You people should know by now. Bugs or fixes that are a little hard to solve are treated in a different way by cryptic. Cryptic decides to do the most easy fix, to save time (and money). But this is happening since ages ago, please guys, wake up. If they see a bug that will cost 3 days of work and money, they just avoid to fix that bug. Its that simple. So, instead of doing their work, fixing the bugs in a proper way instead going around, they are just going the easy way, same for faw same for other skills and same for mission bugs and same for everything. Its time for you guys to activate your wake alarm.
It addresses the root of the problem, and not a symptom of the problem. The root of the problem is the gameplay itself is flawed, and a symptom of that problem is player choice has generally defaulted to tac-heavy gameplay (whether it be escorts, tactical-focused cruisers, science ships with high damage capabilities, etc.)
Those who think it is a bad design choice are those who are still stuck in the mindset that if it is not a band-aid solution to the temporary problems we're seeing now, then it is a bad choice.
Those who see it as a good design choice are those who recognize the big picture for what it is and see this as one small step into a larger agenda where ships can be competitive with each other, but in different ways -- to paraphrase adjudicatorhawk.
Which is what the goal should be, even if it temporarily does not address this particular symptom. I personally don't mind having to deal with more broken builds if it means continual work in the future to smooth things out based on testing, observation and subsequent player behaviors with builds.
+1 to this (if it actually mattered, but hey)
It looks it looks like the devs are trying to make ship powers work better for ships like the galaxy, not make the galaxy better for ship powers. I like the idea and we'll all just have to wait and see how it works out.
It looks it looks like the devs are trying to make ship powers work better for ships like the galaxy, not make the galaxy better for ship powers. I like the idea and we'll all just have to wait and see how it works out.
If I've understood recent Dev posts on the forums properly, I'd say you're spot on.
A balance pass of BOFF skills is long overdue, plus they are thinking of changing / tweaking some of them.
I'm just a little eager now for the changes, even though I know it will be in stages to let people get used to it a bit at a time.
the OP did not make a lot of sense. Better defenses = more dps? Not really. PVE, which is where power creep is a bigger deal (2 min runs?!) people are not dying unless poorly geared and casual, in which case, they do not have the 100k dps either. The glass cannon that can blow up a gate in 1/2 a second does not need double tac team --- even they can take 1/2 a second's worth of return fire without dying.
The guy that needs double TT in PVE is casual, period. It gives newer/weaker players better survival, which the top guys simply do not need.
PVP, folks will find a way to adapt, but my suspicion is that any change is always seen as a negative in pvp. Power creep is an issue in pvp because it excludes a lot of players from doing well, but that is true in all gear based pvp games. The premise is fail to begin with ---hey, lets make a game where pvp is determined by what gear one has so the folks with everything can roflbbqpwn noobz over and over and over for fun! Better idea, make it take years or mega$$ to catch up!
So the net pve effect is mostly zero, except casual/new folks die a little less.
The net pvp effect is folks adapt and new builds become in style, for a little while as people mess with it things will be strange, but I suspect it will settle out in a month.
Pardon my question, but where have they mentioned changes to sensor analysis?
Hawk said that they are internally testing right now the ability to target who you analyze and press a button to analyze that target. So you can then switch targets and do science stuff and go back to the analysis target to get the benefit that builds up over 18 seconds. Also if you analyze an ally you get a healing bonus instead of a damage bonus for enemies.
It's still in internal stages, but he said they've found enough success with it among their tests that he was confident he could mention it there on Tribble.
I would like it if they experimented with removing the shield distribution from tac team.
That's actually on the table. They're also thinking of separating it and moving it to a different power.
If you read all of the posts in the Tribble thread you'll see they're quite aware of the big picture and are working on ideas to really try and help.
As with most things, they are just taking their time. So this won't be happening overnight. Also he mentioned that bigger changes to BOFF powers and the like would probably happen in a full fledged SYSTEMS patch or something like that, so that people don't have to keep relearning how to play, and I get what he's saying there.
So my advice is to keep giving feedback. They may not make the changes specifically the way you would, but they are listening.
I see them removing the shared cool down between Team powers has a great thing.
Engineering Team 3 has always been one of my Favorite skills to use and all of my vessels that have Commander Engineering stations always run it.
Although after reading their reasoning behind the removal of the Shared Cool down it seems like a crutch for not dealing with the real problem which is IMO Tactical Team is OP and needs to be scaled back in what it does.
Well, if they aren't going to nerf A2B+3 technician DOffs+DEM+Marion+BFaW3 which gives cruisers more dps than escorts, then I suppose giving escorts the ability to tank like cruisers is fair. The game's trinity never really made sense in the first place. Now all they need to do is give sci-ships that buff they desperately need more than the other two ever had.
Exactly what I was thinking. If they were really worried about balance science skills would have been improved other than the two particle gen skills. Seriously. We'd see a better system for Flow Caps and Sensor Analysis than what we are seeing now immediately if balance were even considered in this patch. It's bad enough that science captains have to contend with the shared cooldown between RSP and the Solanae shield skill now. And before someone comes on here and flames about that let me just remind them that none of the sensor skills regen shields using the Dyson science consoles or the secondary deflector array.
They should have just given tts auto-distribute to all -teams and kept the gcd between them - All this has done is given every a2b ship an aux independant shield and hull heal every 15s, remove a major weakness of a2b
On top of that, I ran tt/st on my sci ship (dssv) as my fdssv only has an lt tac - so now I can't run tt at a its global cd, meaning I have to fork out for tt doffs (ouch) or lose my grav torp spread 2 to run tt2
The only bright side is now I can have dual sci team 2 and tss1 yet still have more shield heal over a cycle and a global sci-debuff heal..
..of course, that now means every sci ability has to be used from a decloak alpha to have any chance of actually being useful in pvp...
Still can not get into the delta volanis cluster if you are kdf and has been an issue for several months with out a mention in the patch notes. I call for equality for the KDF members.
Removing the shared cooldown between team powers will only make escorts (all ships but escorts primarily) much more survivable and thus increasing the time they can spend sitting in space adding up the dps. A single science team 2 and engineering 2 can fill up the shields and hull of these ships to almost max.
This is a very bad gameplay decision. I know players will welcome it and cheer...but the impact it has on the game is not going to be positive. The already out of control DPS creep just got a major boost.
When will Cryptic address the DPS creep?
KDF costume slots: 4+ years waiting for this... I will hope it is actually fixed.
I don't understand. most escort (no destroyer) have a few engi/sci boff slot. Something like 4 abilities. In stf, you NEED hazard emitter, just to clean the plasma DOTs. Then, you usually carry at least 1 EPTX, sometimes 2 (I like EPTW and EPTS). And on many escort, you also see a2b.
Leaving only a few abilities left. If any. I don't think having a science team 2 instead of TSS 2 will be gamebreaker.
As for filling the shield/hull to the max, don't be silly, it's raw heal, not percent based. The amount of heal is the same, and the damage that need to be done to overcome this healing is the same.
Well, if they aren't going to nerf A2B+3 technician DOffs+DEM+Marion+BFaW3 which gives cruisers more dps than escorts, then I suppose giving escorts the ability to tank like cruisers is fair. The game's trinity never really made sense in the first place. Now all they need to do is give sci-ships that buff they desperately need more than the other two ever had.
Here is what some are not saying, there is a icon on the power tray that automatic distributive shields, its not hard to make a keybind so its active all the time, especially with macro keyboards.
Why nobody is saying this? because they do it but know few are going to drop $100 on a keyboard or even use keybinds to begin with, Tactical Team auto shield distribution isnt a issue because you can always do it without it.
A valid point. The 'manual' icon for shield balancing could and should be changed as well.
Here's what I'll do.. I'll make a new thread specifically for tactical team shield autobalance and this ability to be discussed.
Since Hawk was very willing to discuss the tactical team stuff in the Tribble thread, I think you'll have more success getting a dialog going with the devs making these changes in the tribble forum?
I don't know. Just seems like keeping that discussion going would bear more fruit to me.
It's one change with an acknowledgement that there are other issues.
I think that the post by Adjudicatorhawk linked earlier is a good thing. It shows that they know that there are things that they can do better.
They can't fix everything at once, but they can start by fixing some things in steps.
If something gets a bit of an edge now, a later change will give something else a boost or bring the other thing back down a little.
TT is definitely overpowered and too useful, and I personally hate how it easily and completely negates boarding parties.
It'll be getting hamstrung soon enough. The most interesting part of adjuticatorhawk's post explaining the dev reasoning behind the changes to the shared team cooldowns was this:
"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."
So basically, "Tactical Team is getting a nerf, just not yet."
I don't like the changes either, but its not going to make escorts more powerful, at least not most of mine. I run EPTS1, EPTE1, doffed A2D1, HE1, and TSS2 on my bugship, I am not about to give up my speed and resist buff for ET, and wont give up my hull and shield resists, heals and debuff cleanse for ST. If I had 1 or 2 more eng or sci slots I would, but I don't on the bug.
personally, i think the shield distribution of tactical team should be moved to science team, and science team should have it's heal cut in half. science ships would then be the only ones that can safely double this skill, and everyone else would either have to double or loose hazard emitters, thereby making engineering team more useful in the process by needing a good hull heal after all that hull burn.
however getting rid of the shield bonus of tactical team would make tactical team itself useless, and no longer slotted on anything. its offense buff isnt even noticeable at rank 3, let alone rank one which is where everyone puts it. i think it's tactical nature should give it a higher boost to damage, as well as reducing weapons drain (or something of this nature). this would help cruisers who cant get high rank tactical skills, as well as still make it useful to escorts which are the ones who'd primarily use this.
if tactical team is nerfed to nothing, chances are i'd still have to use it unfortunately. my two tactical ships are a defiant and a multivector, both running cannons and a single torpedo. as it stands, i have 2 torp skills, 2 cannon skills, and a attack pattern with my 2 tactical teams. if tactical team is nerfed, i'll still have to use it as there's no other ensign skill i can use. i'm not using beams, so that cuts most of them out, i dont need another torpedo skill, and i cant use any attack patterns or cannon skills at ensign. therefore i'll just have to keep the silly things on the off chance something uses boarding party, or i go into PVP vs a tactical.
As you said, TT without shield rebalance would be useless. That's why it originally got the Shield rebalance in the first place. If 'Crew' on ships actually would DO something (imagine Crew suddenly affecting Cooldown times, the more you have, the faster things get off cooldown, or repair times even in combat), Tactical Team could buff the 'Crew' aspect, and thus cooldowns, kinda like an 'All hands to battlestations'.
Comments
+1 to this (if it actually mattered, but hey)
It looks it looks like the devs are trying to make ship powers work better for ships like the galaxy, not make the galaxy better for ship powers. I like the idea and we'll all just have to wait and see how it works out.
If I've understood recent Dev posts on the forums properly, I'd say you're spot on.
A balance pass of BOFF skills is long overdue, plus they are thinking of changing / tweaking some of them.
I'm just a little eager now for the changes, even though I know it will be in stages to let people get used to it a bit at a time.
The guy that needs double TT in PVE is casual, period. It gives newer/weaker players better survival, which the top guys simply do not need.
PVP, folks will find a way to adapt, but my suspicion is that any change is always seen as a negative in pvp. Power creep is an issue in pvp because it excludes a lot of players from doing well, but that is true in all gear based pvp games. The premise is fail to begin with ---hey, lets make a game where pvp is determined by what gear one has so the folks with everything can roflbbqpwn noobz over and over and over for fun! Better idea, make it take years or mega$$ to catch up!
So the net pve effect is mostly zero, except casual/new folks die a little less.
The net pvp effect is folks adapt and new builds become in style, for a little while as people mess with it things will be strange, but I suspect it will settle out in a month.
Hawk said that they are internally testing right now the ability to target who you analyze and press a button to analyze that target. So you can then switch targets and do science stuff and go back to the analysis target to get the benefit that builds up over 18 seconds. Also if you analyze an ally you get a healing bonus instead of a damage bonus for enemies.
It's still in internal stages, but he said they've found enough success with it among their tests that he was confident he could mention it there on Tribble.
Seems intreresting.
That's actually on the table. They're also thinking of separating it and moving it to a different power.
If you read all of the posts in the Tribble thread you'll see they're quite aware of the big picture and are working on ideas to really try and help.
As with most things, they are just taking their time. So this won't be happening overnight. Also he mentioned that bigger changes to BOFF powers and the like would probably happen in a full fledged SYSTEMS patch or something like that, so that people don't have to keep relearning how to play, and I get what he's saying there.
So my advice is to keep giving feedback. They may not make the changes specifically the way you would, but they are listening.
Engineering Team 3 has always been one of my Favorite skills to use and all of my vessels that have Commander Engineering stations always run it.
Although after reading their reasoning behind the removal of the Shared Cool down it seems like a crutch for not dealing with the real problem which is IMO Tactical Team is OP and needs to be scaled back in what it does.
Exactly what I was thinking. If they were really worried about balance science skills would have been improved other than the two particle gen skills. Seriously. We'd see a better system for Flow Caps and Sensor Analysis than what we are seeing now immediately if balance were even considered in this patch. It's bad enough that science captains have to contend with the shared cooldown between RSP and the Solanae shield skill now. And before someone comes on here and flames about that let me just remind them that none of the sensor skills regen shields using the Dyson science consoles or the secondary deflector array.
They should have just given tts auto-distribute to all -teams and kept the gcd between them - All this has done is given every a2b ship an aux independant shield and hull heal every 15s, remove a major weakness of a2b
On top of that, I ran tt/st on my sci ship (dssv) as my fdssv only has an lt tac - so now I can't run tt at a its global cd, meaning I have to fork out for tt doffs (ouch) or lose my grav torp spread 2 to run tt2
The only bright side is now I can have dual sci team 2 and tss1 yet still have more shield heal over a cycle and a global sci-debuff heal..
..of course, that now means every sci ability has to be used from a decloak alpha to have any chance of actually being useful in pvp...
...danggit.
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Leaving only a few abilities left. If any. I don't think having a science team 2 instead of TSS 2 will be gamebreaker.
As for filling the shield/hull to the max, don't be silly, it's raw heal, not percent based. The amount of heal is the same, and the damage that need to be done to overcome this healing is the same.
I like your thinking. And I agree.
My character Tsin'xing
I'd say the problem is more with A2B builds.
TT is definitely overpowered and too useful, and I personally hate how it easily and completely negates boarding parties.
But the A2B build is a whole other beast.
A valid point. The 'manual' icon for shield balancing could and should be changed as well.
Here's what I'll do.. I'll make a new thread specifically for tactical team shield autobalance and this ability to be discussed.
Shield Balance Discussion Thread
I don't know. Just seems like keeping that discussion going would bear more fruit to me.
I think that the post by Adjudicatorhawk linked earlier is a good thing. It shows that they know that there are things that they can do better.
They can't fix everything at once, but they can start by fixing some things in steps.
If something gets a bit of an edge now, a later change will give something else a boost or bring the other thing back down a little.
It's just part of a work in progress.
It'll be getting hamstrung soon enough. The most interesting part of adjuticatorhawk's post explaining the dev reasoning behind the changes to the shared team cooldowns was this:
"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."
So basically, "Tactical Team is getting a nerf, just not yet."
however getting rid of the shield bonus of tactical team would make tactical team itself useless, and no longer slotted on anything. its offense buff isnt even noticeable at rank 3, let alone rank one which is where everyone puts it. i think it's tactical nature should give it a higher boost to damage, as well as reducing weapons drain (or something of this nature). this would help cruisers who cant get high rank tactical skills, as well as still make it useful to escorts which are the ones who'd primarily use this.
if tactical team is nerfed to nothing, chances are i'd still have to use it unfortunately. my two tactical ships are a defiant and a multivector, both running cannons and a single torpedo. as it stands, i have 2 torp skills, 2 cannon skills, and a attack pattern with my 2 tactical teams. if tactical team is nerfed, i'll still have to use it as there's no other ensign skill i can use. i'm not using beams, so that cuts most of them out, i dont need another torpedo skill, and i cant use any attack patterns or cannon skills at ensign. therefore i'll just have to keep the silly things on the off chance something uses boarding party, or i go into PVP vs a tactical.
As you said, TT without shield rebalance would be useless. That's why it originally got the Shield rebalance in the first place. If 'Crew' on ships actually would DO something (imagine Crew suddenly affecting Cooldown times, the more you have, the faster things get off cooldown, or repair times even in combat), Tactical Team could buff the 'Crew' aspect, and thus cooldowns, kinda like an 'All hands to battlestations'.
I mean If I press one TT that one goes to 30 secs, while the other goes to 15. But with ET or ST both go to 30 secs.
Plz let me know if im wrong
Currently tactical team's bonuses last for 10 seconds after you click. The ST and ET are only an instant-heal and cleanse.
IM talking about the CD beetween 2 Team of the same ... not how much they last