Away from game for a while: GPvP Status?

felderburg · July 2014

HI all, I've been away for about a year (since Legacy of Romulus, or thereabouts). What's the state of GPvP? I know that there's lots of new types of gear from new rep systems, which doesn't concern me all that much... but what about Kits? That seems like the biggest change. How is the new system working out in GPvP?

tk79 · July 2014

GPvP died to me in Season 9 specifically because of the new kit changes and the imbalances left unattended.

Now with 9.5 we have new Xindi traits and reports of people attaining 100% crit chance. Looks like I made the right choice jumping from that sinking ship.

ursusmorologus · July 2014

Remember 100% chance to knockdown? Its worse than that

nulonu · July 2014

Borked.

/10 char

thefastone21 · July 2014

Don't bother returning to it... so much shield pen, ground pvp is shot to hell.

majortiraomega · July 2014

Ground PvP is a mess right now due to insane critical chance (Motivation giving +85.3%) and critical severity (Rally Cry giving +40% per copy). That isn't going to change much with the upcoming Tribble patch. The uptime on Motivation will be decreased slightly, but that won't help the root of the problem (attaining 100% critical chance for multiple hits). Secondly, Rally Cry's Critical bonus will be capped at two stacks....which won't help that much considering +80% Critical Severity will still cause players to one hit kill most things.

Honestly Cryptic needs to cut Rally Cry's Critical Severity bonus in half and double the heal provided by it. Motivation doesn't need a lower downtime...it needs a lower critical chance bonus. It doesn't need to be +85.3% to be powerful. Players have +21% critical chance on average without buffs. Motivation could still be quite viable with +15% or +20% Critical Chance, but +85.3% is far too high.

Lastly we have Lunge, Exothermic Induction Field, and Quantum Mortar. With Season 9, all three of these abilities have had their base damage increased to the point where just a minor amount of buffing will oneshot players through shields. A oneshot from these three abilities is almost certain on Rally Cry buffed Critical hits. Motivation, as you can imagine, greatly enhances this problem.

Personally I'm not going to touch Ground PvP again until Cryptic drops the Critical Chance bonus on Motivation. Matches aren't at all interesting when every shot fired is a Critical Hit and every Sniper Shot/Pulsewave Archwave is killing the target regardless of defensive buffs. Even split beam rifles are oneshotting three targets. Then you have the three kit abilities I mentioned above (Lunge/Exo/Mortar) that were overpowered before Motivation and stupid overpowered now.

felderburg · July 2014

majortiraomega wrote: »

...and Quantum Mortar... stupid overpowered now.

Well, I'm an engineer, so... yay? I'll just set one up and never leave cover.

That is a bummer. I was hoping to get a little more insight as to how the new kits work, but I guess it sounds like there's one or two must-have abilities, and the rest of the modules don't matter as much. I was looking forward to mines and mortars, though...

tk79 · July 2014

What about Deadly Intent?

While this effect is active, all attacks made with a weapons Primary Attack will reset the cooldown on that weapons Secondary Attack (or refund a portion of that weapons Plasma Fuel, if applicable).

It's a tactical kit module. Being able to quickly fire secondary attacks sounds OP enough to me, all (other broken) things considered. Haven't seen it in practice though.

loverofwars · July 2014

tk79 wrote: »

What about Deadly Intent?

It's a tactical kit module. Being able to quickly fire secondary attacks sounds OP enough to me, all (other broken) things considered. Haven't seen it in practice though.

not really op, ti tactical initiative when active gives secondarys 2 second cds to use deadly you'd have to fire secondary off then primary then secondary its slightly faster recharge on cd then ti which every tact has a bit of a pointless module in all truthfulness added something that already exists ingame yet in a different form kinda like tr-116bs being totally useless why add something so worthless it will never kill, unless someone else shoots the shield out first or if you do kill its from shield by pass that penx4 lol

falklander1989 · July 2014

Its not all so black like this ppl making it,you just need to adapt how new things work and it can be fun.I am a tac,dont using any defensive traits,my primary armor is fleet version that gives additional cit severity bonus and got almost no resistance,i playing in shooter mode all the time even if everyone else ******** that mode is TRIBBLE so according to them im in serious disadvantage just with that and i still manage to play good,get good numbers and survive.And there is counter in premade vs premade matches for all those wide and split beam high crit spam,just get engie or 2 with fbp and problem solved.

falklander1989 · July 2014

And im not fan of motivation module and rally cry stacking,but its here and everyone using it,so will i.I can live with it.

thay8472 · July 2014

Burn it, and begin again!

tk79 · July 2014

thay8472 wrote: »

Burn it, and begin again!

Agreed wholeheartedly, although I don't think it will ever happen.

I can't be nice about it anymore. They release a broken thing first time, "fix" it half-assedly (case in point: last fixes to Motivation) and then are likely to never look at it again, because it then becomes a "third rail situation". Whoever dev came up with such numbers needs to seriously get their math right, although I'm afraid the problems go beyond math.

majortiraomega · July 2014

tk79 wrote: »

What about Deadly Intent?

It's a tactical kit module. Being able to quickly fire secondary attacks sounds OP enough to me, all (other broken) things considered. Haven't seen it in practice though.

The truly dangerous secondary attacks already have minimum cooldowns or shared cooldowns. It isn't overpowered at all considering it does what Tactical Initiative does...but a bit better and only for weapon attacks.

tk79 wrote: »

Agreed wholeheartedly, although I don't think it will ever happen.

I can't be nice about it anymore. They release a broken thing first time, "fix" it half-assedly (case in point: last fixes to Motivation) and then are likely to never look at it again, because it then becomes a "third rail situation". Whoever dev came up with such numbers needs to seriously get their math right, although I'm afraid the problems go beyond math.

It is math, math with a large amount of $$$.

guriphu · July 2014

The core mechanics are better than they've probably ever been, and the bugs are relatively minor in terms of their gameplay impact. It's also much easier to convert an existing 50 to PVP-readiness now than it was in previous seasons. Theoretically, things should be looking up: an aggressive balance pass and a few item availability changes (for instance, mk12 purple-plus kit modules) could make STO ground pvp the best that it has ever been; most of the bugs are tooltip errors, inconsistencies in power effectiveness, and so on, rather than things that affect gameplay to the extent that they force teams to build whole strategies around them.

Unfortunately, the game is less playable and less enjoyable than any time since I started playing in season 5, thanks to a long series of critically bad balance and design decisions. And, thanks to the understood pay-for-power element in STO's current F2P model, a balance pass that would radically change abilities that people have paid for is not something anyone should expect.

rakija879 · July 2014

thay8472 wrote: »

Burn it, and begin again!

Doooooooooooooooooom, everything is OP dooooooooooooooooooooooom.

thay8472 · July 2014

rakija879 wrote: »

Doooooooooooooooooom, everything is OP dooooooooooooooooooooooom.

Thus why we must burn it!!!!!! Put the pvp items into a box.... add in some combustible lemons... problem solved.

nulonu · July 2014

guriphu wrote: »

The core mechanics are better than they've probably ever been, and the bugs are relatively minor in terms of their gameplay impact. It's also much easier to convert an existing 50 to PVP-readiness now than it was in previous seasons. Theoretically, things should be looking up: an aggressive balance pass and a few item availability changes (for instance, mk12 purple-plus kit modules) could make STO ground pvp the best that it has ever been; most of the bugs are tooltip errors, inconsistencies in power effectiveness, and so on, rather than things that affect gameplay to the extent that they force teams to build whole strategies around them.

Unfortunately, the game is less playable and less enjoyable than any time since I started playing in season 5, thanks to a long series of critically bad balance and design decisions. And, thanks to the understood pay-for-power element in STO's current F2P model, a balance pass that would radically change abilities that people have paid for is not something anyone should expect.

Pretty much this. The Undine rifle was really the only major problem in the season 9 release, but only a handful really abused it. Many fixes were introduced for bugs that were around for a couple years in some cases.

It's too bad really but not really surprising. I'm sure I'm not then only one who realized that the kit revamp would mean overpowered modules in lock boxes.

legendarylycan · July 2014

majortiraomega wrote: »

The truly dangerous secondary attacks already have minimum cooldowns or shared cooldowns.

and what secondaries would those be? i know it certainly isn't the unstable bio-molecular rifle's secondary anymore

but don't worry too much - space just got ****ed over in a big way for non-vapers too

majortiraomega · July 2014

shadowfang240 wrote: »

and what secondaries would those be? i know it certainly isn't the unstable bio-molecular rifle's secondary anymore

but don't worry too much - space just got ****ed over in a big way for non-vapers too

Pulsewave Archwave setting and (unless I am mistaken) Sniper Shot has a minimum cooldown. I know for sure that Archwave setting has a minimum cooldown because it also has a short shared cooldown with the Engineer's Orbital Strike ability.

legendarylycan · July 2014

majortiraomega wrote: »

Pulsewave Archwave setting and (unless I am mistaken) Sniper Shot has a minimum cooldown. I know for sure that Archwave setting has a minimum cooldown because it also has a short shared cooldown with the Engineer's Orbital Strike ability.

i wasn't aware sniper shots were all that dangerous in PvP, since it takes almost 3 seconds for the shot to fire off, not to mention the visibility of the traceline - should be plenty of time to get out of line-of-sight, buff up or fire an interruption attack/power at the sniper, no?

mcduffie369 · July 2014

There are no more epic battles, just insta kills. It's not fun anymore. Noone even talks about ground pvp anymore.

spaceeagle20 · July 2014

felderburg wrote: »

Well, I'm an engineer, so... yay? I'll just set one up and never leave cover.

That is a bummer. I was hoping to get a little more insight as to how the new kits work, but I guess it sounds like there's one or two must-have abilities, and the rest of the modules don't matter as much. I was looking forward to mines and mortars, though...

I am just ... also ... a PvE DPS farming Ground Engineer

:P so this is all of the advice I can give you right away:

I guess you know the traits revamp which occured in LoR so ... let's skip that part.

Now you can turn your orbital strike into an orbital chasing beam trait by opening the Genetic Resequencer Pack - Ground Trait : it's a must in PvE, if you can afford it since now it's around 14 millions EC or something like that.

Another good trait is Regenerative tissue : you can handle shields very well, which is good but shields don't matter as much as heals and I have found that this trait comes useful on my engie.

There's a biotech antiproton turret module ... I don't know which one is more damaging : this one or the old phaser turret, probably the new one ... for sure the antiproton turret has got a repel mod.

If you love mines ... latest news is Flash Bombs

Spawn 3 stationary mines. When an enemy approaches, the mine will detonate causing a moderate amount of kinetic damage, blinding them, and stunning them.

Of course, they have a shared cooldown with the chroniton mines, otherwise it'd be OP.

All modules can come in all forms of MK, and all colours.

The mission "Assimilation" in the revamped Borg episodes arc rewards you a very rare module specific to your career and it's quite a fast episode.

etherealplanes · July 2014

For the month or so I have been more involved in ground pvp than any other aspect of this game. What seems to be holding it back is the lack of teamwork and politics between players. There are more matches with bickering and name calling then fighting at times. I get crazy random tells with people trying to put me against other players I don't even know. It's like gibberish to me I honestly think some of these folks are crazy, drunk, or high.

I don't doubt there are some powers that are broken or overpowered but I won't comment on those as I am not the expert. If i were you however I would steer clear of gpvp not because of it's balance state but more because of the people playing it.

-Princess Illiana
-Special Ops KDF

tk79 · July 2014

etherealplanes wrote: »

For the month or so I have been more involved in ground pvp than any other aspect of this game. What seems to be holding it back is the lack of teamwork and politics between players. There are more matches with bickering and name calling then fighting at times. I get crazy random tells with people trying to put me against other players I don't even know. It's like gibberish to me I honestly think some of these folks are crazy, drunk, or high.

I don't doubt there are some powers that are broken or overpowered but I won't comment on those as I am not the expert. If i were you however I would steer clear of gpvp not because of it's balance state but more because of the people playing it.

-Princess Illiana
-Special Ops KDF

Bickering and name calling has been part of PvP in almost every game out there, and I believe the OP is aware. Even if the game were perfectly balanced, it would still happen. I don't think this is the problem.

Also remember that there are controlled environments (fleets, groups of friends) where the atmosphere is better, but the current balance state gets in the way, aggravating people and making them behave in unexpected ways.

felderburg · July 2014

Regarding "politics" and bickering... I am no stranger to that. Teamwork always sucked, except when there were some higher level players on the team. I guess that's not different. But it sounds like personal grudges have gotten a bit more intense... Ah well.

spaceeagle20 wrote: »

Now you can turn your orbital strike into an orbital chasing beam trait by opening the Genetic Resequencer Pack - Ground Trait : it's a must in PvE, if you can afford it since now it's around 14 millions EC or something like that.

A hahahaha! What??? This sounds amazing! According to the wiki (http://sto.gamepedia.com/Genetic_Resequencer_Pack_-_Ground_Trait_%28Profession-Specific%29) it "will follow nearby enemies a few seconds after striking, and deal periodic continuous damage instead of being a single instant strike." Does that mean periodic damage in addition to the initial attack, or does it spread out the initial damage? And what happens if your enemies scatter? Does it just chase one, or all?

legendarylycan · July 2014

felderburg wrote: »

Regarding "politics" and bickering... I am no stranger to that. Teamwork always sucked, except when there were some higher level players on the team. I guess that's not different. But it sounds like personal grudges have gotten a bit more intense... Ah well.

A hahahaha! What??? This sounds amazing! According to the wiki (http://sto.gamepedia.com/Genetic_Resequencer_Pack_-_Ground_Trait_%28Profession-Specific%29) it "will follow nearby enemies a few seconds after striking, and deal periodic continuous damage instead of being a single instant strike." Does that mean periodic damage in addition to the initial attack, or does it spread out the initial damage? And what happens if your enemies scatter? Does it just chase one, or all?

it basically turns it from burst damage to damage over time, and if there are multiple enemies nearby, it'll go after the nearest until it isn't the nearest, the beam ends or the target in question is dead - in which case it'll then go after the next closest and rinse-repeat until number 2 occurs

loverofwars · August 2014

etherealplanes wrote: »

I honestly think some of these folks are crazy, drunk, or high.

-Princess Illiana
-Special Ops KDF

b and c mostly one or two are a. all i'm saying, but on the tells people are trying to put you against certain other players? hm yes i know an entire ground pvp fleet who attempts to force there way on everyone, stand with that person in your pug and you'll be chased and hunted as well i believe the best term here is "cyber bullies" something cryptic should take interest in

remember folks don't do anything that can be held against you in a court of law :-)

Away from game for a while: GPvP Status?

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