cubes are great like they are after all, remember Wolf 359, but please change the insane spheres/nanites spheres HP.
Story missions, beautiful, well written, loved the way the guest stars didn't steal the show but made it better. The art team in particular did a fantastic job
i agree, characters are well written, i like Neelix and the doctor together. The voyager bridge is a little bit meh, the ambient occlusion could be better and the metallic tectures; they look like plastic; but this is just a detail. i like also the new ennemies and theirs skills (the vaadwaur soldiers remind me of the WW1 soldiers:P)
Honestly I think the casuals like myself need to band together and put in a refund demands if this is not fixed by this weekend. I feel NOTHING should have changed in STFs. We should get the satisfaction of burning old STFs in our new ships and the new ELITE STFs should be for 60. This is the laziest way to create new content and now I went from pretty awesome to being beaten down by the borg in an unreasonable dificulty increase. So we can unite or leave, thats the only way this game will change for the better.
while i understand the need to change from normal, Elite to Normal ,advanced, elite with the elite being the new 60lvl end game content .
my issue is with the scalability , in 24 hours before the patch i could take my old end game gear and complete the borg STFs elites in a pug environment though it could be very challenging at times ,
to being completely over matched in the new advanced in a pug situation . its like our gear we worked for in rep and in fleet is pointless .
instead of making the enemies smarter and having new strategies its become a FOCUS ALL fire event. For infected if you let one nanite sphere get to hazard range game over ? really ? you increase the HP and add this ? this is a big change not only do you need to keep trying to push those nan spheres back you have to keep up a level of DPS thats on the level way above what was needed to pug this event .this isnt team work its fire everything at OP Amount of HP NPC , AGAIN did you ever hear of gradual changes to these missions . while i dont mind a minor change done to what makes a mission fail but to add that and too increase to a abusive amount of npc HP , that takes even our gear that should be for this level of content struggles with at a PUG LEVEL is just doent make any sense .
im so glad you listened to the feed back from the 2% tribble testers ,
i understand you want us to BUY new gear and ships for the NEW ELITE content , i get it that this gives us something to shoot for , but to make so the older content needs the same sort of gear setup is the wrong move you basically ruined most players builds that dont have any new gold shinys on there ships yet , to get the resources to make the shineys in the R&D which for some are still working on there levels
Advanced level needs to be on par with the 45-50 mark gear and rep where the Elite is 51-60 the way it is now advanced is no where near that .
We have to invest an awful lot into the game - hundreds of thousands of dilithium per character not to mention acquiring the ships and consoles themselves - to be able to do the same exact content we were able to do for years up till Monday...for half the reward.
How are there people not offended by that?
Exactly this. I'm amazed the forums aren't in flames, to be honest.
I'm actually glad to see the game difficulty raised. It made no sense to upgrade stuff for the content as it was previously. I didn't even bother to upgrade from my original gear since the [borg] modified weapons came out in exchange for emblems. I didn't need to. There was nothing hard even on Elite. It was a snooze fest. The STFs were no different than the clickie consoles in the foundry giving out dilithium for 5 minutes of work.
Now... The content is awesome. The difficulty requires teamwork and yes it takes longer but it should take longer. It reminds me of the old STFs where you wanted to carry a balanced team with people providing support roles to each other. No they aren't 2 hours long anymore, but they do demand your attention and require a good build with good gear and balanced team to be the most efficient.
You've given people 3 levels to play at and if its too difficult or takes too long to play elite then play advanced or regular. I'm still playing story missions on elite setting with my old mk xi borg gear with no problem. As for the STFs/PvEs, well I'll wait until I have my upgraded gear for Elite queues.
I think the rewards should be held to the same standard as other missions with the goal of earning the 8k dilithium in a couple of hours of play. People have been playing the same handful of queues because the time/reward ratio was off and it was the biggest bang for the buck. I'm glad to see things getting balanced.
Gold Sub since March 2010
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
Advanced can be done. For reference, I'm an 11K or 12K tac Ody working my way towards top gear slowly. Even with me, a similar ship and a 30K carrier we still barely beat the timer on ISA.
That kind of skin-of-your-teeth gameplay is what I would expect from Elite. For Advanced, you'll have plenty of intermediate players trying to do it just to get the gear they need to do well. I think a difficulty jump is certainly warranted - ESTFs were getting to be five-minute meals - but the abundance of spheres that do nothing but slow you down really bogs down Infected space in particular.
The artist formerly known as PlanetofHats.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
I also know AI can be tricky so I'll throw out another idea that could make gameplay more reactive:
Challenge ships. 15 ensign slots. My quick math says this is similar power wise to a normal ship aside from shared cool downs but maybe with some severity/accuracy nerfing baked in. And I'd suggest making the ship immune to the global cool down.
A skilled player flying this would find much more reactive gameplay.
Call it a Nova Squadron Retrofit Cruiser/Escort/Science Vessel.
If someone wants more challenge, one of these ships would provide it without penalizing other players. It's just the ship itself that demands reactive play.
15 ensign powers, chance to miss applied to all, no global cool down. There's your challenge mode.
I also know AI can be tricky so I'll throw out another idea that could make gameplay more reactive:
Challenge ships. 15 ensign slots. My quick math says this is similar power wise to a normal ship aside from shared cool downs but maybe with some severity/accuracy nerfing baked in. And I'd suggest making the ship immune to the global cool down.
A skilled player flying this would find much more reactive gameplay.
Call it a Nova Squadron Retrofit Cruiser/Escort/Science Vessel.
If someone wants more challenge, one of these ships would provide it without penalizing other players. It's just the ship itself that demands reactive play.
15 ensign powers, chance to miss applied to all, no global cool down. There's your challenge mode.
It would need mechanics to have only 4 or 5 boffs giving those powers. Otherwise, think of the SRO, pirate, infiltrator, etc stacking.
C.F. Good team upgraded ships & kit 3-4 min, C.F.Adv same team only lasted 6 min fail. In fact we have yet to complete an Advance game or K.F.A.
I no as you grade up your skills improve so we will see what its like when we hit 60 but its not very balanced at the mo & as other people have said i would hate to be just starting out as everything is so nerf now just where would they get the materials they need from unless they have a fat wallet.
My biggest concern besides the difficulty changes is that it will be more difficult to get the reputation set items to have the firepower to handle the better difficulty for up-and-coming players.
Fate - protects fools, small children, and ships named Enterprise Will Riker
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My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
well first off, I think we need a clear definition (from a dev, not the wanna be devs) on what they were going for..
ie, is normal and advanced (old stf's) geared towards level 50's or 60's.. now before you answer, the correct answer would be for level 50's.. its like anygame when you make an expansion, the old content, stays there for people progressing through.. (ie, getting gear and building up for the next hurtle). or else, how does one advance their gear? stepping stones are needed, and there doesn't seem to be any helpful ways to make the propers steps..
this is why I assume that the advanced and normal difficulties should, and are for level 50 play.. the elite, should be for 60... we don't need 3 different difficulties for the same content for level 60...
moving on, I agree with most of the posters.. for some reason, the dev team in this game thinks that simply making a zerg fest and higher hp/ offensive power is an increase in difficulty. while it is, it is not a fun increase in difficulty.. the player base has been asking for harder content, and more importantly, they have voiced leading up to dr that they didn't want a simple increase in just offensive and defensive npc numbers. this is not anything new being said to yall. this has also been one of the games biggest failures.. there is a reason people call it space bar online. it requires very little thought, and just point and shoot.
the new content is ok, I like it, but I wish I were challeneged more, and I mean more in the thinking.. id rather sit there and need to figure out how to get from a to b without agroing all the mobs, and still get mission objectives, than sit there and think of how to hit max dps and drop all the npc's as quickly as possible.
everyonce in a while, the devs show a small sign of learning this, well get a class specific duty in a mission, or well get something that requires the team to work together and execute everything at once.. but then it goes away..
fix the mundane style of play that has been present since beta, and the game will be 100 times better. don't take the lazy way out, take the fun and interesting way out... please..
ps, I want the devs to take this as constructive feedback, im not just slamming anyone or what not, these are real thoughts people are having, ideas I have taken from discussion with pugs, or my fleet, or my friends.. the game is an ok game, it needs to jump that hurtle to be great. it can happen, but the business as usual filosophy needs to be changed at cryptic to do it.
good luck, and hopefully we see some great changes in the near future.
Reposting this from the other thread, sorry if it gets double-posted, but I'm unsure which one is the "official" feedback thread:
So, I just finished an Advanced Cure Space. Thoughts.
1. It is obvious this was in no sense balanced at all. Probably they simply increased the HP/Shields of enemies according to a formula. The reason is namely that the IKS Kang is all but immune to the enemies that spawn due to it's high Shield/HP, enemies whose damage in no way scales proportionate to the HP of the Kang.
2. The nodes (although not, seemingly, the cubes) have pre-DR HP.
3. Killing the cubes no longer completes the mission, you have to kill the BOP's as well. (or at least some of them, it seemed incredibly weird when the mission actually completed, which was often long after we've killed the cubes)
4. Apart from the DPS check (the need to kill all the cubes+some of the BOP's within 15 min.) it's not that much harder: I did not die noticeably more than pre-DR. Elites.
5. It does however, take a significantly longer time. (I'd guess it took us around 25 min? slightly less than 15 to clear out the cubes, and an equal amount of time to kill the remaining Bops/raptors/Negh'vars and the carrier)
6. The carrier is absolutely pointless: It's a huge bag of HP, but since there's no timer on it, there's no particular reason to rush DPS, and it does completely anemic damage. (no one died on the carrier whatsoever)
7. All this means that what "should" be the focus of the mission (protecting the Kang, and the final showdown with the carrier) ignoreable while the tough part becomes evading (no use taking them out) the huge HP-sponge Bops while killing the cubes. Very counter to the actual tone of the mission. (which is more of a "desperate defence" thing)
8. Rewards are absolutely anemic. Neither XP, dilithium or omega marks were anywhere near worth the time spent. I earned maybe 3000 XP on the entire thing, and 480 dilithium.
9. The real problem comes with the fact that the "rare reputation mats" (Borg Neural Processors etc.) are locked behind advanced Queues now. Now, we were a pretty damn well-equipped bunch, but that means *we already had that kind of stuff* The new people coming are going to have to do these advanced STF's in order to earn end-level gear... That is required to run Advanced STF's in the first place. (even the upgrade system works that way!) It's slightly easier for voth/undine since they have their respective battlezones, but this makes the borg reputation all but impossible to finish for new players.
10. I don't really have a problem with the difficult of the mission per se: It was fairly tense when the timer was counting down. The problem is that the difficulty is all in the wrong places. (DPS race rather than a "keep the kang alive" race) the rewards are in no way commensurate with the tipe spent. And it is just plain *boring* you spend most of the time plonking away at high-HP enemies who plonk away at you, neither of you who do very much actual damage to each other.
11. You *really* need to take a look over the STF and figure out the balance of HP, damage, the Kang, etc. Right now it was obviously just "scaled up" from the old Elites, with no consideration for how that changes the dynamics of the mission.
A child drawing the Enterprise with crayons had more thought go into that than the devs put into the new difficulty.
Smarter AI and more boff powers to NPC would of been better. No, you just cranked up the HP by 1000% and the resists by a **** ton thinking that was a smart idea.
No. It wasn't smart. Learn how to balance, go play some other mmo's and get an idea. Or maybe hire competent programmers?
Tanking is useful again.
Support healing is useful again.
Borg are a threat.
Battles are longer.
No more one person dominating the stf.
Its challenging.
Tactics are needed again. (10% rule ftw)
Utility powers are more useful than ever.
Things I don't like :
Rewards are weak.
Takes forever to kill anything especially on timed maps.
Just my two cents but i think it has already been stated by many here, that the new advanced is not that bad, i dont have my ship all tricked out and i did rather well. It might perhaps need a little tweaking or allow for an additional ship to come in, a little more balancing and perhaps a very small adjustment on the advanced or the buffs, other than that i think what Cryptic has done is going in a good direction. Things need to be tweaked a little, but not in a major way like some are suggesting. As someone else stated, it is challenging and it is nice for a change which i would like to see implemented across the entire game.
Ok, this is NOT a complaint thread, but I believe it is a solution thread. As Cryptic stated before, they want more groups to shift to heal/tank/DPS setups, but the most recent changes are actually encouraging more DPS setups. The problem with the recent changes is that Cryptic buffed the WRONG things. The Borg should hit harder than anyone in the game due to adaptation skills and they should have special plasma weapons like Borg Degradative Plasma which should have procs similar to Tholian weapons with a 5% chance to nullify shield and hull resistances for 10 seconds.
This makes people want to have healers, and tanks, instead of buffing the Borg to 10X hull boredom. Also, if Cryptic is going to change Advanced AND Elite, which was NOT mentioned in the blogs, then PLEASE give Advanced back the 960 diltihium as the rewards no longer match the difficulty.
Lastly, please add the shield drain pulse to Cubes and Tactical Cubes. Also, if possible could you add Tactical Spheres with 2 new Borg Abilities(this I don't expect anytime soon but again it is only a suggestion).
The one area I don't mind hit poiints added is Cubes and Tactical Cubes, HOWEVER; adding more specialized Borg Weapons and harder hitting skills like FAW III, Multi-Target Borg Tractor beam/Cutting beam(blue) would greatly increase the fun, INSTEAD of just increasing the hit points.
I agree, all they become now are the same HP meatbags with the same tired old tricks with 2x more wpn damage and 5x more HP. It's just kind of tedious/impossible for most everyone trying to get rep gear.
okay my feedback since this link was posted in another thread
the way it was explained it was supposed to be that we get gear from the normal to use in advanced etc etc plus they would still be "short" at certain levels my experience
I am a returning player who returned a couple of weeks before you announced delta rising. I had 2 klingons with carriers and I started working on my federation but he has a wimpy ship t4 I guess it is. I started a romulan (he is new)
my 2 klingons completed all the reputation and have full gear from the dyson and undine rep line. According to my stats my hull is over 70k and my dps is high not insanely high but I was getting first place regularly in things like the crystaline entity etc.
My federation guy is unplayable he can't even do normals i wanted him to be a science he drives a science vessel and i was going to get him a dauntless. as soon as possible however for the moment I can only play with my 2 klingons in tanks who have full gear from the rep. I can't gear up my federation guy because he cannot do any of the pve rep missions so I have to enjoy the ground adventure zones a whole lot I guess.
my romulan is in a warbird he seems to be able to limp through some of the normals (not all of them he can handle the borg ones but not the undine ones) and he can do all the adventure zones.
I pay cryptic 15/month and wont be opening up my wallet to pay hundreds so no matter how hard you push me to shell out for upgrades since I am not a fan of "pay 2 win" i will grind dilithium. However now its a true grind. The pve q's (which are only playable on normal and advanced on completely decked out klingons in carriers) take ages to complete even on normal and the rewards are terrible.
My federation character having played all the the episodes and who enjoyed at least doing the borge pve q's for fun is now sitting with nothing he can do except ground missions.
My romulan well he does okay but he can't really contribute even to the normal level difficulty because he is a brand new leveled up 50 with the free ship and only some of his reputation completed. So I thank my lucky stars i have 2 klingons in carriers otherwise I would be very borred right now.
The pve q's for dilithium so i dont have to spend several hundred dollars on ships are going to mean that its going to be a very very long time before 2 of my little dudes even touch the new delta stuff because my 15/month subscription is not enough. It should be enough this game is fun but its not worth 100's of dollars. I also dont like having to buy zen not because i am cheap but because i like to earn my gear that is half the fun. Unfortunately the way its set up it looks like I am given not much choice because even the dilithium is going to be next to impossible to come by especially since I can't even do any of the new content on two of my guys because they are outfitted as new level 50's and not twinked fully geared with the best of the best. (should I just delete them and accept that making a new character is impossible now ? unless i want to pay cryptic hundreds of dollars in a short timespan per character?) They are not made of gold and I dont even own them.
freemium is supposed to be about enjoying the game and then paying the company what you can afford for the entertainment at a reasonable level and retaining of these customers to keep them paying you a fee. If the customer enjoys the product you give them they will compensate you financially. If they do not then they wont.
I do enjoy the game although at the moment the button mashing half hour + shootouts to get practially no reward is not feeling very fun.
If you want me to work that hard then at least give me a reward to match it. There are only 24 hours in a day.
I myself find it hard to understand how they want to encourage tank/dps/healer when it's not set up for people who are queing for groups. I am a fly a very good tank ship that have no problems with the borg yet I have not even ran across a healer as of yet, I have ran across tons of dpsers who can't seem to do much damage to the borg to even finish the missions now. I try my best to keep some of the ships with me healed (since I use voice commands and joyrstick I am able to call out members of my teams by number 1-4 then heal them then revert back to the mob). So far this whole new way they have came up with is in my opinion a little short sighted.
They just added huge amounts of HP to everything so it takes longer to do an advanced STF and halved the rewards. This makes no sense. If I spend 15mins doing an STF I expect the rewards to be proportional to time taken and difficulty. The way it is now is just not fun. Not fun means a population drop= less revenue.
Whoever thought and supported adding all the extra dil sinks and reward reductions all in one go doesn't understand MMO populations. An expansion has just been released and the PvE queues are almost empty. No it isn't people just doing all the missions, because there aren't enough skill point rewards to get you to the next tier, so you have to queue PvE. This really wasn't the time to experiment. A really bad idea.
Whoever thought and supported adding all the extra dil sinks and reward reductions all in one go doesn't understand MMO populations. An expansion has just been released and the PvE queues are almost empty. No it isn't people just doing all the missions, because there aren't enough skill point rewards to get you to the next tier, so you have to queue PvE. This really wasn't the time to experiment. A really bad idea.
I'm certainly not queuing up for anything else until I see patch notes outlining changes.
But I'm actually willing to wait for that patch to come, I can't imagine how many players they're losing forever in the meantime.
Until then, let us know your thoughts here, and we will take your feedback into consideration.
The problem has little to do with the health or damage output of the NPCs and everything to do with the massive disparity between two players using the same level of ship and same quality of gear with two different builds.
Take player A in a Scimitar beam boat sporting AP cooldown reduction doffs 8 beam arrays and a leech console with 5 Operative boffs. Compare him to player B in an Oddessy using 6 beam arrays, two torpedoes and Aux2Bat with Technicians. If you really want to get silly add in player C flying a Galaxy-R who does not use any cooldown reduction doffs.
Until STO manages to reduce the disparity of those three you will not be able to please all three. Even with three difficulty levels because of the second major problem. Especially when the game does nearly nothing to help players increase their level of game mastery to be able to make a high performance build beyond the community efforts.
The rewards we play for are intended to be used in the content we are playing to get them. In order to get a Maco space set I need to play advanced queue content. Content designed for players who have that level of gear. Furthermore to get the crafting materials to advance my maco gear from Mk XII to Mk XIV I need to play advanced queues. Granted I can get those materials via other means in the game but those methods are unreliable.
Beyond those two core problems though slowly burning down huge bags of HPs does not make a very exciting or engaging gameplay experience.
Good luck.
PS: The entire T6 ship roll out combined with the decrease of rewards and increased difficulty has eroded any benefit of the doubt I had left to give as a consumer. I doubt I am the only one who feels that way.
I do not played a lot. Just one fleet alert versus tholians and one crystaline entity on advanced. Before Delta Rising I was a good player on both (I could often take 2nd plance on CE - Elite). Now, I failed in both. On the fleet alert, I did not died once, but it did seemed to take a long time to kill the Tholians, in agreement with the general consensus that HP is WAY TOO HIGH. On CE I noticed that was taking longer than usual to lower its health, due to the insane HP it has now. It could be doable if I was on my cruisers, making easier to run away from the fragments spawned at ~70% HP, preventing the entity from regenerating. But the remaining players would need to do the same and It would take hours to finish it. No fun.
For the note: my gear was reasoanable: I think Upgraded chimera, with purple MK XII refracting tetryon cannons and the quad phaser at Mk XII also. Full Assimilated Set Mk XI and all my remaining consoles were at least Mk XII blue. The teamates seemed to be well equipped as well. In the two cases there were at least one T6 ship. Perhaps under the new philosophy it would be reasonable to not get second place in the CE - Adavanced. But an well equipped team completeley fail seens too much. And a well equpped team failling a Fleet alert clearly shows that mobs HP is too much.
Also, listen to the players on Tribble. There is a thread there with several players complaining about this issue
Pre-forum change name: Captain Wilhelm Join Date: March 2009
Thanks Cryptic for introducing the Kelvin Timeline. It remembered why I decided to never more put any money on this game.
There was no need to keep halving the dilth rewards.
I'll praise Cryptic for the new content. But they really didn't need to shaft people quite so hard.
What annoys me most is that I keep expecting/thinking Cryptic do these things to keep afloat (it was easy to beleive when they struggled prior to the PWE takeover.)
Now it just feels like they dont care about the people who supported them through the tough times.
If the advance difficulty is for level 60 players; i think we should wait until a good chunk of the player base is level 60 to judge if its too hard.
My only complaint right now goes to the Crystalline Entity. The shards spawn too far away from the Entity which causes it to hit players and healing the Entity making the game last much longer then it needs to be. Crystalline Entity right now with our levels takes too long! Also them Tholians are beastly, oi.
Ok, me and a few fleet mates, very well built high dps builds all of us, just tried a Crystalline Entity Advanced, and we got our butts thoroughly, ridiculously kicked.
I'm lv 59 with all mk13 gear, two mk14 fleet nutroniums, a leveled starship mastery, and 46% damage resist to everything, and me, and everyone else, was getting killed in two shots, being hit for between 25k and 35k about every 10 seconds. So, if the argument is its mean for lv 60, what lv 60 build and gear is supposed to survive that ?
I'm thinking maybe we needed a good science toon debuffing the hell out of its damage output to even stand a chance, we didn't have any science. But, really, is that what it takes to do an Advanced now? An absolutely perfect team every time? I am totally fine with that being the elite, leave it that way for people that like it, absolutely need a perfect team and people playing their roles and a planned out strategy, but this wasn't elite, and not everyone wants to play like that. Advanced should be hard, but reasonable, and possible, for a few friends with good builds to just jump into and do, even with a very high challenge, it shouldn't be impossible, it stops being fun.
I don't even mind it having way way more hit points and taking a lot longer, I actually like that, but again, I just ask, you tell me, what true lv 60 build n gear is supposed to survive a 30k hit every ten seconds?
Comments
i agree, characters are well written, i like Neelix and the doctor together. The voyager bridge is a little bit meh, the ambient occlusion could be better and the metallic tectures; they look like plastic; but this is just a detail. i like also the new ennemies and theirs skills (the vaadwaur soldiers remind me of the WW1 soldiers:P)
my issue is with the scalability , in 24 hours before the patch i could take my old end game gear and complete the borg STFs elites in a pug environment though it could be very challenging at times ,
to being completely over matched in the new advanced in a pug situation . its like our gear we worked for in rep and in fleet is pointless .
instead of making the enemies smarter and having new strategies its become a FOCUS ALL fire event. For infected if you let one nanite sphere get to hazard range game over ? really ? you increase the HP and add this ? this is a big change not only do you need to keep trying to push those nan spheres back you have to keep up a level of DPS thats on the level way above what was needed to pug this event .this isnt team work its fire everything at OP Amount of HP NPC , AGAIN did you ever hear of gradual changes to these missions . while i dont mind a minor change done to what makes a mission fail but to add that and too increase to a abusive amount of npc HP , that takes even our gear that should be for this level of content struggles with at a PUG LEVEL is just doent make any sense .
im so glad you listened to the feed back from the 2% tribble testers ,
i understand you want us to BUY new gear and ships for the NEW ELITE content , i get it that this gives us something to shoot for , but to make so the older content needs the same sort of gear setup is the wrong move you basically ruined most players builds that dont have any new gold shinys on there ships yet , to get the resources to make the shineys in the R&D which for some are still working on there levels
Advanced level needs to be on par with the 45-50 mark gear and rep where the Elite is 51-60 the way it is now advanced is no where near that .
Exactly this. I'm amazed the forums aren't in flames, to be honest.
Now... The content is awesome. The difficulty requires teamwork and yes it takes longer but it should take longer. It reminds me of the old STFs where you wanted to carry a balanced team with people providing support roles to each other. No they aren't 2 hours long anymore, but they do demand your attention and require a good build with good gear and balanced team to be the most efficient.
You've given people 3 levels to play at and if its too difficult or takes too long to play elite then play advanced or regular. I'm still playing story missions on elite setting with my old mk xi borg gear with no problem. As for the STFs/PvEs, well I'll wait until I have my upgraded gear for Elite queues.
I think the rewards should be held to the same standard as other missions with the goal of earning the 8k dilithium in a couple of hours of play. People have been playing the same handful of queues because the time/reward ratio was off and it was the biggest bang for the buck. I'm glad to see things getting balanced.
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
That kind of skin-of-your-teeth gameplay is what I would expect from Elite. For Advanced, you'll have plenty of intermediate players trying to do it just to get the gear they need to do well. I think a difficulty jump is certainly warranted - ESTFs were getting to be five-minute meals - but the abundance of spheres that do nothing but slow you down really bogs down Infected space in particular.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
Challenge ships. 15 ensign slots. My quick math says this is similar power wise to a normal ship aside from shared cool downs but maybe with some severity/accuracy nerfing baked in. And I'd suggest making the ship immune to the global cool down.
A skilled player flying this would find much more reactive gameplay.
Call it a Nova Squadron Retrofit Cruiser/Escort/Science Vessel.
If someone wants more challenge, one of these ships would provide it without penalizing other players. It's just the ship itself that demands reactive play.
15 ensign powers, chance to miss applied to all, no global cool down. There's your challenge mode.
It would need mechanics to have only 4 or 5 boffs giving those powers. Otherwise, think of the SRO, pirate, infiltrator, etc stacking.
I no as you grade up your skills improve so we will see what its like when we hit 60 but its not very balanced at the mo & as other people have said i would hate to be just starting out as everything is so nerf now just where would they get the materials they need from unless they have a fat wallet.
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My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
ie, is normal and advanced (old stf's) geared towards level 50's or 60's.. now before you answer, the correct answer would be for level 50's.. its like anygame when you make an expansion, the old content, stays there for people progressing through.. (ie, getting gear and building up for the next hurtle). or else, how does one advance their gear? stepping stones are needed, and there doesn't seem to be any helpful ways to make the propers steps..
this is why I assume that the advanced and normal difficulties should, and are for level 50 play.. the elite, should be for 60... we don't need 3 different difficulties for the same content for level 60...
moving on, I agree with most of the posters.. for some reason, the dev team in this game thinks that simply making a zerg fest and higher hp/ offensive power is an increase in difficulty. while it is, it is not a fun increase in difficulty.. the player base has been asking for harder content, and more importantly, they have voiced leading up to dr that they didn't want a simple increase in just offensive and defensive npc numbers. this is not anything new being said to yall. this has also been one of the games biggest failures.. there is a reason people call it space bar online. it requires very little thought, and just point and shoot.
the new content is ok, I like it, but I wish I were challeneged more, and I mean more in the thinking.. id rather sit there and need to figure out how to get from a to b without agroing all the mobs, and still get mission objectives, than sit there and think of how to hit max dps and drop all the npc's as quickly as possible.
everyonce in a while, the devs show a small sign of learning this, well get a class specific duty in a mission, or well get something that requires the team to work together and execute everything at once.. but then it goes away..
fix the mundane style of play that has been present since beta, and the game will be 100 times better. don't take the lazy way out, take the fun and interesting way out... please..
ps, I want the devs to take this as constructive feedback, im not just slamming anyone or what not, these are real thoughts people are having, ideas I have taken from discussion with pugs, or my fleet, or my friends.. the game is an ok game, it needs to jump that hurtle to be great. it can happen, but the business as usual filosophy needs to be changed at cryptic to do it.
good luck, and hopefully we see some great changes in the near future.
The jump from Normal to Advanced, compared to the jump from Advanced to Elite, is just ridiculous.
So, I just finished an Advanced Cure Space. Thoughts.
1. It is obvious this was in no sense balanced at all. Probably they simply increased the HP/Shields of enemies according to a formula. The reason is namely that the IKS Kang is all but immune to the enemies that spawn due to it's high Shield/HP, enemies whose damage in no way scales proportionate to the HP of the Kang.
2. The nodes (although not, seemingly, the cubes) have pre-DR HP.
3. Killing the cubes no longer completes the mission, you have to kill the BOP's as well. (or at least some of them, it seemed incredibly weird when the mission actually completed, which was often long after we've killed the cubes)
4. Apart from the DPS check (the need to kill all the cubes+some of the BOP's within 15 min.) it's not that much harder: I did not die noticeably more than pre-DR. Elites.
5. It does however, take a significantly longer time. (I'd guess it took us around 25 min? slightly less than 15 to clear out the cubes, and an equal amount of time to kill the remaining Bops/raptors/Negh'vars and the carrier)
6. The carrier is absolutely pointless: It's a huge bag of HP, but since there's no timer on it, there's no particular reason to rush DPS, and it does completely anemic damage. (no one died on the carrier whatsoever)
7. All this means that what "should" be the focus of the mission (protecting the Kang, and the final showdown with the carrier) ignoreable while the tough part becomes evading (no use taking them out) the huge HP-sponge Bops while killing the cubes. Very counter to the actual tone of the mission. (which is more of a "desperate defence" thing)
8. Rewards are absolutely anemic. Neither XP, dilithium or omega marks were anywhere near worth the time spent. I earned maybe 3000 XP on the entire thing, and 480 dilithium.
9. The real problem comes with the fact that the "rare reputation mats" (Borg Neural Processors etc.) are locked behind advanced Queues now. Now, we were a pretty damn well-equipped bunch, but that means *we already had that kind of stuff* The new people coming are going to have to do these advanced STF's in order to earn end-level gear... That is required to run Advanced STF's in the first place. (even the upgrade system works that way!) It's slightly easier for voth/undine since they have their respective battlezones, but this makes the borg reputation all but impossible to finish for new players.
10. I don't really have a problem with the difficult of the mission per se: It was fairly tense when the timer was counting down. The problem is that the difficulty is all in the wrong places. (DPS race rather than a "keep the kang alive" race) the rewards are in no way commensurate with the tipe spent. And it is just plain *boring* you spend most of the time plonking away at high-HP enemies who plonk away at you, neither of you who do very much actual damage to each other.
11. You *really* need to take a look over the STF and figure out the balance of HP, damage, the Kang, etc. Right now it was obviously just "scaled up" from the old Elites, with no consideration for how that changes the dynamics of the mission.
Smarter AI and more boff powers to NPC would of been better. No, you just cranked up the HP by 1000% and the resists by a **** ton thinking that was a smart idea.
No. It wasn't smart. Learn how to balance, go play some other mmo's and get an idea. Or maybe hire competent programmers?
Things I like :
Tanking is useful again.
Support healing is useful again.
Borg are a threat.
Battles are longer.
No more one person dominating the stf.
Its challenging.
Tactics are needed again. (10% rule ftw)
Utility powers are more useful than ever.
Things I don't like :
Rewards are weak.
Takes forever to kill anything especially on timed maps.
I agree, all they become now are the same HP meatbags with the same tired old tricks with 2x more wpn damage and 5x more HP. It's just kind of tedious/impossible for most everyone trying to get rep gear.
the way it was explained it was supposed to be that we get gear from the normal to use in advanced etc etc plus they would still be "short" at certain levels my experience
I am a returning player who returned a couple of weeks before you announced delta rising. I had 2 klingons with carriers and I started working on my federation but he has a wimpy ship t4 I guess it is. I started a romulan (he is new)
my 2 klingons completed all the reputation and have full gear from the dyson and undine rep line. According to my stats my hull is over 70k and my dps is high not insanely high but I was getting first place regularly in things like the crystaline entity etc.
My federation guy is unplayable he can't even do normals i wanted him to be a science he drives a science vessel and i was going to get him a dauntless. as soon as possible however for the moment I can only play with my 2 klingons in tanks who have full gear from the rep. I can't gear up my federation guy because he cannot do any of the pve rep missions so I have to enjoy the ground adventure zones a whole lot I guess.
my romulan is in a warbird he seems to be able to limp through some of the normals (not all of them he can handle the borg ones but not the undine ones) and he can do all the adventure zones.
I pay cryptic 15/month and wont be opening up my wallet to pay hundreds so no matter how hard you push me to shell out for upgrades since I am not a fan of "pay 2 win" i will grind dilithium. However now its a true grind. The pve q's (which are only playable on normal and advanced on completely decked out klingons in carriers) take ages to complete even on normal and the rewards are terrible.
My federation character having played all the the episodes and who enjoyed at least doing the borge pve q's for fun is now sitting with nothing he can do except ground missions.
My romulan well he does okay but he can't really contribute even to the normal level difficulty because he is a brand new leveled up 50 with the free ship and only some of his reputation completed. So I thank my lucky stars i have 2 klingons in carriers otherwise I would be very borred right now.
The pve q's for dilithium so i dont have to spend several hundred dollars on ships are going to mean that its going to be a very very long time before 2 of my little dudes even touch the new delta stuff because my 15/month subscription is not enough. It should be enough this game is fun but its not worth 100's of dollars. I also dont like having to buy zen not because i am cheap but because i like to earn my gear that is half the fun. Unfortunately the way its set up it looks like I am given not much choice because even the dilithium is going to be next to impossible to come by especially since I can't even do any of the new content on two of my guys because they are outfitted as new level 50's and not twinked fully geared with the best of the best. (should I just delete them and accept that making a new character is impossible now ? unless i want to pay cryptic hundreds of dollars in a short timespan per character?) They are not made of gold and I dont even own them.
freemium is supposed to be about enjoying the game and then paying the company what you can afford for the entertainment at a reasonable level and retaining of these customers to keep them paying you a fee. If the customer enjoys the product you give them they will compensate you financially. If they do not then they wont.
I do enjoy the game although at the moment the button mashing half hour + shootouts to get practially no reward is not feeling very fun.
If you want me to work that hard then at least give me a reward to match it. There are only 24 hours in a day.
Whoever thought and supported adding all the extra dil sinks and reward reductions all in one go doesn't understand MMO populations. An expansion has just been released and the PvE queues are almost empty. No it isn't people just doing all the missions, because there aren't enough skill point rewards to get you to the next tier, so you have to queue PvE. This really wasn't the time to experiment. A really bad idea.
I'm certainly not queuing up for anything else until I see patch notes outlining changes.
But I'm actually willing to wait for that patch to come, I can't imagine how many players they're losing forever in the meantime.
Heh, I'm almost gone myself. I'm just getting to lvl 60 so I can troll the stfs that do pop.
The problem has little to do with the health or damage output of the NPCs and everything to do with the massive disparity between two players using the same level of ship and same quality of gear with two different builds.
Take player A in a Scimitar beam boat sporting AP cooldown reduction doffs 8 beam arrays and a leech console with 5 Operative boffs. Compare him to player B in an Oddessy using 6 beam arrays, two torpedoes and Aux2Bat with Technicians. If you really want to get silly add in player C flying a Galaxy-R who does not use any cooldown reduction doffs.
Until STO manages to reduce the disparity of those three you will not be able to please all three. Even with three difficulty levels because of the second major problem. Especially when the game does nearly nothing to help players increase their level of game mastery to be able to make a high performance build beyond the community efforts.
The rewards we play for are intended to be used in the content we are playing to get them. In order to get a Maco space set I need to play advanced queue content. Content designed for players who have that level of gear. Furthermore to get the crafting materials to advance my maco gear from Mk XII to Mk XIV I need to play advanced queues. Granted I can get those materials via other means in the game but those methods are unreliable.
Beyond those two core problems though slowly burning down huge bags of HPs does not make a very exciting or engaging gameplay experience.
Good luck.
PS: The entire T6 ship roll out combined with the decrease of rewards and increased difficulty has eroded any benefit of the doubt I had left to give as a consumer. I doubt I am the only one who feels that way.
For the note: my gear was reasoanable: I think Upgraded chimera, with purple MK XII refracting tetryon cannons and the quad phaser at Mk XII also. Full Assimilated Set Mk XI and all my remaining consoles were at least Mk XII blue. The teamates seemed to be well equipped as well. In the two cases there were at least one T6 ship. Perhaps under the new philosophy it would be reasonable to not get second place in the CE - Adavanced. But an well equipped team completeley fail seens too much. And a well equpped team failling a Fleet alert clearly shows that mobs HP is too much.
Also, listen to the players on Tribble. There is a thread there with several players complaining about this issue
Join Date: March 2009
Thanks Cryptic for introducing the Kelvin Timeline. It remembered why I decided to never more put any money on this game.
There was no need to keep halving the dilth rewards.
I'll praise Cryptic for the new content. But they really didn't need to shaft people quite so hard.
What annoys me most is that I keep expecting/thinking Cryptic do these things to keep afloat (it was easy to beleive when they struggled prior to the PWE takeover.)
Now it just feels like they dont care about the people who supported them through the tough times.
But then again, why should they?
My only complaint right now goes to the Crystalline Entity. The shards spawn too far away from the Entity which causes it to hit players and healing the Entity making the game last much longer then it needs to be. Crystalline Entity right now with our levels takes too long!
I'm lv 59 with all mk13 gear, two mk14 fleet nutroniums, a leveled starship mastery, and 46% damage resist to everything, and me, and everyone else, was getting killed in two shots, being hit for between 25k and 35k about every 10 seconds. So, if the argument is its mean for lv 60, what lv 60 build and gear is supposed to survive that ?
I'm thinking maybe we needed a good science toon debuffing the hell out of its damage output to even stand a chance, we didn't have any science. But, really, is that what it takes to do an Advanced now? An absolutely perfect team every time? I am totally fine with that being the elite, leave it that way for people that like it, absolutely need a perfect team and people playing their roles and a planned out strategy, but this wasn't elite, and not everyone wants to play like that. Advanced should be hard, but reasonable, and possible, for a few friends with good builds to just jump into and do, even with a very high challenge, it shouldn't be impossible, it stops being fun.
I don't even mind it having way way more hit points and taking a lot longer, I actually like that, but again, I just ask, you tell me, what true lv 60 build n gear is supposed to survive a 30k hit every ten seconds?