My char flies a JHAS cannon build with fleet polarons. I'm not a very skilled pilot, but obviously most normal story mission content has been pretty strait forward. Ever since transferring my character to Tribble though, I've feeling pretty underpowered.
Since resources are trivial there, I upgraded all my gear to epic quality and started playing the DR missions. While the missions themselves are fun, the space combat feels really slow. The Vaadwaur just won't die.
The Zahl System patrol is probably the best example of this. After setting up the beacons you're tasked with towing some hospital ships out which are surrounded by two of the Vaadwaur's big artillery ships. You can't tow the hospital ships while being fired at, so you've got to take the enemy ships out. By the time you've destroyed them, and chased down all the little support crafts they launch, usually ending up several km away from where you started, two more ships have spawned beside the hospital ships. This is all on normal difficulty. It's not that I have any trouble staying alive, I just can't seem to project enough damage to get anywhere.
I wasn't sure if it was just the Vaadwaur or not so I tested out a few of the patrols in Tau Dewa to see how they compared to my current build on Holodeck. Fighting enemies 10 levels lower (lvl50) than I am, with all MK XIV Epic gear, my ship performed almost exactly the same as it did on Holodeck. Roughly the same amount of volleys to kill each enemy. Felt kind of down after that.
Maybe I just suck, or maybe I dont know some kind of secret to squeeze more power out of my ship, (I dont think I can get my CrtD/CrtH much higher without a complete rebuild which kind of defies the purpose of the upgrade system in my opinion). Perhaps everything has been skewed to account for the new infinite specialization traits, or maybe the story missions are designed that way to encourage team play.
Regardless, I can't say I'm looking forward to potentially spending millions of dilithium and many hours upgrading all my gear for real on Holodeck so I can have a ship that performs the same, or marginally worse than what Ive got now.
I can imagine that will be a pain in the butt for Science Characters in Science Ships...
Fought on Elite, Artillerieship of the Voth. 506k HP. And it spawned small ships with 150k or so.
And the arti ship trys to get away from you to turn around and shoot so with full speed you might just stay behind it shooting it while it shoots back with some turrets. At last the turrets are strong. Still with some shieldheals and the new specilisation for shieldrecharge when the shield is down - no problem. I was following such a ship from one side of the map to the other... It takes even longer because that ship can transfere its shield energy into one arc.
Same for the voth cruiser or how it is named. It was to get away from you and has 300 or 400k HP. And you can follow it with 10% speed because it is so painfull slow.
So you crawl slowly behind it shooting his rear arc while the other ship of the group is doing attack runs on you and neither of them is in any way able to bring down your shield...
It gets even worse because Voodwores seem to have a high defence. So you will miss more often then on other enemys - exept they use some run away skills. The artiships are very special in that point. Bigger then a vesta, same speed, much harder to hit...
And i allready used the phaser cannon of my vesta, the little rom bird hangar pets and my high yield voth rep torpedo launcher was doing up to 33k damage.
Its just insane...
Exactly why I speculate the numbers are bugged - whether it be HP, innate damage resistance, damage itself, or all of them, clearly things are out of whack.
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
Exactly why I speculate the numbers are bugged - whether it be HP, innate damage resistance, damage itself, or all of them, clearly things are out of whack.
I don't know if they're "bugged" or just poorly designed. The devs have kind of come out and said that Delta Rising wasn't going to be as easy as the first 50 levels, and I'm wondering if they just decided that "harder" means "longer".
They could be bugged though, concidering the normal/advanced/elite numbers that seem to be equal across the board.
I don't know, and knowing sometimes how the devs have made things "harder" in the past I wouldn't put it past them that this is as intended.
I don't know if they're "bugged" or just poorly designed. The devs have kind of come out and said that Delta Rising wasn't going to be as easy as the first 50 levels, and I'm wondering if they just decided that "harder" means "longer".
They could be bugged though, concidering the normal/advanced/elite numbers that seem to be equal across the board.
I don't know, and knowing sometimes how the devs have made things "harder" in the past I wouldn't put it past them that this is as intended.
Well, I did say it was a speculation; either of us could be right or wrong, or whatnot
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
So much for thinking about making a more tank focused build.
Clearly no room for anything EXCEPT pure DPS build in DR :mad:
Pure DPS could be bad, as in zero damage mitigation at all. Even with an over 6k dps build I have on an alt, it's taking me forever to burn down the Vaadwaur. Fortunatly they're fairly easy to tank, but they have a couple of ways to insta-gib or close to insta-gib.
Plus while the Vaadwaur are boring, the Heirarchy is kind of fun and a bit more challenging.
That said you still want to go very heavy on the dps, but don't under-estimate their inta-gib abilities
Took a while to get back to this, but some other people in here seem to have pointed out the problem here far better than my stressed out frustrated initial post did.
I was playing on normal with a ship that didn't have a single item below Mk XI rare, all of my weapons were Mk XII purples (except the wide-angle quantum torpedo from the Regent) and two of my tactical consoles were Mk XIII+. Even without the extra console slot and upgraded tac consoles, the two ships I was using can handle an elite STF regularly. There may be some rough spots occasionally depending on what the team does, but more often than not I pull my weight. Do I min-max and try to be uber-competetive and wring out every last ounce of DPS possible? No, but I'm not trying for that, I find that my niche is more healing and crowd control in a science vessel or cruiser, and if I can pull 5k on average then that's pretty solid I think. So when regular story content on normal is dragging on for well over an hour just because the fights are so long and boring, I think something is wrong.
As has been said before, yes people will have access to Mk XIV gear at this level, but you have to remember that these missions are supposed to get you to level 60, they are not top-tier Elite STF style content, you should NOT need a perfectly laid-out ship with nothing but Mk XIV gold and ultra-violet weapons in order to get through them before you fall asleep.
I'm all for a challenge in gameplay, but just sticking a huge damage sponge in normal-level story missions is not the way to do it. It doesn't promote good tactics, it doesn't satisfy the people who play through on higher difficulties anyway, and it doesn't teach you any more than "moar power = I WIN". I honestly like being able to just come on and play a fun story mission without being put through the ringer. If I want a challenge want to I know where to find it, but not just have it forced on me if all I want to do is squash NPCs in my new ship or, more importantly, level up to the point where I'm ready for that challenge.
Admiral Katrina Tokareva - U.S.S. Cosmos, Yorktown-class Star Cruiser Admiral Dananra Lekall - R.R.W. Teverresh, Deihu-class Warbird General J'Kar son of K'tsulan - I.K.S. Dlahath, Vo'devwl-class Carrier
I think there is one angle that hasn't been covered here we mostly look at it as being wrong HP values etc. It finally occurred to me this is a marketing ploy and not one I approve of or else they might have responded to us about it by now.
In a way the slog is meant to encourage us to spend real money to upgrade to Tier 6 and Mark 14 weaponry and equipment. "Moar DPS" is highly encouraged by the business as it requires real money to get it. Which I have no real problems with that business model except in the fact that it has hit the normal game mode. If we played on advance or elite and found this then I don't think people would complain but the "necessity" to have better ships and gear is being forced and that is entirely unacceptable.
It just took a moment to analyze the possible business benefits to see what this truly is.
I think there is one angle that hasn't been covered here we mostly look at it as being wrong HP values etc. It finally occurred to me this is a marketing ploy and not one I approve of or else they might have responded to us about it by now.
In a way the slog is meant to encourage us to spend real money to upgrade to Tier 6 and Mark 14 weaponry and equipment. "Moar DPS" is highly encouraged by the business as it requires real money to get it. Which I have no real problems with that business model except in the fact that it has hit the normal game mode. If we played on advance or elite and found this then I don't think people would complain but the "necessity" to have better ships and gear is being forced and that is entirely unacceptable.
It just took a moment to analyze the possible business benefits to see what this truly is.
Oh make no mistake the devs are actively promoting that Delta Rising isn't "easy" while at the same time marketing that you can do it with a un-upgraded T5 ship and meh gear. Yes I know it's an oxymoronic statement.
So my guess in order to try and market DR to both groups, the elitist who want harder and the casuals who want to play in their T5 ships, they split the line. Made it "harder" without actually making it "harder".
When the T5 drivers get pissed and come to the board, they'll just be shouted down by the elitists telling them to upgrade their gear, and then like you said they'll go and spend a ton of money to do it.
So I'm wondering if the issue isn't with the HPs being high, but with the DPS and HPs not scaling UP properly as you go to advanced and elite, not the other way around.
good job drawing agro on every single ship on the map. half of which you can pretty much avoid. each battle you have to fight through should be fairly isolated around whatever objective your currently on
if your not enjoying yourself, MAYBE your playing wrong. these are just npcs, there is nothing insurmountable here, they still just line up to die. that build was absolutely terrible, your an eng captain, and you cant think of anything better to put in an LTC station then AtB2? 3 copies of ET? only 1 EPtX skill, all on literally the worst ship in the game. you brought 90% of your misery on yourself.
heres something you all need to know about Vaadwaur, spamming faw doesn't work when they have that much health, resistance and background regeneration. before a group of enemies die, you will probably have to deal enough damage to kill them twice over. try actually loading up on single target skills, use a battle cruiser or escorts. cannon, torps, beam overload, deal with one at a time, treat each of them like a threat that needs to be surgically removed. AOE should be limited to trying to snag them in a gravity well, and dumping CSV and TS on them
if your still clueless at level 60, role and alt and pay attention this time, learn to play. nothing end game should be catering to noobs what so ever.
In a way the slog is meant to encourage us to spend real money to upgrade to Tier 6 and Mark 14 weaponry and equipment. "Moar DPS" is highly encouraged by the business as it requires real money to get it. Which I have no real problems with that business model except in the fact that it has hit the normal game mode.
So they're purposefully undermining their own core gameplay to incentivize upgrades (among those who can still stomach as SECOND try at DR) which are in themselves desirable? I don't buy that at all. Just by having upgrades they've done all they need to do to sell people on the idea. Just look at the fact that the system was deployed on holodeck BEFORE harder content was introduced. You have people using that system (my EC income from Superior tech upgrades is testement enough to that) without having to resort to the stick of stupid, overlong, combat.
And with new ships and new ship upgrades they shouldn't have any worries about artificially generating demand for content. Its there, its there now, so what we're left with here is just your every day poor development decision. Its not a conspiracy (in all likelihood), its just a bad idea.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
heres something you all need to know about Vaadwaur, spamming faw doesn't work when they have that much health, resistance and background regeneration. before a group of enemies die, you will probably have to deal enough damage to kill them twice over. try actually loading up on single target skills, use a battle cruiser or escorts. cannon, torps, beam overload, deal with one at a time, treat each of them like a threat that needs to be surgically removed. AOE should be limited to trying to snag them in a gravity well, and dumping CSV and TS on them.
*Raises hand*
I've been using a fantastic single target build and space combat is still entirely unsatisfactory. Stop trying to blame players for the fact that Cryptic daftly made normal cruisers at 60 harder (in the sense of arbitrarily taking more time) to kill than elite dreadnaughts at 50. Of all the instances of "poor game design" I've seen over the years and across the genres this is one of the simplest and most blatent examples (don't **** up your game's difficulty curve with an unavoidable, balance ruining, spike at the end of leveling).
It should result in a change note in the next patch (ex. enemy health increase scaled back by [25-50]%), not discussion.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
good job drawing agro on every single ship on the map. half of which you can pretty much avoid. each battle you have to fight through should be fairly isolated around whatever objective your currently on
if your not enjoying yourself, MAYBE your playing wrong. these are just npcs, there is nothing insurmountable here, they still just line up to die. that build was absolutely terrible, your an eng captain, and you cant think of anything better to put in an LTC station then AtB2? 3 copies of ET? only 1 EPtX skill, all on literally the worst ship in the game. you brought 90% of your misery on yourself.
heres something you all need to know about Vaadwaur, spamming faw doesn't work when they have that much health, resistance and background regeneration. before a group of enemies die, you will probably have to deal enough damage to kill them twice over. try actually loading up on single target skills, use a battle cruiser or escorts. cannon, torps, beam overload, deal with one at a time, treat each of them like a threat that needs to be surgically removed. AOE should be limited to trying to snag them in a gravity well, and dumping CSV and TS on them
if your still clueless at level 60, role and alt and pay attention this time, learn to play. nothing end game should be catering to noobs what so ever.
To be fair, he did say he did it with a rubbish ship and a rubbish build.
good job drawing agro on every single ship on the map. half of which you can pretty much avoid. each battle you have to fight through should be fairly isolated around whatever objective your currently on
if your not enjoying yourself, MAYBE your playing wrong. these are just npcs, there is nothing insurmountable here, they still just line up to die. that build was absolutely terrible, your an eng captain, and you cant think of anything better to put in an LTC station then AtB2? 3 copies of ET? only 1 EPtX skill, all on literally the worst ship in the game. you brought 90% of your misery on yourself.
heres something you all need to know about Vaadwaur, spamming faw doesn't work when they have that much health, resistance and background regeneration. before a group of enemies die, you will probably have to deal enough damage to kill them twice over. try actually loading up on single target skills, use a battle cruiser or escorts. cannon, torps, beam overload, deal with one at a time, treat each of them like a threat that needs to be surgically removed. AOE should be limited to trying to snag them in a gravity well, and dumping CSV and TS on them
if your still clueless at level 60, role and alt and pay attention this time, learn to play. nothing end game should be catering to noobs what so ever.
I was avoiding where I could. but one of the guys I had to cover was in the middle of a large group, and the mission requirement was "defeat vaadwar to cover escape" or something like that.
and as I keep telling everyone it was a quick throw together to see if a lvl 40 ship was still "competitive" and I know its a bad build. 3 engineering teams for example. and a 3 purple doff aux to batt. I only needed 1.
I know all of this.
the point of this post was that the ships take too long to kill. I had been in that battle for a long time and I was bored with tactics, so I just went round in circles cycling buffs. I am not the only one complaining about the silly hull hp. add that to the high defence value and something is seriously wrong.
if you look at my other vids on the channel you will see my normal builds and style. even with my temporal escort with purple and fleet everything it takes forever to kill one.
I don't mind a long battle of wit and tactics like pvp, but this is long tedious and boring.
put yourself in the place of a noob, new to the game in a lvl 40 ship with gear he has just picked up hear and there. and no experience. plenty of theries and no skill. if it took me close to 3 hrs and it left me bored exasperated depressed and with a headache. how do you think a noob will do?
I've been using a fantastic single target build and space combat is still entirely unsatisfactory. Stop trying to blame players for the fact that Cryptic daftly made normal cruisers at 60 harder (in the sense of arbitrarily taking more time) to kill than elite dreadnaughts at 50. Of all the instances of "poor game design" I've seen over the years and across the genres this is one of the simplest and most blatent examples (don't **** up your game's difficulty curve with an unavoidable, balance ruining, spike at the end of leveling).
It should result in a change note in the next patch (ex. enemy health increase scaled back by [25-50]%), not discussion.
its working as intended, they said all along this is how they wanted it. i think their way of making it harder is EXTREMELY POOR, and it should be about ships using skills as numerous and as often as player ships can, not cranking on the npc hit point TRIBBLE until they break it off.
To be fair, he did say he did it with a rubbish ship and a rubbish build.
why would you ever leave space dock with a bad build? especially if you were going to record a video? this was my point, why put yourself through the self inflicted misery.
the biggest problem with pve is it apparently makes you think leaving space dock with your ship in that kind of shape is just fine, and the content should be so easy that it caters to builds that bad.
no, you have to try now. you have to have learned something on your way to level 50, and now you have to apply it. training wheels have to some day come off, you cant be a noob forever
its working as intended, they said all along this is how they wanted it. i think their way of making it harder is EXTREMELY POOR, and it should be about ships using skills as numerous and as often as player ships can, not cranking on the npc hit point TRIBBLE until they break it off.
As far as I know, the currently over-inflated health/damage resistance aspect being intended has yet to be proven beyond assumptions. Harder, yes, but 280k health is a very big jump from roughly 90k
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
why would you ever leave space dock with a bad build? especially if you were going to record a video? this was my point, why put yourself through the self inflicted misery.
the biggest problem with pve is it apparently makes you think leaving space dock with your ship in that kind of shape is just fine, and the content should be so easy that it caters to builds that bad.
no, you have to try now. you have to have learned something on your way to level 50, and now you have to apply it. training wheels have to some day come off, you cant be a noob forever
You'd think that right, but PUGs have kind of proven that reality and your above statement don't go hand in hand. There are a lot of people that join into Elite STFs with PUGs then can't understand why they failed... miserably.
Gonna join the "lvl60 DR space combat is annoyingly long and boring" group. And it isn't just with the Vaadwaur thats like that imo.
Honestly, doing level 50 Elite STFs, fleet actions, etc... on live feels easyer than lvl 60 Normal episode missions on test.
Sorry, but this can't be working as intended. The jump in NPC health/resistance really is too high.
And yeah, they made the statement that DR is surpose to be harder, but isn't thats what the new Elite mode is for? Because if we compare the difficulty jump in lvl50 Ground Combat to DR lvl60 Ground Combat, Ground Combat looks like it has followed in level as you would expect from going up 10 more levels.
So why does normal space combat have such a huge jump for just 10 more levels gained?
"Please, Captain, not in front of the Klingons." Spock to Kirk, as Kirk is about to hug him.
Star Trek V: "The Final Frontier"
There is something going wrong with this indeed. I'm flying an Operations Ody, moderate damage output but more for tanking. Have taken on the Assault ships of the Vaadwaur that were on the map at the start of the mission and can barely take their shields down most times. Yet can have one summoned, as in a pet, from a Battleship or Carrier of some kind, be the exact same kind of Assault ship, health and shields and destroy it in far less time. Then shouldn't I be having the same long drawn out battle with that "pet" as I did with the ship of the exact same kind that I just delt with?
I have no issues with harder. I have issues with long drawn out dog TRIBBLE and what is clearly not working the way it should. I've also had the displeasure of watching enemy shields regenerate at completely insane rates. Would take a facing shield down to a sliver of it's health just to watch it jump back to near max again without so much as a flinch from the other three facings from a rebalancing.
Sorry, but this can't be working as intended. The jump in NPC health/resistance really is too high.
Maybe it's just me, but I've found that even the first mission is more difficult than it used to be. With the weapons I have and the consoles I have, I can do almost 5000 DPS per second, but it took me quite a while to take out the Battleship near the end of "Stranded in Space". It was never ever this hard before...and I wasn't even using upgraded weaponry. (everything is now Epic and maximum Mk level)
Something's definitely wrong...it's like they took the combat plans for the DR content and altered every other ship to fit those parameters.
After checking STO on Holodeck and then on Tribble, I'd found that
Orion Corvette on Holodeck (prior to rescuing the Azura) (Lv. 50): 24,805
Orion Corvette on Tribble (prior to rescuing the Azura) (Lv. 50): 29,930
Slavemaster Battleship on Holodeck (Lv. 50): 56,432
Marauder Battleship on Tribble (Lv. 50): 68,091 {replaced ship}
Orion Corvette on Holodeck (after rescuing the Azura) (Lv. 50): 17,363
Orion Corvette on Tribble (after rescuing the Azura) (Lv. 50): 20,951
Interceptor on Holodeck (Lv. 50): 3,720
Marauding Force Shuttle on Tribble (Lv. 50): 5,836 {replaced ship}
So yeah...something's definitely been changed on Tribble concerning enemy health...and it seems it's extended all the way around back to the beginning.
So they're purposefully undermining their own core gameplay to incentivize upgrades (among those who can still stomach as SECOND try at DR) which are in themselves desirable? I don't buy that at all. Just by having upgrades they've done all they need to do to sell people on the idea. Just look at the fact that the system was deployed on holodeck BEFORE harder content was introduced. You have people using that system (my EC income from Superior tech upgrades is testement enough to that) without having to resort to the stick of stupid, overlong, combat.
And with new ships and new ship upgrades they shouldn't have any worries about artificially generating demand for content. Its there, its there now, so what we're left with here is just your every day poor development decision. Its not a conspiracy (in all likelihood), its just a bad idea.
I never said conspiracy just merely a look at the business motives behind it really. I also think you took what I said out of context. The upgrade items are easily available on the exchange and with the dilithium limit upgrading is a long but not impossible process without spending money. Players are being given the incentive to upgrade in order to be more effective.
From the development aspect it is poor and lazy design to promote difficulty in the way that they have, I will give you that one. I think in some ways the business motive and the development motive work out together for the purpose of monetizing. Especially once you look at the abilities of the intelligence officers and Tier 6 starships also accounting for specialization. They are attempting a balance that will maintain some "challenge" for those who do end up being fully upgraded. Lazy and poor development I definitely agree.
I never said conspiracy just merely a look at the business motives behind it really. I also think you took what I said out of context. The upgrade items are easily available on the exchange and with the dilithium limit upgrading is a long but not impossible process without spending money. Players are being given the incentive to upgrade in order to be more effective.
Well "conspiracy" was just exaggeration for effect. My point was that there doesn't seem to be an ulterior motive behind the move because business reasons aren't likely to reach into this part of the game. You can construct for yourself a narrative that designer X thinks change Y is going to cause players to spend more on Z but when Z is a self-promoting system change Y is not likely to be concieved by designer X. Upgrades are deserable, especially if players want to try advanced and elite difficulty settnigs. We should not be considering their potential impact on normal balance (that is where "this being nothing more than a bad balancing decision" comes in." ) Apart from being unnecessary (in order to sell crafting/upgrading) its counterproductive because it holds endurable gameplay from the player until they spend days/weeks/months fully spec'ing their ship out.
I think the default course of action is simply to put the game down at that point. I've certainly stopped playing through any combat scenario on tribble until they fix health scaling, and I'm one of the happier and more forgiving sort of STO players!
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
I'll be honest, I don't much pay attention to the storyline or who I'm fighting. I just enjoy the space battles. That said, I played a few new missions on tribble, up to I think the kazon (one of them was 'friends in unlikely places') and I know I helped the Borg cooperative with their Borg freeing campaign. Thus far, my fleet galaxy, unupgraded, has had little trouble dealing with the damage these new enemies can muster, and, though it takes some time, does decently well in dispatching each one. I can imagine non-tanks being prone to exploding under the constant hammering, but they should be able to take out enemies quickly enough that it shouldn't be much of a problem. Hit and run attacks are my suggestion here, focus on a single target, and eliminate one at a time, and make sure you set up to do that job.
That said, I played a few new missions on tribble, up to I think the kazon (one of them was 'friends in unlikely places') and I know I helped the Borg cooperative with their Borg freeing campaign..
This is a problem with enemy health scaling. For the first few levels combat remains reasonable but as you reach the higher levels NPC's becomes quite extremely bloated (in the end doubling and in some cases nearly tripling the health of what an equivalent ship would be at 50, on NORMAL.) Play through more than just the first few missions and then report back. Especially with an eng heavy build you are going to see some very, very tedious combat.
And one last plea to cryptic.
Guys the AI is good, these ships combat design is good, the environments are good, the writing is great, and the additional features (into which I include the VOY cast) are very compelling. You have just tweaked one scaling factor WAY TOO FAR for any of that to be enjoyable at higher levels. I want to love DR but with how badly combat progresses [on purely mechanical terms] I'm likely only to play through it on one character (for completion's sake), and then probably never again.
Its just such a terrible waste of content. You need to fix NPC health, desparately, or you will [without hyperbole] ruin STO.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Comments
Since resources are trivial there, I upgraded all my gear to epic quality and started playing the DR missions. While the missions themselves are fun, the space combat feels really slow. The Vaadwaur just won't die.
The Zahl System patrol is probably the best example of this. After setting up the beacons you're tasked with towing some hospital ships out which are surrounded by two of the Vaadwaur's big artillery ships. You can't tow the hospital ships while being fired at, so you've got to take the enemy ships out. By the time you've destroyed them, and chased down all the little support crafts they launch, usually ending up several km away from where you started, two more ships have spawned beside the hospital ships. This is all on normal difficulty. It's not that I have any trouble staying alive, I just can't seem to project enough damage to get anywhere.
I wasn't sure if it was just the Vaadwaur or not so I tested out a few of the patrols in Tau Dewa to see how they compared to my current build on Holodeck. Fighting enemies 10 levels lower (lvl50) than I am, with all MK XIV Epic gear, my ship performed almost exactly the same as it did on Holodeck. Roughly the same amount of volleys to kill each enemy. Felt kind of down after that.
Maybe I just suck, or maybe I dont know some kind of secret to squeeze more power out of my ship, (I dont think I can get my CrtD/CrtH much higher without a complete rebuild which kind of defies the purpose of the upgrade system in my opinion). Perhaps everything has been skewed to account for the new infinite specialization traits, or maybe the story missions are designed that way to encourage team play.
Regardless, I can't say I'm looking forward to potentially spending millions of dilithium and many hours upgrading all my gear for real on Holodeck so I can have a ship that performs the same, or marginally worse than what Ive got now.
Fought on Elite, Artillerieship of the Voth. 506k HP. And it spawned small ships with 150k or so.
And the arti ship trys to get away from you to turn around and shoot so with full speed you might just stay behind it shooting it while it shoots back with some turrets. At last the turrets are strong. Still with some shieldheals and the new specilisation for shieldrecharge when the shield is down - no problem. I was following such a ship from one side of the map to the other... It takes even longer because that ship can transfere its shield energy into one arc.
Same for the voth cruiser or how it is named. It was to get away from you and has 300 or 400k HP. And you can follow it with 10% speed because it is so painfull slow.
So you crawl slowly behind it shooting his rear arc while the other ship of the group is doing attack runs on you and neither of them is in any way able to bring down your shield...
It gets even worse because Voodwores seem to have a high defence. So you will miss more often then on other enemys - exept they use some run away skills. The artiships are very special in that point. Bigger then a vesta, same speed, much harder to hit...
And i allready used the phaser cannon of my vesta, the little rom bird hangar pets and my high yield voth rep torpedo launcher was doing up to 33k damage.
Its just insane...
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
I don't know if they're "bugged" or just poorly designed. The devs have kind of come out and said that Delta Rising wasn't going to be as easy as the first 50 levels, and I'm wondering if they just decided that "harder" means "longer".
They could be bugged though, concidering the normal/advanced/elite numbers that seem to be equal across the board.
I don't know, and knowing sometimes how the devs have made things "harder" in the past I wouldn't put it past them that this is as intended.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
Clearly no room for anything EXCEPT pure DPS build in DR :mad:
sig
http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/5451/om71.jpg
It is a peculiar phenomenon that we can imagine events that defy the laws of the universe.
Pure DPS could be bad, as in zero damage mitigation at all. Even with an over 6k dps build I have on an alt, it's taking me forever to burn down the Vaadwaur. Fortunatly they're fairly easy to tank, but they have a couple of ways to insta-gib or close to insta-gib.
Plus while the Vaadwaur are boring, the Heirarchy is kind of fun and a bit more challenging.
That said you still want to go very heavy on the dps, but don't under-estimate their inta-gib abilities
I imagine that their hull hp aren't so scary if you manage to get the shields out of the way first.
Nah, just slot the particle manipulator trait and hike those part gens. Problem solved.
BTW - A drain build would easily shut down those shields.
I was playing on normal with a ship that didn't have a single item below Mk XI rare, all of my weapons were Mk XII purples (except the wide-angle quantum torpedo from the Regent) and two of my tactical consoles were Mk XIII+. Even without the extra console slot and upgraded tac consoles, the two ships I was using can handle an elite STF regularly. There may be some rough spots occasionally depending on what the team does, but more often than not I pull my weight. Do I min-max and try to be uber-competetive and wring out every last ounce of DPS possible? No, but I'm not trying for that, I find that my niche is more healing and crowd control in a science vessel or cruiser, and if I can pull 5k on average then that's pretty solid I think. So when regular story content on normal is dragging on for well over an hour just because the fights are so long and boring, I think something is wrong.
As has been said before, yes people will have access to Mk XIV gear at this level, but you have to remember that these missions are supposed to get you to level 60, they are not top-tier Elite STF style content, you should NOT need a perfectly laid-out ship with nothing but Mk XIV gold and ultra-violet weapons in order to get through them before you fall asleep.
I'm all for a challenge in gameplay, but just sticking a huge damage sponge in normal-level story missions is not the way to do it. It doesn't promote good tactics, it doesn't satisfy the people who play through on higher difficulties anyway, and it doesn't teach you any more than "moar power = I WIN". I honestly like being able to just come on and play a fun story mission without being put through the ringer. If I want a challenge want to I know where to find it, but not just have it forced on me if all I want to do is squash NPCs in my new ship or, more importantly, level up to the point where I'm ready for that challenge.
Admiral Dananra Lekall - R.R.W. Teverresh, Deihu-class Warbird
General J'Kar son of K'tsulan - I.K.S. Dlahath, Vo'devwl-class Carrier
In a way the slog is meant to encourage us to spend real money to upgrade to Tier 6 and Mark 14 weaponry and equipment. "Moar DPS" is highly encouraged by the business as it requires real money to get it. Which I have no real problems with that business model except in the fact that it has hit the normal game mode. If we played on advance or elite and found this then I don't think people would complain but the "necessity" to have better ships and gear is being forced and that is entirely unacceptable.
It just took a moment to analyze the possible business benefits to see what this truly is.
Oh make no mistake the devs are actively promoting that Delta Rising isn't "easy" while at the same time marketing that you can do it with a un-upgraded T5 ship and meh gear. Yes I know it's an oxymoronic statement.
So my guess in order to try and market DR to both groups, the elitist who want harder and the casuals who want to play in their T5 ships, they split the line. Made it "harder" without actually making it "harder".
When the T5 drivers get pissed and come to the board, they'll just be shouted down by the elitists telling them to upgrade their gear, and then like you said they'll go and spend a ton of money to do it.
So I'm wondering if the issue isn't with the HPs being high, but with the DPS and HPs not scaling UP properly as you go to advanced and elite, not the other way around.
I have a recording of many in the 220k range
iv been learning to do youtube vids and have been exploring the delta quadrant with them.
anyhow. hear is a rant from me and a vid of me tanking about 30 of the little suckers.
yess I am not demonstrating much skill and yes its a rubbish ship. I did it to see if ur standard
noob/ftp/leveller could do it in a "competitive" ship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d05U4xUOwAA
good job drawing agro on every single ship on the map. half of which you can pretty much avoid. each battle you have to fight through should be fairly isolated around whatever objective your currently on
if your not enjoying yourself, MAYBE your playing wrong. these are just npcs, there is nothing insurmountable here, they still just line up to die. that build was absolutely terrible, your an eng captain, and you cant think of anything better to put in an LTC station then AtB2? 3 copies of ET? only 1 EPtX skill, all on literally the worst ship in the game. you brought 90% of your misery on yourself.
heres something you all need to know about Vaadwaur, spamming faw doesn't work when they have that much health, resistance and background regeneration. before a group of enemies die, you will probably have to deal enough damage to kill them twice over. try actually loading up on single target skills, use a battle cruiser or escorts. cannon, torps, beam overload, deal with one at a time, treat each of them like a threat that needs to be surgically removed. AOE should be limited to trying to snag them in a gravity well, and dumping CSV and TS on them
if your still clueless at level 60, role and alt and pay attention this time, learn to play. nothing end game should be catering to noobs what so ever.
So they're purposefully undermining their own core gameplay to incentivize upgrades (among those who can still stomach as SECOND try at DR) which are in themselves desirable? I don't buy that at all. Just by having upgrades they've done all they need to do to sell people on the idea. Just look at the fact that the system was deployed on holodeck BEFORE harder content was introduced. You have people using that system (my EC income from Superior tech upgrades is testement enough to that) without having to resort to the stick of stupid, overlong, combat.
And with new ships and new ship upgrades they shouldn't have any worries about artificially generating demand for content. Its there, its there now, so what we're left with here is just your every day poor development decision. Its not a conspiracy (in all likelihood), its just a bad idea.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
*Raises hand*
I've been using a fantastic single target build and space combat is still entirely unsatisfactory. Stop trying to blame players for the fact that Cryptic daftly made normal cruisers at 60 harder (in the sense of arbitrarily taking more time) to kill than elite dreadnaughts at 50. Of all the instances of "poor game design" I've seen over the years and across the genres this is one of the simplest and most blatent examples (don't **** up your game's difficulty curve with an unavoidable, balance ruining, spike at the end of leveling).
It should result in a change note in the next patch (ex. enemy health increase scaled back by [25-50]%), not discussion.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
To be fair, he did say he did it with a rubbish ship and a rubbish build.
I was avoiding where I could. but one of the guys I had to cover was in the middle of a large group, and the mission requirement was "defeat vaadwar to cover escape" or something like that.
and as I keep telling everyone it was a quick throw together to see if a lvl 40 ship was still "competitive" and I know its a bad build. 3 engineering teams for example. and a 3 purple doff aux to batt. I only needed 1.
I know all of this.
the point of this post was that the ships take too long to kill. I had been in that battle for a long time and I was bored with tactics, so I just went round in circles cycling buffs. I am not the only one complaining about the silly hull hp. add that to the high defence value and something is seriously wrong.
if you look at my other vids on the channel you will see my normal builds and style. even with my temporal escort with purple and fleet everything it takes forever to kill one.
I don't mind a long battle of wit and tactics like pvp, but this is long tedious and boring.
put yourself in the place of a noob, new to the game in a lvl 40 ship with gear he has just picked up hear and there. and no experience. plenty of theries and no skill. if it took me close to 3 hrs and it left me bored exasperated depressed and with a headache. how do you think a noob will do?
its working as intended, they said all along this is how they wanted it. i think their way of making it harder is EXTREMELY POOR, and it should be about ships using skills as numerous and as often as player ships can, not cranking on the npc hit point TRIBBLE until they break it off.
why would you ever leave space dock with a bad build? especially if you were going to record a video? this was my point, why put yourself through the self inflicted misery.
the biggest problem with pve is it apparently makes you think leaving space dock with your ship in that kind of shape is just fine, and the content should be so easy that it caters to builds that bad.
no, you have to try now. you have to have learned something on your way to level 50, and now you have to apply it. training wheels have to some day come off, you cant be a noob forever
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
You'd think that right, but PUGs have kind of proven that reality and your above statement don't go hand in hand. There are a lot of people that join into Elite STFs with PUGs then can't understand why they failed... miserably.
Honestly, doing level 50 Elite STFs, fleet actions, etc... on live feels easyer than lvl 60 Normal episode missions on test.
Sorry, but this can't be working as intended. The jump in NPC health/resistance really is too high.
And yeah, they made the statement that DR is surpose to be harder, but isn't thats what the new Elite mode is for? Because if we compare the difficulty jump in lvl50 Ground Combat to DR lvl60 Ground Combat, Ground Combat looks like it has followed in level as you would expect from going up 10 more levels.
So why does normal space combat have such a huge jump for just 10 more levels gained?
Spock to Kirk, as Kirk is about to hug him.
Star Trek V: "The Final Frontier"
I have no issues with harder. I have issues with long drawn out dog TRIBBLE and what is clearly not working the way it should. I've also had the displeasure of watching enemy shields regenerate at completely insane rates. Would take a facing shield down to a sliver of it's health just to watch it jump back to near max again without so much as a flinch from the other three facings from a rebalancing.
Something is wrong!
Maybe it's just me, but I've found that even the first mission is more difficult than it used to be. With the weapons I have and the consoles I have, I can do almost 5000 DPS per second, but it took me quite a while to take out the Battleship near the end of "Stranded in Space". It was never ever this hard before...and I wasn't even using upgraded weaponry. (everything is now Epic and maximum Mk level)
Something's definitely wrong...it's like they took the combat plans for the DR content and altered every other ship to fit those parameters.
After checking STO on Holodeck and then on Tribble, I'd found that
Orion Corvette on Holodeck (prior to rescuing the Azura) (Lv. 50): 24,805
Orion Corvette on Tribble (prior to rescuing the Azura) (Lv. 50): 29,930
Slavemaster Battleship on Holodeck (Lv. 50): 56,432
Marauder Battleship on Tribble (Lv. 50): 68,091 {replaced ship}
Orion Corvette on Holodeck (after rescuing the Azura) (Lv. 50): 17,363
Orion Corvette on Tribble (after rescuing the Azura) (Lv. 50): 20,951
Interceptor on Holodeck (Lv. 50): 3,720
Marauding Force Shuttle on Tribble (Lv. 50): 5,836 {replaced ship}
So yeah...something's definitely been changed on Tribble concerning enemy health...and it seems it's extended all the way around back to the beginning.
I never said conspiracy just merely a look at the business motives behind it really. I also think you took what I said out of context. The upgrade items are easily available on the exchange and with the dilithium limit upgrading is a long but not impossible process without spending money. Players are being given the incentive to upgrade in order to be more effective.
From the development aspect it is poor and lazy design to promote difficulty in the way that they have, I will give you that one. I think in some ways the business motive and the development motive work out together for the purpose of monetizing. Especially once you look at the abilities of the intelligence officers and Tier 6 starships also accounting for specialization. They are attempting a balance that will maintain some "challenge" for those who do end up being fully upgraded. Lazy and poor development I definitely agree.
Well "conspiracy" was just exaggeration for effect. My point was that there doesn't seem to be an ulterior motive behind the move because business reasons aren't likely to reach into this part of the game. You can construct for yourself a narrative that designer X thinks change Y is going to cause players to spend more on Z but when Z is a self-promoting system change Y is not likely to be concieved by designer X. Upgrades are deserable, especially if players want to try advanced and elite difficulty settnigs. We should not be considering their potential impact on normal balance (that is where "this being nothing more than a bad balancing decision" comes in."
I think the default course of action is simply to put the game down at that point. I've certainly stopped playing through any combat scenario on tribble until they fix health scaling, and I'm one of the happier and more forgiving sort of STO players!
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
I've seen, more often than not [with the new content], multiple ships teaming up against my ship which makes it impossible to take on one at a time.
What would you advise us to do if we were in that situation?
This is a problem with enemy health scaling. For the first few levels combat remains reasonable but as you reach the higher levels NPC's becomes quite extremely bloated (in the end doubling and in some cases nearly tripling the health of what an equivalent ship would be at 50, on NORMAL.) Play through more than just the first few missions and then report back. Especially with an eng heavy build you are going to see some very, very tedious combat.
And one last plea to cryptic.
Guys the AI is good, these ships combat design is good, the environments are good, the writing is great, and the additional features (into which I include the VOY cast) are very compelling. You have just tweaked one scaling factor WAY TOO FAR for any of that to be enjoyable at higher levels. I want to love DR but with how badly combat progresses [on purely mechanical terms] I'm likely only to play through it on one character (for completion's sake), and then probably never again.
Its just such a terrible waste of content. You need to fix NPC health, desparately, or you will [without hyperbole] ruin STO.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!