As a player that's only been lvl 50 for a few months the old PVE was tough but I was starting to get a hang of it and feel like I wasn't dragging my teams down TOO much though I still was some and in many cases had the mission been 100% clones of me we would lose every time. (except a few easier elites).
Still I was feeling like I was getting stronger slowly grinding up. At the same time normal mode ones were so easy I could do them with my eyes closed, they were good for getting TO level 50 though. Still I definitely see why harder difficulties were needed if people could carry me so easily in the harder ones...
Now people are saying advanced just have more HP and that's false, from the perspective of a player on the edge (rare I'm sure in such an old game) the damage is also actually increased a lot, I'm unable to take hits from things I previously could handle (on advanced though). Things I could struggle to tank out for 3-5 min will kill me in 2-5 shots (I'll be honest it's mostly 2-3), so it's more than just the HP but it's harder to see when you're up there where most of you are.
That said even for me, someone that struggled with OLD elite the normal mode is "Can do with my eyes closed" easy. Advanced is now impossible, and certainly impossible for my teams to carry me. I don't see how I can farm my way into advanced with normal rewards, and at the same time normal is so easy that it's actually boring. I thought the changes were nice in theory but in practice the difference between old elite and advanced is just extreme (at least for a somewhat new player like me). I was enjoying Elites, farming up and learning, it was actually a lot of fun and the reason I stayed when I came back recently. Now I either get to play at 0 challenge or not at all. I don't understand. Why was the old difficulty level so bad that you had to remove it?
The difficulty from normal->advanced may seem minor to people at the top but I assure you the gap for someone like me seems impossible. Maybe with a TON of time, farming, trading and "perfect" setups that require me to build my ship exactly the same as everyone else I'll be able to make it to advanced some day. But in the meantime I'm stuck essentially grinding "training mode sub lvl-50" difficulty.
Again I understand how to people at the top you may no longer be able to see the difference between old elite and new advanced because you're just that strong, but I can and for now I'm not sure where to look next for fun.
I just played Defend Rh'Ihho Station Advanced and...
YOU CAN'T RESCUE ALL 6 ENGINEERS IN UNDER 3 MINUTES unless everyone is packing TR-116B's and snares to keep the Elachi from wandering off. Give us an extra minute or two or re-tweak the Elachi so they DON'T RANDOMLY WANDER OFF to play hide and seek.
I would prefer another 30 seconds to cover the time wasted ingetting started in part 2. Barring that:
I think the way to handle it is to have two teams clear their way through the station to rescue engineers. Each team leader would have a 116B and be specced for ground. Hit me up in game if you want to try this out!
DR has brought out a pretty nasty conflict between the ranks of the casual and hardcore gamers in STO.
Seeing 5K DPS constantly referred to so dismissively by people suggesting they are noobs with no interest in getting better is aggravating. I was at that level for a long time before getting up to the 10K DPS level I'm at and I've dumped way too many hours into the game to do that.
The implication that somebody with a 5K DPS ship has no place in these excruciating advanced missions misses the point about needing an accessible level of play that will grant the rewards necessary to buy the equipment that can take them to the next level.
And as for denigrating those who "show no interest in improving", I'd point out that a big chunk of the 30K DPS crowd are those who've copied one or two cookie-cutter builds that a very few have optimized and figured out.
Some people love figuring out how to max the system to its limits by putting as much time in this game as a full time job. Good for them; I'm actually happy there is a solid elite level that has been missing for a long time.
But this new advanced level is barely accessible to me, and I've spent years improving ship builds on my own, and in part I like to play to different equipment combos. I have no idea how a new casual player to the game could deal with these difficulty levels without just giving up in disgust.
If these Advanced queues don't come down in difficulty I can't imagine how new player retention will not tank in the coming months. Alienating casual players is not going to win long-term commitments.
It's a frakking game, people. It should not have to be playable ONLY by those who invest the time to make it a career.
DR has brought out a pretty nasty conflict between the ranks of the casual and hardcore gamers in STO.
Seeing 5K DPS constantly referred to so dismissively by people suggesting they are noobs with no interest in getting better is aggravating. I was at that level for a long time before getting up to the 10K DPS level I'm at and I've dumped way too many hours into the game to do that.
The implication that somebody with a 5K DPS ship has no place in these excruciating advanced missions misses the point about needing an accessible level of play that will grant the rewards necessary to buy the equipment that can take them to the next level.
And as for denigrating those who "show no interest in improving", I'd point out that a big chunk of the 30K DPS crowd are those who've copied one or two cookie-cutter builds that a very few have optimized and figured out.
Some people love figuring out how to max the system to its limits by putting as much time in this game as a full time job. Good for them; I'm actually happy there is a solid elite level that has been missing for a long time.
But this new advanced level is barely accessible to me, and I've spent years improving ship builds on my own, and in part I like to play to different equipment combos. I have no idea how a new casual player to the game could deal with these difficulty levels without just giving up in disgust.
If these Advanced queues don't come down in difficulty I can't imagine how new player retention will not tank in the coming months. Alienating casual players is not going to win long-term commitments.
It's a frakking game, people. It should not have to be playable ONLY by those who invest the time to make it a career.
I have to bring up a quote from a dev blog for this one:
"What you used to refer to as Elite in our queued events and STFs is now known as Advanced. In the new Advanced versions of the queues you will see a similar level of challenge in the enemies that you are used to when the queues were labeled Elite."
O rly? So buffing Advanced HP by 10x and damage by 2x was a "similar level of challenge"?
I have to bring up a quote from a dev blog for this one:
"What you used to refer to as Elite in our queued events and STFs is now known as Advanced. In the new Advanced versions of the queues you will see a similar level of challenge in the enemies that you are used to when the queues were labeled Elite."
O rly? So buffing Advanced HP by 10x and damage by 2x was a "similar level of challenge"?
That's just disingenuous. I mean, cmon devs.
Pretty hard to deny this.
For those who say - you will be ever so much more awesome at level 60... Sure, defensively for 3 out of my 4 ships. How will that help with the dps race? Or must we all be tac?
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
From the Public Elite Channel, Got into a team for a STF today and i can summarize the concenssus of what we think of "Elite mode" including my own.
[11:48] Mueppe@x: whats going on??????????????
[11:49] Nelson@x: Everything got buffed, like 10x.
[11:49] D'raysan@x: yep
[11:49] Mueppe@x: unkillable
[11:49] Seren Talla@x: This is ****ing stupid
[11:49] Mueppe@x: ?????????
[11:49] Vorel@x: bug
[11:49] D'raysan@x: this is ****ing lame
[11:50] Seren Talla@x: Whoever thought this difficulty up needs to be shot
[11:51] D'raysan@x: i guess we can leave
[11:51] Nelson@x: Yup. I won't be running this again till they change it, or I can upgrade all my gear. This is just straight up no fun.
[11:51] Seren Talla@x: Upgrade you gear? T20 gold wont do **** to this
[11:51] Mueppe@x:
[11:51] D'raysan@x: wonder how ground looks like
Mind you 3 birds of prey at the start of the Cure Space, Could not be killed by 4 High DPS ships. [15-18k average] and The new lockbox ship which im not sure of its general average. [the one you pay for for lobi now.] Infact, these 3 basic birds of prey where invincible.
Lets not get into how a single sphere was 1 shotting people in the spawn. As they reloaded.
Each of these STFs on Elite difficulty can only be defeated by strategy. DPS will not do it. Think of each one of these as thier own "NO Win Senario". For real.
Hint. Bring someone with TBRs, without the pull doff. Oh, and heal Kang.
As a player that's only been lvl 50 for a few months the old PVE was tough but I was starting to get a hang of it and feel like I wasn't dragging my teams down TOO much though I still was some and in many cases had the mission been 100% clones of me we would lose every time. (except a few easier elites).
Still I was feeling like I was getting stronger slowly grinding up. At the same time normal mode ones were so easy I could do them with my eyes closed, they were good for getting TO level 50 though. Still I definitely see why harder difficulties were needed if people could carry me so easily in the harder ones...
Now people are saying advanced just have more HP and that's false, from the perspective of a player on the edge (rare I'm sure in such an old game) the damage is also actually increased a lot, I'm unable to take hits from things I previously could handle (on advanced though). Things I could struggle to tank out for 3-5 min will kill me in 2-5 shots (I'll be honest it's mostly 2-3), so it's more than just the HP but it's harder to see when you're up there where most of you are.
That said even for me, someone that struggled with OLD elite the normal mode is "Can do with my eyes closed" easy. Advanced is now impossible, and certainly impossible for my teams to carry me. I don't see how I can farm my way into advanced with normal rewards, and at the same time normal is so easy that it's actually boring. I thought the changes were nice in theory but in practice the difference between old elite and advanced is just extreme (at least for a somewhat new player like me). I was enjoying Elites, farming up and learning, it was actually a lot of fun and the reason I stayed when I came back recently. Now I either get to play at 0 challenge or not at all. I don't understand. Why was the old difficulty level so bad that you had to remove it?
The difficulty from normal->advanced may seem minor to people at the top but I assure you the gap for someone like me seems impossible. Maybe with a TON of time, farming, trading and "perfect" setups that require me to build my ship exactly the same as everyone else I'll be able to make it to advanced some day. But in the meantime I'm stuck essentially grinding "training mode sub lvl-50" difficulty.
Again I understand how to people at the top you may no longer be able to see the difference between old elite and new advanced because you're just that strong, but I can and for now I'm not sure where to look next for fun.
Your points are very valid and I completely agree that for newer players or for casual players who don't have sky high dps, the jump from normal to advanced is insanely different than the previous difference from normal to elite.
The new elite missions can be as hard as they like, it gives somewhere for the 20K DPS hitters to go and play, but they shouldn't remove the winnable challenging content from the players who don't do that sort of damage.
Join date is wrong, I've actually been around since STO Beta.
True alters don't have a "main". Account wide unlocks for all unique event rewards!!
They are playing advanced. He's talking about the elite chat channel
Aside from one 198532 hit I took, the only problem here is there is no way to burn down the enemies in cure fast enough.
I tried this just now in my only real tac ship. It's a cannon ship and each hit is close to 5000 so it's doing a reasonable dps - 15k? We would be needing more than twice that to make any progress in this mission.
It's a bit perplexing to me how about the same = 10x harder for this advanced.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I have to bring up a quote from a dev blog for this one:
"What you used to refer to as Elite in our queued events and STFs is now known as Advanced. In the new Advanced versions of the queues you will see a similar level of challenge in the enemies that you are used to when the queues were labeled Elite."
This right here is why I am a bit upset over the "new" normal. With this quote, they set the tone for what we thought we were getting. I was just fine with sticking to the new advanced queues (old elites). This, however, is nothing like what we got.
To have them lead us to believe this was what we were getting has caused a massive player shock. Even the normal queues are buffed to incredibly high levels when it comes to enemy hit points. I know the normal queues are supposed to be for people still gearing up and getting used to certain runs. There is just no way someone just getting started with a new ship and possible some new gear can make their way through the "new" normal runs. I previously stated that I was in a normal Fed fleet alert and we didn't even make it past wave 2. That's...bad. I have always flown support ships so I survived just fine, but I could not say the same for the rest of the team. Each one died at least twice with one dying 4 times in that new t6 escort.
I know there will be a couple of people saying "I got through a normal just fine with green gear, etc etc." one or even a few people being able to do this does not make it the average. I thought they did a good job of hyping the expansion and bringing in new players. I doubt many of these newer players can handle the difficulty level though. Those are the people I am speaking for.
No, I am not who you think I am. I am someone different. I am instead a banana.
There's a vast disparity on normal difficulty levels. FFA is indeed quite a challenge. I beat it once by 1 second and lost twice at round 6.
Cure normal is still a 3 min affair.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
This right here is why I am a bit upset over the "new" normal. With this quote, they set the tone for what we thought we were getting. I was just fine with sticking to the new advanced queues (old elites). This, however, is nothing like what we got.
To have them lead us to believe this was what we were getting has caused a massive player shock. Even the normal queues are buffed to incredibly high levels when it comes to enemy hit points. I know the normal queues are supposed to be for people still gearing up and getting used to certain runs. There is just no way someone just getting started with a new ship and possible some new gear can make their way through the "new" normal runs. I previously stated that I was in a normal Fed fleet alert and we didn't even make it past wave 2. That's...bad. I have always flown support ships so I survived just fine, but I could not say the same for the rest of the team. Each one died at least twice with one dying 4 times in that new t6 escort.
I know there will be a couple of people saying "I got through a normal just fine with green gear, etc etc." one or even a few people being able to do this does not make it the average. I thought they did a good job of hyping the expansion and bringing in new players. I doubt many of these newer players can handle the difficulty level though. Those are the people I am speaking for.
Don't forget the rewards. The revised rewards suck! If they are going to make things harder, the rewards need to get better, not worse.
<
> <
> <
>
Looking for a new fleet? Drop by the in-game chat channel, "tenforwardforum", and say hi to the members of A Fleet Called Ten Forward (Fed) and The Orion Pirates (KDF). If you already have a fleet you are happy with, please feel free to drop by our chat channel if you are looking for a friendly bunch of helpful people to socialize with.
This right here is why I am a bit upset over the "new" normal. With this quote, they set the tone for what we thought we were getting. I was just fine with sticking to the new advanced queues (old elites). This, however, is nothing like what we got.
To have them lead us to believe this was what we were getting has caused a massive player shock. Even the normal queues are buffed to incredibly high levels when it comes to enemy hit points. I know the normal queues are supposed to be for people still gearing up and getting used to certain runs. There is just no way someone just getting started with a new ship and possible some new gear can make their way through the "new" normal runs. I previously stated that I was in a normal Fed fleet alert and we didn't even make it past wave 2. That's...bad. I have always flown support ships so I survived just fine, but I could not say the same for the rest of the team. Each one died at least twice with one dying 4 times in that new t6 escort.
I know there will be a couple of people saying "I got through a normal just fine with green gear, etc etc." one or even a few people being able to do this does not make it the average. I thought they did a good job of hyping the expansion and bringing in new players. I doubt many of these newer players can handle the difficulty level though. Those are the people I am speaking for.
Since the barrier for these new "Advanced" queues is about 15k DPS per person, you are looking at a very small minority that is even capable of doing advanced.
Since the official number of people that take pride in their above 15k DPS by posting it in http://comatoes.github.io/sto-dps-league/ is around 1335 users, and the STO playerbase is around 670k active users, that means that Advanced is roughly based around .2% of the server population.
Since the barrier for these new "Advanced" queues is about 15k DPS per person, you are looking at a very small minority that is even capable of doing advanced.
Since the official number of people that take pride in their above 15k DPS by posting it in http://comatoes.github.io/sto-dps-league/ is around 1335 users, and the STO playerbase is around 670k active users, that means that Advanced is roughly based around .2% of the server population.
and the .2% are the ones they listened to forget about the other 99.8% of us who are casual and just login to blow off steam or have fun with friends, Unless they put in another viable way of earning the 2nd tier marks from factions other than STF's then a LOT of us will be stuck not getting the gear we need to advance. i've spent close to 2 years playing this game however i've never been more than a casual player because if i wanted to be "hardcore" i'd go back to playing WoW or something similar. STO is NOT nor has it ever been a "raider's " game. TO see it so severely dismiss such a large chunk of it's player base this expansion is really a clear indication of how little they actually do care for our feedback.
My assertion is this, it's not going to matter how many or how few of us whine about new features when the one's they listen are the ones that CLEARLY invest massive amounts of $$$$$ into the game which makes their opinions more valid...... another issue that is Repugnant to me.
There is a huge section of this game that I would consider Casual-Elite. We are those really good casual players, who can maybe do an NWS, who can opt all the old eSTFs with ease... but never bother to min-max seriously. We buy all the costumes, and want to fly all the fun ships. We spend lots of money to make the game enjoyable.
Those of us who put up 7000-15000 DPS, and were blowing through the old STFs with ease; now we're relegated to Normals, which are even easier... or we need to run the Elites, where only the very best of us can compete.
I can do my 15k DPS... barely. That means advanced ISE might be within the realm of possibility for me and my fleeties, if the stars allign properly... but for the bulk of us, and for the bulk of runs, it's a huge waste of time.
And the payout is less than it used to be.
Cryptic is killing the Casual-Elite player here. Knife in the back, green blood spurting from the wound. Killing us.
DR has brought out a pretty nasty conflict between the ranks of the casual and hardcore gamers in STO.
Seeing 5K DPS constantly referred to so dismissively by people suggesting they are noobs with no interest in getting better is aggravating. I was at that level for a long time before getting up to the 10K DPS level I'm at and I've dumped way too many hours into the game to do that.
The implication that somebody with a 5K DPS ship has no place in these excruciating advanced missions misses the point about needing an accessible level of play that will grant the rewards necessary to buy the equipment that can take them to the next level.
And as for denigrating those who "show no interest in improving", I'd point out that a big chunk of the 30K DPS crowd are those who've copied one or two cookie-cutter builds that a very few have optimized and figured out.
Some people love figuring out how to max the system to its limits by putting as much time in this game as a full time job. Good for them; I'm actually happy there is a solid elite level that has been missing for a long time.
But this new advanced level is barely accessible to me, and I've spent years improving ship builds on my own, and in part I like to play to different equipment combos. I have no idea how a new casual player to the game could deal with these difficulty levels without just giving up in disgust.
If these Advanced queues don't come down in difficulty I can't imagine how new player retention will not tank in the coming months. Alienating casual players is not going to win long-term commitments.
It's a frakking game, people. It should not have to be playable ONLY by those who invest the time to make it a career.
I agree with every word here and this should go into the new official difficulty feedback thread :
I think any discussion of a nerf in difficulty should probably wait until enough people are @ level 60. Remember that advanced should be slightly more challenging than the old elites *when you're at level 60* with traits, reasonable gear etc.
However - one thing that has put me off hugely (and I think definitely needs addressing) is the lack of rewards which you receive - as you need reasonable rewards in order to actually get decent gear.
It may well be because I'm not a regular MMO-er, but to be honest I'm not willing to pay the extortionate amounts (real money terms) to buy stuff from c-store, and if grinding takes too long I'd probably just choose to go play something else (it's why I stopped playing STO for a couple of years - my view on games is that they should have a fixed purchase price; if necessary I'd rather pay for extra content - ala DLC - than be 'heavily cajouled' into purchasing what are essentially virtual consumables)
So I just did a few Advanced Borg Disconnected, and I'm about to just give up. Not because it's too hard, but because I'm tired of dealing with idiots. I mean seriously you know it's bad when you walk into an Advanced STF and are told "this is my first time doing Borg Disconencted" then watch every single ship but you fly to the exact same point and totally ignore the Disconnected Borg in their area.
So now getting these Power Cells are going to be nearly impossible because no matter what you'll have either a griefer, a leecher, or a newb in every single PUG making it MANDATORY for you to have a fleet just in order to get ancient power cells and reputation gear.
I don't so mind having a fleet, I have one, but making them now mandatory for basically all items in the reputation system, and for fleet gear and ships because there is no other way to get higher tier stuff with all the idiots in the game.l
Or at least make a rep system approach where you can trade 100 marks for 1 ancient power cell.
If people were more intelligent the Borg disconnect would be easy.
For those who say - you will be ever so much more awesome at level 60... Sure, defensively for 3 out of my 4 ships. How will that help with the dps race? Or must we all be tac?
To be fair, at level 60 you're likely to have roughly twice the HP, and quite a lot more DPS (although probably not 10x)a s you did at 50.
Why do people think that an extra 10 levels, from 50 to 60, will give magically add tons of DPS
Because that is how level cap increases have worked in MMO's for over 20 years now.
End game is level 60 now, like it or not, and until players ate lvl 60 and have skills from the new secondary systems, you really can't judge the difficulty of the content.
It seems fine to me that I can't just go into CCA and park my ship and then go AFK and collect loot when I get back. If advanced is too hard for some people, they always have normal My very first BDN I got all kinds of accolades, its plenty easy enough.
So I just did a few Advanced Borg Disconnected, and I'm about to just give up. Not because it's too hard, but because I'm tired of dealing with idiots. I mean seriously you know it's bad when you walk into an Advanced STF and are told "this is my first time doing Borg Disconencted" then watch every single ship but you fly to the exact same point and totally ignore the Disconnected Borg in their area.
So now getting these Power Cells are going to be nearly impossible because no matter what you'll have either a griefer, a leecher, or a newb in every single PUG making it MANDATORY for you to have a fleet just in order to get ancient power cells and reputation gear.
I don't so mind having a fleet, I have one, but making them now mandatory for basically all items in the reputation system, and for fleet gear and ships because there is no other way to get higher tier stuff with all the idiots in the game.l
Or at least make a rep system approach where you can trade 100 marks for 1 ancient power cell.
Oh noes, day 2 of the expansion and everyone isn't an expert! Life as we know it is over.
I struggle to understand why people moan about the Hardest enemy in the hardest setting is hard to beat, well duh!
They are the Borg! They are supposed to be insanley hard to beat. I am assuming that the people writing thease moanings have never seen TNG before. I'm only hoping that they buff the Borg in Ker'rat as well as they get smashed up by any vessel at any strength DPS or tier.
We are the STF Borg. You will be assimiliated to service us. Lower your trousers and prepare to be mounted. Resistance is futile.
Oh noes, day 2 of the expansion and everyone isn't an expert! Life as we know it is over.
If you're not an expert don't go into an advanced queue and blow it for those of us who know what we're doing. Actually that's not the issue, you can do that all you want I suppose, but it's not fun, and again it makes gettng BNPs impossible.
So no not everyone needs to be an expert, but either a) admit you don't know what you're doing and do a few normals to figure out the map and what's going on or b) Cryptic needs to figure a way that when the non-experts go into a map and blow it for everyone, that we can still get the rewards.
I struggle to understand why people moan about the Hardest enemy in the hardest setting is hard to beat, well duh!
They are the Borg! They are supposed to be insanley hard to beat. I am assuming that the people writing thease moanings have never seen TNG before. I'm only hoping that they buff the Borg in Ker'rat as well as they get smashed up by any vessel at any strength DPS or tier
Again I personally am not saying it shouldn't be hard. What I'm saying is as it stands right now, it's almost impossible to PUG because one non-expert or one leecher or one griefer can ruin it for everyone.
And the answer of "get a fleet" isn't the answer, because not every player wants to. Can I do it with my fleet, sure, but what of the person who doesn't want to deal with fleets, or whose fleet is smallish and not designed around uber-level stuff?
Make it hard, make it difficult, but right now the rewards are gated behind stuff that the majority of players won't be able to handle.
Again I personally am not saying it shouldn't be hard. What I'm saying is as it stands right now, it's almost impossible to PUG because one non-expert or one leecher or one griefer can ruin it for everyone.
And the answer of "get a fleet" isn't the answer, because not every player wants to. Can I do it with my fleet, sure, but what of the person who doesn't want to deal with fleets, or whose fleet is smallish and not designed around uber-level stuff?
Make it hard, make it difficult, but right now the rewards are gated behind stuff that the majority of players won't be able to handle.
Ah, you did touch on a point which I totally agree with you on, the rewards should be increased.
I was also a fan of the Ground STF's, but I haven't tried them post DR release, so if anyone has feedback on that, then that would be helpful, as I'm a little nervous trying them out only to find that they are just as anally retentive.
I think any discussion of a nerf in difficulty should probably wait until enough people are @ level 60. Remember that advanced should be slightly more challenging than the old elites *when you're at level 60* with traits, reasonable gear etc.
However - one thing that has put me off hugely (and I think definitely needs addressing) is the lack of rewards which you receive - as you need reasonable rewards in order to actually get decent gear.
It may well be because I'm not a regular MMO-er, but to be honest I'm not willing to pay the extortionate amounts (real money terms) to buy stuff from c-store, and if grinding takes too long I'd probably just choose to go play something else (it's why I stopped playing STO for a couple of years - my view on games is that they should have a fixed purchase price; if necessary I'd rather pay for extra content - ala DLC - than be 'heavily cajouled' into purchasing what are essentially virtual consumables)
and I suspect that's exactly what all this is about. "Want to do your beloved STFs again? Pay me." I pay barely anything for this game. I've spent maybe 80$-100$ total over like 3 years (I was an hour away from buying the Dilithium Rising pack though, but I read the tribble notes about the STF nerfs first, literally about an hour before I bought it). I'm not a valuable customer to them, and I think at this point they're only interesting in making people pay. Everything they've done recently leads to that, and it doesn't take a genius to come to that conclusion.
I'm not opposed to paying for games; I have an active ESO subscription in an age where gamers are highly opposed to subscriptions. What I'm opposed to is the sort of free to play model STO is quickly adopting. They're trying to be subtle about it but we aren't stupid. This latest difficulty change may be adjusted after the outcry but the point stands that they want people to pay to continue playing their favorite content. They even said as much:
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?
Just have to read between the lines a little to understand what the reasons for the difficulty increase are.
I think any discussion of a nerf in difficulty should probably wait until enough people are @ level 60. Remember that advanced should be slightly more challenging than the old elites *when you're at level 60* with traits, reasonable gear etc.
This. You can't possibly know if Advanced is harder than Old Elite was a week ago because you've not done it at level 60, with all your Spec passives, five new Starship Traits, a Mastered T5U/T6 and MkXIV UR/Gold gear on four out of five players in the PUG. Which is exactly how you were doing it a week ago, relatively speaking.
This isn't to say it will all be fine, but that it simply can't be properly assessed right now. I'm also discounting the apparent scaling bug at lvl 60. Go into an Advanced, fight a sphere and a cube - note how much harder the sphere is than the cube suddenly? Cube is 59, sphere is 60. Likewise doing the final storyline mission at bumps the npcs up to ~1M hp each from ~400k (IIRC) at 59.
On tribble borticus tried to say the ai already is more intelligent than people give it credit for, and it makes targeting decisions based on different priorities and which race NPC etc. But they die beforeanyone could see it. So, of course there's a huge thread about NPC HP being too high, and lots of discussion showing even with more HP, most NPC enemies are still as dumb as bricks.
Personally, I hope they drop the enemy HP a lot, then take dontdrunkimshoot s advice about how to get NPCs to use powers faster and smarter. Would be way more interesting.
I remember reading a post by Bort on the subject of AI, reading between the lines the impression i got was improving the AI is too much work/we can't be bothered, so here are more dumb useless meatbags for you to shoot
I played a CSE (pug) last night, it wasn't any more difficult (in that the npcs don't hit any harder) but their HP pool is stupidly high for advanced (imo). We finished with the optional, but it took way too long for the pitiful rewards
Cryptic doesn't do AI or real challenge, it seems to me they will always take the route with the least effort required
Comments
Still I was feeling like I was getting stronger slowly grinding up. At the same time normal mode ones were so easy I could do them with my eyes closed, they were good for getting TO level 50 though. Still I definitely see why harder difficulties were needed if people could carry me so easily in the harder ones...
Now people are saying advanced just have more HP and that's false, from the perspective of a player on the edge (rare I'm sure in such an old game) the damage is also actually increased a lot, I'm unable to take hits from things I previously could handle (on advanced though). Things I could struggle to tank out for 3-5 min will kill me in 2-5 shots (I'll be honest it's mostly 2-3), so it's more than just the HP but it's harder to see when you're up there where most of you are.
That said even for me, someone that struggled with OLD elite the normal mode is "Can do with my eyes closed" easy. Advanced is now impossible, and certainly impossible for my teams to carry me. I don't see how I can farm my way into advanced with normal rewards, and at the same time normal is so easy that it's actually boring. I thought the changes were nice in theory but in practice the difference between old elite and advanced is just extreme (at least for a somewhat new player like me). I was enjoying Elites, farming up and learning, it was actually a lot of fun and the reason I stayed when I came back recently. Now I either get to play at 0 challenge or not at all. I don't understand. Why was the old difficulty level so bad that you had to remove it?
The difficulty from normal->advanced may seem minor to people at the top but I assure you the gap for someone like me seems impossible. Maybe with a TON of time, farming, trading and "perfect" setups that require me to build my ship exactly the same as everyone else I'll be able to make it to advanced some day. But in the meantime I'm stuck essentially grinding "training mode sub lvl-50" difficulty.
Again I understand how to people at the top you may no longer be able to see the difference between old elite and new advanced because you're just that strong, but I can and for now I'm not sure where to look next for fun.
:cool:
I would prefer another 30 seconds to cover the time wasted ingetting started in part 2. Barring that:
I think the way to handle it is to have two teams clear their way through the station to rescue engineers. Each team leader would have a 116B and be specced for ground. Hit me up in game if you want to try this out!
Seeing 5K DPS constantly referred to so dismissively by people suggesting they are noobs with no interest in getting better is aggravating. I was at that level for a long time before getting up to the 10K DPS level I'm at and I've dumped way too many hours into the game to do that.
The implication that somebody with a 5K DPS ship has no place in these excruciating advanced missions misses the point about needing an accessible level of play that will grant the rewards necessary to buy the equipment that can take them to the next level.
And as for denigrating those who "show no interest in improving", I'd point out that a big chunk of the 30K DPS crowd are those who've copied one or two cookie-cutter builds that a very few have optimized and figured out.
Some people love figuring out how to max the system to its limits by putting as much time in this game as a full time job. Good for them; I'm actually happy there is a solid elite level that has been missing for a long time.
But this new advanced level is barely accessible to me, and I've spent years improving ship builds on my own, and in part I like to play to different equipment combos. I have no idea how a new casual player to the game could deal with these difficulty levels without just giving up in disgust.
If these Advanced queues don't come down in difficulty I can't imagine how new player retention will not tank in the coming months. Alienating casual players is not going to win long-term commitments.
It's a frakking game, people. It should not have to be playable ONLY by those who invest the time to make it a career.
I have to bring up a quote from a dev blog for this one:
"What you used to refer to as Elite in our queued events and STFs is now known as Advanced. In the new Advanced versions of the queues you will see a similar level of challenge in the enemies that you are used to when the queues were labeled Elite."
O rly? So buffing Advanced HP by 10x and damage by 2x was a "similar level of challenge"?
That's just disingenuous. I mean, cmon devs.
Pretty hard to deny this.
For those who say - you will be ever so much more awesome at level 60... Sure, defensively for 3 out of my 4 ships. How will that help with the dps race? Or must we all be tac?
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Each of these STFs on Elite difficulty can only be defeated by strategy. DPS will not do it. Think of each one of these as thier own "NO Win Senario". For real.
Hint. Bring someone with TBRs, without the pull doff. Oh, and heal Kang.
If you haven't done so already, I suggest you also make this post in the new official difficulty feedback thread.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1253091
Your points are very valid and I completely agree that for newer players or for casual players who don't have sky high dps, the jump from normal to advanced is insanely different than the previous difference from normal to elite.
The new elite missions can be as hard as they like, it gives somewhere for the 20K DPS hitters to go and play, but they shouldn't remove the winnable challenging content from the players who don't do that sort of damage.
Aside from one 198532 hit I took, the only problem here is there is no way to burn down the enemies in cure fast enough.
I tried this just now in my only real tac ship. It's a cannon ship and each hit is close to 5000 so it's doing a reasonable dps - 15k? We would be needing more than twice that to make any progress in this mission.
It's a bit perplexing to me how about the same = 10x harder for this advanced.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
This right here is why I am a bit upset over the "new" normal. With this quote, they set the tone for what we thought we were getting. I was just fine with sticking to the new advanced queues (old elites). This, however, is nothing like what we got.
To have them lead us to believe this was what we were getting has caused a massive player shock. Even the normal queues are buffed to incredibly high levels when it comes to enemy hit points. I know the normal queues are supposed to be for people still gearing up and getting used to certain runs. There is just no way someone just getting started with a new ship and possible some new gear can make their way through the "new" normal runs. I previously stated that I was in a normal Fed fleet alert and we didn't even make it past wave 2. That's...bad. I have always flown support ships so I survived just fine, but I could not say the same for the rest of the team. Each one died at least twice with one dying 4 times in that new t6 escort.
I know there will be a couple of people saying "I got through a normal just fine with green gear, etc etc." one or even a few people being able to do this does not make it the average. I thought they did a good job of hyping the expansion and bringing in new players. I doubt many of these newer players can handle the difficulty level though. Those are the people I am speaking for.
Cure normal is still a 3 min affair.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Don't forget the rewards. The revised rewards suck! If they are going to make things harder, the rewards need to get better, not worse.
> <
> <
>
Since the barrier for these new "Advanced" queues is about 15k DPS per person, you are looking at a very small minority that is even capable of doing advanced.
Since the official number of people that take pride in their above 15k DPS by posting it in http://comatoes.github.io/sto-dps-league/ is around 1335 users, and the STO playerbase is around 670k active users, that means that Advanced is roughly based around .2% of the server population.
and the .2% are the ones they listened to forget about the other 99.8% of us who are casual and just login to blow off steam or have fun with friends, Unless they put in another viable way of earning the 2nd tier marks from factions other than STF's then a LOT of us will be stuck not getting the gear we need to advance. i've spent close to 2 years playing this game however i've never been more than a casual player because if i wanted to be "hardcore" i'd go back to playing WoW or something similar. STO is NOT nor has it ever been a "raider's " game. TO see it so severely dismiss such a large chunk of it's player base this expansion is really a clear indication of how little they actually do care for our feedback.
My assertion is this, it's not going to matter how many or how few of us whine about new features when the one's they listen are the ones that CLEARLY invest massive amounts of $$$$$ into the game which makes their opinions more valid...... another issue that is Repugnant to me.
Those of us who put up 7000-15000 DPS, and were blowing through the old STFs with ease; now we're relegated to Normals, which are even easier... or we need to run the Elites, where only the very best of us can compete.
I can do my 15k DPS... barely. That means advanced ISE might be within the realm of possibility for me and my fleeties, if the stars allign properly... but for the bulk of us, and for the bulk of runs, it's a huge waste of time.
And the payout is less than it used to be.
Cryptic is killing the Casual-Elite player here. Knife in the back, green blood spurting from the wound. Killing us.
Just how i'm feeling here.
I agree with every word here and this should go into the new official difficulty feedback thread :
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1253091
However - one thing that has put me off hugely (and I think definitely needs addressing) is the lack of rewards which you receive - as you need reasonable rewards in order to actually get decent gear.
It may well be because I'm not a regular MMO-er, but to be honest I'm not willing to pay the extortionate amounts (real money terms) to buy stuff from c-store, and if grinding takes too long I'd probably just choose to go play something else (it's why I stopped playing STO for a couple of years - my view on games is that they should have a fixed purchase price; if necessary I'd rather pay for extra content - ala DLC - than be 'heavily cajouled' into purchasing what are essentially virtual consumables)
If people were more intelligent the Borg disconnect would be easy.
To be fair, at level 60 you're likely to have roughly twice the HP, and quite a lot more DPS (although probably not 10x)a s you did at 50.
Because that is how level cap increases have worked in MMO's for over 20 years now.
End game is level 60 now, like it or not, and until players ate lvl 60 and have skills from the new secondary systems, you really can't judge the difficulty of the content.
It seems fine to me that I can't just go into CCA and park my ship and then go AFK and collect loot when I get back. If advanced is too hard for some people, they always have normal My very first BDN I got all kinds of accolades, its plenty easy enough.
Oh noes, day 2 of the expansion and everyone isn't an expert! Life as we know it is over.
They are the Borg! They are supposed to be insanley hard to beat. I am assuming that the people writing thease moanings have never seen TNG before. I'm only hoping that they buff the Borg in Ker'rat as well as they get smashed up by any vessel at any strength DPS or tier.
We are the STF Borg. You will be assimiliated to service us. Lower your trousers and prepare to be mounted. Resistance is futile.
If you're not an expert don't go into an advanced queue and blow it for those of us who know what we're doing. Actually that's not the issue, you can do that all you want I suppose, but it's not fun, and again it makes gettng BNPs impossible.
So no not everyone needs to be an expert, but either a) admit you don't know what you're doing and do a few normals to figure out the map and what's going on or b) Cryptic needs to figure a way that when the non-experts go into a map and blow it for everyone, that we can still get the rewards.
Again I personally am not saying it shouldn't be hard. What I'm saying is as it stands right now, it's almost impossible to PUG because one non-expert or one leecher or one griefer can ruin it for everyone.
And the answer of "get a fleet" isn't the answer, because not every player wants to. Can I do it with my fleet, sure, but what of the person who doesn't want to deal with fleets, or whose fleet is smallish and not designed around uber-level stuff?
Make it hard, make it difficult, but right now the rewards are gated behind stuff that the majority of players won't be able to handle.
Ah, you did touch on a point which I totally agree with you on, the rewards should be increased.
I was also a fan of the Ground STF's, but I haven't tried them post DR release, so if anyone has feedback on that, then that would be helpful, as I'm a little nervous trying them out only to find that they are just as anally retentive.
I myself will just stick to [|]
Normal [|]
Advanced [||]
Difficult [|||]
and I suspect that's exactly what all this is about. "Want to do your beloved STFs again? Pay me." I pay barely anything for this game. I've spent maybe 80$-100$ total over like 3 years (I was an hour away from buying the Dilithium Rising pack though, but I read the tribble notes about the STF nerfs first, literally about an hour before I bought it). I'm not a valuable customer to them, and I think at this point they're only interesting in making people pay. Everything they've done recently leads to that, and it doesn't take a genius to come to that conclusion.
I'm not opposed to paying for games; I have an active ESO subscription in an age where gamers are highly opposed to subscriptions. What I'm opposed to is the sort of free to play model STO is quickly adopting. They're trying to be subtle about it but we aren't stupid. This latest difficulty change may be adjusted after the outcry but the point stands that they want people to pay to continue playing their favorite content. They even said as much:
No difficulty increase means no incentive to pay. Again, we aren't stupid.
I also said this in their feedback thread:
Just have to read between the lines a little to understand what the reasons for the difficulty increase are.
This. You can't possibly know if Advanced is harder than Old Elite was a week ago because you've not done it at level 60, with all your Spec passives, five new Starship Traits, a Mastered T5U/T6 and MkXIV UR/Gold gear on four out of five players in the PUG. Which is exactly how you were doing it a week ago, relatively speaking.
This isn't to say it will all be fine, but that it simply can't be properly assessed right now. I'm also discounting the apparent scaling bug at lvl 60. Go into an Advanced, fight a sphere and a cube - note how much harder the sphere is than the cube suddenly? Cube is 59, sphere is 60. Likewise doing the final storyline mission at bumps the npcs up to ~1M hp each from ~400k (IIRC) at 59.
That ain't 'scaling'.
I remember reading a post by Bort on the subject of AI, reading between the lines the impression i got was improving the AI is too much work/we can't be bothered, so here are more dumb useless meatbags for you to shoot
I played a CSE (pug) last night, it wasn't any more difficult (in that the npcs don't hit any harder) but their HP pool is stupidly high for advanced (imo). We finished with the optional, but it took way too long for the pitiful rewards
Cryptic doesn't do AI or real challenge, it seems to me they will always take the route with the least effort required