The only good thing(s) I can say about the new difficulty changes, is they created a 3rd difficulty and, they added some spice to the original enemy layouts, by providing extra enemies where it could stand to use them.
Ground advanced borg missions, seem adequately challenging for sub-60 with everything not completed, elite I cannot say, as I haven't tried them because I am not lvl60 yet.
probably just hp increased by 3times or more and damage resistances and damage also.
No the problem is, there are no damn tanks in this damn game anymore, because they all went dps. So anyone who gets top DPS, pulls all the agro and no one stops it. I'm a damn sci ship, I can do alot, but when I get focused fired and the damn cruiser is in -threat gear and barely doing any DPS, there's an issue.
I can do a lot, but hull tank isn't one of them, but I shouldn't have to. That's the damn cruisers job, but when I out DPS the cruiser and even with -threat gear pull all the agro off a cruiser, there's an issue.
That and the damn cruiser drivers are always running the dps comm system, and never caring that if they're not tanking, someone else is, and maybe they could use a bit of damage mitigation comm stuff, it's what it's there for.
Hi there. I command a threat control cruiser, built to be a hard to kill agro magnet. loaded to the hilt with heals for myself and others. My captain is an engineer. The public queue system dose not support a healer/tank build, it grabs the first 5 to fill a mission.
By inflating hit points instead of inflating damage, cryptic has made my preferred role even more redundant. Damage is king, good tank healers have jumped on the ATB wagon. Why run Romulan + threat consoles, Like I do, when they can load up universals there and boost damage.
I do find it hard to call "everything takes ten times as long because targets go from 900k to 21 million HP" a difficulty increase. A massive boost in tediousness certainly.
Maybe it's a different kind of difficulty increase, like "more difficult to want to play through the tedium and not just say 'TRIBBLE it I'm done'."
At this level of difficulty, you won't have any players to play with. They are going to leave STO for good.
I just spent 40min in crystaline advanced in a 15K T5-U ship. Everyone got fed up and left.:eek: I know you guys want a challenge but, you need to realize the group of you that can spend hours a day grinding impossible missions is actually VERY small. The only reason STO has made money is off the MANY casual players that can fit this game into their busy schedule. (Imagine that, some of us actually are adults, and have careers.) If you don't bring down the difficulty, You guys will find out just how FEW of you there are that want to waste 40mins of their time to complete ONE stf. Because STO will loose its entire money making base and have to shut down. I'm a lifer and don't want to see this game lose money.
Make advanced what Elite was and make the new Elite the one for the guys who want the mega challenge.
CE is only an issue if people go there all unprepared. It's one of the few STFs that require some actual sci skills to succeed.
1) Grav wells with aftershocks and grav torpedo spreads. One ship with grav gens pumped up helps.
2) Ships with sci abilities that clear damage buffs from the CE like tachyon beam and energy siphon.
I saw plenty of teams during the CE event that went in there to just press the spacebar and shoot at stuff while I was the only one with GW and one of the abilities to clear the damage buffs.
Until then, let us know your thoughts here, and we will take your feedback into consideration.
Feedback on the difficulty... hmm. Well, I've got to level up my captain and his specializations. I've got to upgrade and level my ship. Upgrade my weapons. Upgrade my shields, deflector, engines, warpcore, Science consoles, Engineering consoles, Tactical consoles...
Ran my first FFA with my fleet group last night. We had two Dauntless mega-well builds, a Guardian, a Galor, and a Contortrix. The random enemies were Tholians. 70k hull Mesh Weavers is silly, but whatever. We managed to power through it with mega-well crowd control, despite the fact that two players had hard CTDs during the match. I didn't check to see how much time was left on the timer at the end but I think it took at least 7 minutes and 40 seconds (I was one of the CTDs so my log may be incomplete). I'm not sure how well we would have done without having two mega-well CC ships, even though combined group DPS was probably about 50k. I feel like it would have been significantly worse if the enemies had free range to roam everywhere without being compressed into a singularity. That really doesn't engender confidence in trying out PUG-Roulette.
-edit- Forgot to mention levels: Dauntless-60 Galor-60 Guardian-52 Contortrix-53 Dauntless-51, all kitted out with fleet and rep gear.
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
The issue i have atm is i only have 1 T5-U ship. which is an Odyssey Tactical Cruiser, and its tier 4 mastery, and its on a level 56 toon... i havent upgraded my gear, and im still running MKXII weapons. and my Sheilds and stuff is MACO gear. the issue i have is that on Advanced my 89k Hull is eaten in a matter of seconds against the borg. i like the added challenge but nerfing the rewards for that added challenge is a bit of a kick in the guts. all that extra work for less reward.
The added challenge is nice, but when its obviously aimed at 50k dpsers, it means players like me have no hope in hell.
Increase the rewards for NORMAL ADVANCED AND ELITE
NORMAL is fine
ADVANCED Hp should be scaled down 25-30 percent (remember most PUG groups will exist in this plane)
ELITE - havent tried it yet so cant comment
RESEARCH MATERIALS - increase sources where one can get these.
ENEMY AI - rather than buffing HP improve AI mechanic.... I must say AI of vaduuwaar is pretty decent and they try and flank and not try and directly ram you in the front.
Remove ULTRA RARE equipment but not EPIC !! DIL costs for upgrading is exorbitant for F2P players like me. Or as other have pointed out in the above posts increase rewards and sources for materials to develop in game. ofcourse dont make it too easy but at this rate it will take atleast a year to bling out a single ship.
Add LOBI ships in the store with a Romulan angle as well with singularity cores.
Finally please include an NPC somehwere where we can trade in bugged gear with MK 13 values having the same value as MK 12.
Fleet Actions need to go back to pre-DR configuration. Before DR you could carry 2 players in Mirandas or other beginning level ships but now, if you get teamed with just one low level player your not going to be able to complete the action. It not really fair to the lower level players or the higher ones. Another option would level banding like level 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, etc.
Maybe NOW you guys might listen to my idea. Its clear you want us to SHOW YOU THE MONEY. I havnt even played DR yet (I'll login tomorrow) but I can tell with all the dilithium price slashing, you want less free loading and more wallet opening.
Ok. Take the advice of a casual who will pay casually. Put ALL high end gear into the Z store. Make it gear boxes purchasable for zen. TRIBBLE the naysayers. Its not pay to win, its just Pay to keep up. $5 for a Mk XIV gold gear item of my choice. At that price, I'll throw you $10-$20 a month pretty consistently to slowly chip away at maxing out my ships and crew. As well as play and grind for some. The special sets and outfits can stay unpurchasable, to have something to play for. But its much better to get consistent income from players who just want a fair deal, than relying on lockboxes. Sure, you can still lockbox, and put special ships and stuff in there too. But if PAYING players want to open the wallet and gold max a ship in a few clicks of the z store buttons, WHY would you stop them? Let the freeloaders grind their fingers off to earn the best stuff, let THEM gamble in the rep upgrade/chance system for a pitance of dilithium. Its clear you want to squeeze every cent from us you can. But all the tricks and gimmicks arent necessary. Just be straight up with us, and thousands upon thousands will open their wallets for you for a FAIR deal.
Its the logical choice Al. I know DR cost a lot of money to make. I want to pay you for your work. But Im not going to grind my fingers off AND pay you buckets. Try tapping into the casual payer player. Stop aiming for the whales. A steady diet of good paying seals can get you the raise you and your coworkers want.
Just sayin
STO: @AGNT009 Since Dec 2010
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
The over all content is great however there are some issues.
it Could use an updated seven of nine outfit with hair.
also An updated intrepid Class bridge and interior content would be nice.
the game play is too hard it takes far to long and it pays next to nothing.
You guys are on the right track...
It not really fair to the lower level players or the higher ones. Another option would level banding like level 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, etc.
I've been arguing for this for a long time. A fresh level 8 character in a Miranda isn't going to do jack squat in a fleet alert with level 50 characters (lol, 500 DPS is so useful), much less an alert with level-60-scaled enemies.
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
I can already imagine it now, "Elite STF group LFM, 45k dps or gtfo! Science and Engineers need not apply"
As stated many times over (and extensively on tribble), the HP values are just completely off the chart. Elite mode on story missions has become as fun as banging your head against a wall. Making something unpleasant isn't the same as making something more challenging. Never once on elite mode was I in danger of dying, but it feels like my XIII spiral waves got downgraded into ticklebeams as I try and climb a mountain of HP. I can't imagine how bad it's going to be trying to play this expansion with an alt who never obtained level 50 rep and fleet gear.
One thing that has been absolutely driving me nuts, Optional. Either rename them to, mandatory objective, or remove them. You can't fail an STF and still have it be considered an "Optional" objective. If optionals are going to be mandatory, they might as well remove the ability to que for ground STFs. Since this game became FTP, I have gotten the optional in an infected ground once in a queued PuG, :rolleyes:.
i do like the new advanced difficulty - at least in the conduit mission. the hp might be a bit high, but that's something that needs to be looked at when we actually have all mk xiv gear in t6 ships, currently i'm still in my t5 not-upfraded not-fleet kar'fi with mostly mk xii gear and doing ok...
i like that in conduit you now have to actually pay attention and work together, instead of the auto-win it was before. played it 3 times on advanced with pugs, first time an utter failure, second time an almost easy win, and the 3rd time we at times needed 3 ppl gw'ing the spheres in turn to keep us from failing, due to some mistakes that were made...
although they took quite some time, it felt like an archievement completing the mission, which is the best reward ever! didn't actually look at the other rewards for it, so can't say if those need tweaking.
i guess the difficulty will drop a lot once ppl get accustomed to the new style, to a point where it'll stop feeling like an archievement... guess that's when the other rewards will become more important
The upgrade system is a complete farce and utter waste of your resources.
You have to pray to the RNG gods in order to get a DECENT modifier. And the cost is ridiculous.
Slot based weapons/gear, where you have to explore/missions to get material to craft modifier attachments to weapons.
ie, a basic beam array mk xii would have 3 empty modifier slots, you can upgrade the base weapon to mk xiv (epic, UR) to unlock the forth modifier. Say you want an acc mod, craft the modifier with dil/materials, ie, targeting component, iso chip, whatever, and what your crafting level is determins if the crafted modifier is successful or not.
Just an idea since someone brought up the epic/UR weps ^^
The upgrade system is a complete farce and utter waste of your resources.
You have to pray to the RNG gods in order to get a DECENT modifier. And the cost is ridiculous.
Slot based weapons/gear, where you have to explore/missions to get material to craft modifier attachments to weapons.
ie, a basic beam array mk xii would have 3 empty modifier slots, you can upgrade the base weapon to mk xiv (epic, UR) to unlock the forth modifier. Say you want an acc mod, craft the modifier with dil/materials, ie, targeting component, iso chip, whatever, and what your crafting level is determins if the crafted modifier is successful or not.
Just an idea since someone brought up the epic/UR weps ^^
thats why i dont upgrade weapons.I wont get TRIBBLE mods on my accx3 weapons I paid tens of millions ec.
both the upgrade ability and the difficulty are a little intense right now. I dont know how anyone in anything other then MK XIII and MK XIV will get ANYTHING done. And with the upgrade being both buggy and a complete RNG. its such a drain on resources.
I have to say that, at first I went into a rage over the STF changes. After calming down I think the following needs tobe done.
1. Dil rewards
Normal 480
Advanced 960
Elite 1360 or thereabouts
2. Difficulty
Havent played any elite Stfs yet so cant comment. Advanced has been improved by the changes(does feel more challenging) but the NPC Hitpoints could do with a bit of a Nerf....say 20%
To Cryptic: I know this is a business and I know you want to earn money, but what you have done in this update with the dil cut and time increase is too much. We have already been given two enormous Dil sinks with the R&D and Upgrade systems......please don't completely kill us with a dil decrease aswell!!
PS: If advanced is for ships with MKXIII/MKIV upgrades.....how are we supposed to get the very rare materials to do the upgrades if we cant play the missions!......please think about this point.
Geko,Thanks for your time, the difficult is kind of fine.. the time to complete.. well as a casual player, that's a problem, and as a crafter, it's worse, some middle groud would be great... a Little adjustment on either the rewards or the difficulty... that's all, make it worth our time..
I've actually changed my thoughts slightly about the HP increase for 'normal' difficulty. At first, it didn't really bother me, but what with the dozen or so patrol missions in the Delta Quadrant it's getting really tedious.
They are doing virtually no damage to me (because I play story content on Normal for the story more than the challenge and my ship is more geared for the old 'elite' missions) but they all have insanely high HP now and it takes so long to kill them that it's just ridiculous. I'm not challenged, just bored. One of the patrols yesterday had me face off against three Vaadwaur cruisers, each of which had in excess of 150K HP... I mean, what's the point in that other than to intentionally slow down progress by a huge factor?
Please, rethink the HP multipliers.
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!!
I've actually changed my thoughts slightly about the HP increase for 'normal' difficulty. At first, it didn't really bother me, but what with the dozen or so patrol missions in the Delta Quadrant it's getting really tedious.
They are doing virtually no damage to me (because I play story content on Normal for the story more than the challenge and my ship is more geared for the old 'elite' missions) but they all have insanely high HP now and it takes so long to kill them that it's just ridiculous. I'm not challenged, just bored. One of the patrols yesterday had me face off against three Vaadwaur cruisers, each of which had in excess of 150K HP... I mean, what's the point in that other than to intentionally slow down progress by a huge factor?
Please, rethink the HP multipliers.
Everything feels a bit like quick sand.
Ground story missions are littered with points where you have to interact with objects and they designed it so that the interaction "fails" (sometimes multiple times) and sends you to do another interaction.
This is clever when used as seasoning, but there were several times that I noticed them leaning very heavily on it. The mind meld and the defense complex come to mind. Several points where you do 3 interactions in a row on the same console, it became a game of "watch the progress bar".
Some of the interact dialogues have quirked an eyebrow, as well. It's hard to tell if they're being intentionally humorous with some of the tech jargon or if they kinda phoned them in.
the upgrade system and the pseudo need of EPIC/gold stuff is the problem. the real problem.
the devs think (in my opnion) that all the players are like children behind a new toy, they want it or they do a whim. Majority of players (my though, not a certainty) want just competitive gears for the new content and we know that MK XIII or MK XIV are sufficient (not MK XII purple for the stf).
the upgrade of the items should stop at MK XIV (purple-UR), and the rest only for the pvp players.
who really need epic/gold stuff? a lot of players whined because they wanted these new shiny stuff, now the devs have created contents (rewamped stfs etc) for them and the majority of the players are ****ed up
Ran 3 DR Missions, Tau Dewa Sector Patrol, Tholian Alert, and the Deferi Dailies. So Far Stuff is pretty Wonky. I am running everything on elite too.
I think ground with Away Teams is tuned pretty well right now IF YOUR Team is geared. If not, there will be challenges, but my death squad are all in set bonus stuff (MACO, Adapted MACO, Jem'Hadar, and Dyson).
Space on the other hand is a different story. The Breen Chel Gretts in Orelius are harder to kill than any of the 5 combat zones in Tau Dewa (Japori/Carraya/Beta Thoridar/Gama Eridon/Naendra). Neither did much damage, although the Hirogen are pretty good at shield stripping now, it just takes for ever to kill them. I did TD in a little over 30 minutes, Aid the deferi and Kelvani each took about 15 minutes because i was basically tickling them. No problem on the Raiders, the Gretts were tanking like the Voth.
I aint the best DPSer but I got enough invested in my ship to hold my own and be way more than adequate for anything thus far. Yet when I ran the Tholian Alert the 4 ships that went in finished it in about 5 minutes with everything annhilated and all the loot collected.
I do think a better assessment will be made once people hit 60 and got all of their traits and such. I'll switch to a T6 to unlock the trait once I hit Mastery 4 in my Avenger.
I know the odds are that this won't be read, but my thoughts are as follows.
space normal queues: They should be a level of difficulty between the old normal and old elite, and should reward the 480 dilithium that old normals gave. I also think it would be interesting if you gave an added bonus of one borg neural processor/isomorphic injections/etc. with completing the optional in under a certain time. (This should also be done in normal ground queues.)
space advanced queues: The difficulty should be lowered to a point between where they are now and old elite, they should also reward the 960 dilithium that old elites gave.
space elite queues: I'm not sure if the difficulty should be changed either higher or lower, but the reward should definitely be increased to 1440 based on the current level of difficulty.
ground in general: Normal and advanced should remain at the same difficulty as the old normal and elite respectively. I haven't tried the new elite ground, so I can't give a fair opinion on that. They should also follow the same reward levels that I mentioned above (480, 960, 1440).
Support 90 degree arc limitation on BFaW! Save our ships from looking like flying disco balls of dumb!
You removed content the majority enjoyed, elite STFs.
You replaced them with content the minority enjoys, advanced STFs.
Then added another level of content for that same minority of people, new Elite STFs.
Ok, so maybe advanced STFs are scaled for level 60 people with good gear, that's fine. But why on earth can you queue for them at 50 without good gear? There isn't so much as a warning saying you do not have the gear/level for this content. Why is there no system in place to ensure that those that are ready for this content don't have their time wasted by those that don't. Is the community supposed to police this themselves? because that is going to end well.
My suggestion is pretty simple and probably already suggested in the long thread, but as someone who likes the higher difficulty and loves the challenge, I'd like to see that part left alone, but just have the STO missions add more time to be completed. As it was, in numerous attempts, we were doing well, but we were just so far away from completing it because the additional hitpoints and the added number of ships is making it very difficult to complete the mission in the allotted time.
Fleet Admiral Duane Gundrum, U.S.S. Merrimack
Fleet Admiral Ventaxa Proxmire, U.S.S. Shaka Walls Fell
Blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/?page_id=1990
Foundry series: Bob From Accounting & For the Sake of the Empire
Comments
probably just hp increased by 3times or more and damage resistances and damage also.
No new challenge, but to get more dps.
Hi there. I command a threat control cruiser, built to be a hard to kill agro magnet. loaded to the hilt with heals for myself and others. My captain is an engineer. The public queue system dose not support a healer/tank build, it grabs the first 5 to fill a mission.
By inflating hit points instead of inflating damage, cryptic has made my preferred role even more redundant. Damage is king, good tank healers have jumped on the ATB wagon. Why run Romulan + threat consoles, Like I do, when they can load up universals there and boost damage.
Brody ToS
Maybe it's a different kind of difficulty increase, like "more difficult to want to play through the tedium and not just say 'TRIBBLE it I'm done'."
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1254401
Helpful Tools: Dictionary.com - Logical fallacies - Random generator - Word generator - Color tool - Extra Credits - List of common English language errors - New T6 Big booty tutorial
CE is only an issue if people go there all unprepared. It's one of the few STFs that require some actual sci skills to succeed.
1) Grav wells with aftershocks and grav torpedo spreads. One ship with grav gens pumped up helps.
2) Ships with sci abilities that clear damage buffs from the CE like tachyon beam and energy siphon.
I saw plenty of teams during the CE event that went in there to just press the spacebar and shoot at stuff while I was the only one with GW and one of the abilities to clear the damage buffs.
Feedback on the difficulty... hmm. Well, I've got to level up my captain and his specializations. I've got to upgrade and level my ship. Upgrade my weapons. Upgrade my shields, deflector, engines, warpcore, Science consoles, Engineering consoles, Tactical consoles...
I'll get back to you on that.
Thanks, I am.
-edit- Forgot to mention levels: Dauntless-60 Galor-60 Guardian-52 Contortrix-53 Dauntless-51, all kitted out with fleet and rep gear.
Joined January 2009
The added challenge is nice, but when its obviously aimed at 50k dpsers, it means players like me have no hope in hell.
NORMAL is fine
ADVANCED Hp should be scaled down 25-30 percent (remember most PUG groups will exist in this plane)
ELITE - havent tried it yet so cant comment
RESEARCH MATERIALS - increase sources where one can get these.
ENEMY AI - rather than buffing HP improve AI mechanic.... I must say AI of vaduuwaar is pretty decent and they try and flank and not try and directly ram you in the front.
Remove ULTRA RARE equipment but not EPIC !! DIL costs for upgrading is exorbitant for F2P players like me. Or as other have pointed out in the above posts increase rewards and sources for materials to develop in game. ofcourse dont make it too easy but at this rate it will take atleast a year to bling out a single ship.
Add LOBI ships in the store with a Romulan angle as well with singularity cores.
Finally please include an NPC somehwere where we can trade in bugged gear with MK 13 values having the same value as MK 12.
Maybe NOW you guys might listen to my idea. Its clear you want us to SHOW YOU THE MONEY. I havnt even played DR yet (I'll login tomorrow) but I can tell with all the dilithium price slashing, you want less free loading and more wallet opening.
Ok. Take the advice of a casual who will pay casually. Put ALL high end gear into the Z store. Make it gear boxes purchasable for zen. TRIBBLE the naysayers. Its not pay to win, its just Pay to keep up. $5 for a Mk XIV gold gear item of my choice. At that price, I'll throw you $10-$20 a month pretty consistently to slowly chip away at maxing out my ships and crew. As well as play and grind for some. The special sets and outfits can stay unpurchasable, to have something to play for. But its much better to get consistent income from players who just want a fair deal, than relying on lockboxes. Sure, you can still lockbox, and put special ships and stuff in there too. But if PAYING players want to open the wallet and gold max a ship in a few clicks of the z store buttons, WHY would you stop them? Let the freeloaders grind their fingers off to earn the best stuff, let THEM gamble in the rep upgrade/chance system for a pitance of dilithium. Its clear you want to squeeze every cent from us you can. But all the tricks and gimmicks arent necessary. Just be straight up with us, and thousands upon thousands will open their wallets for you for a FAIR deal.
Its the logical choice Al. I know DR cost a lot of money to make. I want to pay you for your work. But Im not going to grind my fingers off AND pay you buckets. Try tapping into the casual payer player. Stop aiming for the whales. A steady diet of good paying seals can get you the raise you and your coworkers want.
Just sayin
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
it Could use an updated seven of nine outfit with hair.
also An updated intrepid Class bridge and interior content would be nice.
the game play is too hard it takes far to long and it pays next to nothing.
You guys are on the right track...
I've been arguing for this for a long time. A fresh level 8 character in a Miranda isn't going to do jack squat in a fleet alert with level 50 characters (lol, 500 DPS is so useful), much less an alert with level-60-scaled enemies.
Joined January 2009
As stated many times over (and extensively on tribble), the HP values are just completely off the chart. Elite mode on story missions has become as fun as banging your head against a wall. Making something unpleasant isn't the same as making something more challenging. Never once on elite mode was I in danger of dying, but it feels like my XIII spiral waves got downgraded into ticklebeams as I try and climb a mountain of HP. I can't imagine how bad it's going to be trying to play this expansion with an alt who never obtained level 50 rep and fleet gear.
One thing that has been absolutely driving me nuts, Optional. Either rename them to, mandatory objective, or remove them. You can't fail an STF and still have it be considered an "Optional" objective. If optionals are going to be mandatory, they might as well remove the ability to que for ground STFs. Since this game became FTP, I have gotten the optional in an infected ground once in a queued PuG, :rolleyes:.
so they must remove the fleet stuff?
Remove EPIC, keep ULTRA RARE, and for the gold gears make them ONLY for pvp. And everybody (well, in fact almost everybody :P) will be happy.
- pvp players will have all the needed stuff for their fights
- pve players will have the needed stuff for their stfs
and this means no elitist players who want that all the others be like them
what is this need of EPIC stuff?
i like that in conduit you now have to actually pay attention and work together, instead of the auto-win it was before. played it 3 times on advanced with pugs, first time an utter failure, second time an almost easy win, and the 3rd time we at times needed 3 ppl gw'ing the spheres in turn to keep us from failing, due to some mistakes that were made...
although they took quite some time, it felt like an archievement completing the mission, which is the best reward ever! didn't actually look at the other rewards for it, so can't say if those need tweaking.
i guess the difficulty will drop a lot once ppl get accustomed to the new style, to a point where it'll stop feeling like an archievement... guess that's when the other rewards will become more important
You have to pray to the RNG gods in order to get a DECENT modifier. And the cost is ridiculous.
Slot based weapons/gear, where you have to explore/missions to get material to craft modifier attachments to weapons.
ie, a basic beam array mk xii would have 3 empty modifier slots, you can upgrade the base weapon to mk xiv (epic, UR) to unlock the forth modifier. Say you want an acc mod, craft the modifier with dil/materials, ie, targeting component, iso chip, whatever, and what your crafting level is determins if the crafted modifier is successful or not.
Just an idea since someone brought up the epic/UR weps ^^
thats why i dont upgrade weapons.I wont get TRIBBLE mods on my accx3 weapons I paid tens of millions ec.
1. Dil rewards
Normal 480
Advanced 960
Elite 1360 or thereabouts
2. Difficulty
Havent played any elite Stfs yet so cant comment. Advanced has been improved by the changes(does feel more challenging) but the NPC Hitpoints could do with a bit of a Nerf....say 20%
To Cryptic: I know this is a business and I know you want to earn money, but what you have done in this update with the dil cut and time increase is too much. We have already been given two enormous Dil sinks with the R&D and Upgrade systems......please don't completely kill us with a dil decrease aswell!!
PS: If advanced is for ships with MKXIII/MKIV upgrades.....how are we supposed to get the very rare materials to do the upgrades if we cant play the missions!......please think about this point.
One to beam up!
They are doing virtually no damage to me (because I play story content on Normal for the story more than the challenge and my ship is more geared for the old 'elite' missions) but they all have insanely high HP now and it takes so long to kill them that it's just ridiculous. I'm not challenged, just bored. One of the patrols yesterday had me face off against three Vaadwaur cruisers, each of which had in excess of 150K HP... I mean, what's the point in that other than to intentionally slow down progress by a huge factor?
Please, rethink the HP multipliers.
Everything feels a bit like quick sand.
Ground story missions are littered with points where you have to interact with objects and they designed it so that the interaction "fails" (sometimes multiple times) and sends you to do another interaction.
This is clever when used as seasoning, but there were several times that I noticed them leaning very heavily on it. The mind meld and the defense complex come to mind. Several points where you do 3 interactions in a row on the same console, it became a game of "watch the progress bar".
Some of the interact dialogues have quirked an eyebrow, as well. It's hard to tell if they're being intentionally humorous with some of the tech jargon or if they kinda phoned them in.
the devs think (in my opnion) that all the players are like children behind a new toy, they want it or they do a whim. Majority of players (my though, not a certainty) want just competitive gears for the new content and we know that MK XIII or MK XIV are sufficient (not MK XII purple for the stf).
the upgrade of the items should stop at MK XIV (purple-UR), and the rest only for the pvp players.
who really need epic/gold stuff? a lot of players whined because they wanted these new shiny stuff, now the devs have created contents (rewamped stfs etc) for them and the majority of the players are ****ed up
I think ground with Away Teams is tuned pretty well right now IF YOUR Team is geared. If not, there will be challenges, but my death squad are all in set bonus stuff (MACO, Adapted MACO, Jem'Hadar, and Dyson).
Space on the other hand is a different story. The Breen Chel Gretts in Orelius are harder to kill than any of the 5 combat zones in Tau Dewa (Japori/Carraya/Beta Thoridar/Gama Eridon/Naendra). Neither did much damage, although the Hirogen are pretty good at shield stripping now, it just takes for ever to kill them. I did TD in a little over 30 minutes, Aid the deferi and Kelvani each took about 15 minutes because i was basically tickling them. No problem on the Raiders, the Gretts were tanking like the Voth.
I aint the best DPSer but I got enough invested in my ship to hold my own and be way more than adequate for anything thus far. Yet when I ran the Tholian Alert the 4 ships that went in finished it in about 5 minutes with everything annhilated and all the loot collected.
I do think a better assessment will be made once people hit 60 and got all of their traits and such. I'll switch to a T6 to unlock the trait once I hit Mastery 4 in my Avenger.
Sure, if you think "similar" means "orders of magnitude of difference".
space normal queues: They should be a level of difficulty between the old normal and old elite, and should reward the 480 dilithium that old normals gave. I also think it would be interesting if you gave an added bonus of one borg neural processor/isomorphic injections/etc. with completing the optional in under a certain time. (This should also be done in normal ground queues.)
space advanced queues: The difficulty should be lowered to a point between where they are now and old elite, they should also reward the 960 dilithium that old elites gave.
space elite queues: I'm not sure if the difficulty should be changed either higher or lower, but the reward should definitely be increased to 1440 based on the current level of difficulty.
ground in general: Normal and advanced should remain at the same difficulty as the old normal and elite respectively. I haven't tried the new elite ground, so I can't give a fair opinion on that. They should also follow the same reward levels that I mentioned above (480, 960, 1440).
Support 90 degree arc limitation on BFaW! Save our ships from looking like flying disco balls of dumb!
You removed content the majority enjoyed, elite STFs.
You replaced them with content the minority enjoys, advanced STFs.
Then added another level of content for that same minority of people, new Elite STFs.
Ok, so maybe advanced STFs are scaled for level 60 people with good gear, that's fine. But why on earth can you queue for them at 50 without good gear? There isn't so much as a warning saying you do not have the gear/level for this content. Why is there no system in place to ensure that those that are ready for this content don't have their time wasted by those that don't. Is the community supposed to police this themselves? because that is going to end well.
Fleet Admiral Ventaxa Proxmire, U.S.S. Shaka Walls Fell
Blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/?page_id=1990
Foundry series: Bob From Accounting & For the Sake of the Empire