45 minute matches.....

thishorizon · March 2014

todays patch included the removal of shared cooldowns on team abilities.

this, in turn, has created an environment where kills are rare to come by. due to the fact that everyone can clear their own debuffs without penalty.

if one was to look at the powers available, and the doffs that maximize their usefulness, you can come to a very quick conclusion on the few types of builds viable for team pvp play....and how it might actually disolve the concept alltogether...

i was in several matches today that lasted almost an hour....and a few where nobody died...so we all left.

so cryptic, where do we go from here?

can you say that this change was intended for...... the betterment of PVE? or PVP? or....actually...why was the change implimented at all after just a few days on tribble?

id like to have fun kill bad guys...

but....

havam · March 2014

L......O.........L

Just out of curiosity, and to give some context: pugging or premade? How many healers? Do you have an engie recluse I don't know about?

rmy1081 · March 2014

This is why:

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1042681

adjudicatorhawk wrote: »

Hi all,

There's been a lot of hubbub about the Tribble changes to the cooldown lockout between Tactical Team, Science Team, and Engineering Team, and I wanted to come give you a rundown of what the change accomplishes and why we chose to do it.

There were multiple reasons to remove this shared cooldown:
Certain team powers were rarely getting use due to perceived or real mandatory nature of other team powers - Engineering Team suffered the most here, while Science Team was in-use but played a significant "second fiddle" to Tactical Team

Dispel-type abilities are timing-sensitive in nature, but holding off using non-dispel powers so that a dispel would be available when a debuff is applied is unsatisfying gameplay if the debuff never comes or gets put on someone else

Similarly, needing to use Tactical Team to survive meant Science or Engineering debuffs applied by Voth or Borg were extra frustrating due to feeling like the player made the best choice they could (surviving) but still being punished (not being able to use the dispel they have equipped and hadnt used)

The shared lockout itself was based on an old paradigm of design within the game that has since been moved away from. It was entirely thematic in its nature the Teams were already busy and not mechanical the effects are too powerful together justification.

The combination of parts 1 and 4 meant that Engineering powers (Emergency Power to Shields) were the most frequent Shield heals, and Science powers (Hazard Emitters) were the most frequent Hull heals. This is contrary to the desired niches of the abilities.

Engineering Ensign and Science stations were far less desirable than intended due to Science Team and Engineering Team being on CD when Tactical Team was used. This was discussed back when the DDeridex was created and again now when we relaunched the Galaxy.

Giving players the choice of burst effectiveness but longer gaps in effectiveness (All 3 team powers on 30 second CDs rather than rotating a Team every 15 seconds) is interesting gameplay - deciding whether to mete out my heals over time or blow them all at once determines how vulnerable I am/how many cards I still have in my hand over the next 15 seconds.

"This is disruptive to current meta-game is this intentional? Is this good?"

Its definitely intentional. We want players to be able to use Engineering Team and Science Team, but we recognize the importance of Tactical Team in the currently widespread gameplay pattern adopted by many players. We want to make Tactical Team less mandatory over time (and in fact think the power itself is quite overloaded in terms of what it does), but bringing Tac Teams effectiveness down substantially would be more disruptive than allowing players to use Sci and Eng Team in conjunction with Tac Team. Were also hopeful that players will now be more willing to use Science and Engineering Teams on allied players once this change is made, since they wont have to make as much of a choice between selfishness and selflessness as they did before.

The metagame in general is dominated by choices that are too good compared to the other choices available. This leaves players dissatisfied with false choice. For instance, Beam Fire at Will is ostensibly an AoE power, but deals more damage to a single-target than normal Beam Fire does. Conversely, Beam Overload is a single-target damage power, but actually lowers the users medium-term DPS despite providing burst due to its more-than-substantial power drain, and due to competing with Fire at Will for a power slot. Long term, the more real (nontrivial) choices we can present players with, the happier they will be with the game. This is exemplified in our Trait revamp and our upcoming Kit Revamp, and our ongoing efforts to make all of our ship classes competitive with each other but in different ways.

If they actually do what they say it seems like a good thing in the long run. but yeah, right now it kinda sucks.

antoniosalieri · March 2014

I only had time for a couple matches... but that wasn't my experience honestly. I was in one very good match with hank and a few other people I know are good players from the opvp crowd. Match was around 15min ended 15 14... lots of healing lots of pushing and EVERYONE including the recluses in the match all died at least a couple times.

Having gotten into a no one dies match... I'll try to get on and do a few more this evening.

lucho80 · March 2014

Went into two pug matches. One lasted almost an hour with all the debuff clearing. The other one lasted about 20 minutes. The debuff clearing makes for long boring matches with the immortal cycling.

antoniosalieri · March 2014

This could also be an anomaly day... as everyone is testing this change out by changing there builds up a ton.

Perhaps in a few days when fewer people are out pugging in there new triple team cruisers and recluses and run a better mix of ships we will see different outcomes.

Just throwing it out there... the matches I got into might have been lucky as I was flying my standard bug and a few other people I noticed where still in there standard escort style builds.

I had no issues killing healers today in my bug... didn't seem to take any longer then it has the last while anyway honestly.

s7ike · March 2014

TBH, 45min matches where no one dies happened before the patch. And to some degree pugs are getting better (Average).

marc8219 · March 2014

I only had time for a couple matches and prowling around Kerrat a few min before logging but I just used my same BOP build and didn't have trouble getting kills yet. Seems like a lot of people were lazy like me and didn't change builds around yet. We will see in a week or 2 how this works but I still think it will get worse.

idiian · March 2014

only have done 1 Match until yet:

http://www.hilbertguide.com/leaderboard/encounter.php?id=5950

Yes it was long, i died one time in my recluse, while my team was chasing another target 40km away and i sitting in tykens and gravity......

has been a interesting match, and i don´t feel that Heal is much overpowered ......

I like longer Matches which are interesting and the advantage going from one side to another and back...... I don´t like 5 Minute Matches ending in a Massacre 15:0..... i think, most pvp'ers think the same.....

shadowwraith77 · March 2014

To the pvp community consider this a challenge to develop stronger teamwork, and ways to work around their better healing capacity. You should be enjoying a lengthy and challenging match, not ones that can be tromped on in just a few mins.

thishorizon · March 2014

rmy1081 wrote: »

This is why:

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1042681

If they actually do what they say it seems like a good thing in the long run. but yeah, right now it kinda sucks.

ty for this rmy.

lets hope its for the best, right now...its overkill in my opinion.

therealmt · March 2014

Isnt this a good thing? so much spam. finally some more toclear.

On another note, another buff to aux2bat builds. imagine they can now run TT, ST and ET all at once. every 15 secs. LOL

seriously

Superhealers are back! Never the less vaping will still be just as easy really, ok perhaps a tiny bit harder cuz more TT's are floating around, perhaps.

doffingcomrade · March 2014

I imagine "immortal" matches were a result of everyone swapping in all these new heals...but you can't swap in something without giving something up, and that meant lots of people sacrificed their offense for defense. No surprise no one died when everyone switched to tanking.

p2wsucks · March 2014

thishorizon wrote: »

ty for this rmy.

lets hope its for the best, right now...its overkill in my opinion.

I don't get his (the Dev's) reasoning at all. I spelled it on in the tread, but let's just say I used to fly various builds w/TT&ET&ST. I don't any more and it's not the shared cooldown w/TT that I gave ET and ST up.

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=6402001&postcount=72

^^^ An example I posted over a year ago (different meta then, though Aux2batt fun was still to be found ...). On Raider builds in particular it was important to have disable counter options in order to get out of the way of the counter punches. I just don't think they understand their own meta.

webdeath · March 2014

45+ minute match for me, though it was more then likely my own fault for testing out the "Improved" Failaxy-X.. Which I kind of liked the new changes to it.. and the match was a 5/15 Loss for me. 45 Minutes to LOSE a match.. And BADLY!

I do like the change for Pug matches, as it does give a good reason to bring ET or ST now with TT if your build can fit it.

Aux to Bat builds do definitely, unfortunately, gain a HUGE benifit from this change.

Personally, I am glad that there might actually be some gains in this change.. Even if it makes the matches longer. I'm wondeirng what their future goal is exactly with this change.. I guess we won't find out with out a Delorian..

realmini · March 2014

therealmt wrote: »

harder cuz more TT's are floating around, perhaps.

ha ha tt matters to you

mancom · March 2014

Average match duration before the team patch: 643 seconds (average of almost 6k matches)
Average match duration after the team patch: 975 seconds (average of 23 matches)

Let's see how this develops.

magniacapra · March 2014

Just out of interest, has anyone changed their team composition yet?

If tanking is so easy, why not teams of 4 tac's and less sci's?

ilhansk · March 2014

Yeah I saw the dev's response in that other thread.

I was thinking about challenging his statements in a very lengthy post, with a lot of examples (PVP and PVE related), to explain him why each of his points is flawed, shortsighted, in a calm friendly, easily followable logical manner.

But then I thought, pfft, what would be the point, I'd just be wasting an hour of my time.

@ the devs:

You may have access to the source code, and you may have sheets with fancy tables and all, yet your attempts of improving this game are dictated by a rather superficial knowlegde. You are tweaking parameters, lacking awareness, expecting wrong results.

This patch does NOT improve the quality of the game, it deteriorates it.

PS: the Lance is funny though (chnk your logs!)

eurialo · March 2014

My major concern is about the role of science ships. Now that we can easly use tt, et and st at the same time a lot of science debuff will became useless. Yesterday for the first time I had no need for science support when my tactical captain was debuffed with ss or subnuke.

virusdancer · March 2014

p2wsucks wrote: »

I don't get his (the Dev's) reasoning at all. I spelled it on in the tread, but let's just say I used to fly various builds w/TT&ET&ST. I don't any more and it's not the shared cooldown w/TT that I gave ET and ST up.

Yeah, Hawk's post struck me as odd - is that what they're actually seeing or is that what they surmised from data they had? If the latter, do they even play the game or just blindly guess at what data means? Folks have been arguing for years about BOFFs, abilities, seatings, and all the rest...so many folks saying similar things...which was completely ignored by the devs.

I used to joke that this game was in trouble because of Cryptic listening to folks in General Discussion (the folks not smart enough to figure out there were any other sections of the forums and they simply post everything there)...but the way it's been going of late, it's more like they've been listening to the folks in Ten Forward - the folks that take the short bus to the internet.

elric071 · March 2014

I personally haven't PUG'ed any PvP since the patch yesterday, but my fleet did do our weekly intra-fleet PvP last night. As an Engineer Healer in a Fleet Ambassador, I was pulling around 300k-500k more healing per match in the 5 matches we played. It was rather nice to be able to throw one team at one teammate and another team at a different teammate with literally the next click.

But only a couple of matches were really long. The first was around 35-40 mins and it ended with my team's loss 15-5. It did really seem like a game that should've ended more like 15-13, we just couldn't get through their cross healing. The next couple of matches were pretty standard matches for us, 15-10 and 15-13, and they didn't seem any longer than normal. The last two were epic 15-14 battles that even 2 days ago would've taken 40 minutes or so...And they were really fun

I guess I'll have to jump into a PUG or two and see how it is there but this change does seem to affect match length in certain situations...I just hope it doesn't drag out the lopsided matches too badly. That would really make those type of matches more painful than they already are...

I think I'll give it a week or so before I get too worried about the changes...

Qapla'!

grandpadxx · March 2014

thishorizon wrote: »

todays patch included the removal of shared cooldowns on team abilities.

...

so cryptic, where do we go from here?

can you say that this change was intended for...... the betterment of PVE? or PVP? or....actually...why was the change implimented at all after just a few days on tribble?

id like to have fun kill bad guys...

but....

Hi,..

this is good,.. i want a answer too.

For what they did it ? PvP,.. No ! PvE... No ! For what ??

I my Mind they destroy the good old PVP in the game.. whats next ? No CD for Alpha ? No CD for TTS ? Whats next ??

The only way to Play PVP today is you fly a.. Vaper.. Anti Vaper.. Zombie Cruiser or the best FAW Simi.

FIX THIS BS !! :mad::mad::mad:

greetings

idiian · March 2014

still can´t see anything wrong with longer matches........you guys like 5 Minute Matches ending in a 15:0 Massacre???

play WoT

kkthxbb

grandpadxx · March 2014

idiian wrote: »

still can´t see anything wrong with longer matches........you guys like 5 Minute Matches ending in a 15:0 Massacre???

play WoT

kkthxbb

Thats not the point.. but you dont understand the real problem. Maybe you should be play WoT.

greetings

donrah · March 2014

Instead of unlocking the team abilities, they should have tried to normalize the DPS.

magniacapra · March 2014

donrah wrote: »

Instead of unlocking the team abilities, they should have tried to normalize the DPS.

Like they did with BFAW?

wolverine595959 · March 2014

donrah wrote: »

Instead of unlocking the team abilities, they should have tried to normalize the DPS.

That would have been all well and good but this was backdoor nerf to sci not tac. Especially not escorts. This does make the 3 sci power escorts or 3 eng power escorts a little tougher but the escorts running lt eng and lt sci will probably stay with 2 x EPtX and 1 HE and 1 TSS

45 minute matches.....

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