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Any "official" word from Cryptic on the new Difficulty levels?
bendalek
Member Posts: 1,781 Arc User
As the title asks, is there going to be any 'official' announcement from Cryptic about the level of Difficulty in the queued team events, missions, and STF's?
For instance, proc rates, particularly on "out of vogue" types, such as Tetryon, Polaron and Phaser, seem to have increased hugely! Procs that have subsytem power drain/offline effects seem to happen way more often **...
** I recently leveled several Romulan toons, and most of the lower level missions are against enemies that use Polaron/Tetryon/Phaser weapons. So i was in a position to re-run many missions in a very short time frame. I had to start putting points into PI's and SSR just be able to function.
ISE, now requires more thought, as the Nanite Spheres spawn almost instantly, and instead of travelling at 1/100 Impulse, they are now nearly as quick as standard Spheres. The Spheres will also "run away" and try and drag you away from the transformers.
CSE, the BoP's, Raptors and Neg'ies will now actively hunt players, the (Cryptic Patented) *BSST's now spawn constantly, and NPC's will actively target Scimitar's over other ships.
(*Borg Super Stealth Torpedo. For those that don't know, these invisible torpedo's do anywhere from 40000 to 1000000 damage per hit and cannot be seen or avoided ... a little 'ROFL joke' from Cryptic)
KSE, The Borg hull destroyer beam (assimilation beam?) seems to have a range in excess of 27Km. And Donatra now has a 'preview' attack that seems to work very similarly to Eject Warp Plasma XII, it eats your hull and slows your ship down so that, unless you have a EVM available, your toast when she hits you with her cone attack.
Tholian Red Alerts, now have more webs than a Marvel Convention and more weavers than a retirement village ... Anything other than a BFAW spamming Tank is pretty much toast.
Breach Elite, well this one is pretty much unplayable now, as the enemies have all been buffed so much it's like your ship has tissue paper shields and hull and you are using a schoolboy biro spit ball shooter against the Hulk
NPC's in almost all missions, skirmishes, patrols and events now seen to have 0 Cool Down on "spam" powers, so you have High Yield Torpedos, Photonic Fleets, Aceton Assimilators and Tractor Drones outnumbering Stars in the Milky Way!
Haven't tried any ground events or STF's, so don't know if any of those have changed recently?
So ...
1) Is any of this "official" and/or intentional?
2)If intentional, first .. WELL DONE! ... and thanks!
Most of these changes are awesome, and have added some actual 'fun' to many missions. Some things still need a little 'tweaking' though.
2a) Also if intentional, can we get a list of the changes? ... Or maybe it's better, and more fun, not to know?
3)If not intended, and simply a bug generated/created by the changes to Rep and Trait powers ... PLEASE DON'T FIX THEM ALL! ... Just the 'broken' ones ...
For instance, proc rates, particularly on "out of vogue" types, such as Tetryon, Polaron and Phaser, seem to have increased hugely! Procs that have subsytem power drain/offline effects seem to happen way more often **...
** I recently leveled several Romulan toons, and most of the lower level missions are against enemies that use Polaron/Tetryon/Phaser weapons. So i was in a position to re-run many missions in a very short time frame. I had to start putting points into PI's and SSR just be able to function.
ISE, now requires more thought, as the Nanite Spheres spawn almost instantly, and instead of travelling at 1/100 Impulse, they are now nearly as quick as standard Spheres. The Spheres will also "run away" and try and drag you away from the transformers.
CSE, the BoP's, Raptors and Neg'ies will now actively hunt players, the (Cryptic Patented) *BSST's now spawn constantly, and NPC's will actively target Scimitar's over other ships.
(*Borg Super Stealth Torpedo. For those that don't know, these invisible torpedo's do anywhere from 40000 to 1000000 damage per hit and cannot be seen or avoided ... a little 'ROFL joke' from Cryptic)
KSE, The Borg hull destroyer beam (assimilation beam?) seems to have a range in excess of 27Km. And Donatra now has a 'preview' attack that seems to work very similarly to Eject Warp Plasma XII, it eats your hull and slows your ship down so that, unless you have a EVM available, your toast when she hits you with her cone attack.
Tholian Red Alerts, now have more webs than a Marvel Convention and more weavers than a retirement village ... Anything other than a BFAW spamming Tank is pretty much toast.
Breach Elite, well this one is pretty much unplayable now, as the enemies have all been buffed so much it's like your ship has tissue paper shields and hull and you are using a schoolboy biro spit ball shooter against the Hulk
NPC's in almost all missions, skirmishes, patrols and events now seen to have 0 Cool Down on "spam" powers, so you have High Yield Torpedos, Photonic Fleets, Aceton Assimilators and Tractor Drones outnumbering Stars in the Milky Way!
Haven't tried any ground events or STF's, so don't know if any of those have changed recently?
So ...
1) Is any of this "official" and/or intentional?
2)If intentional, first .. WELL DONE! ... and thanks!
Most of these changes are awesome, and have added some actual 'fun' to many missions. Some things still need a little 'tweaking' though.
2a) Also if intentional, can we get a list of the changes? ... Or maybe it's better, and more fun, not to know?
3)If not intended, and simply a bug generated/created by the changes to Rep and Trait powers ... PLEASE DON'T FIX THEM ALL! ... Just the 'broken' ones ...
Oh, hoho hohhhhh, Oh,, hoho, hohhhhh
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Tholian and Voth from what i've encountered so far, Ignore almost all shields and go straight into hull damage.
This isn't a huge issue in regular content. But things like the Tholian Alert, or the Dyson STF content. It makes almost all the elites impossible for a pug group that isn't running all cruisers with high defense. Unless you have a huge stockpile of repair items.
Just feels strange that they address the power creep substantially, and then decide to boost everything to be on par with the old power creeps performance.
0/10 season nine.
I might even go so far as to say that some of these changes have ... almost ... made some of the mission ... Epic :eek: .. .With a few caveats!
I'm not sure that the thinking is quite correct here as Elite STF's are virtually "un-PuG-able" now ... Before, even with an AFK'er or a 'noob' you could usually wing it, and get the optional as well ... Now though? Forget it!
For Elite STF's now though, pretty much the only way to guarantee a quick and Optioned ESTF is in a pre-made ...
This might have been to make the "normal" version of PuG's pop more, but sadly the rewards aren't good enough, so it means that more players will simply not bother at all I'm afraid.
If they are going towards this in their new design, its going to kill a lot of reasons people play this. Its a nice casual break from the norm. And I think they've forgotten thats who their main audience is.
The procs just go off way to often, so your hull is constantly being 'eaten' and in a large ship, unless you replace all your consoles with Bio-Monitors, you have no crew within seconds = No hull healing ...
As mentioned in my first post, they spam so many 'webs' you can't move more than 1K without being caught ... And to top it all off, when you get gibbed, the game respawns you right in the middle of the fur ball, so you just get gibbed again, and again ... and again ...
All told, most ESTF's are now un-PuGable, unless you luck out with a couple of experienced players, but it's genuinely fun and entertaining with a pre-made or experienced group, and several of the other queued events are pointless ... You'll notice that several queues that used to pop regularly are now empty due to these changes.
I think that's the main thing I noticed in the borg stfs. My shields are up but there is 25% hull damage. I didn't get that with borg before. I also got pounded pretty hard this morning, but that sometimes depends on the team quality - ie. low team quality and I get hit harder usually.
I can't say for sure if it's harder now. Maybe? I'm going to try a battlezone now. (edit). No problems in the battlezone. Seems the same.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
There have definetly been changes to Proc Rates on powers and weapons, and a lot of the queued events and STF's have been modified.
It's yet to be seen if Cryptic will actually admit to any of these changes, or if they are waiting to see the reaction from players, and adjusting them where needed, before making the "Big Reveal"
It's things like this that Cryptic need to know about! ...
I'm quite happy that they have decided to make some changes to the game, though it would have maybe been nice to know it was happening, the surprise was kinda cool ... But some things they have totally BROKEN!
As I said, I think Cryptic are waiting to see the reactions from players, and waiting to see what feedback these "hidden" changes bring ... I'm positive that they have added a huge "threat' value to Scimitars, but most won't be unhappy with that!
I'm also positive they have 'tweaked' the proc rates on many powers, particularly the "unpopular" ones like Phaser and Tetryon (might be interesting to try Chrono Torps and see if they've been changed)
Players who have noticed significant changes, or are finding certain things stupidly harder now, need to speak up, so that Cryptic can "balance' these changes.
Is it just me? or has anyone else noticed the Tac Cube at the end of ISE now seems to have around 200000000000000 more HP than it used to? It's no more dangerous, it just now seems to take AGES to wear it down.
Some escort drivers are actually hanging closer to the cruisers but we need moar from the borg too make the cruisers really work and the escorts actually be dependent on the sci healers and tank crusers
I would love to see the cubes start using some grav wells and other console tricks too
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
The undine seem wimpy to me. I'd like to see story and exploration mission enemies get a big buff. It would be neat to actually get to do some radiation damage with the new undine torpedo. I'm wasting a console slot for now for the radiation 28% bonus
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
you lost your rep passives heals crit boosts you made a fragile build that held onto these passives to save you and increase your damage/crits using passive tanking to live you have now lost it npcs haven't been buffed you have been nerfed embrace ramming speed and go with a bang until you figure out a decent setup to use
In the Tholians case, their weapons offline attack seems to proc far more often, and their BFAW spam is really out of hand atm. Their pets also seems to respawn at a faster rate.
The Borg, everyones favorite enemy that we love to hate. They seem to hit far harder than ever before. Their normal plasma torps seems to proc very often with the plasma DOT, sometimes burning your armor like it was not even there. The allmighty "I Win" invisible torpedo of doom is back with a vengeance. Also, they seem to spam shield drain, and they move like they are on speed.
They seem to hit harder on ground too, but not so hard that it's impossible.
But the worst offenders to "win by spamming powers" are the Undine. Holy cow do they spam powers. That torpedo attack that slows you down seems to have no CD at all, meaning that 3 or more of those can hit you at once. The rifts are really annoying, and those snot bubbles...
The Voth are also guilty of this, but not to the same extent. Their torpedoes seems to hit like a ton of bricks thou, and that decoy attack drains shields faster than before.
Something is up, and I really hope Cryptic is on top of it...
And given they've had the Borg (and content in general,) deal out more damage than at the end of a prior Season, seems more like game code mechanics off kilter again, before the do a nerfing, so I can't really endorse to all of this yet. Especially inclusive when the Voth STFs suddenly get harder to, and one can't fully tell if the mobs are more difficult, or given too much damage in the first place.
In so saying however, I've done all four Borg STFs with few problems in S9, as an engy Gal-X A2B Rommy Plasma pilot. I 'do' sense that escorts might be being targeted a bit much as well, for making the game more 'difficult'. Not sure yet there, is the bias against Escorts is real enough, but I 'do' wonder if Escort game play is in danger of being passe, of a sort.
Is all this going to translate to 'true' enhanced game play, or just more bad coding, in the end.
As for the other STF's and Team Content, it's still a 'luck of the draw' for PuG's. Pre-mades, shouldn't have any trouble, although you do have to pay attention or lose optional's on some of them.
CSE and ISE are a 'little more challenging' is the best way I can describe it, the AI has been tweaked a bit, Spheres will now actively try and separate you from the team, they also will try and drag/lure you towards the Gate or Tac Cube ... The Gate and Tac Cube, also seem to spam powers more often now, and Plasma Torps are very nearly as thick as CRF enhanced cannon shots!
The end Tac Cube in ISE also seems have been given some extra HP, as even with a "good" DPS team, it's taking longer to kill ...
Donatra is a bit 'nastier' now as well, and don't even get me started on the "joke' that is Tholian Red Alerts!
All up, I truly like the new missions, almost all of them are actually a bit challenging now, particularly if your in a 'glass cannon'.
Still not happy that Scimitars have been slapped with the extra threat rating, but I guess Cryptic listened to all the ... discussions ... on here.