means one point of shield transferred from another facing. At lowest, the transfer would be 1:3. Three points of damage draws 1 point of shield from another facing. This means that high burst damage would be mitigated, but sustained damage would be three times more effective at taking out the current facing. So if you're dishing out low DPS, that means for every 300 damage, Tac Team transfers 100 shield points from the other facings. If you're dealing high DPS, 300 damage will cause Tac Team to draw 300 points from the other shield facings. So at high DPS, that shield face has 100% extra points (i.e. twice the points) and at low DPS, it only has ~33% extra. So, when Tac Team is on, you can do more damage by not doing a spike.
Science ships do need more shield regen, not more capacity. Like the OP said. Try doing PvP without Tac Team. You wouldn't because you know you'd pop in no time. You even made my point for me. Shields regen is useless, TT keeps you from dying. The problem about PvP is that burst DPS matters more than anything else.
That scale mechanic does sound rather interesting, but how do we determine what qualifies as "high damage" or "spike damage" and what qualifies as "sustained damage" or "pressure damage"?
I wasn't trying to counter your point, my point is that it is not significant that sci ships use tac team, all ships use tac team, it's a fact of life that the devs have built a game in which tac team is basically essential. I have a thread on that in both the pvp forums "tanking without tac team?" The answer is basically no, it's not possible, except those rare unicorn science ships like the wells that can have super ridiculous thick shields on top of ridiculous enough heals that they can manage it. And "devs: please add shield distribution to eng team and sci team asap" in the mechanics forum... because holy TRIBBLE, we need some way of tanking other than tac team.
I still fail to see how sci ships need better regen when they have the best regen in the game, and how escorts need better turn when they have the best turn in the game. I don't see "and cruisers need higher innate resistance" or 'and cruisers need way more hull hp" or "and cruisers need thicker shields" or anything in that regard, so why do awesome escorts with their awesome speed and maneuverability and evasion and epic damage need even better maneuverability, and why do science ships with the best shields need even better shields, and why did cruisers not make your list of things that need better things? Cruisers did just get some fancy shmancy new aura powers, but those are auras, which makes them a gift to the world, not just cruisers... despite their itty bitty range, which will hopefully be remedied.
A better idea is to take out the automatic distribution and turn it into a buff to normal distribution. IE, make it so you have to manually distribute your shields, but you get the same rate of distribution as with Tac Team. A good addition might be to lower the rate slightly (Say, 10% or so).
As it is now, regular distribution takes a while to kick in (Whereas Tac team happens about 3-4x as fast) and it simply cannot keep up with any major (or even minor) amount of damage. Regular distribution as it is now only serves to help not waste shield heals, not to directly counter damage to a particular shield facing.
Change the auto-distro to a distribution rate buff, and Tac Team maintains its usefulness while removing the problem of a Tactical ability doing something only a combination of Sci and Engineering heals should be able to do (IE, leaving a facing mostly intact after a Spike or even a fair amount of pressure damage).
What could also be done, building off of this change, is to rework the Team abilities to add in similar usefulness.
For instance, Tac Team can remain mostly the same (with the Distribution buff), Engineering team can also have the Distribution buff but at a higher rate, and Sci Team can also have the distribution buff (but at a very low rate) alongside a higher shield regen.
To make it more clear (though with mostly made up numbers just for the sake of example), I'll list out what I think the team abilities should be:
Tactical Team (1,2,3):
75-85-95% Shield Distribution Buff
100-125-150% Flight Speed strength.
Clear Boarding Parties and Tactical Debuffs.
125-150-175% Crew Death resistance.
Engineering Team (1,2,3):
95-115-125% Shield Distribution Buff
3-5-7% Damage Resistance
Hull heal (Keep it the same as it already is)
Repair Subsystems
Science Team (1,2,3):
60-70-80% Shield Distribution Buff.
13-17-19 Shield Regen
Clear Science debuffs
2-3-5 Power Levels (Direct Increase)
Design the team abilities that way and all 3 become equally useful (it would take testing to decide the most balanced numbers obviously, but the numbers I used give you the basic idea of what whatever team you use should do for your ship) instead of one being a must-have for absolutely everyone in the game while the other two are almost completely pointless outside of very specific situations.
This is why Tactical team is a problem that should be fixed.