I must also point out that this thread is nothing if not just pure troll/flame bait and should probably be locked. If you have something that PWE needs to address, address it to them via support and not a public forum where you make it clear that people's opinions will be ignored.
occasionally cryptic staff do find their way into the public forum, should there be significant issues with a certain thing and there are enough voices on the subject and it well constructed enough, they will either take it into consideration without mentioning anything and try to resolve it or a staff member comes on and mentions the situation and what they plan on trying. Branflakes used to do this and i do not know if he still does, but the point is, sometimes a cryptic staff member has been known to come on the public forums and make a comment. my guess is that the staff at this point are focused on the end of the year and early next year. doubtless one of two members of the cryptic staff will find their way ingame to celebrate the winter event or anniversary.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I'd reason it's no less self-centred or self-absorbed to play an engineer in a dps cruiser than it is to play a tac/scort. Actually it opens up options, I can pull my weight when damage is what's required of me, I can spread debuffs around, I've killed things with ease that a tac/scort couldn't hope to take on alone or with the heals at my disposal (most of which I can and will share when I can afford to). So I find it's more functional than a tac/scort, keeps up with tac/scorts, does more for a team than a tac/scort... yeah... really self-centred, self-absorbed and sociopathic...
Your premise of sociopathy is incorrect and flawed. Most tacscorts get into these ships under no delusion that they'll be dependent on their team mates to achieve the goal of minimizing the time. This can't be said for cruisers, BO and they can solo the biggest fights in this game without issue, and near-one-shot any boss they want while they're at it. All the while adding insult to injury with using aux2bat and miracle worker spam.
You can keep playing the problem off as my own if you want, but here are the summary of the final experiment: Playing a character completely as a sociopathic player based on the University of Michigans Sociopath's Profile paper I used 3 subjects for this experiment, and in each case, the player that played the strict profile of sociopath was rewarded TEN TIMES MORE than the other 2 in eSTFs -- consistently. Of course, I'm not going to expect you to bite the hand the feeds you, I mean, that would be silly.
Also, in case anyone would like to see it, a controlled parse I've done in this tacscort with my fleet mates whom I know aren't sociopathic, I could indeed sustain 24,000 dps for over 300 seconds. I can't sustain more than 7,000 dps in any pug, and my signature, I have the screenshot too.
Said NO to Arc. Gets punished by not being given a free outfit, free lobi, and free shuttle. Now forced to use Arc's site when trying to get to STO site. Still not rewards for beta testing the Arc website by force. Bravo Cryptic.
As far as I was aware the Reward was always a random one however high dps seems to trigger the 6 and 11 BNP's more often than not, that does need to be tested out.
Actually, I tend to get 6 (& sometimes the 11 BNP reward) quite frequently, in my low dps capable, but high CC & survivable MU Vo'Quv. And that's with or without sending any support to any others.
And to the original poster, the game doesn't necessarily reward "sociopaths" in my opinion, (although it sure has, until recently, supported leechers), but it may not penalize them either.
However, with that being said, when I enter an STF, and see NO ONE is acting as a team, trying to support each other, etc, I just do what I have to do, and move on to the next STF. That's why, honestly, most of my ships & skills are geared towards keeping me alive as long as possible. I get sick of everyone else tending to not help each other.
With that being said, as well, every few days, or week and a half, I "turn back an old leaf", and try being really supportive and watching team-mates' shield & hull levels. But after a few more days of no one else wanting to help each other, and sometimes, downright sheer idocy, I get sick of it again, and stop. And it amazes me as well, tons of times, that "tacscort pilot", ends up half the time acting like he's so special, because he's "dps-king", my response is, "Let him fend for himself" Let's see how "elite" he really is when he keeps getting hammered and popping. (You know the old saying, you attract more flies with honey than vinegar)
So you MIGHT want to consider that in your little experiment, as well, that you're running into people like me, that have gotten sick of others' attitudes, and refusal to get into a "team-mindset" when they hit a team environment, so just get in, do what they have to do, and get back out.
(Oh, and from another thread that I've run afoul of you in, the one with the highest dps doesn't necessarily win, min/maxing may be one way to play, but is hardly the only or the best way)
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
butcher suspect, "What'd you hit me with?"
Temperance Brennan, "A building"
Maybe I don't quite understand the arguement. it seems to me that the OP is lamenting the lack of the holy trinity in a game that many have been saying is so DPS orientated that any other role is practically worthless, and that makes everyone is a sociopath.
Let me give an example. I was going the Elachi Alert, okay so it's not an STF so sue me. Anyway, this PUG was so horrible that we failed the first optional. I was a science ship, and parcing it out, I was the top DPS even out of a Federation escort, two romulan ships (a Mogai and something else I don't remember), and an Avenger assault cruiser.
We failed not because no one was healing each other, (the only person who died was me, once, during the final battle because I managed to get agro from every Elachi Battleship there and they chain fried all my skills with that sweep thing they do), but because they couldn't do enough DPS. Let me reiterate, a Science Ship was doing more DPS then all the other ships?
So my point is, why bring heals into a game where DPS rules, and almost every ship out there has enough resistances and shields simply due to the over the top power creep. Why bring a skill that's not DPS orientated where simply put you want to get on a Elite non-pug STF team, they expect you to do a certain amount of DPS, not healing, not CC, but DPS?
And we're sociopaths for not chatting in team except on occasion to tell a new player what to do, and instead concentrate on killing the enemies in the STF?
So I guess I see the OPs point where it's the devs fault for this, but that doesn't the players Sociopaths, that makes them simply playing the game.
Besides, as the OP and a number of other people have mentioned, PUGs generally suck... not always... but usually. Why the heck would I want to talk to lil Timmy the 25 year old trogladyte who drives a Escort who can't out dps a science ship? Usually the moment I start talking to lil Timmy in the USS xXxUSUXXORSxXx who has no idea how to play, I'll get 25 million PMs from them asking me to go to Drozana with them and "celebrate" our win.
There is a real problem in PUGs -- no one works as a team. This is in part to the type of person that runs through a pug and part because either there is a language barrier or people just aren't used to the melding of strategies.
However, one thing is nearly always true no matter the pug, those who play as a team are greatly outnumbered and dwarfed by those whom seem to be mindless drones/bots.
Example 1 (more to come, I'm planning on running 2 additional experiments -- the second will show how easy it is to be a sociopath and how rewarding it is in this game, and the third will show the effect it has on FIVE brand new players I'm going to bring into the game that I know are very compassionate and empathetic folks -- I will be documenting all the experiences and data):
I've tested a theory, over the past week I have run a tacsort build through 4 pugs per day every day (since Nov 1, 2013). Each day, I would play missions that somewhat require some space-combat teamwork such as the Crystalline Catastrophe (10 players total -1 for myself), Hive Onslaught Elite (5 players total -1 myself), Vortex Elite (5 players total -1 myself), and the Cure Found Elite (5 players total -1 myself). Here are the findings:
Total Players in Sample Group: 147
Number of heals received other than myself: 1
Number of group text (chat) interactions (other than gg at the end): 2
Number of times a player not knowing the script foils the optional: 14 (out of 21)
Analysis:
As you can see from the number of times a PUG optional was foiled (there was more due to an honest mistake here or there I did not include), the chat conversations should have reflected this with at least a "I'm new and have no idea what needs to be done here. Any advice?" I personally love these messages, as I only see them once per 3 months and are a welcomed relief and hope that the game is not near 100% sociopaths.
Also from the sample group, I realize it is not large, but it seems to be typical and reflects my year's worth of experience playing STO near exactly. I did ensure that I played at a diffrent time every day. The first set was started at Noon EST, then 2 EST, then 4 EST and so on until I covered the 4am EST crowd (I'm a US Army vet, sleep is not a requirement :P). I did not find any anomalous data and tried to cover every time but the late morning hours which seems to have few people online and PUG'ing.
There is one more observation I'd like to make. As a tacscort, I died about 1 out of 2 PUG's. Some were more, which averaged about 1 per PUG. I did this pug in the Fleet Armatage with a tactical captain who only gets 5 available heals (Ltcmdr Engineer, Lt Science). This is one of the more common tacscort builds I see, and playing with the fleet, my death ratio is nearly always 0 unless someone makes an honest mistake - granted the members of my own fleet are hand-selected team-players and close friends both in-game and IRL (a very small percentage [10%ish] are purely STO acquainted players). With that being known, there seems to either be no incentives for a team to heal tacscort builds or they find that it has no benefit to their own scores and end-loot (very sociopathic behavior). This needs to be corrected.
From my calculations, PUGs are far from healthy in this game and needs some attention from the developers.
Here is a suggestion:
Scale rewards depending on:
Cruisers: Heals (primary) & Damage Intake
Science: Debuffs (primary) & Heals
Escorts: DPS (primary) & Debuffs
Engineer Captains: Heals (tertiary)
Science Captains: Debuffs (tertiary)
Tactical Captains: DPS (tertiary)
Give engineers and science ships a reason to heal -- make the encounter require heals to other players or penalize or reward captains who heal by providing a feed-back effect (maybe a +1% rep gain for being thoughtful or -1% rep gain for being a sociopath)
Or, ensure that EVERY captain and ship build has equal self-sufficiency tools available to them in PUGs. As it stands, and even as many guides state, tactical officers in escorts rely heavily on their team for survivability. Without this, they can't do their job: dps.
Display a 5-Tabbed leaderboard at the end of EVERY PVE queue: 1: Overall Scores; 2: DPS; 3: Heals per second 4: Survived Incoming Damage per second; 5: Relevant Statistics (deaths, crit%, other's healed, other's buffed, mobs debuffed, etc.
Give players a voting system in PUGs to allow the group to kick out players who would rather solo the content than play a part of a team opening the slot for another player. When a vote happens, players should be required to provide a required reason: a) AFK b) Under-Geared/Skilled for Elite (for tactical escorts that aren't dpsing), or c) Not providing support as a support vessel/class.
Give players a "queue ignore" option so if they don't want to group with a player any more, the queue will always avoid putting them in the same group.
Make ALL elite events more challenging and/or much harder than they currently are or give players another tier to join -- "Hardcore" where the mere word teamwork must be engraved in every player's play-style.
I welcome feedback, but don't troll and keep in mind one thing before you start a rebuttal that this doesn't happen or I'm somehow misunderstanding "everything": When you toss a brick in a pack of dogs, the one it hits barks the loudest.
This is really long. Can you summarize everything you said in twenty words or less?
Conclusion i have deducted from my years of various MMORPG's is, that every time they make abtrhung that require teamwork easier, this phenomena gets worse.
This was obvious in WOW which i started at 07. Nack then teams required healers, tanks and DPS to cooordinate what they do to success in any "Dungeon content". The easier the stuff got by giving players more stats over the years, the worse this got until they launched que system to this content which blew all team effort. Suddenly antisocial players who previously could not do that content, got to do it without any effort on social part.
From this, i have concluded that any content that requires teamwork, should not be available by simple que. They should requirre some social effort to form a team. Also, content should be hard enough that everyone is needed. Teamwork is mandatory, not optional.
Encouraging teamwork and socializing is all fine, however the whole thing about "requiring teamwork" can easily go too far and end up becoming a total mockery of social gameplay. Seen it at far too many times at MMOGs: When team members are required to do Very Specific Things and have Very Specific Skills, the end result is that people don't want to team up with other human players. No, they want to team up with healbots/DPSbots/supportbots/whatevers, ones that fulfill their assigned role and don't waste valuable time with anything else.
Just pointing out the fact that forcing people to team up doesn't always encourage social gameplay, that in fact forced teams can result in a different form of asociality.
Encouraging teamwork and socializing is all fine, however the whole thing about "requiring teamwork" can easily go too far and end up becoming a total mockery of social gameplay. Seen it at far too many times at MMOGs: When team members are required to do Very Specific Things and have Very Specific Skills, the end result is that people don't want to team up with other human players. No, they want to team up with healbots/DPSbots/supportbots/whatevers, ones that fulfill their assigned role and don't waste valuable time with anything else.
Just pointing out the fact that forcing people to team up doesn't always encourage social gameplay, that in fact forced teams can result in a different form of asociality.
But then again, games which do not allow addons that do work for players and also have hars policy about botting, IP ban for exmple or mac adress ban, could easily force players to work in teams.
Besides it is absurd to make content that requires more than one player to allow people not working together. If people can do what they want in content that requires more players, they could easily do the same with NPC allies.
Those Borg attack for example, many times you go and try to do it in time, they fail. Mostly because people go full impulse to shoot something that kills them. If you try to talk some strategy in chat, it is ignored. Players have learned from experience that team content has become so easy in most MMORPG that they actually expect them to be easy enough so you dont have to socialise with others. When they cant do what they wish to get max score, they complain in forums.
I don't pug much if at all. However I did pug the breach elite the other day with a fleety. One of the people there was in an adapted battle cruiser or something like that (the lock box tal shiar rip off of Neros's ship) and using his cloak he went to the ship that needed saving, saved it, scrambled the enemy sensors then proceeded to run off. He spent more time cloaked than firing at things.
I'm ok with that, people wanna do something like that then it's fine as we can't really fail. What I had a problem with is he then proceeded to call my fleety an idiot for not only freeing the ships but destroying the ships nearby. There was a lot of name calling from him throughout the match even after I pointed out that the team had split up to save the ships and done it too. This meant that each one needs to not only free the ship but destroy the ships nearby to ensure it doesn't die. More abuse, he's now on the ignore list but it does show the bad experience and I wish it was the only one but it's not.
I used to put more with 2-4 fleet members, sometimes we'd get remarks like wow that was quick and it's nice to play with good players. Now whenever I pug I either get silence, bad players, insulting players or afk players. It is rare I have got a good player.
Disclaimer: I do not count private matches formed with people from certain channels.
As for the OP and his way of setting out ship classes...well, see, the problem is cruisers are out dpsing escorts in the current meta so I don't really agree with that.
What we should be asking for is clarification on how they see ship and captains interacting.
Are the captains the classes like damage, tank, space wizard and the ships tools to do the job (supported by the range of abilities within boff classes) or are the ships the classes too so a cruiser is a tank first and foremost and can never hope to do the damage of an escort and science ships are largely irrelevant in PvE outside of co-ordinated builds and specific teaming?
I much prefer being a sociopath thank you very much. If i choose to play as using Kirk, Sisko, and Tom Paris as role-models well thats within my right.
I am a lunatic in charge of 2500 peoples lives, given free reign over a state of the art starship that i do with as i please.
Inertia just means you can do Powerslides in you carrier!
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Your premise of sociopathy is incorrect and flawed. Most tacscorts get into these ships under no delusion that they'll be dependent on their team mates to achieve the goal of minimizing the time. This can't be said for cruisers, BO and they can solo the biggest fights in this game without issue, and near-one-shot any boss they want while they're at it. All the while adding insult to injury with using aux2bat and miracle worker spam.
If my premise is flawed then so is your assessment given that is what I am basing my comments upon. When I build my tac/scort I build it with no expectation of any support which limits me to about 6k dps generally though I make up for this with spike damage in excess of 25k. BO is an escort weapon for PvP, the stupid high DPS cruisers run FAW and A2B, not that I run A2B as I don't like it, of course many cruiser pilots will tell me I'm doing it wrong but that's beside the point and I'd like to see a cruiser 1 shot a boss mob and maintain any form of sustained performance or healing of others...
You can keep playing the problem off as my own if you want, but here are the summary of the final experiment: Playing a character completely as a sociopathic player based on the University of Michigans Sociopath's Profile paper I used 3 subjects for this experiment, and in each case, the player that played the strict profile of sociopath was rewarded TEN TIMES MORE than the other 2 in eSTFs -- consistently. Of course, I'm not going to expect you to bite the hand the feeds you, I mean, that would be silly.
I'm not playing the problem off as yours, I'm pointing out that you know nothing about me as a player beyond my ship type, character class and my objective along with some performance notes and yet you are so quick to call me a sociopath, as to your study, if that were the case and I were the sociopath you would like to believe I am I should get better rewards than anyone else consistently, truth is that I regularly don't.
Also, in case anyone would like to see it, a controlled parse I've done in this tacscort with my fleet mates whom I know aren't sociopathic, I could indeed sustain 24,000 dps for over 300 seconds. I can't sustain more than 7,000 dps in any pug, and my signature, I have the screenshot too.
Wow, so you pulled 24k dps for 5 minutes in a premade where I would imagine you had high scatter volley uptime and everyone was running Attack pattern Beta all the time, great. When I do my dps parses I do them in pugs and I reliably dish out 9k in them with my cruiser, so maybe you need to look at your build and adjust it so you take less fire and can handle more on your own, escorts aren't glass cannons anymore...
When you queue up blind for any group content you are rolling the dice and you will have to live with the end result.
It has been said a billion times that it is better to run group content with friends or fleet mates and if you have neither you can also use Group Channels to find likeminded players to run group content with.
Pugging can be its own punishment and complaining about it over and over again when there are much better options open to us all for teaming is the new definition of Insanity.
Well, the best way to bring about the change you want is to be that change. So, say hello to other players and provide commentary or guidance when necessary.
I do not talk much in team chat but I do monitor my other team mates, when I can I will throw out a repair or shield buff. I only get upset when I do so and the consequence is that I end up dying because it is on cool down and no one bothers to throw me one.
Not really sure the OP understands the meaning of "sociopath". Not wanting to engage in a conversation with a complete stranger that you are likely to never ever see again in your lifetime does not make you a sociopath.
You know Cryptic has Jumped the Proverbial Shark when they introduced Tractor Pulling to Star Trek Online!
Not really sure the OP understands the meaning of "sociopath". Not wanting to engage in a conversation with a complete stranger that you are likely to never ever see again in your lifetime does not make you a sociopath.
Before anyone talks to complete stranger, they are just complete neutral strangers to the.
However if one decides to speak to strangers, he or she may even make new friends.. Or enemies, or just another occasional person you say "Hey" when you meet that one. Speaking to people opens countless possibilities unlike keeping silent.
If one is not ready to engage in social interaction to get access to some content, he or she is playing wrong genre of games. In my opinion, there is countless single player games with bot companions that suit this kind of personality. They can even craft many of these games to their own individual tastes by modding. Im not saying that these persons should npt play MMO games, im only saying that they should accept to be able to play solo content only.
Well, the best way to bring about the change you want is to be that change. So, say hello to other players and provide commentary or guidance when necessary.
I do not talk much in team chat but I do monitor my other team mates, when I can I will throw out a repair or shield buff. I only get upset when I do so and the consequence is that I end up dying because it is on cool down and no one bothers to throw me one.
Second part is so true that I generally let them die...well it's more accurate to say I draw threat and deal with it so they don't need to heal me. I won't try to save them not because I'm cold hearted but because I know there's no need to.
As for helping people...the amount of times I've said after or during a game "hey, do you use X, it really helps me stay alive " then get "f*** you b***h" or something else back, sometimes over the in game VoIP, has lead me to not bother offering help and turn off VoIP completely.
I help when asked but then I form groups in various channels instead now so no more problems. It's up to those that have flown with me to decide if that's a loss for pugs or not but I know I'm not the only player that refuses to help pugs get better because of torrents of fowl immature abuse from narrow minded little ****s.
I'm not sure you understand the meaning of the term you used. There are many different types of players in the game, many have had bad experiences with so called great players.
I have given up asking for advice, the response is at best dead air or some snide remark or some boast that they can destroy a 100 borg cubes by just sneezing hard.
I stay off the chat during combat and assess the situation and contribute the best I can, if my play is not up to you standards, so be it, as long as the task is completed and all get rewards, besides I'm usually very busy during combat for chit chat.
I have been in many groups where one player or another thinking they are the greatest, cruising around in and out of battle firing about have the time and claiming all the credit. The best thing about this game is the ability to turn off the chat.
I would like to find out how to make a quick battle damage assessment, I sometimes spend a couple hours scrolling thru the battle log trying to determine how much damage I did compared to others.
Well, i for one.. do not heal.. reason?, there is no AoE Heal... for me, at least, is incredibly difficult to target a friendly ship for the heal, as autotargeting kiks in all the time..
Now with the new command cruiser commands, i'm always alternating from ofensive to defensive (shields), when i see people lower on shields around me (as it is a AoE power)
I would heal other more if i could.. and i dont like macros, nor shorcuts.. and i wont use them , just give me a AoE heal, and i'll be a happy healer
I'm not sure you understand the meaning of the term you used. There are many different types of players in the game, many have had bad experiences with so called great players.
I have given up asking for advice, the response is at best dead air or some snide remark or some boast that they can destroy a 100 borg cubes by just sneezing hard.
I stay off the chat during combat and assess the situation and contribute the best I can, if my play is not up to you standards, so be it, as long as the task is completed and all get rewards, besides I'm usually very busy during combat for chit chat.
I have been in many groups where one player or another thinking they are the greatest, cruising around in and out of battle firing about have the time and claiming all the credit. The best thing about this game is the ability to turn off the chat.
I would like to find out how to make a quick battle damage assessment, I sometimes spend a couple hours scrolling thru the battle log trying to determine how much damage I did compared to others.
I believe this post might help you with the latter.
Yeah sometimes people are arrogant, I myself have said some things once or twice in the past but then I do try to keep a lid on it.
Most recent example is when someone said "Hey guys, anyone need advise about the breach" and I responded with "It doesn't really matter as we can't fail the mission". I was quick to then offer some tips when they said I didn't need to be an ar***ole. I don't think I was but I took it on my chin and played along offering advise like saying where the exit was etc.
Well, i for one.. do not heal.. reason?, there is no AoE Heal... for me, at least, is incredibly difficult to target a friendly ship for the heal, as autotargeting kiks in all the time..
Now with the new command cruiser commands, i'm always alternating from ofensive to defensive (shields), when i see people lower on shields around me (as it is a AoE power)
I would heal other more if i could.. and i dont like macros, nor shorcuts.. and i wont use them , just give me a AoE heal, and i'll be a happy healer
In fact it would help a lot of new players. In particular this part: "For a cruiser that does a lot of target switching to heal allies, it is a good idea to set the option Auto attack (in Options -> Controls) to "Toggle, non-combat cancels"."
By default F1 targets self then F2, F3, F4, F5 your team mates in the order they appear in on the team sidebar thingy, should help with sending heals to others when you want.
By default F1 targets self then F2, F3, F4, F5 your team mates in the order they appear in on the team sidebar thingy, should help with sending heals to others when you want.
I was about to point that out in regards to the hot keys for Team support. However; that being said, the OP is erroneous in assuming that Cryptic is obligated to punish or reward for team play.
Quite simply its your responsibility to acquire or find fleet mates or friends to assist you with your gameplay. If a time zone is not suitable for you, make sure you find someone in your own time zone. The game is packed with players around the clock at different time zone.
Overall its the game design that is flawed because it plays alot like a single player, team play is not encouraged from the get go and only really matters in regards to end game content. That is where the design flaw is more apparent.
This flaw is also boosted by the fact that the Devs only contribution to end game content, is by creating something both tedious and nonstrategic, meaning their only recourse is to boost the enemies HP and DMG ratio. They still have not gotten rid of the invisible torp syndrome that has plagued this game from day 1.
PUGS is an inferior form of team play, that's a given, granted from time to time you may find an excellent PUG group, but the truth of the matter is that PUGS generally is a mix bag. That is it is a hit or miss group, that, coupled with bad game design and you have a recipe for frustration.
While I understand the OP's determination to try to have the devs create something to encourage more cooperative gameplay, truth is, PUGS will never give you that true experience. I love to PUG from time to time, but there are some end game STFs etc... that I will not play with PUGS due to:
A) BAD Game mechanics
&
PUGS are not ideal for certain STFs, especially Ground missions, though on a very very rare occasion you may get a lucky group.
I play only mmo(rpg)s but I always play SOLO as much as I can.
I woudnt even try a game that tries to force ppl to group and I hate all who might even imply that mmos should be for ppl to group and "socialize" . (Yeah I hate fb, twitter and all those ****ty "services" too)
I am all for well thought matchmaking system.
I am also all for cryptic too to reward ppl who do quests solo cause its soo much more difficult to solo than walk in a park with a full grp the same quests, even that for a guy like you that would mean that they encourage soloers and tag us as sociopaths ...damn kid...
No, most ships have very specific roles to fill. That's not my word, that's PWE's. They're very sturdy on the subject that cruisers are tanks, escorts are dps, and science are support. I agree there are some hybrid ships out there, the Vesta, Chimera, and Battlecruiser comes to mind here. But that doesn't mean they are not still suited for their primary category and if you insist on using a defiant class escort with a tactical officer to tank instead of dps, then yes, chances are, you're a sociopath and would provide no benefit to your group besides that of comical relief. However, if you're an engineer in a Chimera, and you so choose to tank and do a good job of it, then you should be able to hit the leader-board on heals and damage intake for your captain which should grant you the increased rewards.
Again, my idea doesn't necessarily lock you into one loadout or another, however it does ensure that you are providing real benefit to your team and aren't an empty hat.
All it ensures is if a person does not play by your cookie cutter standards they get shafted in rewards.
One time I did place 1st in CCE normal, was in a imperial class, 8 BAs, a APO, and 4 hull heals (eng team, haz em, and 2 aux to hulls). I was dishing out damage with constant self DPS buffing and auto fire, but I equally focused on dishing out heals. Not saying that i saved everyone, but I tried my best to over look the health of my team, and some dudes from other team who are receiving an exceptionally high amount of pelting. I didn't need to self heal much at all because A: I move, not sit still to be pelted with shards and shock waves, and B: my ship isn't built entirely on DMG output! (DPS goes into tact slots hull to eng, and shields to sci. I do not have most DPS, but i have both DPS and endurance.)
At the time, I assumed that I placed due to a combo of DPS and healing others.
Also, in case anyone would like to see it, a controlled parse I've done in this tacscort with my fleet mates whom I know aren't sociopathic, I could indeed sustain 24,000 dps for over 300 seconds. I can't sustain more than 7,000 dps in any pug, and my signature, I have the screenshot too.
Signature
Jessop: Why didn't you heal him? [a dead character who was tanking -- commenting about a tacscort that was tanking at 20% or less hull for over 20 seconds]
Elery Quinn: Why should I heal a tacscort? He dies, i get first place. Simple.
Hint: the above comment is the epitome of a sociopath.
Wow, so you pulled 24k dps for 5 minutes in a premade where I would imagine you had high scatter volley uptime and everyone was running Attack pattern Beta all the time, great. When I do my dps parses I do them in pugs and I reliably dish out 9k in them with my cruiser, so maybe you need to look at your build and adjust it so you take less fire and can handle more on your own, escorts aren't glass cannons anymore...
Case in point.
Said NO to Arc. Gets punished by not being given a free outfit, free lobi, and free shuttle. Now forced to use Arc's site when trying to get to STO site. Still not rewards for beta testing the Arc website by force. Bravo Cryptic.
So... if I were to do 9k dps in my tac/scort that would be fine, huh? But of course I can't heal anyone else while I do that can I? And that isn't sociopathic... but flying a cruiser doing the same damage in a situation where I CAN heal somebody is sociopathic?
Comments
occasionally cryptic staff do find their way into the public forum, should there be significant issues with a certain thing and there are enough voices on the subject and it well constructed enough, they will either take it into consideration without mentioning anything and try to resolve it or a staff member comes on and mentions the situation and what they plan on trying. Branflakes used to do this and i do not know if he still does, but the point is, sometimes a cryptic staff member has been known to come on the public forums and make a comment. my guess is that the staff at this point are focused on the end of the year and early next year. doubtless one of two members of the cryptic staff will find their way ingame to celebrate the winter event or anniversary.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Your premise of sociopathy is incorrect and flawed. Most tacscorts get into these ships under no delusion that they'll be dependent on their team mates to achieve the goal of minimizing the time. This can't be said for cruisers, BO and they can solo the biggest fights in this game without issue, and near-one-shot any boss they want while they're at it. All the while adding insult to injury with using aux2bat and miracle worker spam.
You can keep playing the problem off as my own if you want, but here are the summary of the final experiment: Playing a character completely as a sociopathic player based on the University of Michigans Sociopath's Profile paper I used 3 subjects for this experiment, and in each case, the player that played the strict profile of sociopath was rewarded TEN TIMES MORE than the other 2 in eSTFs -- consistently. Of course, I'm not going to expect you to bite the hand the feeds you, I mean, that would be silly.
Also, in case anyone would like to see it, a controlled parse I've done in this tacscort with my fleet mates whom I know aren't sociopathic, I could indeed sustain 24,000 dps for over 300 seconds. I can't sustain more than 7,000 dps in any pug, and my signature, I have the screenshot too.
Actually, I tend to get 6 (& sometimes the 11 BNP reward) quite frequently, in my low dps capable, but high CC & survivable MU Vo'Quv. And that's with or without sending any support to any others.
And to the original poster, the game doesn't necessarily reward "sociopaths" in my opinion, (although it sure has, until recently, supported leechers), but it may not penalize them either.
However, with that being said, when I enter an STF, and see NO ONE is acting as a team, trying to support each other, etc, I just do what I have to do, and move on to the next STF. That's why, honestly, most of my ships & skills are geared towards keeping me alive as long as possible. I get sick of everyone else tending to not help each other.
With that being said, as well, every few days, or week and a half, I "turn back an old leaf", and try being really supportive and watching team-mates' shield & hull levels. But after a few more days of no one else wanting to help each other, and sometimes, downright sheer idocy, I get sick of it again, and stop. And it amazes me as well, tons of times, that "tacscort pilot", ends up half the time acting like he's so special, because he's "dps-king", my response is, "Let him fend for himself" Let's see how "elite" he really is when he keeps getting hammered and popping. (You know the old saying, you attract more flies with honey than vinegar)
So you MIGHT want to consider that in your little experiment, as well, that you're running into people like me, that have gotten sick of others' attitudes, and refusal to get into a "team-mindset" when they hit a team environment, so just get in, do what they have to do, and get back out.
(Oh, and from another thread that I've run afoul of you in, the one with the highest dps doesn't necessarily win, min/maxing may be one way to play, but is hardly the only or the best way)
butcher suspect, "What'd you hit me with?"
Temperance Brennan, "A building"
Let me give an example. I was going the Elachi Alert, okay so it's not an STF so sue me. Anyway, this PUG was so horrible that we failed the first optional. I was a science ship, and parcing it out, I was the top DPS even out of a Federation escort, two romulan ships (a Mogai and something else I don't remember), and an Avenger assault cruiser.
We failed not because no one was healing each other, (the only person who died was me, once, during the final battle because I managed to get agro from every Elachi Battleship there and they chain fried all my skills with that sweep thing they do), but because they couldn't do enough DPS. Let me reiterate, a Science Ship was doing more DPS then all the other ships?
So my point is, why bring heals into a game where DPS rules, and almost every ship out there has enough resistances and shields simply due to the over the top power creep. Why bring a skill that's not DPS orientated where simply put you want to get on a Elite non-pug STF team, they expect you to do a certain amount of DPS, not healing, not CC, but DPS?
And we're sociopaths for not chatting in team except on occasion to tell a new player what to do, and instead concentrate on killing the enemies in the STF?
So I guess I see the OPs point where it's the devs fault for this, but that doesn't the players Sociopaths, that makes them simply playing the game.
Besides, as the OP and a number of other people have mentioned, PUGs generally suck... not always... but usually. Why the heck would I want to talk to lil Timmy the 25 year old trogladyte who drives a Escort who can't out dps a science ship? Usually the moment I start talking to lil Timmy in the USS xXxUSUXXORSxXx who has no idea how to play, I'll get 25 million PMs from them asking me to go to Drozana with them and "celebrate" our win.
This is really long. Can you summarize everything you said in twenty words or less?
This was obvious in WOW which i started at 07. Nack then teams required healers, tanks and DPS to cooordinate what they do to success in any "Dungeon content". The easier the stuff got by giving players more stats over the years, the worse this got until they launched que system to this content which blew all team effort. Suddenly antisocial players who previously could not do that content, got to do it without any effort on social part.
From this, i have concluded that any content that requires teamwork, should not be available by simple que. They should requirre some social effort to form a team. Also, content should be hard enough that everyone is needed. Teamwork is mandatory, not optional.
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Just pointing out the fact that forcing people to team up doesn't always encourage social gameplay, that in fact forced teams can result in a different form of asociality.
But then again, games which do not allow addons that do work for players and also have hars policy about botting, IP ban for exmple or mac adress ban, could easily force players to work in teams.
Besides it is absurd to make content that requires more than one player to allow people not working together. If people can do what they want in content that requires more players, they could easily do the same with NPC allies.
Those Borg attack for example, many times you go and try to do it in time, they fail. Mostly because people go full impulse to shoot something that kills them. If you try to talk some strategy in chat, it is ignored. Players have learned from experience that team content has become so easy in most MMORPG that they actually expect them to be easy enough so you dont have to socialise with others. When they cant do what they wish to get max score, they complain in forums.
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I'm ok with that, people wanna do something like that then it's fine as we can't really fail. What I had a problem with is he then proceeded to call my fleety an idiot for not only freeing the ships but destroying the ships nearby. There was a lot of name calling from him throughout the match even after I pointed out that the team had split up to save the ships and done it too. This meant that each one needs to not only free the ship but destroy the ships nearby to ensure it doesn't die. More abuse, he's now on the ignore list but it does show the bad experience and I wish it was the only one but it's not.
I used to put more with 2-4 fleet members, sometimes we'd get remarks like wow that was quick and it's nice to play with good players. Now whenever I pug I either get silence, bad players, insulting players or afk players. It is rare I have got a good player.
Disclaimer: I do not count private matches formed with people from certain channels.
As for the OP and his way of setting out ship classes...well, see, the problem is cruisers are out dpsing escorts in the current meta so I don't really agree with that.
What we should be asking for is clarification on how they see ship and captains interacting.
Are the captains the classes like damage, tank, space wizard and the ships tools to do the job (supported by the range of abilities within boff classes) or are the ships the classes too so a cruiser is a tank first and foremost and can never hope to do the damage of an escort and science ships are largely irrelevant in PvE outside of co-ordinated builds and specific teaming?
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.
I am a lunatic in charge of 2500 peoples lives, given free reign over a state of the art starship that i do with as i please.
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
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If my premise is flawed then so is your assessment given that is what I am basing my comments upon. When I build my tac/scort I build it with no expectation of any support which limits me to about 6k dps generally though I make up for this with spike damage in excess of 25k. BO is an escort weapon for PvP, the stupid high DPS cruisers run FAW and A2B, not that I run A2B as I don't like it, of course many cruiser pilots will tell me I'm doing it wrong but that's beside the point and I'd like to see a cruiser 1 shot a boss mob and maintain any form of sustained performance or healing of others...
I'm not playing the problem off as yours, I'm pointing out that you know nothing about me as a player beyond my ship type, character class and my objective along with some performance notes and yet you are so quick to call me a sociopath, as to your study, if that were the case and I were the sociopath you would like to believe I am I should get better rewards than anyone else consistently, truth is that I regularly don't.
Wow, so you pulled 24k dps for 5 minutes in a premade where I would imagine you had high scatter volley uptime and everyone was running Attack pattern Beta all the time, great. When I do my dps parses I do them in pugs and I reliably dish out 9k in them with my cruiser, so maybe you need to look at your build and adjust it so you take less fire and can handle more on your own, escorts aren't glass cannons anymore...
It has been said a billion times that it is better to run group content with friends or fleet mates and if you have neither you can also use Group Channels to find likeminded players to run group content with.
Pugging can be its own punishment and complaining about it over and over again when there are much better options open to us all for teaming is the new definition of Insanity.
Pugging is a choice not a necessity.
I do not talk much in team chat but I do monitor my other team mates, when I can I will throw out a repair or shield buff. I only get upset when I do so and the consequence is that I end up dying because it is on cool down and no one bothers to throw me one.
Before anyone talks to complete stranger, they are just complete neutral strangers to the.
However if one decides to speak to strangers, he or she may even make new friends.. Or enemies, or just another occasional person you say "Hey" when you meet that one. Speaking to people opens countless possibilities unlike keeping silent.
If one is not ready to engage in social interaction to get access to some content, he or she is playing wrong genre of games. In my opinion, there is countless single player games with bot companions that suit this kind of personality. They can even craft many of these games to their own individual tastes by modding. Im not saying that these persons should npt play MMO games, im only saying that they should accept to be able to play solo content only.
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Second part is so true that I generally let them die...well it's more accurate to say I draw threat and deal with it so they don't need to heal me. I won't try to save them not because I'm cold hearted but because I know there's no need to.
As for helping people...the amount of times I've said after or during a game "hey, do you use X, it really helps me stay alive
I help when asked but then I form groups in various channels instead now so no more problems. It's up to those that have flown with me to decide if that's a loss for pugs or not but I know I'm not the only player that refuses to help pugs get better because of torrents of fowl immature abuse from narrow minded little ****s.
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.
I have given up asking for advice, the response is at best dead air or some snide remark or some boast that they can destroy a 100 borg cubes by just sneezing hard.
I stay off the chat during combat and assess the situation and contribute the best I can, if my play is not up to you standards, so be it, as long as the task is completed and all get rewards, besides I'm usually very busy during combat for chit chat.
I have been in many groups where one player or another thinking they are the greatest, cruising around in and out of battle firing about have the time and claiming all the credit. The best thing about this game is the ability to turn off the chat.
I would like to find out how to make a quick battle damage assessment, I sometimes spend a couple hours scrolling thru the battle log trying to determine how much damage I did compared to others.
Now with the new command cruiser commands, i'm always alternating from ofensive to defensive (shields), when i see people lower on shields around me (as it is a AoE power)
I would heal other more if i could.. and i dont like macros, nor shorcuts.. and i wont use them
I believe this post might help you with the latter.
Yeah sometimes people are arrogant, I myself have said some things once or twice in the past but then I do try to keep a lid on it.
Most recent example is when someone said "Hey guys, anyone need advise about the breach" and I responded with "It doesn't really matter as we can't fail the mission". I was quick to then offer some tips when they said I didn't need to be an ar***ole. I don't think I was but I took it on my chin and played along offering advise like saying where the exit was etc.
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.
This might help you http://hilbertguide.com/#Cruiser
In fact it would help a lot of new players. In particular this part: "For a cruiser that does a lot of target switching to heal allies, it is a good idea to set the option Auto attack (in Options -> Controls) to "Toggle, non-combat cancels"."
By default F1 targets self then F2, F3, F4, F5 your team mates in the order they appear in on the team sidebar thingy, should help with sending heals to others when you want.
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.
I was about to point that out in regards to the hot keys for Team support. However; that being said, the OP is erroneous in assuming that Cryptic is obligated to punish or reward for team play.
Quite simply its your responsibility to acquire or find fleet mates or friends to assist you with your gameplay. If a time zone is not suitable for you, make sure you find someone in your own time zone. The game is packed with players around the clock at different time zone.
Overall its the game design that is flawed because it plays alot like a single player, team play is not encouraged from the get go and only really matters in regards to end game content. That is where the design flaw is more apparent.
This flaw is also boosted by the fact that the Devs only contribution to end game content, is by creating something both tedious and nonstrategic, meaning their only recourse is to boost the enemies HP and DMG ratio. They still have not gotten rid of the invisible torp syndrome that has plagued this game from day 1.
PUGS is an inferior form of team play, that's a given, granted from time to time you may find an excellent PUG group, but the truth of the matter is that PUGS generally is a mix bag. That is it is a hit or miss group, that, coupled with bad game design and you have a recipe for frustration.
While I understand the OP's determination to try to have the devs create something to encourage more cooperative gameplay, truth is, PUGS will never give you that true experience. I love to PUG from time to time, but there are some end game STFs etc... that I will not play with PUGS due to:
A) BAD Game mechanics
&
I play only mmo(rpg)s but I always play SOLO as much as I can.
I woudnt even try a game that tries to force ppl to group and I hate all who might even imply that mmos should be for ppl to group and "socialize" . (Yeah I hate fb, twitter and all those ****ty "services" too)
I am all for well thought matchmaking system.
I am also all for cryptic too to reward ppl who do quests solo cause its soo much more difficult to solo than walk in a park with a full grp the same quests, even that for a guy like you that would mean that they encourage soloers and tag us as sociopaths ...damn kid...
All it ensures is if a person does not play by your cookie cutter standards they get shafted in rewards.
At the time, I assumed that I placed due to a combo of DPS and healing others.
Signature Hint: the above comment is the epitome of a sociopath.
Case in point.
So... if I were to do 9k dps in my tac/scort that would be fine, huh? But of course I can't heal anyone else while I do that can I? And that isn't sociopathic... but flying a cruiser doing the same damage in a situation where I CAN heal somebody is sociopathic?
... Sure...