Unfortunately, the game always lacked any need for teamwork. There are no real tank or healer, the classes are there, but they simply doesn't work as they should. Even if they did, the content is not designed to use them. And even if they worked like a proper tank and heal, and the content was tailored for that, that would not be any better, as we would have less builds available. Don't expect to see a full DPS engi (the tank class), in an escort (a DPS ship), in a content that ask for tanks.
It was pretty much hidden so far, and we see that now because of all the powercreep. With the fleet stores, the cstore ships/gamblebox/fleet, Rom BOFF, DOFF, and the reputation. Add some extremely powerful build like A2B+DEM+Marion, and you ends up with a content trivialized, and the DPS king.
Before that, it was difficult for a player to have a full MK XII ship. And even then, today's ship are simply more powerful. Today, anyone can have the best gear with little effort.
Why try to CC/heal/tank when you can just nuke everything on sight and finish the STF in few minutes ?
This ^
Very very true.
Don't blame the DPS counter. That's a symptom, not the cause.
Blame game mechanics which reward selfish behavior instead of teamplay, and don't require the latter, in the first place.
And blame the total lack of documentation and transparency.
Best example: Dyson Battlezone
It's fun in general, but the reward system is so totally screwed up, it's not even funny
Zone hopping, one-shot V-Rex tagging, leeching, basically waiting for others to do the work..
How do you reliably get max rewards per round? Why is minimal effort (just shooting all three v-rexes) the easiest and most teamplay-killing way to do it?
It seems like Cryptic really lacks some competent designer for these kinds of mechanics.
There is pretty much not a single fair, balanced and well documented reward system in this game. At least not one I can think of right now. It's either a race against your teammates, or pure random luck.
Do they (the devs) WANT us to try and TRIBBLE one another over? Like some kind of weird PvP'ish 'grab as much as you can as fast as you can'-game? When it's supposed to be cooperative PvE? I wonder.
Perhaps in Legendary mode, you could be 'vulnerable' to PvP actions from the 'other' factions. E.g. Fed vs Klink, and of course, vs Borg for a massive three way.
The borg would have to be superborg of course, to present the option of working together to reap the rewards (10man zone running) or killing the rest of the bad guys a set number of times, allowing your group majority control of the rewards, IF they can kill all the borg in the zone infected, khitomer, cure, hive etc.
PPS: It's Elite mode, ppl should have decent DPS+knowledge before joining, which they may not because they just want to be pulled through for the bigger rewards.
PPPS: It's "people." Is typing really that difficult? It's also false economy--you'd be better off trying to shorten "knowledge" and "through."
PPPPS: The only way to get knowledge of how to play through an elite STF is to play through the elite STF. There's always a first time. Even you had a first time, and I'm sure your performance was spot-on, yes? Reading about it on wikis and team boards is not the same as playing it.
Angels and ministers of mercy, protect me from players who think they're not having fun efficiently enough! Stat lawyers and accountants are the bane of any game. Someone needs to make a game just for you guys, so you'll go play that and leave nice people alone.
I think it less epeen and more self-reliance. You cant really rely on teamwork in pugs, so if you can (using KASE for example still) solo one side, it's essentially taking the pressure off the rest of your teammates - who may or may not be on par with you.
exactly.
i remember one day. i went on right side forward generator, also intercepting the probes flying nearby. i've cleared probes, destroyed 2 of the small generators, cube appeared, half of the hull of the cube decimated. another set of probes came, i went on them with the cube on the back. and i see that picture: 3 people spawned the cube on the left side and all exploded to the cube, left side probes left without attention. i hit my afterburner (with the cube on my back) and chased those probes. those people respawned meanwhile and destroyed the third group of small generators spawning the third cube and have died to it again.
next picture was that: 3 cubes on the map in the middle, all cubes chasing me. at least the fifth player was good enough to kill forth cube alone and helped me with those 3 cubes.
none of the probes were slip by, me and 5th player cleared the cubes.
those 3 "dead people" have start to pissing off each other and us. two of those leaved the game. the last one "glued" himself to the back of the 5th player because he looked more tanky being in bortasqu.
final picture: no probes slept by, optional completed at 0:30 sec mark. donatra had no chance to survive either.
so the conclusion is simple: don't rely on other people. just be yourself the reliable player.
if you can't do the job alone you are not worth it to team with you.
its a hard lesson, but true.
I don't think they can fix the problem without the casual players starting a riot. If they gave every NPC no less than 1 million hit points/hull and allowed them to use the same moves as us human's, the game would be more fun for most of us.
But because it's obvious this game is catered to casual players that don't want to have their lockbox / C-store spaceship blown up every 2 minutes, they'll never fix it. It'll just be a easy game that focuses on DPS. The Crystalline Entity event from earlier this year was suddenly set to "overkill mode". I loved it (even though they had to many NPC's spawning), it was a real fight. I saw for the first time Scimitar's blowing up every 2 minutes :eek: it was as if the Mighty Scimitar was "weak". But then the riot started on this forum and Cryptic decided to smother that event in weak sauce to make the casual players happy.
Normally when 3 of mirror Star Cruisers gang up on my JHDC, I laugh cause they can't touch me. But during the Crystalline Entity event, just 3 Mirror Star Cruisers would have my hull down to 10% in a matter of seconds. It became a REAL fight for survival. It actually made my palms sweat trying to fight them off, heal my team mates and hit the shards. I never though this game could give me a challenge like that. That was the last time I saw an entire team healing each other.
One day Cryptic will be free from their Perfect World overlord. Until that day comes, they will continue to pamper the whales of this game, and ignore everyone that isn't a whale.
I thought holding down one side of KASE solo while the group of four rapidly eliminated the other was standard practice? In my experience it's more effective going 4/1 than 3/2 even in pugs. Then again I'm the guy that always volunteers to hold the fort right-side since I'm the only person I can trust in a pug to start with. But apparently helping my team by doing my job well is selfish.
PPPS: It's "people." Is typing really that difficult? It's also false economy--you'd be better off trying to shorten "knowledge" and "through."
PPPPS: The only way to get knowledge of how to play through an elite STF is to play through the elite STF. There's always a first time. Even you had a first time, and I'm sure your performance was spot-on, yes? Reading about it on wikis and team boards is not the same as playing it.
Angels and ministers of mercy, protect me from players who think they're not having fun efficiently enough! Stat lawyers and accountants are the bane of any game. Someone needs to make a game just for you guys, so you'll go play that and leave nice people alone.
They made that game. It's called EVE Online. Also, it's my opinion that Cryptic has given the players too much freedom in this game. Freedom to act like jack-butts. And freedom to captain the ship they want in the way they want. But just because you can finish something faster doesn't mean that you should or that you have to.
I only played WoW for a very short time but one of the things that I thought worked well was how they queued players into the dungeons. The queue system automatically put a team together with a dps or two, a healer, a tank or two or something to that effect.
This encouraged more builds and player diversity and team work. Was the content itself really any harder or easier than content in STO. Not really. But really the good thing was that I was constantly getting my butt healed off and buffed and never once died due to my hit points. Yes I had Kung-Fu Pandas twinkling their fingers at me for heals! The only time I died was if i fell off a cliff or got seperated from the team by my own lack of experience.
So STO is like a free for all wild west where meanies get to run wild and that can be seen in our loot drops where everyone rolls NEED. Another good thing about WoW, if someone rolls need on a loot item that's not for their class or in excess, they will be chastised by the team and in some cases kicked. Which IMO is the way it should be.
Healers, Tanks, and CC exist in this game and if built right are very effective. Whether or not people want them around is the real question. Frankly speaking though I'm going to play as I enjoy playing and as such I'll continue to tank and heal in PvE and PvP to my little hearts content and DPS hungry min-maxers be darned. Even in Elite STF's run off of the PublicElite STF channel players die occasionally. They don't need to though. I like to think that missions actually run smoother and more efficient when there IS cross healing going on.
The problem doesn't lie with players but with Cryptic itself.
The endgame PVE does not prepare players for PVP. It doesn't even teach you the basics and what works or doesn't work.
It only teaches you DPS is king, when was the last time you saw a full out healer recluse in the STF's??? It doesn't happen, you only see escort spewwing out faw and doing ISE in 3 mins.
Why, because it is so easy to them, the same STF's for the last 8 seasons, this was bound to happen.
Now found frequenting MWO short term and then Star Citizen long term. Raged Quit PVP long ago
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
I personally see nothing wrong with keeping team-based coordination confined to PVP arenas. Star Trek TOS and TNG typically portrayed ships operating indepedently in deep space missions. Multi-ship encounters usually took place during large scale battles like Wolf 359 and the Klingon Seige of Cardassia Prime and DS9. Ships did not have the ability to cross-heal via engineering team and hazard emitters. They could extend shields, but that was about it.
Ship-centric performance has one major motivating factor over team play, and that's 1st place purple prize drops x2 in several competition PVE maps like Gorn Mine Field, SB24, and Crystalline Entity (though why Mk X's still drop in CCE is beyond me...) , 2nd place = 1 purple drop, 3rd place = 1 blue drop, and greens for everyone else. Two AP-Mag regulators Mk XI made me 10mil EC in a space of 5 minutes work. The closest equivalent for PVP is Kerrat, but with all the cross-faction sniping in there, the chances of getting decent items per player greatly diminishes. With GMF, your odds are 1 in 5 (much higher if running a tuned PVE build).
I personally see nothing wrong with keeping team-based coordination confined to PVP arenas. Star Trek TOS and TNG typically portrayed ships operating indepedently in deep space missions. Multi-ship encounters usually took place during large scale battles like Wolf 359 and the Klingon Seige of Cardassia Prime and DS9. Ships did not have the ability to cross-heal via engineering team and hazard emitters. They could extend shields, but that was about it.
Ship-centric performance has one major motivating factor over team play, and that's 1st place purple prize drops x2 in several competition PVE maps like Gorn Mine Field, SB24, and Crystalline Entity (though why Mk X's still drop in CCE is beyond me...) , 2nd place = 1 purple drop, 3rd place = 1 blue drop, and greens for everyone else. Two AP-Mag regulators Mk XI made me 10mil EC in a space of 5 minutes work. The closest equivalent for PVP is Kerrat, but with all the cross-faction sniping in there, the chances of getting decent items per player greatly diminishes. With GMF, your odds are 1 in 5 (much higher if running a tuned PVE build).
Could you kindly define the acronym MMO for me please?
Could you kindly define the acronym MMO for me please?
Yes yes, we all know it's a multi-player game. But remember, all multi-player means is that more than one person can play the game at the same time, nothing more. It does NOT mean you have to team up with, play against or interact in any way with other players. That is what everyone is forgetting. If you play mmo's to "socialize" or "make new friends" or whatever, fine. Just remember some of us play because we like the game, nothing more. That's why I play STO, not to socialize or meet new people or make new friends, I simply enjoy the game. Yes I know I get put on teams when pugging stf's/fleet actions, but that does not mean I have to socialize with anyone.
I don't care what the header says, I am not now, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be, an "ARC user".
Yes yes, we all know it's a multi-player game. But remember, all multi-player means is that more than one person can play the game at the same time, nothing more. It does NOT mean you have to team up with, play against or interact in any way with other players. That is what everyone is forgetting. If you play mmo's to "socialize" or "make new friends" or whatever, fine. Just remember some of us play because we like the game, nothing more. That's why I play STO, not to socialize or meet new people or make new friends, I simply enjoy the game. Yes I know I get put on teams when pugging stf's/fleet actions, but that does not mean I have to socialize with anyone.
So if anti social behaviour is preferenced by so many, why do we have PvE queues at all? Why don't we just eliminate the queues, and focus on having 'missions' as we do with the Cardassian episodes, the Breen episodes and so on.
It just so happens the Borg episodes are remarkably short, so perhaps eliminating the Multiplaying factor from the Multiplayer game to cater to the antisocial agenda being forwarded by the DPS racers would make the game more 'streamlined' per-se, towards making the game more solo-player?
In fact, would it not be more expedient to the game off-line completely, seeing as there are a "majority" people who don't like socializing/teamworking inside a 'multiplayer' game, instead prefer measuring their e-peen via DPS racing? Why not cut out the middle man and reduce the strain on the internet?
If you don't want to socialize - don't.
What you, sir, are forgetting is the majority of people who play MMO's are in fact, not social shut-ins...
So if anti social behaviour is preferenced by so many, why do we have PvE queues at all? Why don't we just eliminate the queues, and focus on having 'missions' as we do with the Cardassian episodes, the Breen episodes and so on.
It just so happens the Borg episodes are remarkably short, so perhaps eliminating the Multiplaying factor from the Multiplayer game to cater to the antisocial agenda being forwarded by the DPS racers would make the game more 'streamlined' per-se, towards making the game more solo-player?
In fact, would it not be more expedient to the game off-line completely, seeing as there are a "majority" people who don't like socializing/teamworking inside a 'multiplayer' game, instead prefer measuring their e-peen via DPS racing? Why not cut out the middle man and reduce the strain on the internet?
If you don't want to socialize - don't.
What you, sir, are forgetting is the majority of people who play MMO's are in fact, not social shut-ins...
Simple answer: competition games. Even if players aren't actively trying to kill each other, they can still compete against each other for prizes depending on the map in question. There's quite a leap between friendly competition vs. antisocial behavior. Lumping players into social vs. anti-social labels is an unnecessary polarizing generalization. Cooperative vs. individual game play is more fitting.
Could you kindly define the acronym MMO for me please?
I know this was already answered, but MMO = Mass Multiplayer Online. All this indicates is that many players can play in the same virtual space. Beyond that, there are no other requirements for MMO's. Players are only bound by the rules of the game they choose to play.
I have found it funny that over the years since MMO's have entered in the late 1990's, the dream has devolved from loads of players working with each other in a big, online world, into a segmented (i.e. heavily instanced and many servers with small pops) online world where players increasingly refuse to cooperate with other players, want gameplay to emphasize solo-friendliness.
There may be more people playing (supposedly) "Massive Multiplayer* Online" games these days, but it has devolved greatly from what the original aim was.
Closer to Single Player Games with an optional Multiplayer Lobby, but requiring constant online connection to play.
I have found it funny that over the years since MMO's have entered in the late 1990's, the dream has devolved from loads of players working with each other in a big, online world, into a segmented (i.e. heavily instanced and many servers with small pops) online world where players increasingly refuse to cooperate with other players, want gameplay to emphasize solo-friendliness.
There may be more people playing (supposedly) "Massive Multiplayer* Online" games these days, but it has devolved greatly from what the original aim was.
Closer to Single Player Games with an optional Multiplayer Lobby, but requiring constant online connection to play.
* = And I use the term loosely
Player independence is MMO evolution as opposed to de-evolution. Early MMO's like Everquest1 and WoW emphasized roll-based teamwork to the point of cult fanaticism. If you could not find a group that was capable of defeating a particular instance or encounter boss, you were pretty much SOL. Modern MMO developers realized that there had to be more available game play options to prevent end-game content from becoming a ritual group-only line dance, so individual activities were added to cater to a larger total customer base.
STO and other modern MMO's give players options to do both group and individual play. Emphasizing only one format over others alienates players of the less favored format, thereby diminishing the MMO's customer base and hurting the game title long term.
Why, because it is so easy to them, the same STF's for the last 8 seasons, this was bound to happen.
Actually , the original (long) versions of the STF's for the first 3 season mandated team effort as it had both space and ground elements that you could not simply DPS through .
Then they split the missions up and dumbed them down for the F2P masses .
I have found it funny that over the years since MMO's have entered in the late 1990's, the dream has devolved from loads of players working with each other in a big, online world, into a segmented (i.e. heavily instanced and many servers with small pops) online world
Do't you then find it ironic that certain popular single player games (Call of Duty ect.) have turned around from their origins as a single player shooter and now the most popular element to them is their ability to multiplay on-line ?
The MMO's went "single player" and the "single player" went MMO . :eek:
STO and other modern MMO's give players options to do both group and individual play. Emphasizing only one format over others alienates players of the less favored format, thereby diminishing the MMO's customer base and hurting the game title long term.
Agreed , but when you can "single player" an STF ("kirk" a group content) , then something is ever so wrong .
But @ Cryiptic they are not really hearing this and go "lalalalalala ... let's add more passive powers !!"
Very simply what is the point of teamwork now? The STF's are kindergarten easy on Elite level with the firepower we have these days in a team. It's something I have said for many many months now. The toys we have been given have outpaced the mechanics of the game leaving teamwork obsolete.
Back in the old STF's you HAD to work as a team, there simply was no option, if you didn't, you failed, the game now unfortunately hasn't progressed with the firepower, the difficulty of the enemy has remained the same and fallen way behind so now it becomes a simple matter of who can out DPS the other guy.
It's not really a de-evolution of teamwork as much as it is a lack of evolution of the games mechanics and NPC difficulty. What does this mean? If you are going to increase the amount of firepower a player can do as new toys and defenses are developed you need to adjust the difficulty of the enemy to match it.
There's an easy solution. More weapons slots. Better consoles. More traits. More DPS.
Now, see i do most of my content with my Fleet so we pretty much have how we do it locked down.
So its random mishmash of chat the rest of the time.
I have done the content so to the death that i can fly most of it with my eyes closed.
But i see the point, but i also see the fact that people dont want to physically talk to people, partly because they play their game so damn loud you have to turn off your sound or mute them so you dont get an echo.
Plus its all well and goo to have teamwork, but if the whole team is only doing enough damage to finish the STF in about a total of 40-45 minutes, well yay for teamwork i guess.....
Inertia just means you can do Powerslides in you carrier!
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The problem is not so much the people shooting for the DPS gold chalice, it's that the fleet actions, with some exceptions almost exclusively gives higher and better rewards to people with the highest DPS and overall damage.
It's a design issue which wouldn't be that hard to fix. Heck, they even went the OPPOSITE direction and award more invisible points for healing in Crystalline Catastrophe! Why not start retrofitting the e-stfs with points for healing, etc?
Discloser: I am not having a whinge. I run a transphasic t'varo torpboat and have been recorded (by someone else) to have 130k DPS which apparently gave me a gold E-peen which as you can see, I don't give two poo's about it.
It's not about how big it is, it is how you use it. Motion of the ocean, lads.
Transphasic Torpedoes and DPS in one sentence, rofl:D
C-Store Inc. is still looking for active members on the fed side. If you don't have a fleet feel free to contact me in game @stegi.
This is on the reasons I largely lose interest with STO and end up playing other games after content dumps.
The game was never designed to deal with things like the trinity, it's just a zerg/respawn fest until you win or lose the activity.
I's love to see cryptic really implement some group play with tanking and healing, debuffing and dps become actually relevant and needed playstyles, but I don't think it's something the engine is capable of.
Player independence is MMO evolution as opposed to de-evolution. Early MMO's like Everquest1 and WoW emphasized roll-based teamwork to the point of cult fanaticism. If you could not find a group that was capable of defeating a particular instance or encounter boss, you were pretty much SOL. Modern MMO developers realized that there had to be more available game play options to prevent end-game content from becoming a ritual group-only line dance, so individual activities were added to cater to a larger total customer base.
STO and other modern MMO's give players options to do both group and individual play. Emphasizing only one format over others alienates players of the less favored format, thereby diminishing the MMO's customer base and hurting the game title long term.
Thank you for reinforcing my post about the de-evolution of teamwork and the "multiplayer" aspect of "Massive Multiplayer Online" games. Back in the day, everybody had something important to offer to a team. Today, solo-friendliness has eroded teambuilding, teamwork. Solo-friendliness breeds character independence; You don't really need anybody at all.
Anyways, as for STO, like I said before... all you need is DPS. A team full of Escorts or A2B TAC Cruisers is the End-All-Be-All of this game. You don't really need cross healing in PVE. You don't even need to support each other outside of shooting at the same target(s). Matter of fact, healing other players will probably slow you down and rack you less points in some of the competitive locations of this game. You are better off letting a teammate die in front of you and doing nothing about it, or risk your standing in the ranks.
Ok so there's no TL;DR version and first lines of OP's post gave me impression that his post is filled with tons of unncsecessary info so i'll just assume that OP is unstatisfied with the fact the game doesn't require a lot teamwork.
Well let me tell you this: games that concentrate on too much teamworks scare off newbies cuz they (newbies) have no team, they have no knowledge etc. This results in low population which means less money for the game development. Want an example? Go play...say APB Reloaded. W/O proper teamwork you'll get steamrolled. Every single time. Well unless you fight against pug full of newbies who are just like you. As a result this game have very low pop and crazy shop prices and im surprised that it's is still alive.
So yeah what you are talking about is actually a good thing. Very few ppl want to play game where you have to rely on your teammate too much. And these kind of games usually filled with raging (both with and without reason) ppl. Sometimes playing these games can be a very frustrating expirience.
I'm not saying teamwork is not needed but players should be self-sufficient and able to compensate teammate's lack of skills with their own skills.
There's one thing i have to agee however: this game is too easy. Sometimes it's so easy that i ask myself wth am i doing in a game where i just need to sit at one spot and spam space till everyone is dead.
All i've said above does not apply to PvP since i dont play it 'cuz imo PvP balance is broken beyond repair. But thats whole other topic.
What gets me about this game, is we've had a tremendous "power-surge" not power-creep. Some of the new gear in conjunction with the DPS-Or-GTFO mentality equals content being steamrolled.
Might as well state that there is no "endgame" level content any more. Not when a casual builder/ship-smith such as myself can get 10K DPS with very little effort.
The Devs seem fixated on one-hit-wonder scale "challenge." Come into a map, avoid the one-hit-your-dead beam or torpedo and spam space-bar for 15 min. Kind of reminds me of certain Facebook games and is a throwback to retro-oldschool gaming. Don't touch anything on screen or POP. Couple this with the powerups and reward tokens being dropped in the Battlezone... it's becoming Sonic or Mario in space.
I used to coach people on Conduit Elite, I use to preach crowd-control and 10% rule. No one, even in premade teams, wants to play that way anymore. It's all about mega-DPS and blowing the generator before the spheres arrive. Wee. :rolleyes:
How do we fix? New content that requires the abilities of a sci, a tac and an engineer. A gating system that assembles proper balanced teams. Content that can't be completed by simply spamming 4,000,000 DPS in under 320 seconds.
I don't see that happening though, we're FarmTrek, MarioTrek and other derisive nicknames now. Kind of why I've scaled back my participation so much.... the game has become BORING and predictable.
Thank you for reinforcing my post about the de-evolution of teamwork and the "multiplayer" aspect of "Massive Multiplayer Online" games. Back in the day, everybody had something important to offer to a team. Today, solo-friendliness has eroded teambuilding, teamwork. Solo-friendliness breeds character independence; You don't really need anybody at all.
No problem However, keep in mind that many of those team-centric MMO's lost market share and died slow, painful deaths because few players could meet end game content's sheer group coordination and gear requirements. Players were content with being able to solo or group through mid-level content, but once they hit end game content with no solo options available, that game's entertainment value sharply decreased. How would you like it if you spent 90% of the time searching for raid-capable group and only 10% of the time actually playing? This was the team-only MMO's Achilles' heal.
Successful MMO titles like WoW, Guild Wars, etc... adapted by integrating both team and solo play. This kept the player base busy regardless of their current group status / roles / options.
Anyways, as for STO, like I said before... all you need is DPS. A team full of Escorts or A2B TAC Cruisers is the End-All-Be-All of this game. You don't really need cross healing in PVE. You don't even need to support each other outside of shooting at the same target(s). Matter of fact, healing other players will probably slow you down and rack you less points in some of the competitive locations of this game. You are better off letting a teammate die in front of you and doing nothing about it, or risk your standing in the ranks.
The low group team play requirements cater to a broader casual player base, not hard-core min-max STO gamers such as ourselves. STO's financial model depends on sheer headcount to succeed. The broader the player base, the more micro-transactions sales Cryptic can close.
The problem is not so much the people shooting for the DPS gold chalice, it's that the fleet actions, with some exceptions almost exclusively gives higher and better rewards to people with the highest DPS and overall damage.
It's a design issue which wouldn't be that hard to fix. Heck, they even went the OPPOSITE direction and award more invisible points for healing in Crystalline Catastrophe! Why not start retrofitting the e-stfs with points for healing, etc?
I honestly don't think that they can fix it. Because if they can fix it, they would have done it by now. Just about every two weeks we have another ship released, so every two weeks this problem gets worse.
One day Cryptic will be free from their Perfect World overlord. Until that day comes, they will continue to pamper the whales of this game, and ignore everyone that isn't a whale.
Comments
That would work, something to restore a bit of balance back and would promote more teamwork and less solo dps contests.
***Disenchanted***
Real Join Date: Monday, 17 May 2010
This ^
Very very true.
Don't blame the DPS counter. That's a symptom, not the cause.
Blame game mechanics which reward selfish behavior instead of teamplay, and don't require the latter, in the first place.
And blame the total lack of documentation and transparency.
Best example: Dyson Battlezone
It's fun in general, but the reward system is so totally screwed up, it's not even funny
Zone hopping, one-shot V-Rex tagging, leeching, basically waiting for others to do the work..
How do you reliably get max rewards per round? Why is minimal effort (just shooting all three v-rexes) the easiest and most teamplay-killing way to do it?
It seems like Cryptic really lacks some competent designer for these kinds of mechanics.
There is pretty much not a single fair, balanced and well documented reward system in this game. At least not one I can think of right now. It's either a race against your teammates, or pure random luck.
Do they (the devs) WANT us to try and TRIBBLE one another over? Like some kind of weird PvP'ish 'grab as much as you can as fast as you can'-game? When it's supposed to be cooperative PvE? I wonder.
The borg would have to be superborg of course, to present the option of working together to reap the rewards (10man zone running) or killing the rest of the bad guys a set number of times, allowing your group majority control of the rewards, IF they can kill all the borg in the zone infected, khitomer, cure, hive etc.
PPPS: It's "people." Is typing really that difficult? It's also false economy--you'd be better off trying to shorten "knowledge" and "through."
PPPPS: The only way to get knowledge of how to play through an elite STF is to play through the elite STF. There's always a first time. Even you had a first time, and I'm sure your performance was spot-on, yes? Reading about it on wikis and team boards is not the same as playing it.
Angels and ministers of mercy, protect me from players who think they're not having fun efficiently enough! Stat lawyers and accountants are the bane of any game. Someone needs to make a game just for you guys, so you'll go play that and leave nice people alone.
i remember one day. i went on right side forward generator, also intercepting the probes flying nearby. i've cleared probes, destroyed 2 of the small generators, cube appeared, half of the hull of the cube decimated. another set of probes came, i went on them with the cube on the back. and i see that picture: 3 people spawned the cube on the left side and all exploded to the cube, left side probes left without attention. i hit my afterburner (with the cube on my back) and chased those probes. those people respawned meanwhile and destroyed the third group of small generators spawning the third cube and have died to it again.
next picture was that: 3 cubes on the map in the middle, all cubes chasing me. at least the fifth player was good enough to kill forth cube alone and helped me with those 3 cubes.
none of the probes were slip by, me and 5th player cleared the cubes.
those 3 "dead people" have start to pissing off each other and us. two of those leaved the game. the last one "glued" himself to the back of the 5th player because he looked more tanky being in bortasqu.
final picture: no probes slept by, optional completed at 0:30 sec mark. donatra had no chance to survive either.
so the conclusion is simple: don't rely on other people. just be yourself the reliable player.
if you can't do the job alone you are not worth it to team with you.
its a hard lesson, but true.
But because it's obvious this game is catered to casual players that don't want to have their lockbox / C-store spaceship blown up every 2 minutes, they'll never fix it. It'll just be a easy game that focuses on DPS. The Crystalline Entity event from earlier this year was suddenly set to "overkill mode". I loved it (even though they had to many NPC's spawning), it was a real fight. I saw for the first time Scimitar's blowing up every 2 minutes :eek: it was as if the Mighty Scimitar was "weak". But then the riot started on this forum and Cryptic decided to smother that event in weak sauce to make the casual players happy.
Normally when 3 of mirror Star Cruisers gang up on my JHDC, I laugh cause they can't touch me. But during the Crystalline Entity event, just 3 Mirror Star Cruisers would have my hull down to 10% in a matter of seconds. It became a REAL fight for survival. It actually made my palms sweat trying to fight them off, heal my team mates and hit the shards. I never though this game could give me a challenge like that. That was the last time I saw an entire team healing each other.
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
They made that game. It's called EVE Online. Also, it's my opinion that Cryptic has given the players too much freedom in this game. Freedom to act like jack-butts. And freedom to captain the ship they want in the way they want. But just because you can finish something faster doesn't mean that you should or that you have to.
I only played WoW for a very short time but one of the things that I thought worked well was how they queued players into the dungeons. The queue system automatically put a team together with a dps or two, a healer, a tank or two or something to that effect.
This encouraged more builds and player diversity and team work. Was the content itself really any harder or easier than content in STO. Not really. But really the good thing was that I was constantly getting my butt healed off and buffed and never once died due to my hit points. Yes I had Kung-Fu Pandas twinkling their fingers at me for heals! The only time I died was if i fell off a cliff or got seperated from the team by my own lack of experience.
So STO is like a free for all wild west where meanies get to run wild and that can be seen in our loot drops where everyone rolls NEED. Another good thing about WoW, if someone rolls need on a loot item that's not for their class or in excess, they will be chastised by the team and in some cases kicked. Which IMO is the way it should be.
Healers, Tanks, and CC exist in this game and if built right are very effective. Whether or not people want them around is the real question. Frankly speaking though I'm going to play as I enjoy playing and as such I'll continue to tank and heal in PvE and PvP to my little hearts content and DPS hungry min-maxers be darned. Even in Elite STF's run off of the PublicElite STF channel players die occasionally. They don't need to though. I like to think that missions actually run smoother and more efficient when there IS cross healing going on.
The endgame PVE does not prepare players for PVP. It doesn't even teach you the basics and what works or doesn't work.
It only teaches you DPS is king, when was the last time you saw a full out healer recluse in the STF's??? It doesn't happen, you only see escort spewwing out faw and doing ISE in 3 mins.
Why, because it is so easy to them, the same STF's for the last 8 seasons, this was bound to happen.
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
Ship-centric performance has one major motivating factor over team play, and that's 1st place purple prize drops x2 in several competition PVE maps like Gorn Mine Field, SB24, and Crystalline Entity (though why Mk X's still drop in CCE is beyond me...) , 2nd place = 1 purple drop, 3rd place = 1 blue drop, and greens for everyone else. Two AP-Mag regulators Mk XI made me 10mil EC in a space of 5 minutes work. The closest equivalent for PVP is Kerrat, but with all the cross-faction sniping in there, the chances of getting decent items per player greatly diminishes. With GMF, your odds are 1 in 5 (much higher if running a tuned PVE build).
Could you kindly define the acronym MMO for me please?
Yes yes, we all know it's a multi-player game. But remember, all multi-player means is that more than one person can play the game at the same time, nothing more. It does NOT mean you have to team up with, play against or interact in any way with other players. That is what everyone is forgetting. If you play mmo's to "socialize" or "make new friends" or whatever, fine. Just remember some of us play because we like the game, nothing more. That's why I play STO, not to socialize or meet new people or make new friends, I simply enjoy the game. Yes I know I get put on teams when pugging stf's/fleet actions, but that does not mean I have to socialize with anyone.
So if anti social behaviour is preferenced by so many, why do we have PvE queues at all? Why don't we just eliminate the queues, and focus on having 'missions' as we do with the Cardassian episodes, the Breen episodes and so on.
It just so happens the Borg episodes are remarkably short, so perhaps eliminating the Multiplaying factor from the Multiplayer game to cater to the antisocial agenda being forwarded by the DPS racers would make the game more 'streamlined' per-se, towards making the game more solo-player?
In fact, would it not be more expedient to the game off-line completely, seeing as there are a "majority" people who don't like socializing/teamworking inside a 'multiplayer' game, instead prefer measuring their e-peen via DPS racing? Why not cut out the middle man and reduce the strain on the internet?
If you don't want to socialize - don't.
What you, sir, are forgetting is the majority of people who play MMO's are in fact, not social shut-ins...
Simple answer: competition games. Even if players aren't actively trying to kill each other, they can still compete against each other for prizes depending on the map in question. There's quite a leap between friendly competition vs. antisocial behavior. Lumping players into social vs. anti-social labels is an unnecessary polarizing generalization. Cooperative vs. individual game play is more fitting.
I know this was already answered, but MMO = Mass Multiplayer Online. All this indicates is that many players can play in the same virtual space. Beyond that, there are no other requirements for MMO's. Players are only bound by the rules of the game they choose to play.
There may be more people playing (supposedly) "Massive Multiplayer* Online" games these days, but it has devolved greatly from what the original aim was.
Closer to Single Player Games with an optional Multiplayer Lobby, but requiring constant online connection to play.
* = And I use the term loosely
Player independence is MMO evolution as opposed to de-evolution. Early MMO's like Everquest1 and WoW emphasized roll-based teamwork to the point of cult fanaticism. If you could not find a group that was capable of defeating a particular instance or encounter boss, you were pretty much SOL. Modern MMO developers realized that there had to be more available game play options to prevent end-game content from becoming a ritual group-only line dance, so individual activities were added to cater to a larger total customer base.
STO and other modern MMO's give players options to do both group and individual play. Emphasizing only one format over others alienates players of the less favored format, thereby diminishing the MMO's customer base and hurting the game title long term.
Actually , the original (long) versions of the STF's for the first 3 season mandated team effort as it had both space and ground elements that you could not simply DPS through .
Then they split the missions up and dumbed them down for the F2P masses .
Yey ... .
Do't you then find it ironic that certain popular single player games (Call of Duty ect.) have turned around from their origins as a single player shooter and now the most popular element to them is their ability to multiplay on-line ?
The MMO's went "single player" and the "single player" went MMO . :eek:
Agreed , but when you can "single player" an STF ("kirk" a group content) , then something is ever so wrong .
But @ Cryiptic they are not really hearing this and go "lalalalalala ... let's add more passive powers !!"
So its random mishmash of chat the rest of the time.
I have done the content so to the death that i can fly most of it with my eyes closed.
But i see the point, but i also see the fact that people dont want to physically talk to people, partly because they play their game so damn loud you have to turn off your sound or mute them so you dont get an echo.
Plus its all well and goo to have teamwork, but if the whole team is only doing enough damage to finish the STF in about a total of 40-45 minutes, well yay for teamwork i guess.....
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
It's a design issue which wouldn't be that hard to fix. Heck, they even went the OPPOSITE direction and award more invisible points for healing in Crystalline Catastrophe! Why not start retrofitting the e-stfs with points for healing, etc?
Transphasic Torpedoes and DPS in one sentence, rofl:D
Like I said:
All about how you use it.
The game was never designed to deal with things like the trinity, it's just a zerg/respawn fest until you win or lose the activity.
I's love to see cryptic really implement some group play with tanking and healing, debuffing and dps become actually relevant and needed playstyles, but I don't think it's something the engine is capable of.
Thank you for reinforcing my post about the de-evolution of teamwork and the "multiplayer" aspect of "Massive Multiplayer Online" games. Back in the day, everybody had something important to offer to a team. Today, solo-friendliness has eroded teambuilding, teamwork. Solo-friendliness breeds character independence; You don't really need anybody at all.
Anyways, as for STO, like I said before... all you need is DPS. A team full of Escorts or A2B TAC Cruisers is the End-All-Be-All of this game. You don't really need cross healing in PVE. You don't even need to support each other outside of shooting at the same target(s). Matter of fact, healing other players will probably slow you down and rack you less points in some of the competitive locations of this game. You are better off letting a teammate die in front of you and doing nothing about it, or risk your standing in the ranks.
Well let me tell you this: games that concentrate on too much teamworks scare off newbies cuz they (newbies) have no team, they have no knowledge etc. This results in low population which means less money for the game development. Want an example? Go play...say APB Reloaded. W/O proper teamwork you'll get steamrolled. Every single time. Well unless you fight against pug full of newbies who are just like you. As a result this game have very low pop and crazy shop prices and im surprised that it's is still alive.
So yeah what you are talking about is actually a good thing. Very few ppl want to play game where you have to rely on your teammate too much. And these kind of games usually filled with raging (both with and without reason) ppl. Sometimes playing these games can be a very frustrating expirience.
I'm not saying teamwork is not needed but players should be self-sufficient and able to compensate teammate's lack of skills with their own skills.
There's one thing i have to agee however: this game is too easy. Sometimes it's so easy that i ask myself wth am i doing in a game where i just need to sit at one spot and spam space till everyone is dead.
All i've said above does not apply to PvP since i dont play it 'cuz imo PvP balance is broken beyond repair. But thats whole other topic.
Might as well state that there is no "endgame" level content any more. Not when a casual builder/ship-smith such as myself can get 10K DPS with very little effort.
The Devs seem fixated on one-hit-wonder scale "challenge." Come into a map, avoid the one-hit-your-dead beam or torpedo and spam space-bar for 15 min. Kind of reminds me of certain Facebook games and is a throwback to retro-oldschool gaming. Don't touch anything on screen or POP. Couple this with the powerups and reward tokens being dropped in the Battlezone... it's becoming Sonic or Mario in space.
I used to coach people on Conduit Elite, I use to preach crowd-control and 10% rule. No one, even in premade teams, wants to play that way anymore. It's all about mega-DPS and blowing the generator before the spheres arrive. Wee. :rolleyes:
How do we fix? New content that requires the abilities of a sci, a tac and an engineer. A gating system that assembles proper balanced teams. Content that can't be completed by simply spamming 4,000,000 DPS in under 320 seconds.
I don't see that happening though, we're FarmTrek, MarioTrek and other derisive nicknames now. Kind of why I've scaled back my participation so much.... the game has become BORING and predictable.
No problem
Successful MMO titles like WoW, Guild Wars, etc... adapted by integrating both team and solo play. This kept the player base busy regardless of their current group status / roles / options.
The low group team play requirements cater to a broader casual player base, not hard-core min-max STO gamers such as ourselves. STO's financial model depends on sheer headcount to succeed. The broader the player base, the more micro-transactions sales Cryptic can close.
Welcome to MMO'ing 2013
I honestly don't think that they can fix it. Because if they can fix it, they would have done it by now. Just about every two weeks we have another ship released, so every two weeks this problem gets worse.